Taking a Downer

[October 17th, 2007]

Young Oregonians’ drug use has been climbing. Overdose deaths from heroin, cocaine and meth continue to rise. But cops are bringing fewer felony drug cases for the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office to prosecute in court.

In the first six months of 2007, the Portland Police Bureau and other agencies handed prosecutors 1,391 felony drug cases, according to an internal report by the DA’s office. That’s a 23 percent drop from the same period last year, when cops dished up 1,810 such cases for prosecutors.

Why the lull? Nobody believes cocaine, meth and heroin use have fallen 23 percent—including District Attorney Michael Schrunk. Instead, he points to the police.

“I think it’s the manner of enforcement,” Schrunk says. “I don’t want to use the word ‘lax.’… I think the police have not put it high on their priorities.”

At the start of this year, Portland Police Chief Rosie Sizer cut one shift at the Police Bureau’s Drugs and Vice Division. The division, which investigates large drug cases, used to have two shifts. But when a lieutenant retired, the shift from 3 pm to 1 am was dropped as of Jan. 1. Now the division only works days.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Mark McDonnell says the move came at the wrong time. After meth ingredients were taken off store shelves in 2004, the local market was shaken. Dealers lost their sources, and users are scrambling for new dealers. McDonnell says with traffickers in disarray, it’s police who are losing an opportunity by scaling back on investigations.

But Sizer says it’s wrong to blame the lost drugs-and-vice shift for fewer arrests. The unit concentrates on big investigations, not popping street-level users. And while a shift was shut down, the number of personnel in drugs and vice has remained about the same, though the night shift served more warrants.

“I don’t think it holds a lot of water,” Sizer says when asked if the cut shift meant fewer drug cases.

Instead, she blames a shortage of cops. Recruitment goals aren’t being met, mirroring a nationwide police problem. “If we run short, officers spend most of their time responding to calls for service and have less discretion to respond to matters of community concern, like drugs,” she says.

Sizer also points to changes made to the city’s drug-free zones before this month, when Mayor Tom Potter allowed the zones to expire entirely because reports showed cops were excluding a higher percentage of black arrestees than whites.

The drug-free-zone law let police ban people arrested for drugs from certain parts of town. But in spring 2006, police had to throw away their entire list of people who’d been excluded since 1992 because the rules were overhauled.

Sizer says that dealt a blow to drug arrests that continued into this year, because many busts for possession came after cops approached someone they knew had been excluded from the neighborhood.

Now that the drug-free zones are gone altogether, the number of drug arrests will probably continue to drop, says Sgt. Wayne Kuechler, supervisor of the Police Bureau’s prosecution liaison office.

“The interesting thing will be to see where it is two months from now,” Kuechler says. “You’ll probably see that same level of decrease again.”