August 14, 2003

So Just What Is Going On With The Obstructions As Nuisances Ordinance Anyway?

Now, I had indeed seen a small item in The Oregonian stating that the Portland Peace Encampment had been cleared this week by the Portland Police Bureau. Since the website which carries news from the paper is currently down due to the power blackout in the Northeast, I can't point you to it. But you can read coverage from the Portland Independent Media Center or listen (mp3) to a story from KBOO.

There's a good deal of fuss and flurry over just how the Obstructions as Nuisances ordinance was used in this case, much of which involves the premise that the enforcement guidelines for that ordinance underwent some sort of sudden change this week.

So what's the deal? I don't know for certain yet. One story that cropped up on Portland Indymedia says that there had been some sort of pilot project involving the ordinance which involved (for lack of a better phrase) lax enforcement by (according to a post on Indymedia) "[permitting] people to sit on the sidewalk in the downtown area provided they were not interfering with normal pedestrian traffic flow." According to this story, that pilot ended this week, replaced by stricter enforcement guidelines.

Disclosure: Not being a regular reader of Indymedia anymore, the ordinance situation was brought to my attention by Karrie Higgins. Expect more on what exactly is going on with the Obstructions as Nuisances ordinance here, and likely from Higgins as well.

For what it's worth: In the absence of an actual so-called "sit-lie" ordinance, the Mayor's office and the Portland Police Bureau have simply made use of specific enforcement guidelines for the Obstructions as Nuisances ordinance in an attempt to achieve many of the same goals. How the old-versus-new enforcement guidelines (if such a switch exists) play into this isn't clear to me at the moment.

Posted at 09:48 PM | PermalinkComments (6) | TrackBacks (6)
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Comments (6)

  1. hilsy on 15 Aug 2003

    It makes sense to me that some change was made because of what I have observed this week downtown. Across the street from my office on Morrison just above the Galleria, a woman has been, for no better description, living on one of the benches for at least a year. I noticed that the police came through this week and cleared out her extremely overflowing shopping cart. I've noticed the same police van around downtown this week.

  2. Mac Diva on 17 Aug 2003

    This is an issue where I part ways with the liberals who are busy patting themselves on the back for opposing the ordinance. The solution for homelessness, if there is one, is not to let people 'live' on sidewalks.

    As for the 'peace' and other encampments downtown, most of the inhabitants are longterm street people with substance abuse or other problems, not anti-war activists. And, they don't own the sidewalks. We all do. They take the sidewalks away from the rest of us when they make them their private property. The freedom of expression argument is largely bogus.

    Last, but not least, the plot to murder that young retarded woman was hatched by homeless folks who lived in the peace camp some of the time. That should tell us something about the kind of riffraff it was attracting.

  3. The One True b!X on 17 Aug 2003

    Sticking just with that last point for the moment: The people behind the Portland Peace Encampment had established rules much like those of Dignity Village, wherein certain kinds of behavior were not permitted at the camp. As far as anything I've read, the ring leader of that homeless killing had been at the camp maybe once, and didn't fit in.

  4. The One True b!X on 17 Aug 2003

    Oddly enough, parenthetically, the day they started arresting people for that killing, there was some punk homeless kid on my TriMet bus out of downtown talking about how they were arresting his friends but he had jumped onto a bus. I'm fairly certain, now that I look at his photograph, that it was, in fact, the ring leader they didn't catch up with until recently.

  5. Mac Diva on 18 Aug 2003

    According to the 'O,' several of the group of apparent killers (it is surprisingly large) had hung out at the peace camp. I think I saw it in either Friday or Saturday's paper.

    Dignity Village also has a history of criminal involvement. Their first spokesman, the double amputee (because he neglected his care as a diabetic, not because he served in Vietnam as he tells people) is a child molester who has spent his whole life in prison or on the streets. The next, the former Burnside drug dealer who dresses as an Arab, was arrested for wife beating and public drunkeness while he was the spokesman. There have been numerous other arrests for similar violations, theft and fighting. For a while, the police were practically living at Dignity Village. Remember to distinguish between people's rhetoric and what they actually do. I guess it must be the reporter in me. I am skeptical whenever people declare themselves too wonderful.

  6. tomwsmf on 19 Aug 2003

    With Geroge Jr hitting town I would venture to say the powers that be are scrubbing up the scurbs to make good old stumptown the spitting image of wholesomeness.

    Of course the kids whacking each other is a bit unsettling but given the long Dickensonian history of problem not at all out of the ordinary. That it got major press was the differnece here. Had the Bigmedia simply shown another sotry about drug addled hoopsters no one would be the wiser.

    -tomwsmf

Trackbacks (6)

  1. obstruction as nuisance? on 15 Aug 2003

    Last year, Mayor Vera Katz created new enforcement guidelines for the "obstruction as nuisance" ordinance, which prohibits citizens from

  2. obstruction as nuisance? on 15 Aug 2003

    Last year, Mayor Vera Katz created new enforcement guidelines for the "obstruction as nuisance" ordinance, which prohibits citizens from

  3. obstruction as nuisance? on 15 Aug 2003

    Last year, Mayor Vera Katz created new enforcement guidelines for the "obstruction as nuisance" ordinance, which prohibits citizens from

  4. obstruction as nuisance? on 15 Aug 2003

    Last year, Mayor Vera Katz created new enforcement guidelines for the "obstruction as nuisance" ordinance, which prohibits citizens from

  5. obstruction as nuisance? on 15 Aug 2003

    Last year, Mayor Vera Katz created new enforcement guidelines for the "obstruction as nuisance" ordinance, which prohibits citizens from

  6. obstruction as nuisance? on 26 Oct 2003

    Last year, Mayor Vera Katz created new enforcement guidelines for the "obstruction as nuisance" ordinance, which prohibits citizens from...