In September, Oregon lawmakers enacted legislation turning low-level drug possession into a more serious crime punishable by up to 180 days in jail. The resulting crackdown has led to thousands of arrests statewide in recent months. People targeted in cities such as Medford, and overworked public defenders tasked with representing them, say the drug enforcement has been chaotic and at times brutal.
While the new policy has appeared to reduce visible drug use in some public spaces, unhoused people, who have been most impacted by the police response, say it has exacerbated their struggles.
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The Medford police department has led the state in drug criminalization – by a lot.
The city is located in a region near the California border that is one of the more conservative areas of a blue state; more than half of voters in Jackson county, which includes Medford, supported Donald Trump.
From September, when the new law was enacted, through 26 March, the Medford police force carried out 902 drug possession arrests – more than double the number of cases in Portland (a city with seven times the population). Jackson county has logged 1,170 arrests total.
Verling, an officer on the city’s “livability” team, a unit focused on low-level crimes, including unlawful camping, trespassing, public drinking and drug possession, said many police were relieved when drugs were recriminalized. The 2020 reform had led to increasing reports of drug use on the streets and growing concern about public intoxication.
Recriminalization, Verling said, allows him to engage people in hopes of pushing them to treatment. “I really don’t want to see someone go to prison … but this gives us the ability to get back into their lives,” he said on a recent patrol through Medford.
He said the job was most rewarding when seeing someone turn their life around after they’ve been jailed – and when his team arrests dealers, potentially “making people sober by making the drugs inaccessible”.
One of the livability team’s main priorities has been clearing homeless encampments, and as Verling drove his patrol car onto a pedestrian greenway, the impact was clear. During the pandemic, encampments were a common site. Now, there were few visible signs of homelessness. Several locals were jogging.
Where did people go?
“People leave town. They’re like, ‘OK well it’s a crime to camp here,’” he said, adding he believed many were in shelters.
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Jackson county designed its program so officers could directly hand over arrestees to drug treatment programs instead of jail, a collaborative approach meant to get people immediate help without involving the courts. But many don’t qualify, aren’t offered this alternative during their arrest, or they decline an officer’s offer. According to the latest available data, while there have been nearly 1,200 possession arrests, as of 27 March, only 69 people have been referred to deflection.
Instead, many get arrested. And rearrested. One 43-year-old unhoused woman said police were “acting like every person on the street is a drug addict, which is not true”, and that she had been arrested four times by Medford’s livability team since October, generally for camping violations. While she was quickly released after her last arrest, her partner was not, leaving her to camp outside alone. The woman, who asked not to use her name out of fear of police retaliation, said she was sleeping in front of a social services center in hopes her partner could easily find her when he gets out. “The separation makes me feel like I can’t breathe,” she added. “Police say they’re helping the homeless, but they’re just throwing us in handcuffs and jail.”
Problem is we did half the plan. We referred them to counseling and then they couldn’t get through to a counselor. Because that part cost money so it was half-asses
Just in time for prison labor to be useful for Trump’s needs!
I’m sure this group will be excellent workers and there’s no unintended consequences of any sort.
People leave town. They’re like, ‘OK well it’s a crime to camp here,’” he said, adding he believed many were in shelters.
So they’re not actually doing anything to help anyone, they’re just hoping everyone moves on and then it can be someone else’s problem. That seems pretty on brand for conservatives
Love him saying he believed they are in shelters now. As if they were camping on the street when shelters were a great a perfectly viable option they were just ignoring. Even if local shelters have the capacity (they likely don’t), there are serious issues with the way a lot of them are run. People generally don’t want to be camping on the street, but I guess this guy thinks they were living the life and now are all back on the straight and narrow since out of sight is out of mind.
Green, the DA, said he felt deflection was a better path to treatment than the criminal system, which can be a slow process, and that the fact that only some people were succeeding was a good sign: “We didn’t [make it] too easy or too hard. We really found that sweet spot.”
Oh fuck you. 70 or so people deflecting out of 1200 arrests is not success you pompous prick, it’s failure.
It’s a better rate than the 130+/16,000 that deflected under 110.
At this rate, by the time we’ve arrested 16,000 people to match those ticketed under 110, 933 people will have diverted. 7x more than diverted under 110.
Still not enough, but far better than decriminalization. A $100 ignorable ticket isn’t an incentive.
Did you miss the entire part of the article talking about how this effectively locks up the court system, deprives US citizens of their constitutional right to representation, and does effectively nothing to actually get people off drugs?
Tell me more about how you like punishing the poor for being poor, though.
The court system in Oregon was fucked already, ignoring crimes isn’t going to fix that problem.
I can’t help but notice that you really like to cherry pick only the parts of comments you think you have a simple answer to.
How about responding to the meat of the argument rather than trying to just move the goalpost?
Why do that when he can fear monger about drug users, like he did with BLM protestors?
The salient points have been addressed elsewhere. But yeah, like I said, our courts are fucked:
https://apnews.com/article/oregon-public-defender-judge-ruling-dbb0489e4690cc28cd7d26eed6cddde8
But the solution isn’t to just throw up your hands and go “Welp, guess we can’t enforce the laws then!”
The solution is social welfare programs and a focus on mental health, job placement, and relocation assistance. Give the vast majority of people health care, stable employment, and a safe place to live, and they will thrive.
