A man suffering a mental health crisis climbed to the top of a construction crane in Southeast Portland and stayed there for more than five hours before climbing down and being taken into police custody Wednesday.

According to the Portland Police Bureau, the agency’s Special Emergency Reaction Team and Crisis Negotiation Team responded to the area of Southeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Ankeny Street just after 1 p.m. to assist Central Precinct officers with a “person in crisis who was in an elevated position on top of a crane.”

Police say the man climbed atop the 290-foot crane at the 5 MLKĚý˛úłÜľ±±ô»ĺľ±˛Ô˛µĚý˛őľ±łŮ±đ and that responding police followed him using harnesses and other climbing gear. Police said they were able to identify the man and talk with him as he paced back and forth along the crane’s catwalk looking at the job site below.

5 MLK is a 17-story building being constructed by general contractor Hoffman Construction.

“Right now we’re still investigating how the individual yesterday gained access to the crane,” Hoffman Vice President Dan Drinkward said. “We don’t want to go into detail on that, but what I can tell you is there are a number of strategies we employ to restrict access to the tower cranes.”

According to Sgt. Brad Yakots, a public information officer with the Portland Police Bureau, the subject was not believed to be a construction worker. The crane was locked down and the site evacuated shortly after 1 p.m. on Wednesday.

After crisis negotiators climbed the crane and talked with the man for over two hours, he finally made his way down the crane’s internal ladders just before 6:30 p.m. and was taken into custody by officers.

The man reportedly scaled a perimeter fence to access the job site before climbing the crane. The operator was able to shut down the crane and call authorities as the man made his way up.

“(The crane’s operator) is unharmed, and he did a very good job of shutting down the crane – shutting off its power so the crane won’t move,” Yakots said in a media briefing.

Around the world, a spate of so-called “rooftopping” adventurers have trespassed onto building sites to climb tower cranes, tall buildings and other structures and then document their activities. As a result, anti-climb devices have become commonplace at sites in Europe and beyond. These include shields around the cranes’ bases with solid walls up nearly 10 feet tall, locking hatches in cranes’ masts and many other precautions.

Drinkward said security around cranes typically starts with a perimeter fence and continues inward. At the base of the crane there is normally a locked structure and gate, often with solid walls; there are intermediate hatches in the crane mast with locks; no-climb netting outside the crane; locks on the hatches that go into the cab; and at the top, a switch to kill power.

Nevertheless, no set-up is perfect, Drinkward said.

“Each of these crane installations is a custom installation,” he said. “The way you configure the crane is different at each site, so the strategies you use vary from project to project and they change as the project gets built.”

Changes take place even as the building rises, he added.

“It’s a dynamic environment and you’re constantly balancing the security of the crane and the ability of the crane operator to safely move up and down to do his work,” he said.

Drinkward praised the actions of the crane operator, who is a Hoffman employee.

“We’re really grateful for the quick action of our employees to secure the cab of the crane and ensure the individual in crisis was not able to operate the crane,” he said.

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Use of social media is by no means limited to checking out someone’s food photos or enduring seemingly never-ending political rants.

Take the case of Adam Bonner, a superintendent with Portland’s Hoffman Construction. Last summer, he used a teenager’s social media posts to investigate and put a stop to the boy’s exploits climbing a construction crane Hoffman was using on a Seattle job site.

“He contacted Seattle Police, but he also began his own investigation using social media,” explained Karen Blythe, executive director of the of the Pacific Northwest. “He quickly identified a 17-year-old suspect, he did some more detective work, learned the name of the young man and his high school and he engaged the suspect in an online chat.”

From there, Bonner convinced the boy to put an end to his adventures, met with his father and had the teen issue a contrite apology – on social media. That allowed all involved to walk away without involving the criminal justice system.

For that effort, Bonner was recognized Thursday by the CICP and given the group’s annual Padlock award, which honors the industry figure who goes the extra mile to prevent theft and vandalism at local job sites.

