Item C: Downtown Public Safety Issues

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the period of the Olympic Trials during which time EPD will be fully deployed with no additional capacity available. Over the past year or more, some downtown business owners/operators have repeatedly been the subject of racially-motivated harassment. Some of those incidents were classified as crimes and others, although apparently motivated by hate or racism did not fall into the definition of any crime in the Eugene Municipal Code, or Oregon Revised Statutes. Regardless, the circumstances of some of the crimes complicated staff’s ability to prosecute those responsible for them. Councilors Andrea Ortiz and Mike Clark organized several downtown safety meetings which were attended by Eugene Police command staff, downtown business operators, and other interested parties to develop a plan to address behavioral crime problems in the downtown core. Efforts previously had been frustrated by, among other factors, limited police staffing. Staff agreed to address the problem with short, intermediate and long-term strategies. Strategies In the short-term, EPD assigned an additional bicycle officer to the downtown core to focus on those offenses for which prevention, presence, and an immediate police response is most likely to result in the desired outcome. The officer maintained open lines of communication with the affected business owners and family members to ensure they were able to report crimes as they happened, directly to an officer able to respond immediately. The officer also became familiar with offenders who frequented the downtown core so when crimes occurred he was able to quickly identify the individual responsible. He developed relationships with citizens willing to testify as witnesses and others who only felt safe sharing information anonymously. The effect of this policing strategy has been an observed reduction in crime and a greater sense of safety in the affected portion of the downtown. It has also caused an apparent shift of those adolescents and young adults who loitered on W. Broadway to the area around the Eugene Public Library. Behavior crimes have followed. The Police Department's intermediate strategy has been to assign all foot patrol officers (DEI, West University, and Summer Bicycle Program) under the supervision of one sergeant in the Community Policy Section of the Patrol Division. This transition of the program will ensure the policing efforts in the downtown core will be managed by supervisors with a focus on reducing crime and improving safety. Possible long-term strategies include further increasing the proactive presence of police officers in the downtown, consideration of enhanced disorder control ordinances such as hate-related harassment behaviors, downtown “safety zone” declarations, and exclusionary ordinances. As the Special Projects Program has demonstrated, some of the most effective methods for reducing crime in a small and active area like downtown Eugene are the consistent, long-term presence of police officers assigned to proactive activities. Although staff does not have the personnel capacity to increase the hours of operation or numbers of officers assigned from April through October, it does have some limited capacity to extend the operation from October through April if funding were available. In the long-run, the solution to this staff capacity issue is the continued, incremental addition of police officers over the course of several budget years. F:\CMO\2008 Council Agendas\M080414\S090414C.doc