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Party Patrol Storms Campbell Club

On Saturday the Eugene Police Department raided a party at the Campbell Club, one of the student co-op houses, after receiving a tip that there was an illegal number of kegs on the premises. From the R-G:

When police arrived, residents refused to allow officers entry into the residence. Police obtained and served a search warrant a little before 3 a.m. Sunday. Police said they located the five kegs, and also found several minors who were hiding in various rooms throughout the house as well as in the attic.

Police broke down several doors that were locked from the inside to gain entry into the rooms, said Lt. Angie San Miguel, one of the officers at the scene.

Police cited 15 individuals as minors in possession of alcohol, and issued 21 citations for noise disturbance and 11 for furnishing alcohol to minors. Four were lodged at Lane County Jail on charges that included interfering with a police officer.

According to several sources, there was an undercover cop present. Also, the Campbell has allegedly been issued thousands of dollars in fines. The party was an end-o’-year bash for the regional ultimate frisbee teams. From what I understand, the UO men’s ultimate team rented out the basement of the building. If this is true, the ultimate team is up the proverbial creek, especially if they used club funds to buy the kegs. (But, hey, you’d have to be complete moron to do something like that, right?)

My sources also said that some of the kegs were allegedly rented to a fake address (a big no-no). I’ll try and verify this more tomorrow.

Moving on to more concrete information, there’s already a Facebook group for two of the arrested Cambpell Club members, “Free the Alder St. 2“. (Why do only protesters and bank robbers get to have cool numerical distinctions?) There is a picture of some of the busted doors here (Facebook login required). It was apparently quite the kerfuffle between the co-op kids and the EPD. Once again, the R-G:

Ian Royer, 24, one of the four lodged in jail, said he went outside to ask police what was going on that he was immediately handcuffed and then forced to wait outside, with about eight others, for more than two hours as police sought to obtain a search warrant.

“We were freezing, and they would not let us urinate,” he said. “It may seem trivial not to be able to pee, but when your bladder is about to explode it is really awful and does not feel human at all.”

Royer, a UO senior, said he was wearing a T-shirt and was denied warmer clothing. He said he believes police refused to let him and others urinate so that they would agree to let them search the premises without a search warrant. He said it’s completely appropriate for citizens to demand a warrant before allowing police to enter a private residence.

He and others asserted that another resident, Aaron Nelson, was smashed against a wall and arrested as he tried to record the scene on videotape.

I’m not a particular fan of cooperative living or ultimate frisbee, but is this what the EPD should be spending the majority of its manpower on? According to several reports, there were 12 cop cars at the Campbell Club. Meanwhile, Eugene still has a ridiculous amount of property theft, not to mention a downtown rendered almost uninhabitable by roving packs of street urchins.

  1. Vincent says:

    A brilliant riposte.

  2. William says:

    Actually, olly, im not in a hole.
    maybe you’d be in a hole when the pigs come tearing apart your house.

  3. Betz says:

    Stop snitchin’

    Vote or Die.

  4. Ian says:

    Carmelo Anthony approves of this thread.

  5. Olly says:

    William: “You know what happens to snitches in this town.”

    Are you familiar with the expression “when you’re in a hole, stop digging”?

    UPDATE (12/08): The question was rhetorical, but the answer is apparently “no”.

  6. William says:

    Kevin, the only people “false swearing” on the keg receipts were the frisbee guys, not campbell clubbers. And we KNEW there was an undercover cop there because he was the one who stuck around when the police showed up and then toured round the whole house, tearing up all our belongings with the police. You know what happens to snitches in this town. and no knock warrant? i dont know wtf you’re talking about but i didnt say anything about a no-knock warrant.

    And “anon”, i don’t know who you are or why you go round to every news website talking about someone named “BC” but you sound like a cop to me as nobody knows what you’re talking about.

  7. Anon says:

    Remember when BC used to sell herb out of the SCA office? Good times!

  8. […] ODE ran a story today on the Campbell Club incident, mainly dueling quotes between the EPD and the co-opers. I enjoyed this part for the mental image […]

  9. Chris says:

    This whole thread reminds me of Officer Angel from Hot Fuzz.

