Item B: Ordinance on Downtown Public Safety Zone

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Ms. Nelson supported Sgt. Fitzgerald’s recommendation to add sex offenses to the ordinance. Ms. Nelson continued to have questions around the issue of due process and looked forward to court challenges to the ordinance as a means to answer some of the commission’s questions. However, given that the City lacked the ability to hold people before trial, there would be more failure to appear violations if the DPSZ did not exist. On balance, she thought the DPSZ was worth having in place. Mr. Ahlen suggested the commission’s discussion of the ordinance was an opportunity to communicate to the council that the City needed to find a way to fund more jail beds. He termed the DPSZ a temporary “fix” until that could occur. Mr. Brown said the City Council had recently had a chance to devote more resources to public safety or to social service and a council majority chose to devote more money to public safety, which he found unfortunate. He hoped the council did a better job of allocating resources in the future. Responding to a question from Mr. Brown about the core group of offenders, Lt. Mozan said the exclusion had a time window and when the time expired some offenders returned to the downtown. Some returned within the exclusion period and were charged with a criminal violation. Many were offending elsewhere. He referred the commission to page 9 of the report, which indicated that ten percent of all crime was taking place in a ten-block area of downtown. Mr. Brown commended increased communication with the stakeholders but pointed out that could occur without the exclusion zone. He did not support the ordinance and questioned whether the zone had been effective given that crime had only gone down in two categories and those excluded were free to commit crimes in other parts of the community. He thought the ordinance’s provisions were unclear and believed it violated the United States Constitution. He said the City already had laws in place, and needed more resources to make the system work. He did not think the ordinance improved anything. Mr. Clark suggested the commission was making assumptions about due process that might not be accurate. He asked how long an officer could hold someone following arrest. Chief Kerns said that a person must be arraigned within 24 hours but their movements could be restricted within that time period. He said it required the same evidence for a judge to exclude someone as it required for the officer to exclude someone. Lt. Mozan clarified that judges, not officers, excluded people from downtown. Mr. Clark believed that the DPSZ had resulted in the desired results. He also agreed with adding sex offenses to the list of offenses for which one could be excluded. While he understood the concerns expressed regarding the lack of legal counsel at hearings, he pointed out that people could also complain to the Police Auditor about that issue without a lawyer present, and to date no one had. Mr. Mueller objected to the ordinance. He suggested that a homeless alcoholic person who was usually in a haze most of the time would be unable to stand in front of a judge and understand the proceedings without a lawyer. He did not see how someone could get due process in such a situation. Mr. Mueller regretted the commission lacked information about the exclusion zone passed in Portland and subsequently discarded. He suggested Eugene could face similar challenges to its zone. Mr. Mueller said if the commission was to recommend the continuation of the DPSZ to the council, he supported the addition of sex offenses and the elimination of public urination as reasons for exclusion. He called for more bathrooms in downtown. Mr. Mueller said that the mentally ill do not know what was going on and a mentally ill person should not receive an exclusion order. He noted that two people were excluded for marijuana possession and he thought that ridiculous, and called for the deletion of possession as a reason for exclusion.