City's Proposed "Sit/Lie" Ordinance and Drug Free Zones Suffer Setbacks
You'd better be careful if you sit down in a public space in Portland. Sometime late last year, the City government stuck a revised version of City Code Title 14 (Public Order & Police) on their website for comment.
While normal procedure would be to have a "strike-through" version of the old Title 14, allowing the public to see what changes were proposed, the 100-plus page wallop of legalese was posted without any indication of what was new, revised, cut, or added.
Lawyers from the Oregon Law Center, Metropolitan Public Defenders, and the ACLU of Oregon went through the proposal line by line, discovering the City was attempting to add "Sit/Lie" provisions (making it a criminal offense to sit or lie on a sidewalk), doubling maximum fines for most violations (from $500 to $1000), creating a crime of sitting on a park bench (if your use of it prevents others from being able to "enjoy" the bench), and much more. The lawyers wrote a short analysis of the proposal for Commissioner Erik Sten, whose work on housing issues makes him the council member most involved in homelessness and poverty issues.
The letter leaked out to the press, causing a huge backlash (including a derogatory Oregonian editorial cartoon and an Associated Press story which ran in the Washington Post and elsewhere) and delaying the vote on the new code beyond the tentative May hearing date.
Other concerns highlighted by the OLC/MPD/ACLU letter were:
--expansion of the definition of "police officer" to include PSU security and state or federal police;
--the addition of the criminalization of "attempt, conspiracy and solicitation" of any crime, essentially expanding police power to surveil a person's thoughts; and
--prohibition on the exchange of goods, services, or anything of value without a permit on any public property.
The "Sit/Lie" portion of the ordinance, called "Interfering with Vehicular or Pedestrian Traffic," declares that a person is guilty of obstructing a sidewalk or other public right of way if she stands, sits, lies or engages in any other conduct that "would cause" a pedestrian or other user of "any part" of the right of way reasonably to take action to move around or avoid the object or person in order to make use of the right of way. The City has been very frank in saying that the only parties involved in drafting the new code have been the Association for Portland Progress (a consortium of downtown businesses), the police, and the City Attorney's office.
For more information contact the OLC at 503-295-2760, the MPD at 503-295-2100 or the ACLU at 503-227-3186. Check the City's website at www.ci.portland.or.us for updates.
Meanwhile, the City's Drug Free Zone ordinance suffered a hit in early February when Oregon's Court of Appeals ruled that people cannot be convicted of Criminal Trespass unless they have been given warning to leave the property they are on (or in) prior to being charged with Trespass (Oregon v. Lawrence D. Collins, http://www.publications. ojd.state.or.us/A108615.htm).
Chip Shields, director of Better People, a living-wage employment and counseling program for former offenders, praised the decision, noting that "the drug free zones make it difficult for residents of the zones to get on with their daily lives, even if they are in recovery from addiction. Freedom of movement shouldn't be restricted that way. A few more checks and balances have been restored to the Oregon criminal justice system."
For information on minority overrepresentation related to the drug free zones, see http://www.lpscc.org/images/orreport.pdf (p. 30).
Pepper Spray Company, City, and School Police to Pay in Dickie Dow Settlement
Early this year, in order to avoid the possibility of losing in court, Portland's City Council proposed a $380,000 settlement with the family of Dickie Dow, a schizophrenic man who died after police pepper-sprayed, beat and piled on him in 1998 (see PPR #25 and previous issues). The settlement also included $10,000 from Armor Holdings, the company that manufactures the pepper spray used by Portland Police. The spray probably contributed to Dow's death. Another $10,000 came from the Portland School Police (the first officer to encounter Dow the night he died was school officer Dennis McClainpicture below).
While the January 3 Oregonian reports that Dow's death "helped spur more police training," it is unclear whether documents exist to support such police claims. The article quotes "police officials" as saying they renewed CPR training in 1999, and are planning "refresher courses" in April. They also claim that new recruits get 20 hours of crisis intervention training and that "the Bureau plans to include a four-hour crisis curriculum for all officers as part of mandatory communications training."
Dow's parents, Barb and Ted Vickers, are to receive the bulk of the claim, with $50,000 set aside for Dickie's estate. Their lawyer, Paul Hart, was quoted by the Oregonian as noting the City agreed to settle in part because the Vickerses were treated badly and arrested while Dow was being beaten up. Hart said, "It would be tough for them to explain why it was OK to knock a 5- foot-2, 105-pound woman to the ground and call her four-letter words."
The Vickerses are still working out final details surrounding the settlement. They expect to make a public statement sometime in the spring, possibly to coincide with Dickie's birthday in June, and probably at their memorial garden in his memory at the corner where the incident occurred, N Fenwick and Lombard.
Mejía Death Shakes Up Mental Health System, One Year Later
Last April, when Portland Police shot and killed José Mejía Poot inside a psychiatric facility, fingers pointed everywhere (see PPRs #24-25). Somehow, while several publicly announced policy changes have been made, including the closure of the hospital, the police's role in the death of the epileptic man has still not been addressed.
The Portland Tribune, which did a lot of work covering the story when it happened, wrote its second in a series of articles on the "Mental Health System" of Multnomah County on December 7, titled "Mejía fallout sparks reform." While it reveals that the county has proposed random inspections of facilities to help prevent future problems, nothing in the article indicates a strengthening of hospital rules against any firearms coming onto hospital grounds.
The Justice for José Mejía Poot Committee is working on a plan to commemorate the one year anniversary of Mejía's death, which coincides with the release of this newsletter.
For more info contact AFSC at 503-230-9427.