  10. Chris says:

    A friend of mine got an open container ticket a couple of weeks ago for walking, literally, across the street from one house to another. Against the rules? I guess. Still a dick move though by the cop.

    I remember another time that I was BBQ’ing outside of my apartment. It was me and three of my friends and we weren’t being loud or anything. It was not even night time, and we’re sitting there talking and enjoying the day when EPD rolls up in a police car, two cops get out and they tell us that there has been a complaint. I don’t know who would have filed a complaint for a quiet BBQ at 5PM, but even if there was one they said I had to move my grill (a smaller one) off of the sidewalk. I asked them if they were serious because this meant that I had to move my grill 4 inches to the left onto the driveway. They said they were not joking. I moved the BBQ 4 inches to the left and….they left. It was surreal.

    On another note, years ago my uncle got a ticket riding his bike near downtown. The cop pulled him over and gave him a ticket for, no shit, “accelerating through an intersection”. The light had turned yellow as my uncle entered the intersection (on his BIKE) and he pedaled through and was clear on the other side before the light turned red. My uncle smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, and I’ve never seen him ride a bike faster than 10 miles per hour.

    Another time, at night I was driving out onto Agate street from 15th, on campus, and I had been parked so I forgot to turn my lights on right away. I made the turn onto Agate, realized my lights were off after 10 feet or so, turned on my lights and the cop down at 18th and Agate passed me, turned around and pulled me over. I didn’t get a ticket, but I wasted 20 minutes sitting there explaining that, yes, I knew my lights had been off for 20 feet…that’s why I turned them on a minute or so before you decided to pull me over. Granted, I wasn’t a smart ass about it.

    Just remembering this crap has made me think that we should put out a call for the most absurd tickets issued by EPD. I bet there would be some hilariously screwed up entries.

  11. Kevin says:

    What percentage of people charged with noise violations went to jail last year? And isn’t is also a travesty that people can’t carry their open beer can or whiskey bottle down the street without risking a ticket and jail, even if they’re over 21?

  12. Dr. Suess says:

    “and why aren

  13. Brandon says:

    It seems like nothing has changed on Alder Street in the years since I was going to CC parties in the late ’90s. There’s assaults all over campus, downtown remains a mess and *this* is what EPD is doing with their time? I think it’s time for another OC expose/rant on how the department might better use their resources in light of the ongoing blight in other areas of Eugene.

    Am I still bitter about the time I was tear gassed by EPD a few weeks after they did absolutely nothing and even hindered my efforts to retrieve a stolen vehicle? Yup.

  14. margaret says:

    it seems to me that the problem for a lot of people throwing parties is the fact that noise violations are not violations in this town but CRIMES. seriously? the city council really thinks that a bunch of poor college kids, and let’s face it the ordinance is totally aimed at college kids, should end up in jail because they threw a party? i don’t want to hear my neighbor playing their music so loud that my walls shake but i’m not mean enough to want them thrown in jail for it.

    why isn’t someone going before the city council and telling them that it’s unfair/unjust/unconstitutional that college students are targeted in such a manner?

    and why aren’t the people who have received MIPs and other drinking citations attempting to lower the drinking age to 18? there is a national move among many colleges (including several here in oregon) to lower the drinking age.

    if loud noise wasn’t a crime and the drinking age was 18, do you really think the police would be knocking on your door to tell you to shut down your party – let alone getting a search warrant to take your beer?

  15. Steve says:

    Rooms at the Campbell Club are rented out individually, like apartments. Rooms are not public cooperative space but private lockable dwellings. My thought is that the Warrant covered only public spaces in the building, not individuals locked rooms. The legality of kicking in the locked doors of tenants is certainly in question. I would expect the EPD to obtain a warrant for each numbered dwelling.

    I lived at the Campbell Club in the late 90

  16. Kevin says:

    Red handed lies? You mean like false swearing on the keg receipts? Undercover cops? If the cop is undercover, how do you know he’s even there? No knock warrants? How do you have a no knock warrant when the police are standing outside your door for two hours?

