Comments

1
Hopefully something workable, since the city is now paying buku $$ to survey and cite downtown.
2
"'The public doesn't care that this is our fourth pass at trying to craft this law,' said Miller, in response to a question asking how many times the city needs to craft the ordinance before it quits. 'The public cares about getting this issue right.'"

Some of the public actually does care that you keep spending time trying to enact an inherent unfairness into law, wasting everyone's time, and subjecting people to what inevitably turn out to be unconstitutional infringement of people's rights in the interim.

And the notion that the "status quo" is "having nothing" because there *are* other laws regarding obstruction of the sidewalks and the like.

It's beginning to look as if the city has an ongoing mental disorder, incapable as it seems to be of getting itself off this repeatedly destructive path.
3
Erm, that should be

And the notion that the "status quo" is "having nothing" IS NONSENSE because there *are* other laws regarding obstruction of the sidewalks and the like.
4
Fuck you Matt Davis, you [EDITED: HATE SPEECH/SLANDEROUS LANGUAGE]! Stop trying to put the rights of shit bags in front of the rights of normal, good, productive people! People like you are ruining Portland and WE will NOT stand for it any longer!
5
wow... It really saddens me that the city was just informed that punishing people based on their class may not be fair... so they are going back to try again...
What are they looking to solve? People "blocking the sidewalk"? as our friend b!X pointed out, there are already laws against that... To me, it is, and always has been, about not liking "your kind" in "our city".
This particular trip through the "Sit/Lie Round About" was seriously silly...
I do not know about what happened before outside of just hearsay, but what I do know is that having a law that is wanted by the PBA to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, then having them be the spokesman and co-chair of the committee that was supposed to make the law fair and impartial is good humor indeed.
Having the police, who take funding from the PBA to the tune of several officers salaries (the ones that enforce this law ironically...) be in charge of enforcing this law is unfair... The case can be made, that at least in this instance, no longer do our police represent us...
The same can be said for the courts where this case is tried, no longer is the court free of outside influence, the PBA pays part of its bills...
The punishment? Your 8 hours of community service for being tired and resting? Usually done in a PBA ran clean up crew.
6
YOU Patrick Nolen are [EDITED: UNNECESSARILY AGGRESSIVE.] part of the problem! You want the rights of shitbags to be put in front of the rights of good, hard working, productive, law abiding persons.

YOU ARE RUINING THIS CITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
7
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
Anatole France
8
Fire&Deport: Clearly, we should take everyone that we don't like in this city and round them up, drug them, and then sell them to ship captains as crew. That would get rid of the freeloaders around here; give them something to do.

(Ohh, wait, we tried that one already.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_tunn… )
9
humm,
now I feel a bit awkward... I want to respond, but I am not sure what to call you... "FIRE and DEPORT Matt Davis (aka: shit bag lover) " I will go with your AKA...
SBL,
yes, I am on the large end of things... when I was in high school and college I averaged about 170-180 pounds depending on the time of year, I wrestled and played soccer, which kept me in good shape.
when I became homeless I, like a lot of people dealt with the depression and fear in a bad way. I ate. most of the time in Portland you can find meals easily while homeless. The flaw with a lot of these meals is that they are made from cheap materials that carry a lot of empty calories and carbs... I ate myself, over the 8 years I was homeless, in to Diabetes and a weight problem. I am not proud of it, but that is the fact... something I am trying to change.
another thing I am trying to change is the total denial by many that we have a homeless epidemic in this country. we, through our lack of care and greed have turned a societal problem in to something that effects people who don't "fit" the homeless "template".
we look for answers in the same places over and over again... hatred, fear, lack of understanding, laws that outlaw the right to exist. To me, the answer is clear, better jobs, more low income housing, health care, and a society that puts its heart where it's mouth is and actually cares what happens to other people.
I would recommend you read "Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failures" by the Western Regional Advocacy Project. it is a great book that discusses how we came to a point where there are people who have jobs cant afford a place to live.
I feel that everyone should have rights, including the businessman walking down the sidewalk. I completely understand the natural reaction to be embarrassed when you see someone that you cant offer direct and easy help to solve their problem... the answer is not to shun them though, the answer is to work as a society to work on systemic solutions... no more band aids and butcher knives.
thank you
Patrick
10
If I gave a shit about your fuckin life story Tubbo I would have asked...but I didn't! Go eat a whole cow or something!

