Mayor Sam Adams wants the city to fund a new prosecutor in an effort to crack down on drug use especially in Old Town, he said Wednesday.
“Right now drug dealing in the city of Portland, because of budget cuts at the district attorney’s office, they’re not prosecuting them. They’re getting basically a traffic ticket and that’s intolerable,” Adams said.
He said it will cost about $150,000 to $200,000. That money would also pay for the overtime for police to do more street patrols.
Residents and business owners in Old Town say they are seeing blatant crack dealing and crack smoking right in broad daylight. Cal Skate owner Howard Weiner captured photos of actual drug transactions outside his business and of crack being smoked in the doorway.
A three-decade business owner in Portland, Weiner said he’s never seen it this bad.
“Literally at 4,5,6 in the morning, would you see on Flanders Street, in particular, up to 40 folks dealing and using crack cocaine,” he said. “God forbid we haven’t had any armed robberies but that’s the next step.”
Adams is also pushing for a drug-free zone in Old Town that would allow officers to kick people out of the area if they’ve had some kind of drug-related conviction.
The city hasn’t had that sort of thing for four years since a study showed that black people were getting kicked out disproportionally more often than Latinos or white people. A new drug-free zone would not be based on the whim of an officer. That was one of the reasons constitutional and racial inequality issues were raised under the old drug-free zone.
As part of the effort to make the Old Town area a drug-free zone again, police set up a mobile precinct near Northwest 4th and Davis Wednesday afternoon as a show of force. But currently, police aren’t doing anything differently until the City Council signs off on the new plan.
People who live and work in the area said drug dealing has gotten worse in the last six months and many don’t feel safe walking through the area. They said they support the mayor’s push to allow police to kick people with drug convictions out of the neighborhood.
“I would really support that, and I think that if they were going to prosecute there also has to be some sort of follow-up,” said Tina Keller who works in Old Town. “They can’t just be prosecuted, put in jail and then released the next day. That doesn’t do anybody any good.”
“I’m a recovering addict myself,” Old Town resident Lloyd Johnson said. “But you can’t change if the environment don’t change. … There’s crack being sold every day down here – heroin, crack, all that. It needs to stop because of the little babies.”
Johnson said it’s almost impossible to walk in Old Town without being approached by dealers or by someone who may hurt you.
“You don’t mind helping them if they try and help themselves, but when they get to the point to where they’re trying to rob you … it shouldn’t be like that.”
Adams will go before the City Council in two weeks to ask for the changes.
KATU News reporter Anna Canzano contributed to this report.
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