- Adam Wickham
As the Mercury reported in today’s issue, a fairly new effort from police and prosecutors has aimed tougher enforcement at certain nuisance crimes often affiliated with homelessness, but not too many people know it exists.
Among those left in the dark: Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who in recent months spearheaded an effort to find a new home for the Right 2 Dream Too rest area. And to say Fritz is not pleased might be putting it mildly.
The commissioner was “horrified and very disturbed,” she says, to learn of the so-called Chronic Offender Pilot Project (COPP) today. She thinks Mayor Charlie Hales—commissioner in charge of the Portland Police Bureau—should have briefed her on the policy change.
“I’ve been quite involved in houselessness issues and caring for people that live outside,” Fritz tells the Mercury. “The communication obviously is lacking, and how to correct that more than a year into this council is an ongoing challenge.”
The COPP takes a novel approach to certain crimes—littering, public intoxication, public urination—which have historically been treated lightly. Whereas offenders in past years were cited, given a court date, and met virtually no consequences if they didn’t show, the COPP targets lawbreakers with arrest, then bench warrants if they miss a court date.
To do so, the Portland police and the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office are leveraging the state’s “interfering with a peace officer” law, which makes it a class A misdemeanor to refuse “to obey a lawful order.” Under COPP, cops who see a person littering/drinking/peeing in public issue a warning and put the person on a list. If the offender is caught literring/drinking/peeing again, they’re taken to jail for not following the earlier order.
The project began last summer, and cops and prosecutors say its intent is two-fold: to persuade people to seek treatment, and to persuade people to leave Portland.
According to a procedure document detailing the program, it “should serve to make Portland less attractive to people who want to come here and openly violate the law and degrade community livability.” That’s a fairly bald reference to the “travelers” known to descend on Portland during the summer, a group that’s been a focus of police lately, especially since a teen struck a septuagenarian with a skateboard last summer.
“We found the guy who hit somebody with a skateboard and he’s going to jail for five years,” Fritz says. “That’s a problem. That’s criminal behavior. Littering twice is not criminal behavior.”
Fritz appears to be weighing her options. She holds a weekly meeting with Hales—it was yesterday—and he’s never mentioned the policy change despite her work around homelessness. She intends to bring it up next week.
“We’re in a (US) Department of Justice settlement agreement,” Fritz says. ” We understand that some of those interactions (between police and the homeless) in the past have not turned out well.
“I can no longer sit back and say: ‘I’m not the police commissioner. This is not my problem.'”
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Hales, Dana Haynes, says the mayor’s aware of the policy. And, though he hadn’t fully read the Mercury‘s story, he took issue with a headline reading “A Tough New Policy Targets the Homeless.”
“We are going to disagree with you that it is targeting the homeless,” Haynes says.
Way to go Hales. I’m in full support.
The reason that people don’t tell Fritz things is she makes them worse. She is in charge of neither the police nor housing. Her recent involvement in “houselessness issues” has been to complicate them tremendously and create a headache for the rest of the Council. (Which isn’t resolved, by the way. R2D2 still hasn’t found a place to go and the next candidate location is likely to be just as controversial as the last one, starting the whole mess over again.)
Agreed.
So public urination is a crime that the police treat lightly? Someone should tell James Chasse, he doesn’t seem to be paying attention. Oh I forgot, Chris Humphreys killed him because he might have peed in the street, the penalty for actually peeing in the street is much more lienent.
It’s Fritz. She’s shocked and horrified by anything that doesn’t involve endless hours of “process.” In her ideal world, her job description would consist of nothing but briefing meetings.
I’m “horrified and very disturbed” by Fritz’s seemingly complete disconnect with reality
Fritz is right and the PBA, speaking through the police bureau will be proven in the courts to be wrong. Again. Unfortunately taxpayers will have to pay the legal costs. Again. Hey R2D2, I hear the mounted patrol building and covered paddock is going to be available soon…
You got to love her. In her effort to make things better, she always makes them so much worse.
So if my kid litters they are put on a list . They litter again to jail they go. This is crazy. Tracking people like that and sending them to jail for that. Again City hall is out of control.
The way Hales is handling The houseless “problem” is going to backfire. His heartless pursuit of dollars is KILLING the Real Portland. I want Bud back at city hall.
“Seek treatment”? Where exactly? Emergency shelters have waitlists months long. And why is the default assumption we are in need of treatment? Does 50% of the population have to be homeless before we do something about the banksters causing it?
most of these homeless downtown seem like they’re fairly functional reasonable people that are just “out of luck” whether by chance or by choice. so why shouldn’t they be held accountable for the crimes they commit? repeat offenders are taking advantage of our spineless enforcement & sentencing standards. same goes for anybody, homeless or homeful.
This policy makes no economic sense. It costs the taxpayers money to engage in the useless process of criminalizing poverty and insanity. It costs money to harass them, money to take them to court (for which they probably won’t even show), and money to incarcerate them. If we’re going to spend money on them anyway, couldn’t we do so humanely?
We could invest more heavily in Port-O-Lets and their upkeep and all downtown citizens would profit; we could support Shower To The People so the homeless could keep clean; we could support Sisters of the Road and Ne Si’Ka (Food From The Heart) so they are fed by donations & volunteers (i.e., not taxpayers but those who WANT to help); and we could provide trash service to Hoover Towns so they don’t trash up the area. I mean, since we’re throwing money at the “problem” anyway…
I’m not sure why Portland went to all the trouble to rip off Austin’s slogan if the PBA doesn’t really want to “Keep Portland Weird.” After all, as many people call it Taser Town as Portlandia nowadaze.