Things are slowly changing in the city and you liberal fuckers aren't going to have power soon!

STOP RUINING THIS CITY by putting the rights of shit bags in front of the rights of hard working, tax paying citizens!
11
Not that I don't think sit lie is unconstitutional, because it is...however after working downtown for 3 years every single time I walk past some gutter punk with a sign asking for money so he/she can get drunk or stoned and then called an "asshole", "prick," "dickhead," or anything of that ilk for actually responding and saying I don't have any cash...I really don't have a lot of sympathy for those people.

Maybe that's where the real problem here lies. I know there are those with mental disabilities and many have psychiatric issues they need help with. The problem is that Portland is so full of asshole gutterpunk mid twenty year old asshats that those that actually need help get drowned out by self entitled idiots who most likely are choosing their beggar lifestyles and ruining it for those that actually need the help.

Does that make me a bad person?
12
BlackedOut: Not at all, but there are existing laws to target illegal behavior.

"Lance said cops could arrest people for assault in the fourth degree if they grabbed someone's leg while they were walking on the sidewalk, or for harassment if they touched someone while begging. "There's offensive littering, too," said Lance, "and the city's own argument doesn't bear up with what they have been doing."

If somebody's acting like a prick, there's probably a crime there, somewhere. But making up low-level harassment ordinances just so we can get on these kids' cases smacks of a lazy attitude to policing.

For the last two months the cops have been doing fine, using the other laws. They just don't like doing police work, it seems.
13
Mister crazy angry pants: idiot or effective strawman troll?
14
I know we're all supposed to have some empathy here, so how about trying to put yourself in someone else's shoes, like:

I wonder how most people would feel if they beat their brains out getting a small business off the ground, say 70-80 hours a week plus their life's savings just to have a rot mouthed meth addict and his bulldog set up camp outside for the whole summer?

15
"For the last two months the cops have been doing fine, using the other laws."

I think their point is in the past they didn't have to go so far as arresting people, and now they do.

Yes, mister crazy angry pants is a strawman troll.

Blackedout is right: it's nice to care for those who need help. But y'all have to at least consider the possibility that people who live and work downtown are actually complaining about the sit/lie situation for a good reason, and not just because we're all filthy conservatives.
16
I completely accept that businesses are angry, which is why we should focus on people using the laws that are constitutional.

If I were a business owner and I saw harassment outside my property, I'd want that person arrested. Same with offensive littering.

But it's a huge leap from there to say we should make up a law to target people we just don't like for something that's perfectly legal, because it's in the interests of business.
17
Does anyone else see a contradiction between these two things?

1) "the mayor wants to move fairly quickly, in weeks, as opposed to months."

and

2) .....involving the city attorney's office, police, the bureau of transportation, the bureau of Development Services, and Trimet, in another go at the law.
18
SBL,
I am not a liberal
and
I think everyone has rights, not just a few people.

BlackedOut,
you are not a bad person.
I agree, I don't like it when people get mad at me for things I cant control either. I must say thought, as much as I have worked downtown and been downtown, probably in the last five or so years I have had enough "abusive" responses to fill 2 hands, no more... my usual response when asked for money, when I don't have it is "sorry, I don't got nothing".
I think we are in great need for more mental health services in our city, as is the rest of the country.
thanks
Patrick
19
If we can legally ban smoking within 10 feet of a doorway, then why can't we ban sitting or laying within 10 feet of a doorway? Or, is the anti-smoking law illegal too?
20
Eject all of the Portland Police Bureau from their homes, along with city council, for the period of one year. The homeless are to be moved into their homes. Check back a year from now to see if the cops and council still think criminalizing homelessness and poverty is still a good idea. Elitist and classist, ANYONE could end up on the street in this country as there is no safety net. Then think about how you'd like to be pushed around like a piece of trash. SIT LIE IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL. And no, I don't want my pigs "nimble and agile", as cops are the natural enemy of the poor and the working class. I'd prefer them to be simply absent.
21
It's the effect of the law that's unconstitutional, so it's no use trying to craft a new law to have the same effect!

