Aware that the party is over, homeless drugs addicts are already leaving Grants Pass, a local activist told NR.
Brock Spurgeon says the drug-fueled party in Grants Pass, Ore.’s parks is nearly over.
On Sunday, the state’s three-year experiment in drug decriminalization officially came to an end when a new law reinstituting criminal penalties for drug possession went into effect.
That, combined with Grants Pass’s efforts to once again prohibit camping in its parks, means that the small blue-collar city in southern Oregon will likely no longer be a magnet for junkies and addicts looking for a place to get high without repercussions, Spurgeon said.
Spurgeon, a leader of a community group aimed at keeping Grants Pass parks safe and clean, said he believes many drug users who’ve flocked the city are already moving on.
“I’m counting less tents,” he said, referring to his weekly tally of homeless people camping in the parks. “They’re starting to kind of leave town a little bit on their own, and I think that is going to keep happening.”
Last month, in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling in their favor, the Grants Pass city council unanimously voted to evict homeless campers from their parks; they agreed to designate four — now two — city-owned lots for people to camp if they have nowhere else to go.
But community activists like Spurgeon were also eyeing the September 1 date when penalties for possession of illegal drugs would be reinstituted as a critical next step in their fight.
Earlier this year, Oregon lawmakers overwhelmingly passed H.B. 4002, which made it against the law again to possess small amounts of hard drugs like heroin and fentanyl. It was a clear repudiation of Measure 110, the state’s failed drug-decriminalization experiment.
The new law makes possession of small amounts of drugs a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail, though there are many off-ramps along the way for addicts to get treatment instead. That includes millions of state dollars for local governments to establish so-called “deflection” programs to get some drug users in treatment and to keep them out of jail.
So far, at least 28 of Oregon’s 36 counties have applied for deflection-program funding, but only half expected to have their programs ready by September 1, according to an Oregon Public Broadcasting report.
Grants Pass police chief Warren Hensman told National Review on Tuesday that his department would prefer to prioritize getting drug users into treatment over taking them to jail or issuing them citations, though the community’s deflection program isn’t running yet.
“As soon as deflection comes on board we will be deflecting people,” he said. “We plan on deflecting people through our sobering center. We already have a robust relationship with our sobering center and sour service providers.”
Multnomah County, which includes Portland, also doesn’t have a deflection center up and running yet — its opening has been delayed until at least mid-to-late October. Until then, the county is operating mobile deflection teams that can respond to calls for service from police between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. on weekdays.
Portland police chief Bob Day told reporters on Friday that many drug users they encounter likely won’t qualify for deflection, including drug users caught committing other crimes and people who are already out on parole or probation, according to the Oregonian newspaper.
“I have low expectations that we’re going to see tons and tons of folks” routed to deflection, he told reporters on Friday, adding that the criteria is “very narrow.”
According to the Portland Police Bureau, officers who encounter a drug user who qualifies for deflection will wait up to 30 minutes for a deflection specialist to arrive on scene. If the specialist doesn’t arrive during that period, the drug user will be jailed.
“We’re not able to just wait around,” Day said. “If it’s outside the hours and nobody’s available, then it’s my expectation that [the drug user will] also go to jail.”
About 60 percent of Oregon voters passed Measure 110 to decriminalize drugs in November 2020. Coming less than six months after George Floyd’s killing, the measure was pitched as a social-justice reform. The campaign was promoted and funded by the far-left, George Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for a “non-punitive, equitable, and regulated drug market.”
The drug-decriminalization effort promised to prioritize “harm reduction.” People found with illicit drugs would get only a citation and a $100 fine, which could be dismissed if the offender called a treatment-referral hotline and created a health assessment.
But most offenders didn’t bother paying the fine, calling the hotline, or showing up to court, and the treatment and recovery options Oregonians voted for for failed to materialize.
Oregonians increasing blamed the measure for exacerbating the spiraling addiction crisis and rampant homelessness that has gripped the state in recent years.
That was the case in Grants Pass, which became the center of a Supreme Court case over the rights of local governments to regulate public camping.
At one point, the city was placed under a federal injunction which required it to allow the homeless to camp in 15 of its 16 biggest parks. The parks became havens for addicts, who for the most part could publicly consume drugs with impunity. They openly bought and consumed hard drugs, passed out in their tents and cars, and littered the parks with needles and drug paraphernalia.
Last year two homeless men were involved in a fatal shooting in a local park. The body of another homeless man who overdosed and died in a park was removed while kids were playing baseball earlier this year.
National Review profiled Grants Pass’s struggles to regulate homelessness in July.
“For the longest time, these people were staying in the parks and there were these drug dealers delivering drugs to all of the parks, like an ice-cream man,” Spurgeon said.
Now that there are penalties in place again for drug use, Spurgeon said it’s critical that members of his Park Watch group continue monitoring the parks and reporting illicit behavior to police.
“Now the police will come because [drug possession is] a crime,” he said, adding that it will be up to the community to hold its leaders’ “feet to the fire.” “If nobody calls in on somebody getting high in the park, they’re going to get high in the park.”