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Crime-free zone renewal abolished

LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO

Last month Mayor Tom Potter allowed the city’s drug- and prostitution-free zones, including some on Northeast 82nd Avenue and in Parkrose on Sandy Boulevard, to expire without benefit of a hearing.

In a press release, Potter declared that he had decided to abandon the controversial zones: “I have concluded that both programs are no longer serving their intended purpose and act only to suppress a serious community problem rather than solving it.”

He based this on a study by Campbell DeLong Resources, Inc., whose report was issued with the press release. The report did not mention the prostitution-free zones, although Potter’s Public Safety Policy Assistant Jared Spencer told the Memo the consultant did discuss this with the mayor’s staff. It did provide evidence that police officers utilize the drug-free zone ordinance’s “exclusions” in a discriminatory way that targets African Americans to a disproportionate degree. The bias appears in all the city’s drug-free zones and cannot be explained by legitimate variables, the report said.

However, the report also said, “We don’t recommend [abolishing the ordinance] unless it is coupled with an equally emphatic strategy to address the underlying factors that led to the disparities” — i.e., racially discriminatory practices by police officers. The report did not touch on the law’s effectiveness, and Potter’s reference to this alludes to the long-made criticism that the law doesn’t cause perpetrators to cease illegal activity, but simply to move it around.

John Campbell, a principal of Campbell DeLong, has in the past been a proponent of the zones. In one public address, referring to the moving-the-problem criticism, he said that such crimes are “a plant, not a rock. By that I mean, the one thing they don’t do is stay the same. If you leave it alone, it will take root and grow. If you uproot it, you will at least stunt its growth.”

Under the ordinances, when people are arrested for drug- or prostitution-related crimes in designated high-crime zones, the arresting officer can order them “excluded” from the zones for up to 90 days. If, during this time, they are found in the zone without a legitimate purpose, they can be arrested for criminal trespass. Proponents say the zones are an invaluable law-enforcement tool without which known criminals can conduct business openly in the same location even after arrest. Critics say the zones are often used by the police to unfairly harass homeless people and racial minorities, and can mean that people are arrested twice for crimes they were never proven to be guilty of.

Last year, after considerable public debate, Potter and a divided City Council renewed a modified version of the law on the understanding that an advisory committee would be formed to review and monitor the law’s operation, and would report to council within a year. Last spring Potter’s aide, Maria Rubio, told council the city had gotten a late start on the process. It was extended until September.

Last month Rubio told the Memo that the advisory committee couldn’t reach agreement and “didn’t work out.”

In place of the zones, Potter and Commissioner Randy Leonard have pledged funding to provide an additional 57 jail beds and to “investigate how to increase community-based treatment services for those arrested for prostitution.” The press release mentioned ongoing efforts by Chief Rosie Sizer to root out discrimination within her bureau.
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