  17. william says:

    perhaps, Kevin, and “Ian destroyer of fate” you should be more worried about the fact that the police have been caught RED HANDED lying openly to the public and the press several times over the course of this event. No matter how much you hate the Campbell Club, abusive police effect all members of the community. Do unto others my friend.

  18. Kevin says:

    Well, Tim, keep hope alive.

  19. Timothy says:

    Oh, Kevin, some part of me hopes your house gets hit with a no-knock to make you less compliant with the police state. But you probably don’t deserve that kind of terror, on the other hand you are obviously a law-and-order douchetard so maybe it’d be poetic justice.

  20. Kevin says:

    I don’t know why people can’t look at the bright side of things. I mean, if you tell the police to get a warrant, why whine when they get a warrant? But you should take something positive from this. Perhaps you’ve learned to be careful what you wish for. The nice folks at Campbell Club may have had imperfect knowledge of what happens when the police do get a warrant. And the next time, since it’s probably on a macro, it shouldn’t take near as long to write the warrant.

  21. blank says:

    as a former cc resident i find it very suspect that the EPD choose to raid the house over this. in my time there we threw dozens of parties and it was never an issue.

    the unspoken agreement had always been: we keep the crowds out of alder street and reasonably calm, if there are noise complaints we turn down the volume and cool things off. the cops would show up in force on occasion, one halloween there were maybe 15 on bikes, but they’d always keep their distance in the street. several times they actually approached us to complement our handling of the crowds.

    sure, we like to throw big parties, but we live in that house too, so we don’t want a riot in our living room or people trashing the place. come on EPD, what a waste of time and money!

  22. Ian destroyer of fate says:

    I actually work with a guy who lives at the Campbell club (although he really hates it). He told me that only two officers showed up (as a response to a noise complaint) at first but they were provoked into sending more. He said that his dirty hippy roomates provoked the citations by talking shit to the police and trying to argue with “the man” everything and that the EPD only called for backup when they realized the number of citations they were going to wirte. According to him (i.e. someone who lives in the house and was issued a citation) the EPD’s actions were justified. Also the downstairs keg wasn’t for the ultimate frisbee team per se but for people who live at the Campbell Club. Believe it nor not the EPD doesn’t always cross the line. My rule of thumb is “if you fuck with the cops, prepared to get fucked back twice as hard and in a very uncomfortable position (like the back of a Volkswagen)”

  23. TedTheTiniestTurtle says:

    i hope the campbell club has a fundraiser for the campbell club. i’d go.

  24. Dr. Suess says:

    “I get a contact high just from biking past that place.”

    Is that a bad thing?

  25. loraxsmells says:

    yeah, the lorax is pretty awful.
    that place is full of filthy filthy hippies.
    i dont think anyone in the world would be sad if that place vanished forever…

    but the campbell club is great, the cops overstepped – at the expense of people’s real safety.

    i mean, college kids with beer? oh no! they must be stopped.
    before they become – just like their parents.

  26. Betz says:

    You “suppose” the residents of the Lorax are hippy-ish? I get a contact high just from biking past that place.

  27. anonymous says:

    I would like to clarify that, while you guys seem to have the right idea about what happened, it is simply not true to call all the co-op residents hippies. The residents of the Lorax co-op next door are quite hippy-ish i suppose, but I live in the Campbell Club and I am FAR from the left wing.

    When the police are the ones breaking the law, who do you call? That’s why both lefties and right-wingers must put their differences aside when it comes to unconstitutional breaches of our civil rights.

  28. Jacob says:

    Cut programs. God knows I tried

  29. Drew says:

    If those are the limits they need to restructure becuase outside of my street I have personally seen five bloddy fights and twelve bad break ins IN THE PAST MONTH! if you are a citizen in west campus right now your safety has to be in question

  30. Daniel says:

    On a somewhat related note, I think this story would be an excellent test case for using a wiki to compile facts and build a picture of what happened.