And I'm not sure where the police got this idea that they are supposed to have enforcement powers beyond enforcing criminal laws -- or that new laws should to be passed because police want "another tool" -- but it sounds to me like a dangerous expansion of their powers.

I will say, though, that I'm surprised how often I meet nice-seeming, non-homeless people who express resentment at homeless people. Seems to me, on the whole, homeless people have a lot more reason to resent the housed than the other way around, since sleeping on the streets is a lot more uncomfortable than being asked for change. But I guess perhaps people's discomfort is born of guilt: an awkwardly-expressed compassion at seeing raw inequality and not knowing how to fix it.
22
There are many laws cops don't enforce to the letter of because it is both impractical and nonsensical. It seems to me that getting rid of sit/lie has resulted in criminalizing homelessness even more by forcing cops to arrest individuals after they cross the line to criminality rather than use common sense and diffuse situations.

At the same time I also understand the slippery slope that sit/lie ordinance represents in terms of constitutional rights. And criminalizing homelessness is plain wrong.
There has to be a middle ground here that gives law enforcement a tool to diffuse situations but also protects everyones rights.
Previous poster brought up an intersting question. If it is legal to restrict smoking withing 10 feet of a bulding entrance why not panhandling?
23
Finnegan,
the difference being that in order to use the Sit/Lie law, if you are a cop, you just say "this guy was sitting down so I wrote him a ticket for sitting on the sidewalk" and the guy goes to court and gets his punishment...
with the disorderly conduct charge you have to prove that there was intention to impede someone's path in court... and the person gets access to public defense. With Sit/Lie there is no right to public defense and the person has already been decided to have committed the crime.
thanks
Patrick
24
I was under the impression, perhaps wrongly, that cops under Sit/Lie used it as a tool to get folks moving or not sit in front of a store directly or to chill on aggressive panhandling (and let's be honest there isn't a more aggressive panhandler on the streets than those Merycorps/Greenpeace folks, those are the folks I actively keep an eye out for and avoid) and issued verbal warnings. Do they also issue tickets that folks have to go to court for? Whats the charge? I guess it's moot since the law was struck down but curious.
25
People in Portland view *any* person who asks for money as an "aggressive panhandler", simply because people in this city are passive weenies who think asking for things or doing things is rude and presumptuous.

If a homeless person is sitting or lying on the sidewalk, they aren't being aggressive. If they're blocking the sidewalk, a simple "excuse me" would solve the problem. (An A-board or sidewalk cafe can't move by itself if it's blocking the sidewalk.)

Agreed with previous posters and Randy Leonard that charity panhandlers are a thousand times worse than homeless panhandlers. The charities and their contracted panhandling agencies also probably treat their hired panhandlers badly; some people I know had the same problem with ACORN, and their plight was in the Willamette Week a few years back.
26
@BlackedOut: Doesn't make you a bad person, but I really question your experience. I've lived, worked, and shopped in downtown for years, and the number of times I've been called names, threatened, or vilified, for refusing to give could literally be counted on one hand. Most common response is "that's cool, have a good day".

I'd also like to add that my conservative, elderly, somewhat frail, and very well-traveled parents find Portland's downtown one of the friendliest, safest, major downtowns in the nation.

@No Viable Solution: Your "same as the 10 ft. no smoking ordinace" suggestion maybe the most sensible proposal I've heard out of this debate. Of course, that means it is doomed to fail.

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