Item B: Downtown Public Safety Issues

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success and controversy. Attachments A and B are examples of exclusion ordinances for City Council discussion. Attachment A (version A) provides for exclusion for 90 days if a municipal court judge finds by a preponderance of evidence that a person committed certain offenses within the downtown area. Version A also provides for exclusion for a term of one year upon conviction. Attachment B (version B) is also an exclusion ordinance, but provides only for exclusion upon conviction of the commission of certain offenses within the downtown zone’s boundaries. Both exclusion ordinances empower the Municipal Court to grant excluded persons variances to enter the downtown area for a variety of purposes. Both the City of Eugene and other communities have successfully utilized exclusion zones in the past. Similar exclusion zones in the City of Portland have survived various legal challenges. The City’s Prostitution Free Zone ordinance virtually eradicated street level prostitution in the West Jefferson and Whiteaker neighborhoods. Park exclusions are used as an effective tool to temporarily forbid certain offenders from remaining in, or returning to, City parks. When the downtown core was a pedestrian mall, the City’s downtown mall exclusion ordinance allowed officers to prohibit repeat offenders from returning to the downtown mall for brief periods of time. Officers considered the ordinance to be an effective method for reducing crime. Exclusion zones create an increased sense of safety for community members who live and work in the designated zone. For example, park exclusions provide officers with an alternative to incarceration that displaces chronic violators, creating a greater sense of safety in our parks and playgrounds. The civil penalty of exclusion is designed to hold offenders accountable for their actions, to remove offenders from unhealthy environments and to break the cycle of criminal and offensive behavior. The absence of repeat offenders from the designated zone can improve commerce and encourage a more welcoming environment for visitors and residents of the area. On the other hand, the use of exclusion zones curtails the freedom of an excluded person to move about within the exclusion zone. The exclusion ordinances before the City Council at this work session, like the prostitution exclusion ordinance and the downtown mall exclusion ordinance, allow excluded persons to apply for variances to enter the zone for certain specific purposes (for example, to access social services within the zone). Both the prostitution exclusion ordinance and the downtown mall exclusion ordinance were applied in some measure to members of vulnerable populations who accessed social services located within the exclusion zones. Allowing subjects excluded by ordinance into the zone for important services was occasionally challenging. The City received complaints that exclusions were not consistently applied, leading to some perception of disparate enforcement. . The critical component of an effective exclusion zone is a consistent police presence To be effective, the same police officers, familiar with chronic offenders, need to be assigned persistently to the same area. Individuals excluded from the zone are more likely to honor the restrictions imposed on them when they believe consequences are reliable and predictable. Enhanced Penalty Zone EPD also considered an ordinance to enhance penalties for certain crimes committed within the downtown public safety zone but ultimately concluded, based in part on advice from the Municipal Court, that any deterrent effect would be outweighed by the costs of administration and enforcement. Z:\CMO\2008 Council Agendas\M080609\S080609B.doc