  31. Chris says:

    From the EPD Website:

    “In addition to the regular patrol teams, some officers are assigned to dedicated foot and bike patrol positions. Neighborhood patrol areas include the University of Oregon campus, the West University neighborhood, and the downtown area. These neighborhood patrols are a popular community policing effort that keep the same officer in the same neighborhood each day, allow officers and community members to develop rapport, and function to reduce crime and other neighborhood problems in the areas covered.”

    On another note, one of EPD’s attempts at rapport building includes a crime map that you can break down by month or year.

    Perhaps consulting that map you can find the best location in the city limits for holding a party. Not surprisingly, university neighborhoods have drastically high counts for “liquor offenses”. In the case of the W. University neighborhood it’s something like 194 liquor offenses to about 10 in Santa Clara. Incidentally, certain areas of Santa Clara are still unincorporated, but are within the city limits. Technically speaking, those areas are also outside of EPD jurisdiction. hehe

  32. Chris says:

    True. It is like the Coburg speed trap that got shut down a year or so ago.

    The police have the law to back them up in that, yes, they are enforcing ‘the lawr!” but realistically they go apeshit-batman-crazy-cop on college kids. This isn’t to say that some drunk asses aren’t asking for it when they get it, but by and large people are not looking for trouble and are trying to have a good time but the cops show up en masse with SWAT hovering in a commandeered helicopter ready to pounce.

    If anything, this is yet another argument for making campus wet again and having a bier hall of sorts in a central (profitable) location. Sure, parents who are disconnected from reality will themselves go apeshit, but there must be strong arguments out there for having a more controlled environment on campus that can generate revenue and not give EPD an excuse to roll in heavy.

    Moral of the story? Hold your parties on private property in the county, outside of the city limits, or just go somewhere in the county that is inconspicuous. Last I checked, there is one county sheriff on duty at night and he/she has the county as his/her jurisdiction. In other words, the chances of he/she showing up at your party are slim. I do know that when my aunt and uncle moved out to Pleasant Hill, the neighbors said that if their house catches on fire or you have some sort of emergency requiring the police, you call them and tell them that you think you’ve killed someone. Even a burning house doesn’t warrant the attention of county authorities as most are volunteer and their primary mission is to contain the damage and not to extinguish the fire…

    And thanks Vincent….I was wondering if people would get that. hehe

  33. Scott says:

    While I’ve never like the Co-op or the people therein, it is true, it is bullshit when dealing with EPD.

    At the same time, is anybody surprised?

    EPD spends so much time in and around the University campus because of how easy it is to bully college students into paying off fines for various crimes. You don’t hear many stories of college students standing up to the charges put against them by DPS and/or EPD.

    If you’re a police department hurting for cash because the local and country government doesn’t know how to budget what would you do? Spend all your time hunting actual crimes and making little money off of it or keep your department running through huge fines against stupid, drunk college students?

    Easy choice depending on your morals.

  34. Vincent says:

    In other news, The KLF may very well rock you.

  35. Vincent says:

    Otherwise in the three block radius where the party had been broken up four cars had their windows smashed in and the property stolen.

    Some hooligans (I’m guessing erstwhile Taylor’s customers) smashed in a window to a professor’s office here in Condon Hall this weekend, too. As far as I know, nothing was stolen. They evidently just broke the windows and threw a bunch of rubbish into the guy’s office.

    I saw some dudes in an SUV try to run down some people downtown on Saturday night, too. Luckily, one of the bike cops happened to witness the whole thing and pulled the guys over.

    Sounds like it was a wild weekend in Eugene.

  36. Anthony says:

    I’ve been to some crazy parties in my time, and in my experience this was one of the most good-natured shindigs I’ve had the chance to attend. Nobody was off the wall drunk, people were carrying on in a respectful manner, and when the cops first showed up everyone cleared out. It’s bullshit that they are pressing charges, it’s bullshit that they broke Ian’s camera, and it’s bullshit that everyone there is being accessed those gigantic fines. The rate of reported sexual assaults in this town doubled last year, and yet the EPD finds the resources to use undercover officers and nine squad cars in order to harass a bunch of frisbee slinging hippies.

