In exactly one month, the city’s controversial Drug- and
Prostitution-Free Zones will expire, forcing city council to decide
whether or not to renew them. And for the second time in two years,
Mayor Tom Potter’s office has broken a key promise—the creation
of an oversight committee to examine the law’s fairness.
Under the Drug Free Zone (DFZ) law, people arrested for possessing
or selling drugs—or for prostitution—in certain public
areas (downtown, North/Northeast Portland, and 82nd Avenue) can be
banned, or “excluded,” from that entire zone for 90 days. If they
violate that exclusion, they can be charged with criminal trespass and
fined $500 or imprisoned for 30 days.
But here’s where the law gets problematic: The exclusions aren’t
dependent on convictions, so a person can be excluded from their
neighborhood without ever being convicted of a crime. Worse, there’s
compelling evidence that the DFZ law disproportionately targets
minority communities. According to figures released earlier this year
by the police bureau, African Americans who are arrested for drugs are
more likely to be given exclusions than Caucasians, at a rate of 65
percent to 52 percent citywide. And African Americans make up a sizable
majority of the drug arrests in those zones, despite representing only
six to seven percent of the population [“Kinder, Gentler Zones,” News,
March 22].
Because of those numbers, and because of the possibility that the
law could sidestep constitutional protections of due process, city
council has twice called for an oversight committee to be formed to
look at the policy. In March 2006, council agreed to renew the zones
for another year, but only if Potter created such a committee.
Despite that clear direction, the committee wasn’t formed until just
weeks before the zones expired last April. They had a total of three
meetings, which, by all accounts, were disastrous and unproductive.
(The group included Jim Hayden from the district attorney’s office, and
Public Defender Chris O’Connor—natural and professional
adversaries who are hardly capable of finding a middle ground.) When
the mayor’s office asked for another six-month extension on April 11, a
unanimous city council agreed, but only if the committee was
restructured and finally got to work.
On May 24, Maria Rubio, Potter’s public safety advisor, emailed the
committee members letting them know that the committee was going to be
reformed—yet, instead of forming a new committee, it was
disbanded completely, and the work of analyzing the exclusion data was
given to one person: private consultant John Campbell. In other words,
instead of a broad committee of community members examining the law,
Campbell alone would be analyzing the data and then giving it to city
council.
That has more than one city commissioner frustrated, including Sam
Adams, who based his yes vote for the zones on the creation of the
oversight committee.
“There’s a point at which analysis stops and the conversation needs
to begin, which is why I think we need the oversight committee,” Adams
says. “Who’s going to fill that role now? It’ll be city council, but
we’re not an adequate substitute for an oversight committee, which
would know the historical context and be solely focused on it.”
“I thought it was pretty clear what we wanted from the committee at
the last hearing,” Adams added. “I’m disappointed that that hasn’t
happened.”
Commissioner Erik Sten, a longtime opponent of the DFZs, is equally
frustrated.
“It would take an extraordinary response from the mayor’s office for
me to be comfortable [voting to renew the zones],” he says. “They
aren’t worth keeping unless we get everything right, and we’re
obviously a long way off from that standard.”
And Commissioner Randy Leonard plans to vote to end the Drug-Free
Zones until city council can be certain that they are being used fairly
and are effective. Not surprisingly, he’s blasted Potter’s lack of
process.
“Tom Potter has not done what he promised to do in preparing for the
reauthorization of the DFZ,” he says. “I don’t see how any council
member can get themselves to vote to reauthorize the Drug and
Prostitution Free Zone ordinance given the council’s clear directive,
Mayor Potter’s clear agreement, and then his completely ignoring the
council—but stranger things have happened.”
Doing the simple math, a majority of city council is less than
prepared to vote to renew the Drug-Free Zones.
But even if Potter was in the majority, and not the minority, he’s
got another obstacle: Campbell didn’t receive the contract from the
mayor’s office to do the DFZ work until July 30—a mere two months
before the zones expire. The mayor’s office is expecting him to deliver
a report by mid-September (as early as September 12), but he’s unsure
if he’ll be done in time.
“We received the contract to do the analysis at the end of July,” he
told the Mercury, “and I’m doing my best to be able to tell them
something, but I doubt very much that there’ll be any kind of full
report by September 12.”
Given the DFZ policy’s long, embattled history, and the increasing
controversy surrounding it in the past two years, the question for many
in city hall is why the mayor’s office would consistently fail to
fulfill the promises it made in order to get the zones renewed.
In a sit-down conversation with the Mercury on Tuesday,
August 28, Rubio didn’t discuss the reasons for the contract delay.
“We want to do things right, and I feel pretty confident that that
is indeed what we are doing,” she says.
Asked what will happen if Campbell’s statistical analysis is not
ready by September 12, the currently planned date for city council both
to see the analysis and vote on renewal, Rubio responded, “We’ll have
to determine the next steps.” And if the analysis isn’t ready by
September 30th, when the ordinance is due to expire? “Then we’ll just
have to look at the alternatives.”
Leonard, for one, is out of patience.
“I have always suspected the DFZs were more show than substance,”
Leonard says. “With the clear disregard of the council’s directive by
Mayor Potter to set up a citizen review committee, that makes the point
better than I ever could.
“Even if Campbell is done in time,” Leonard added, “it’s beside
the point.”