Downtown, No Finer Place For Sure
In a 5-3 vote, the Eugene City Council passed the contentious exclusion ordinance that I wrote about last week. A judge can now ban individuals from the downtown area for 90 days without trial or right to a lawyer if they have allegedly committed a long list of crimes, including public urination, furnishing alcohol to a minor and possession of marijuana. If actually convicted, a judge can then ban the individual for up to a full year. (In other news, the Oregon Commentator staff are never going downtown again.)
That ol’ carpetbagger Alan Pittman has an article in the most recent Eugene Weekly about the exclusion ordinance. Despite the usual Pittman-isms, he manages to point out the more glaring problems with the new plan:
The city could jail, for up to 90 days, a person who violates the exclusion order. Before the ordinance, getting caught with a joint could result in a ticket; now, it could result in a three-month jail term. Holding a prisoner costs taxpayers an estimated $350 a night.
And the money quote from City Councilor Betty Taylor:
Taylor said the “unjust” exclusion ordinance will just move the problem from one part of downtown to another. “The people who are excluded will not disappear.” She said those jailed for violating the ordinance will be released quickly from the overcrowded facility, and she said that all the violations in the ordinance are already illegal. “We need to enforce the laws we already have.”
I agree. While I consider most denizens of downtown obnoxious and disgusting, the ordinance is a poor attempt at a solution – costly, hard to enforce and perhaps unconstitutional. As Councilor Bonny Bettman also was quoted as saying in Pittman’s article, “To punish people who have not been convicted of a crime is inconsistent with everything we stand for in this country.”
Hey, guys. Have you ever heard of this thing called the Bill of Rights? Read up on it. You might want to skip a few pages over to the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Pretty radical stuff. Can you actual believe the government has to follow laws written by a bunch of old dead white guys that say we have to give people a trial before we punish them. I mean the idea is just totally outrageous. Better go to the libraries and bookshops to collect all the copies of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence that we can. We simply can’t tolerate such intolerant limits on government power. Wouldn’t burning books in the Quad at the UO be totally trippy?
To those on both sides of this argument, don’t worry. Even if the county DID have the power to jail people who hang around downtown after they’ve been banned, the actual incarceration would never happen. The jail doesn’t have enough funding to hold people for petty stuff like this; in fact, they barely have enough money to keep serious criminals there.
POT=PEACE is an impeccable tautology. You must be a gentleman and a scholar, sir.
pUFF PUFF…
REMEMBER POT=PEACE
Look… we should be able to walk downtown with a joint in our hand in ANY town!
Just as I do here in Cave Junction Oregon…
If by “drop some shit bombs” you mean “drop some shitty passes,” then yes, you are correct, sir. The only way the Huskies could beat us is if they were so abysmally bad that our defensive line became incapacitated with laughter.
Sakaki, we don’t shoot dogs. We just humiliate them until they wish they were dead. How many yards did J-Stew rush on Washington last year?
I see a dog. Can I kill it?
And how.
Well well, looks like the shithole of Eugene is going to finally fall apart when the Dawgs destroy the rotten SWAMPCHICKENS at that awful shitrag of a Crapzen stadium. I bet the SWAMPCHICKENS team is made out of these awful shitbums you shitidiots are all talking about.
THE SHIT HAWKS ARE FLYING IN, FLYING IN REAL LOW, GUNNA DROP SOME SHIT BOMBS ON ALL YOU DIRTY EUGENITES.
LONG LIVE THE DAILY!!!
Damn it, I should have said Betty Taylor, but my original statement remains valid.
I hate agreeing with Bonny Bettman…
Speaking of ordinances that are long-forgotten, is it still against city code for dogs to be on 13th street next to the University?
P.S. CJ, your place is s shithole, you yuppie bastard.
And what you pointed out was a great idea.
Don’t get me wrong — I only go to John Henry’s when I’m suffering from deep depression. But I was just pointing it out.
It might be better that John Henry’s is a wasteland. The booze in that place sucks. I’d rather stay at Rennie’s. At least I know what I’m getting there.
Hey Downtown Democrat: Jonathan Swift called, he wants his…oh fuck it.
I’m comforted (slightly) by the fact that a judge will only be able to ban somebody with a “preponderance” of evidence of a crime, although I’m not sure how much protection that will provide from abuse if the accused is unable to be represented by a lawyer.
The most shocking part of all this is the willingness of councilors to lump people who piss in an alley with people who sell drugs. If everybody who pisses on the sidewalk gets banned from downtown, John Henry’s will be a fucking wasteland on Thursday nights. Or any night, for that matter.
Also — and this line of logic may be flawed, so I open myself up to all sorts of criticism — how will this affect the money the city makes in misdemeanor fines? I assume that if somebody is banned from downtown, he or she won’t be getting tickets anymore, and thus won’t be paying any fines. Then again, maybe the majority of people who get these kinds of tickets wouldn’t pay anyway.
Well there in lies the final twist! I am actually a street rat!
Wow, you pay taxes?! That’s incredible! Being the effete, college yuppie that I am (living in my “nice campus condo” no doubt) I obviously have no basis from which to argue with you.
Listen, I fucking hate street kids, but this ordinance is bullshit. It’s not going to solve the problem.
Waaah waaah waaah wambulance
“get what?”
That you don’t pay taxes and support crumb bums?
Assuming, for the moment, that “Downtown Democrat” isn’t some wretched attempt at satire, I think it’s safe to say that he doesn’t quite “get it”.
This is a total “Look! See? We’re doing something about the problem!” measure that the pols involved can point to during their re-election campaigns so they can say they’re “cracking down on crime” and “making the streets safer” and all that sort of bilge.
Never mind that sticking a small police station in one of those empty buildings and keeping officers on patrol in the area would probably have a much greater chance of helping clean up downtown. So what if Johnny Streetrat gets told by some judge that he “can’t be in downtown for three months”? Who’s gonna stop him?
We don’t need new laws to solve this problem. We need better enforcement of already existing ones.
You guys are all perched in your nice campus condos and don’t know what the fuck your talking. Do you have any idea what downtown is actually like? Sure you do, going to the bars and getting knee-scraping drunk, butI live there, it was an accident, however I have seen the filth. If Eugene ever wants to bring the downtown back to a reasonable commercial center, first thing is first, get rid of the street rats, hookers, and drug addicted bums in 4 ways:
a) The Exclusion Ordinance (Ship the bums and street rats to Portland, get them away from me).
b) Get rid of Kesey Square, turn it into a putt putt golf course or something (Kesey Square a nice place, to buy heroine).
c) Stop providing homeless trash social services, they don’t deserve it (That’s why they move here, because college kids don’t pay the taxes and don’t whine about having a piece of shit downtown and city for that matter.)
d) Taze the fuck out of everyone (Even if they simply give you the stink eye, shit, it’s a lot better than mace)
Cims-
Arbitrary punishment? What do you think punishments are? An exact measurement of justice?
How about discriminating against the average Joe, who wants a clean city (That they pay taxes in, you guys don’t) by having a bunch of shitty drug addict street rats, hookers and bums.
So Eugene is becoming England, then?
Well, if I understand the objections of the commentator; that being the cost, inability to enforce the laws and ineffectiveness of the laws (because of people going elsewhere), than wow, we actually agree! Shocking! Also, I think this will be one ordinance, which unless removed, will stay on long after anybody remembers it, until some unwitting person gets picked up for any of the crimes and then the ordinance gets used as a an arbitrary punishment, by police or judge. Anyway it is, I feel, a poor form of policy, which may be marginally discriminatory.