  37. Jan says:

    It can’t be easy being a hippy on Greek Row. I think there’s a Willie Nelson song about it.

  38. Chris says:

    “San Miguel said the situation was not a typical loud party complaint because of the additional concerns about illegal kegs on the premises.”

    Yes, kegs that may have been members of the highly-trained, anti-police militia “The Keg Liberation Front” rumored to exist in hippy co-op buildings across the United States.

    Party-goers could be heard shouting “KLF is going to rock you!” at the police prior to their entry to the building.

    Other arrested individuals had parked their cars incorrectly, facing against traffic, and one individual, according to police, “had dressed incorrectly for the cold weather”.

  39. Chris says:

    It just seems to me that if the EPD wanted to, you could send ONE cop to a party like that and basically put everything on the line in the initial conversation.

    “I don’t want to bust your party, but it’s too loud and too big and I imagine there are some minors inside. I’ll give you an hour to solve this situation because I think it is in everyone’s interests that you take care of this instead of me. When I come back, if things haven’t changed…then I’m going to call in the cavalry and it’s going to be a painful, expensive all-nighter for everyone.”

    Why EPD seems to fear a co-op house full of beer drinking college kids is beyond me. Either the training EPD gets is out-of-whack or EPD is full of people who get off on busting people for the easy stuff. I know that people have rioted before on a drunken misadventure, but I would argue that part of the reason for that is EPD’s response with such force. Can’t anyone operate with any savvy?

    Don’t get me wrong, if they broke the law there they broke the law….but responding like that just seems insane to me.

  40. Drew says:

    Otherwise in the three block radius where the party had been broken up four cars had their windows smashed in and the property stolen.

  41. Lyzi says:

    Many people are thinking that EPD was waiting for a reason to bust the Campbell Club for something, anything (the cops roll through that place every weekend), and the ultimate players dropping the ball gave them that reason. Luckily for the co-oppers, there were a couple kegs left after the cops left. Also: each resident of the Campbell Club (whether or not they were upstairs asleep when the cops arrived) was slapped with a $350 charge for a portion of a noise complaint, among other charges.

  42. Timothy says:

    Four years while I was an undergrad and they didn’t catch a rapist with a known MO…I guess solving actual crime doesn’t generate cash the way this kind of shit does. I believe a little band called “Body Count” has something to say about this kind of thing.

  43. Ian says:

    It’s a good thing no crimes that actually hurt people are ever committed in Eugene, because boy, would the EPD look foolish.

  44. Scott says:

    By the way, if you google Oregon Keg Limit Law, an OC post pops up about 6 entries down.

  45. Scott says:

    Meh, it’s EPD.

    What I want to know is why it’s illegal to have 5 kegs in your house and exactly what the reasoning behind that law is.

    I suppose I could make a couple of arguments for it already but I’d rather have the knowledge than extrapolation.

  46. Betz says:

    Imagine, though, if all of the undercover cops show up to the fake party, not knowing that everyone else is a cop. Reminds me of an SNL skit,
    “Narc School” … scroll towards the bottom.

  47. Chris says:

    It is overkill….I saw the cars that night and it seemed like something out of the movies (as in I expected a shootout and a few shots fired). It’s also pretty indicative of the ‘relationship’ that EPD has with the citizens of our fair city.

    Smashing down doors and ‘raiding’ the house to give a bunch of people MIP’s is crazy. Yes, the law was broken and all, but it still seems like there are better ways to go about such things.

    Also, an undercover cop? Now EPD is seeding the UO party scene with undercover elements? That made me laugh. I can picture that cop already, huge ego and all; “I can’t talk about what I do…I’m undercover”.

    On the other hand, it may become a good strategy to create fake parties for EPD to respond to with all of their force. That way, every other party in the city will catch a break that night…..not to mention it sounds like a response like this one would provide criminal elements a good time for planning even crazier things, like robbing a bank. Someone call George Clooney.

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