Number of IEDs Found in Portland Declines Sharply in 2014

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Cornelius Swart, GoLocal PDX Director of Content

Photo credit: WikiMedia

The number of improvised explosive devices found in Portland dropped significantly in 2014, a trend mirrored around the state and one that leaves law enforcement officials scratching their heads.

Although a number of high-profile cases involving explosive devices made headlines in 2014, the overall number of devices found in Portland declined roughly 36 percent over the course of the year, according to an analysis of police data by GoLocalPDX.

“We’re down and don’t ask me why, we don’t know,” said Sgt. Michael Unsworth of the Portland Police Bureau’s Metropolitan Explosive Disposal Unit (MEDU).

Most recently, Portland Police arrested Neal Allen Panschow, 43, after he allegedly threw four pipe bombs at officers during an east Portland car chase last December.

In October, an explosive device detonated inside a car near Markham Elementary School in Southwest Portland. Later that month, Portland’s bomb squad removed a pipe loaded with a shotgun shell, connected to a tripwire, from a trail in Forest Park. No one was injured in any of the incidents.

Yet despite these alarming cases, the incidence of improvised explosive devices in the city dropped significantly.

IEDs found in Portland Each Year

Nationally, there were 5,909 explosive incidents in 2013 that caused 390 injuries and 31 fatalities, according to the most recent statistics from the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives (ATF).

On any given year, Portland police recover or destroy about two dozen or more IEDs, mostly in the form of pipe bombs and bottle bombs, according to the data. Some are found at crime scenes or in public places like parks, school grounds or outhouses.

Since 2009, that number has held fairly steady, varying by only two or three IEDs each year. But in 2014, the number of IEDS recovered and destroyed dropped dramatically, and law enforcement officials around the region are not sure why.

Unsworth said his agency saw a decline in IEDs throughout the metro area.

“We are hearing the same thing in Salem and Eugene,” Unsworth said.

Portland’s MBDU goes on 350 to 400 service calls every year. Of them, only a few dozen wind up being improvised explosive devices that require destruction or removal by the unit’s bomb disposal robot.

Arrest for possession or manufacture of an explosive device is fairly rare, according to Unsworth.

Sgt Kevin DelGrande with the Oregon State Police’s Explosive Unit said that his detail saw the same decline this year. Predominantly, state police respond to rural explosive disposal cases.

“The majority of our cases are actually disposal of commercial explosives,” DelGrande said. “People find things that were once used for mining and agricultural purposes.”

About half of the IEDs built with what police determine to be criminal intent are found at crime scenes and the other half are found in public, DelGrande said.

Long Term Trends and Mega Bombs

Unsworth said thankfully no one has been injured by IEDs found in public in Portland this year. He characterized most of the devices as “mischief,” devised by young adults and teens.

“They tend to be [found] in big school yards, golf courses, any open field,” Unsworth said. “That’s where people go at night and say ‘Let’s blow things up.’”

Unsworth said that the long-term trend in IEDs has been going down for years.

“When I started 20 years ago, pipe bombs were everywhere,” he said. “But since 9/11, people understand that these things are serious and people do get hurt.”

That said, he sees an alarming trend in people using recipes they find on the Internet to build large explosive devices with household chemicals and other publicly available compounds.

These types of explosives, like the fertilizer bomb Timothy McVeigh used to destroy the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, “but worse,” are rare but extremely deadly, Unsworth said. Increasingly, the know-how to build them is widely available on the web, Unsworth said.

“Those are the ones that scare us,” he said. “That’s a true concern.”

Related Slideshow: Portland’s 35 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods

* Rankings have been adjusted since their original posting to better reflect all neighborhood boundaries that make contact with the city's most dangerous intersections.

Number of IEDs Found in Portland Declines Sharply in 2014

Related Slideshow: Portland’s 35 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods

#35

Buckman-East

#34

Overlook

#33

King

#32

Buckman-West

#31

Kerns

#30

Hosford-Abernethy

#29

Parkrose Heights

#28

Creston-Kenilworth

#27

Hayden Island

#26

Wilkes

#25

Pleasant Valley

#24

Lloyd

#23

Madison South

#22

Richmond

#21

Arbor Lodge

#20

Parkrose

#19

Northwest

#18

Mt. Scott-Arleta

#17

Brentwood-Darlington

#16

Sellwood-Moreland

#15

Eliot

#14

St. Johns

#13

Portsmouth

#12

Pearl

#11

Kenton

#10

China/Old Town

#9

Downtown

#8

Cully

#7

Foster-Powell

#6

Mill Park

#5

Montavilla

#4

Centennial

#3

Powelhurst-Gilbert

#2

Lents

#1

Hazelwood

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