Portland city officials on Tuesday responded to a disturbing video published this week by a Bayside neighborhood landlord showing rampant drug abuse, violence and public indecency outside of his building.
The video, shared on Monday by Portland landlord Ned Payne — viewed over 4,200 times on Youtube as of Wednesday — is a compilation of security camera footage recorded over a period of several months depicting the scene outside of 19 Portland St.
Payne’s footage shows clips of young children having to step over homeless individuals sleeping on the stoop of the building, tent encampments, open drug use and apparent drug deals, public urination, fights and a man racking and showing off a handgun to a group of people.
WARNING: The video below contains graphic content and includes strong language, violence and drug use. Viewer discretion is strongly advised.
Payne told WGME Tuesday that the front steps of his building have become the scene of daily drug use, crime and violence over the years, and that tenants living in the building are “petrified.”
“There are fights, screaming, drug abuse, drug dealing,” Payne told WGME. “And it happens every day.”
“I think the tenants that live here are petrified,” Payne said. “Every single time they open the front door, they have no idea what’s going to greet them outside.”
“Kids shouldn’t have to live like this. Families shouldn’t have to live like this,” he added. “And it’s just something that has to be dealt with.”
The building is situated close to the Elena’s Way low-barrier homeless shelter, operated by the nonprofit organization Preble Street.
The city’s Health and Human Services and Public Safety Committee brought up the video during their Tuesday meeting to discuss ways to increase police presence and outreach in the Bayside neighborhood and respond to the safety concerns of the public.
Portland Police Chief Mark Dubois informed the committee that “there’s definitely an increase in activity” in the Bayside area, saying that officer initiated calls and arrests in the neighborhood are up about 20 percent from 2023, with 1,450 officer initiated interactions this year to date.
Chief Dubois said there is a dedicated Bayside detail that operates in the area daily from noon to 8 p.m., and as a result of the recent complaints they will double the detail to include four officers.
City Councilor Kate Sykes, who was elected to represent District 5 last November and is the former co-chair of the Maine Democratic Socialists of America (Maine DSA), said the video is “really hard to watch,” but that it also contains “some kind of beautiful moments between human beings there.”
“As difficult as those interactions are, and the things that are happening, there’s kindness there,” Sykes said.
“And so I think this is one of those moments in a community where we can become really divided, and I think understanding that the suffering that we’re seeing there is all of our suffering,” Sykes added. “It’s the suffering of the people on the street, it’s the suffering of the people who have to live in that area and see that every day, it’s the suffering that gets compounded when videos like that go out to the rest of the community and, you know, reverberate.”
Committee Chair and At-Large City Councilor April Fournier expressed similar sentiments, saying “I think we feel compassion and sadness for the individuals who are the ones that are sleeping on the stairs, because I can only imagine having someone take a video of one of the lowest moments of my life and disseminate it to the public for everyone to see.”
“I don’t want to in any way dismiss the concerns that are brought forward, you know, we hear you, we definitely recognize the critical nature of the situation,” Fournier said, adding that “it is a very slow and challenging process” to increase outreach efforts to address the situation.
Responding to the video Portland Mayor Mark Dion said that while he appreciates the Councilors’ “balanced approach,” he is “troubled” and that he has to “speak for the neighborhood.”
“You know, I can contemplate this is an abstract fashion, but they have to live with it, that’s their stoop, they walk that neighborhood,” Dion said. “I don’t know how I’d feel as a father having to traverse that space with my daughters having to go off to school — I don’t want to lose sight of that.”
“When they’re racking a handgun, I’m not sure outreach is the answer,” Dion said. “When they’re injecting somebody into a vein or artery in their throat, I’m not sure therapy is the appropriate answer at that point.”
“I don’t want the neighborhood to feel like we’re trying to create some equity balance here that everybody’s needs are being met as we approach it,” he added. “I think we have a responsibility to meet needs, but we have a responsibility to our residents and their safety, because it’s their home.”
District 1 City Councilor Anna Trevorrow responded to Dion saying she “felt the need to offer some rebuttal comments.”
“I don’t feel we should be setting up a dynamic we’re picking sides in this,” Trevorrow said.
Trevorrow said Payne’s video being publicized is “very divisive,” and “capitalizing on fear and stigma.”
