Item 4: Ordinance Concerning Downtown Public Safety Zone

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with compassion for the children on the streets. The simplest thing to do is to bring homeless people in. The larger problem is alcoholism. A very large number of homeless people are alcoholics. She wants to give disability checks to people who are homeless. Walt Hunt: Homeless people need a lot of help. He supports the exclusion zone because it’s the right thing to do. If he had committed a crime downtown and was looking at jail or just staying away from the area downtown, he would choose to stay away or be told to stay away from that place. It seems a lot harsher to be locked up than to be kept out of an area. It also seems to be a lot cheaper to be enforcing safety laws, and tell people they’ve worn out their welcome downtown. After so many times of assaults or drunken disorder, so many times being caught in an alley shooting heroin, enough is enough. There is more to it though. All other reasons would have to be dealt with. He works downtown, and two years ago he started noticing an increase in violent activity and drunken disorder. He doesn’t have his own security team. He was assaulted twice near his business by a person who had 80 charges against him. Had that person been excluded he wouldn’t have been attacked. He thinks if there’s a problem the way the ordinance is written, let’s change that, but keep it. Tim Mueller: He asked questions about alcohol and drug violations mentioned in the activity report. It seemed to him more exclusions were made from drug violations than from alcohol. Terry Smith answered: the average number of charges per person in the exclusion zone is 2.9, and it is fairly uncommon for drugs to be the sole reason for exclusion; something else occurred. The most frequent way in which drugs are discovered is a result of another enforcement or action. When a person is searched prior to being lodged, drugs may then be discovered and an additional charge is made. Mr. Mueller asked another question: Is 16% of the exclusions from marijuana effective? Terry Smith answered: many of these are felonies because of the proximity to a school, or for dealing. Lt. Mozan answered: marijuana is easy to typecast into one category. However, having less than an ounce is just a violation. But bringing it near a school becomes a felony (Network Charter School is within 1,000 feet, near where offenses were). Similarly, if someone is dealing, it’s a different offense and more serious. Looking at that offense, you don’t usually see the same violation level. Those crimes are categorized as serious crimes in courts. Other cases involve heroin, and high scheduled drugs (meth, delivery of scheduled narcotics). Mr. Muller said he was impressed by Carol’s poem describing her observations sitting in court for a number of sessions, and regular exclusion zones being thrown out by the judge. Mr. Muller asked what cases weren’t approved by a judge, and why? Lt. Mozan answered: one thing important as a police manager is that we must be efficient that we take our procedures seriously and communicate with one another. When an exclusion order did not stand up, it was a show cause for violation in court. A person can appear in court and get a hearing set for due process. In a show cause hearing, if the court hasn’t received all documentation (like the citation), the judge won’t issue an exclusion order without sufficient data. That occurred in about seven cases. Lt. Mozan suggested a change in the ordinance to add a safeguard for adequate data transfer. He said administrative failing shouldn’t cause that to happen. He does not believe there is any over-zealous enforcement. He said the report’s profile downtown shows that during the summer, six officers were assigned to self-initiated activity and provided with data from businesses and stakeholders on certain criminal activity. The officers are very thoughtful about enforcing the law with exclusion to chronic offenders, repeat offenders, and people who prey on people. Ofc. Bremer mentioned an arrest he made on a person for menacing and animal abuse. The appropriate charge was made to Circuit Court, and among the charges was menacing, which is one of the offenses, and an exclusion order was made based on that conviction. A failure is that the ordinance only spells out municipal codes tied to specific offenses, not State statutes. Linda Tucker: She is a security officer contracted by LTD. She thanked the ACLU for their perspective of due process. Every day she works with Ofc. Bremer and other downtown officers. She said most of the kids downtown are great. Jail is a laughable joke here in Eugene because people know they won’t stay long. The