Cops wait 3 hours to respond to 911 calls as a woman was being murdered. Media blames bail.

On Saturday, Aug. 27, Racheal Angel Abraham was murdered by a former boyfriend, Her five kids were in the house at the time of the brutal attack. This week the Oregonian broke the story that her killer, Mohamed Adan, had been bailed out by the Portland Freedom Fund shortly before the murder. Other local media picked up the story, with outraged quotes from the DA blaming the death on the bail fund.

I am deeply concerned by the circumstances that led to Mohamed Osman Adan's release. Our prosecutors aggressively pursued a high bail amount in this case. Mr. Adan’s intent to kill the victim was unambiguous. After the judge set Adan’s bail, the Portland Freedom Fund undermined our efforts and the efforts of the court to save the victim's life by using their resources to bail him out. When a judge imposes bail, the defendant’s ability to pay is among the factors they consider. The action taken by the Portland Freedom Fund circumvented this, with tragic results. We offer our deepest condolences to the family of the victim, and will dedicate our efforts to the full prosecution of this matter.

There are indications the fund might be dissolved. A source tells me that they failed to do their due diligence: they accepted a letter of support for his release by a nonprofit that does not specialize in domestic violence. DV Muslim community groups in Portland, they said, had been aware of Adan’s attacks on the mother of his children.

But compared to other stakeholders in the case—including the DA—the fund is arguably far less to blame. Yet that’s virtually invisible in the news coverage.

Let’s start with the DA’s claim that he repeatedly warned of Adan’s dangerousness. “The DA's office had repeatedly stressed that there were "significant lethality factors" for Mohamed Adan's alleged victim after his prior arrests,” KGW notes.

First, earlier that year, when his dangerousness was already clear based on prior violence against her, he’d been released with an ankle monitor — by a judge, not the bail fund. He promptly ripped off his ankle monitor and attacked her again.

The DA emphatically claims he warned about his dangerousness. Who did he warn? DA’s don’t work with bail funds. They try to thwart their efforts at every turn. The DAs warnings were to the court—the judge still opted for $20,000 instead of remand. Adan’s family doesn’t appear to have been struggling too badly economically so it seems unlikely $2,000 bond would have prevented his release if the fund hadn’t stepped in. But that’s all speculation, I admit.

What is not speculation, but described in the very same papers framing the horrific tragedy as solely to fault of the bail fund, is that police were first alerted to a disturbance in the home at 7:30, when Abrahams called them. After that, neighbors called 911 to report a domestic violence to the police. But police only arrived at 10:45 after Adan called 911 to report her death!

Around 7:30 a.m. on Saturday, Portland dispatch received a call from Abraham's number. According to court documents, Abraham's voice could be heard saying something like "I'm not doing black magic" before the call disconnected. A dispatcher tried to call back, but the phone rang and then went to voicemail.

A few minutes after that call, a neighbor called to report a fight at the address between a man and a woman. There is no indication in the DA's office affidavit whether police were dispatched to respond at that time.

Hours later, just before 10:45 a.m., Adan called 911 himself. He reported that Abraham was dead, according to the affidavit. When a dispatcher told him to perform CPR, he reportedly refused. He said that he took a knife from Abraham and was "protecting the children."

When officers arrived at the townhouse, they found Adan downstairs "in clean clothes" with three children under the age of 8. Upstairs, in a child's bedroom, police found Abraham's body laid out on a bed, according to the affidavit, covered in a bedsheet.

The story is a horrific tragedy and the bail fund seems to have made a mistake. But Abrahams would also most likely still be alive if DAs bothered collaborating with bail funds instead of viewing them as the enemy. And most of all if police bothered to do their jobs. Where’s that headline?