“We need to be looking at global solutions to it that doesn’t pit one side against the other, and certainly not the people who are the most marginalized and have the least resources,” Trevorrow said.
“I appreciate the rebuttal Councilor,” Mayor Dion replied to Trevorrow. “I don’t have problems picking sides — I’ve spent a career picking sides to try to advance one proposition or another, and the side I took tonight is for the general public safety.”
While discussion of the video was not on the agenda for the committee’s Tuesday meeting, Councilor Fournier said conversations regarding the Bayside neighborhood will be ongoing and a part of the committee’s future meetings.
Leave it to a Commie to think it’s beautiful.
They love chaos and crime so they can have excuses to grab more power and steal our God given rights.
Why don’t you go live there lady?
The Liberal Council whiners who think nobody should be taping these problems is the exact reason the city will never move to really FIX THE PROBLEMS.
get what you vote for I guess
Kate Sykes & April Fournier, with all their Compassion! Should let them all Camp out & Urinate & wave Guns around & do drugs right at their Homes ! This is the problem the Wackos Frauds that are elected are the Demise of our Society
“Councilor Fournier said conversations regarding the Bayside neighborhood will be ongoing and a part of the committee’s future meetings.” That’s double-speak for we really don’t give a damn and don’t intend to actually solve the problem. The blame for the rot of Portland starts with the voters but ends with the useless Leftist council members.
Ha Ha Portland. You get what you vote for. Sykes is from the Maine Democratic Socialists of America. Need more be said. You keep voting for these people and expect things to change? That is the definition of insanity.
That’s no way to live – either for the tenants having to be greeted with a hell-like scene or the lost souls staggering through life. I’m afraid that Bangor city officials look to Portland for solutions when Bangor should be seeing Portland as an example to learn not to copy.
Why don’t we put these poor, misguided people to work for the community good? Have them do positive things for the community. They could pick up trash off the street, work at gun ranges as a safety range officer, distribute clean needles, and we could pay them with free fentanyl, cigarettes, toilet paper, and alcohol. A WIN_WIN situation all around. Maybe counselors Anna Trevorrow and April Fournier would be singing a different tune if this “crap” were to occur on THEIR DOORSTEPS EVERT DAY.
I grew up in Portland and fortunately don’t live there any more. The Bayside area has always been sketchy. It’s now been gentrified but the zombies remain.Portland is just another failed social experiment by the left. Good luck folks.
I feel so badly for the family that lives at that address. Maybe the landlord could put a steel door in front of the porch as a temporary measure, one that could be unlocked by the tenants, like the steel doors in NYC that protect businesses from being robbed. Then it won’t be so easy and inviting for the junkies to sit down and they’d have to move on, maybe to a park and away from apartments.
Hey Anna Trevorrow, go ahead and pick sides. There is a good side and a bad side and nothing beautiful in the bad side.
Age restricted videos are designed to limit the dissemination of the video. I don’t have a YouTube account and don’t want one. So I can’t watch it. If porn were age restricted American tweens/teens wouldn’t be such ho’s and need abortions.
Funny, how the two dumb girl city councilors avoid all mention of guns, drugs, urinating in public and littering.
What are the so called “kind beautiful moments” there? Did they hug it out after shooting up? Did they shake hands after fighting, did they help each other by calling 911 when the another overdosed?
And the other girl idiot can only talk about how the vagrants privacy is violated when recorded on security camera sleeping on the streets/stoops? Crazy! They don’t have to sleep on the street. Portland has shelters, Portland has tried to move them into shelters. The vagrants refuse to go because they can’t show off guns, use drugs, fight and litter in the shelters. Their personal choices / rights end when they violate others personal choices / rights.
Put them in vagrant detention centers, detox them, put them in skills training (welding, CDL etc) and get them back into the land of the living.
Also, shut down preble street, catholic charities and jewish community alliance. Those idiots are a huge problem. They are inviting and enabling illigal migration and homelessness in Maine.
To Esau the bot:
You must not have read the article as it has nothing to do with Gaza. We don’t really care for your medieval tribal hatred in Maine. We have a saying from the 60’s that you may not have heard. AMERICA LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT. Feel free to hop on a plane to Gaza at any time.
All I can say is that the Left brought Portland down. They did it deliberately.