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Chronic nuisances lead to Woodland Park eviction

Police respond after years of drug, prostitution complaints

LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO

The city’s Chronic Nuisance ordinance is designed to deal with places, as opposed to people, that are a “chronic” source of crime and problems to their neighbors.

Two months ago the Woodland Park Neighborhood Association had a dramatic demonstration of the ordinance in action.

The ordinance states that if there are three complaints to the police, judged to be legitimate, from the same address in the course of a month, the police can begin a process that, if carried to its conclusion, would allow the city to order the property vacated for up to a year, with no one allowed to live in or use it. Very seldom does it come to that; the aim is to bring pressure on the owner to take steps to correct the problem.

Earlier this year, East Portland Crime Prevention Specialist Teri Poppino and East Precinct officer Tracy Chamberlain used the ordinance to contact Ray Evans, who owned a house on Northeast 101st Avenue. Neighbors had complained about tenants at the residence.

“They said the people there were driving them crazy,” Poppino said. “They said there was drug dealing, prostitution, and that the place was a pigsty. It was keeping them awake at night, and they didn’t feel safe in their own homes because of the level of traffic and the nature of the people coming around. There was a high level of frustration, and a sense that the issue wasn’t progressing fast enough.” The problems had been going on for more than two and a half years, they said.

Officer Chamberlain told Evans, “We’ve seen enough of these types of situations to say that this merits a Chronic Nuisance Letter” - the first step in the shutting down process. After this, he said, Evans was cooperative.

I ain’t done nothin’ - lately
Evans sought eviction of his tenant, Lawrence Foreman and his family. Foreman, his wife, daughter and several friends, showed up at the October 23 Woodland Park meeting to complain. He brandished a letter from Samuel Pierce of the Oregon Department of Human Services, who had investigated the house in response to allegations of drug dealing in the presence of children, and found the charges unwarranted. Foreman claimed that other allegations against him were false as well.

“In the first year, yes, there was a lot of partying, but in the last two and a half months I’ve really turned things around,” he said. “In the last year there hasn’t even been alcohol there.” He accused those present of discriminating against him because he was young.

“What this is here is called consequences,” Poppino answered. “This is due to the type of people you’ve attracted into your home, the comings and goings at all hours. You’ve been raising havoc for years. It’s taken a long time for the system to work.”

“We’ve been processing this problem for three years, and this is the end result,” Woodland Park chair Alesia Reese said. She added that some residents had been driven away by the problems.

Chamberlain told the Memo that Foreman made the same complaints to him. Upon checking with neighbors, he said, “I found that he had been threatening people cursing them, getting in people’s faces and being very confrontational.”

Poppino says that most chronic nuisance complaints are resolved when the first letter is sent. “When it has to go all the way to the end, it has to go to court,” she says. She and fellow crime prevention specialist Rosanne Lee could remember only one such case, involving the bar El Moro on Northeast 122nd Avenue.

Reese urges other communities that have chronic nuisance problems to be vigilant and pursue them.
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