The solution is not cramming people into prison labor and ripping their constitutional rights from them.
I really don’t understand how this isn’t obvious to everyone.
That’s not the solution, because given a choice, addicts will not choose it.
The real solution is involuntary commitment for mental health and drug treatment, but nobody wants to go there.
A $100 ignorable ticket isn’t an incentive.
A wiser person might concede that if an unhoused addict had $100 in spare change they might also be able to afford treatment, housing and food.
$100 isn’t going to get anyone treatment or housing, and they’d rather blow it in a drug market than on food.
How many addicts or former addicts do you know 'cause that’s a pretty big brush you’re using to paint ALL addicts with.
I used to be an addict (booze) and came close a couple of times to a full-blown cocaine addiction (the 80’s and early 90’s were crazy).
If you can’t feel any empathy or compassion for those battling an addiction you are missing out on an important part of being human and caring for your neighbor … whoever they may be.
Well, I know how much treatment and housing costs and it’s way more than a $100.
I also know if you give an addict a choice between food and feeding the addiction they will choose the addiction every day and twice on Sunday. (That’s why it’s “an addiction”.)
Yet you seem to be assuming that ALL addicts are non-functional in society. The 80’s Wall St should have taught you that’s not true.
80’s Wall Street isn’t living in their own shit on the streets of Portland.
Fucking Methford - figures. Literally the toilet of Oregon. I’m not surprised whatsoever that the crackdown started there.
The homeless problem in Jackson county was out of control long before drug legalization. When I was doing homeless outreach there in 2020, there were over 7k people on the street who had lost their homes to the wildfires of the previous years - still unhoused, and the fires had been over for more than a year. There were almost no support services due to the rural nature of the county and a lack of public funding. My hat goes off to the folks who volunteer to support the homeless there - they do a huge amount and almost all of it is privately funded through volunteer outreach.
The drugs weren’t the problem - the lack of housing, jobs and the constant police harassment were. What drug legalization meant was that they no longer had an excuse to just pick up the homeless and warehouse them in jail to keep them out of the public eye - and as a result, the public got to see up close and personal what it’s like to live on the street.
Drug criminalization is almost never about the drugs or the harm they do. It’s about having an excuse to put people you don’t want to see in public in jail.
As an aside, it’s a pretty well known fact that the Methford police are corrupt as fuck, love to bully the locals, and the ACLU started a lawsuit in August against them for illegal spying. If Oregon ever becomes a police state, it will start in Methford.
Ashland cops, on the other hand (15 miles south on the freeway), are actually a great bunch and were actively working to support their homeless citizens while I was up there.
110 was a DISASTER and resulted in open air drug markets acting with impunity.
The PLAN was to make drug possession a $100 ticket and then waive it if they called a 1-800 number to ask about assistance.
NOTE: You didn’t have to actually GET assistance, all you had to do was call the number.
Out of 16,000 people ticketed under the program, less than 140 called the number.
Proponents of the measure argue that funding for assistance wasn’t effective, which is also absolutely true, but it doesn’t change the fact that 99+% of people ticketed never SOUGHT assistance.
Maybe people just enjoy drugs and don’t want assistance?
“No no you MUST have the help the government is giving you! WE’RE HERE TO HELP YOU, DO NOT RESIST. BODILY AUTONOMY IS ILLEGAL.”
If they were just doing that and not contributing to the overall degradation of society, it would be fine.
Unfortunately the decriminalization increased problems across the board to fuel the drug habit.
Car theft, for example, had a dramatic increase, now with 110 reverted, we’re seeing those numbers go back down.
I would argue the super rich tech bros and unfettered capitalism contribute way more to the so-called ‘degradation of society’ than any street people do.
But that’s just my opinion, having lived on the streets myself.
Drug use was huge in the 1950s, 60’s, and 70’s. Strange that people reminisce about those times as a paragon of successful society.
It’s also an era with peak unionization, high marginal tax brackets, and active monopoly busting. It has some of the lowest wealth disparity the US has seen.
The racism and other issues were huge too, but at least you could work a job and feed a family in most places.
But no! It can’t be the current issues are the wealthiest 1% crushing the rest of us. Just because the average salary is quickly trending to a poverty state and home are unattainable to most people… Never. Can’t be that. It must be the drugs causing it. Instead of the damage causing people to seek escape from reality, which drugs offer a means to do… Nope, can’t be that.
“Drug users are the degradation of society!” is exactly what Nixon and Reagan ran on, and Jordanlung claims he’s a progressive. 🙄
Not in Oregon they don’t.
So Oregon is troubled by unique drug users who are worse than anywhere else, or does the rich somehow not touch anything in Oregon?
Drug use exploded as a problem in Oregon when we de-criminalized it. So, yes, Oregon was unique in that regard. Fortunately we reversed course there and are starting to get it back under control.
The rich are a problem here, but not to the degree you might think. Nike is here, Intel is here, really those are the two big ones and they don’t have the same impact as, say, Amazon or Microsoft in Seattle.
Then support the richest 10% having their taxes raised to 70% like it was prior to Reagan getting his grubby little hands in the mix. Oregon would then be able to afford to build more drug treatment centers.
So more prisioners is good? Re-criminalizing things people do to to ease the stress of fascism for more prision labor is useful?
Might as well argue for weed to be illegal again since some people have done bad things with it, so all people must be punished.
