A Portland, Oregon, businessman has launched a legal initiative targeting elected officials in the city and across the country for allowing lawlessness to run rampant over the last three years.
Gregg Schumacher, former president and owner of Schumacher Furs, announced his new Restore Law & Order legal organization on June 27. The effort aims to recruit business owners affected by the crime and property destruction of the last few years to join as plaintiffs in lawsuits against elected officials for allowing criminal behavior to go unabated.
Rising crime has become “distressingly normalized” in U.S. cities, Restore Law & Order said in a press release announcing the effort. The group’s mission is to hold government officials “personally accountable for their inaction and violation of constitutional law,” the legal group said, as they seek to end the “ongoing deterioration of safety and security that plagues our communities.”
“The organization is actively seeking business owners with demonstrable economic losses and damages due to crime and lawlessness to join as plaintiffs in its numerous lawsuits against cities, states, local governments, and elected officials throughout the country,” the group said.
Schumacher said government officials bear the responsibility for the damage even more than the criminals themselves.
“It is not Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and other radical extremist groups and radical thugs that are the primary cause of riots, homelessness, illegal protests, violence, and crime. It is the corrupt lawless government officials that need to be held accountable,” Schumacher told The Daily Wire.
He blamed left-wing policies for the destruction in cities and said elected officials had violated their oaths of office.
“They have intentionally attempted to destroy Portland and other cities across America, which their far left-wing liberal agenda is the backbone of their cause,” Schumacher said. “They’ve imposed radical liberal ideology, which has overwhelmingly had a significant negative result. Many of the government officials throughout the United States violated the personal oath they took to uphold the laws of the U.S. Constitution, which has resulted in billions of dollars of economic damage throughout Oregon.”
Along with other major cities, Portland erupted into riots in May 2020 after the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis. In Portland, the protests lasted for months, continuing through the summer and as late as October.
On just one night in July 2022, vandals broke the windows of more than five downtown Portland businesses. Protesters looted stores, set fires, and destroyed private property.
Since COVID, shootings in Portland have tripled, homicides have risen from 36 in 2019 to a record 97 in 2022, and car thefts have spiked to 11,000 last year, up from 6,500 in 2019.
The homeless population in Oregon at large has increased by 23% in just two years, one of the largest increases in the country. Downtown Portland, where many businesses operate, is notorious for open-air drug dealing, public urination, and petty crime. Foot traffic downtown plummeted during COVID and has remained down as businesses struggle from the riots and pandemic lockdowns.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP
Schumacher’s family business, Schumacher Furs, was established in 1895. It was America’s oldest fur company before it was forced to close permanently in 2007 after animal rights protesters demonstrated outside the downtown Portland store for about two years.
“It was shocking and heartbreaking watching terrorists systematically destroy the company my family built,” Schumacher said. “Law enforcement failed to intervene effectively, leaving us without the basic protection we deserved.”
“The effects were devastating to our family and the families of hundreds of people we employed, many of which were expert craftsmen who had proudly worked for the company for decades,” he said.
Now, Schumacher wants to prevent what happened to Schumacher Furs from happening to other businesses, he said.