“Several drafts of that social media post were submitted until one met Adam’s approval,” Blythe told the audience of construction industry executives and law enforcement officials. “And the crane climbing, at least since last fall, has stopped. Adam has good investigative skills along with the skill of persuasion that brought this very serious issue to an end.”

Bonner’s award was given out at the group’s 22nd annual awards luncheon held this year at the Multnomah Athletic Club in downtown Portland. Newly appointed Portland Police Bureau Chief Danielle Outlaw served as keynote speaker.

The CICP was founded in 1996, and to date has reported more than $18.3 million in losses from members’ job sites. Crucially, the group and its partners in law enforcement have been able to recover more than $6.5 million of that amount during the same time period.

Also on Thursday, the group handed out its Law Enforcement Partner Award to three separate parties.

The first was given to Vancouver Police Department crime analyst Jaycee Elliot, who last year created a flier with theft prevention advice for contractors following a series of thefts of utility trailers from job sites.

Another went to Milwaukie Sgt. Detective Tom Broomfield, Detective Tony Cereghino and Detective Larry Giddings for their creation of an informative flier detailing a stolen metal ramp. The flier was given to recycling centers that partner with the CICP, resulting in the eventual recovery of the $17,000 ramp.

The final Law Enforcement Partner award was given to Portland Police Bureau officers James Fleming and David Staab, who in August 2017 used information from CICP partner Titan Construction Services of Oregon City to recover a stolen flatbed truck filled with tools and hauling a water trailer. The two officers needed just six hours to find and recover the stolen truck, which was valued at more than $20,000.

“It’s been a successful year,” CICP Board Chairman Travis Baker told the audience. “There’s a lot of activity happening, and we’re always looking to provide contractors with new ways of profit protection through crime prevention.”

The last award of the day, the Law Enforcement Award, went to a group of Oregon State Police troopers and investigators and Bureau of Land Management federal special agent Chip Mican.

In that case, Oregon State Police Detective Brian Assmus was advised in February 2017 by a contractor of the theft of a 2010 Kubota excavator from a job site near milepost 217 on Interstate 5 between Albany and Eugene. The excavator was recovered later that same day near Salem, and two arrests resulted from the case.

Just weeks later, the CICP was asked to prepare an alert regarding a stolen Oregon Department of Transportation backhoe. This also resulted in OSP troopers recovering the stolen vehicle.

Assmus was not finished, however. On April 14, he reported a suspicious excavator to CICP, and after a brief investigation found the suspect down the road taking the tires off of an ODOT light stand so he could replace the excavator’s tires.

“Of course they were arrested,” Blythe said to applause.

Other OSP troopers involved in these cases included trooper Tom Willis, senior trooper Mark Moore, trooper Kevin Zwijacz and senior trooper Curtis Weaver.

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The Portland Police Bureau‘s Mounted Patrol could be headed to a police property near the St. Johns Bridge.

The City Council on Wednesday voted to allow the Portland Development Commission to move forward on redeveloping the Centennial Mills site. It was a “neigh” vote for the police horse force, which formerly occupied a paddock and a small office at Centennial Mills.

The Mounted Patrol’s horses have temporarily been boarded at Lake Oswego Hunt Club. The potential new home for the Mounted Patrol is a facility at 7027 N.W. Saint Helens Road (U.S. Highway 30), where the Police Bureau stores seized vehicles. The Police Bureau owns the property.

“Everything’s fluid at this point, but that is what we are looking at in the interim,” said Sgt. Pete Simpson, spokesman for the Police Bureau.

Developer Bob Ball is raising money for the Mounted Patrol’s relocation through Friends of the Mounted Patrol, a nonprofit group.

If the horses move to Saint Helens Road, the bureau will move the seized vehicles to another police facility in Northwest Portland, Simpson said.

At Wednesday’s council meeting, Commissioner Amanda Fritz questioned the need for the Mounted Patrol, saying it’s a luxury the city can no longer afford.

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