Mayor was troubled by exclusion zones

Concerns of bias and effectiveness led Potter to pull plug on prostitution, drug program

By peter korn

The Portland Tribune, Oct 9, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (19 Reader comments)

When Mayor Tom Potter decided two weeks ago not to renew the drug- and prostitution-free zone laws he gave two reasons — a data analysis that suggested police were discriminating against blacks in handing out the exclusions, and a lack of confidence that the zones were working to combat crime.

“These things have been controversial for 15 years,” said John Doussard, Potter’s communications director, of the exclusion zones. “Once the numbers became public there were more questions than there were answers with the law.”

As far as Alejandro Queral, executive director of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center, is concerned, the report to the mayor confirmed what his organization had been saying for years.

“In my mind these alleged benefits have never been proven. I have never seen data that shows they are good at reducing the overall crime rate,” Queral said.

And in Queral’s opinion, even if the laws were effective, they were wrong — used to discriminate against black people.

Portland Police Chief Rosie Sizer says she’s still searching for theories to explain the data in the report. One possibility, she says, has to do with the types of drug crimes whites and blacks are getting arrested for in Portland.

Most of the whites were arrested in the newer drug-free zone along Southeast 82nd Avenue, and most often they were arrested for dealing methamphetamine. Blacks were more often arrested in downtown and Old Town for dealing cocaine.

Sizer said that since the Southeast exclusion zone is a more recent addition to the drug-free neighborhood list, officers there, not as familiar with exclusion-zone rules, were not issuing exclusion-zone notices at the same rate.

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