Oregon City to Ban Would-Be Criminals

July 25, 2008 — -- Fed up with drug dealing and petty crime, Eugene, Ore., officials want to ban people who have been accused or convicted of crimes from the downtown area.

Some say the proposed ordinance is an overreaction that's unconstitutional and would never stand up in court. Others, like Eugene Chief of Police Robert Lehner, defend the proposal as an effective way to fight crime and blight, and say the exclusion is not as broad as it seems.

Store owners and residents in Eugene, population 153,000, have been complaining about unsavory people who loiter downtown, hindering business and threatening pedestrian safety, according to Lehner.

"Police officers and judges are all very familiar with who these people are," Lehner told ABCNews.com. "This has been a longstanding issue that has probably gone on for decades. There was lull in crime for awhile, but it picked up a fair bit with the economic downturn in the downtown area."

The city council of Eugene wants to exclude individuals from downtown for 90 days if "a municipal court judge finds by a preponderance of evidence that a person committed certain offenses within the zone."

The accused would get a trial before a municipal judge before he or she could be banned from the downtown. Under the proposed ordinance, if a person has already been convicted of disorderly conduct, drug dealing, robbery, assault or other offenses in downtown Eugene, he or she could be excluded for one year from the area.

Jeffrey Fagan, the co-director of the Center for Crime, Community and Law at Columbia University, says that this type of ordinance would change the way in which a judge would make decisions about offenders.