Drug Free Zones, left to sunset by Mayor Tom Potter, could be making a return if a request by the businesses and residents of Old Town Chinatown Neighborhood get the mayor’s nod.
After many meetings where the issue of street-level drug dealing dominated discussion, members of the neighborhood association, the business community and the Chinese community have all sent a request to Mayor Sam Adam’s office saying it supports the reinstitution of the drug free and prostitution free zones.
The city ordinances establishing the zones, or DFZ and PFZ, were allowed sunset in 2007 after legal and critical challenges to their process and use by police. The zones allowed police to exclude people from the zone if they had prior arrests, allowing them to stop individuals, ask questions and even search property based on a “preponderance of evidence” (a step up from the previous incarnation that allowed police to do so based merely on suspicion, which was ruled illegal in Circuit Court).
The DFZ in particular were highly criticized by an independent study in 2007 that found that racial disparity in the administration of exclusions, with African Americans receiving exclusions at a much higher rate than whites in the Downtown zone. In one six-month period in 2006, half of the people arrested in DFZs were African American. All of them were excluded, while only 60 percent of the whites arrested were excluded.
Residents and business owners have said that soon after the ordinance was gone, the dealers came back.
“I want to open the discussion,” said Howard Weiner, owner of Cal Skate in on Northwest Sixth Avenue in Old Town and chairman of the neighborhood association’s Livability Committee. “And whether or not it’s a Drug Free Zone or some other tool, the reality is it is continuing to get worse and worse down here and we need some help.”
The neighborhood association on Monday agreed to send a letter to the mayor requesting the reinstatement with two provisions: That only those convicted of the dealing of drugs will be excluded, and anyone excluded may come into the area for health care, social services or educational purposes. The neighborhood is calling for the creation of a working group and an oversight committee to monitor the impact and efficacy of such a zone.
Chris O’Connor, with the Metropolitan Public Defenders office, has fought the Drug Free Zones in court and in principle. The ultimate goal, he said, is less about addressing the illegal drug market, which laws already exist to do, and more about circumventing the state’s ban on vagrancy laws and pushing undesirables out of the neighborhood.
“It’s just terrible policy,” says O’Connor. “Clearly, they’re self selecting for geography and the audience, and that ends up having a disparate impact on people who are homeless, people of color, people who are otherwise exposed to more scrutiny by the police.”
Residents and business owners in the neighborhood have reported at meetings that the problem is escalated at night, and that some calls to police to report the problems of dealing have gone completely unanswered.
“If they see somebody committing a drug crime they could arrest them for a drug crime, if they see someone engaged in disorderly conduct, they should arrest them for disorderly conduct,” O’Connor said. “Other than that, they’re just saying I don't want a particular person standing there. Clearly there is a racial component to it.”
“Part of it is we don’t have walking patrols, we don’t have the same enforcement,” Wiener said. “We have a county that doesn’t prosecute, jails that are full. We’re are dealing with a system that is so broken and people, even if they are amenable to treatment, can’t get into treatment. If this discussion of the Drug Free Zone brings all of those questions to bear, than at least for me personally, I’ve done my job.”
Antoinette Edwards, Director of Public Safety and Peacekeeping with Mayor Sam Adams’ office, says the office take the neighborhoods’ concerns seriously and will work with them to address the situation. The outpouring of concern from the neighborhood has imparted a sense of urgency to the situation.
“The question is, how do we really strategically deal with it in a way that’s respectful and with equity,” Edwards said. “It’s not a small order. But there’s something we can do.”
The ACLU of Oregon has opposed the civil exclusion orders because they “did not have sufficient due process protections before individuals are denied the right to travel and associate freely.” The ACLU said that Portland enforced exclusion orders against people who were never prosecuted or who were found not guilty of the underlying crime that was the original reason the police gave for issuing the exclusion order. And because the orders were civil, not criminal, a person served with an exclusion order was not entitled to a lawyer to assist in challenging the order. But with the exclusion in place, a violation could result with a criminal charge of trespassing.
“I’m a pretty tolerant guy, but there are certain things that are just intolerable,” said Jack Hammer, owner of Everett Street Autoworks at Fifth Avenue and Everett Street. “So when I hear people say the goal is to get drug dealers off the street, I say that sounds good to me. … I believe in the mission of Central City Concern and what Sisters Of The Road does, but when I see that there’s dealers blatantly dealing in front of these people where there are people struggling to get passed their dependency, it just doesn't make any sense.”
Look for a extensive piece on the Drug Free Zones in the up and coming edition on Friday, Feb. 18.