August 1, 2008

Dear Mayor Kitty Piercy and Eugene City Councilors:

As the CPA Steering Committee reads it, the proposed Exclusion Ordinance would allow individuals to be excluded from the downtown area for periods ranging from 90 days to one year. The criteria include accusation of, or conviction for, any item from a long list of crimes, including many misdemeanors and minor infractions. The list ranges from such subjective charges as disorderly conduct and harassment, to drug possession. According to the proposal, a judge could exclude people from the area based on a "preponderance of evidence" regarding the accusation.

The potential for abuse of such an ordinance, is obvious to any student of civil and human rights. One could be accused if one's lifestyle, politics, ethnic group, religion, age or appearance were bothersome to folks more favored by the police. Historically, this kind of ordinance is often applied to those who express their political preferences through public demonstrations.

Amending such a proposal will not render it acceptable. For instance the proposal might be amended to include only those convicted. But many low income people, and the working poor, accept conviction on lesser crimes, when accused of more serious crimes, because they only have access to public defenders, whose services are increasingly limited for lack of funding.

Of course the homeless, and youth, will be typical targets of this ordinance. Its application will push these folks back into the residential neighborhoods, where there is even less security for local residents. The "Westown on 8th Avenue" apartment complex is now open. Most of its residents are low income people. If any of them were accused, would they be excluded from their home, or from using the transit station? Would people be prohibited from seeing their representative or attorney or doctor in a downtown office? And what if they work downtown themselves? What if they are seeking a job that happens to be downtown?

The exclusion could itself cause more typical balkanization patterns in our city, with groups of people, excluded from the mix of a generalized downtown scene, forming a more territorial type of association in the neighborhoods.

Another troublesome aspect of this proposal is the tremendous burden it will place on the already overburdened taxpayer. Imagine a new layer of our municipal judicial system, emerging to deal with processing expulsions and their enforcement. Think of the millions of dollars that will be spent on defending against the inevitable lawsuits resulting from such a system. This will drain money from currently strapped agencies, who, with better funding, are quite capable of dealing with criminal problems.

We are opposed to the municipal government forming a shadow legal system, in which people can be punished, with exclusion, on the basis accusations outside established criminal standards. Even if the proposal is limited to those convicted, it would still create punishments beyond those already assigned in our existing laws.

Anyone who cherishes our basic liberties should oppose it. One of the chief proponents, Betty Snowden, commented in supporting the proposal, that her rights were being violated every day. Any time anyone's rights are violated, action needs to be taken. However the protection of the rights of one individual, or group, does not lie in suppressing the rights of someone else. It lies in properly funding our judicial system, and in preventative efforts designed to reduce the need for people to be referred to the judicial system. High priorities in this effort should be filling two needs that have been obvious but completely ignored by the City for decades: an adequate youth center and an adequate non-denominational homeless shelter in the central part of the City.

Incremental funding of known solutions, from community enforcement to social services, will be far more effective than a new pile of ordinances. It's very imprudent to consider a new punitive system, when the US already has the largest prison population in world history.

Sincerely,

Bob O'Brien, CPA President