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Email that a member of Montavilla In Action sent to the Mayor & City Council after today's program on OPB:

Good Day Mayor Potter & City Council Members

We are following up on our email last week, we still look forward to your response. We would love to meet with you. This morning we eagerly listened to OPB's "Think Out Loud" program on Prostitution. In hopes that some of the critical next steps, timelines, funding and planning of the new proposal by the City would be revealed. Unfortunately no new details were communicated. All of the questions we asked in our rebuttal that we sent to you on Friday September 12 - we still look forward to your response. We will attach that doc again. You can also go to our blog to view the community's comments: www.MontavillaInAction.blogspot.com

The discussion this morning on OPB primarily centered around the "philosophical versus the practical". One practical & low cost solution that was briefly touched upon on the program, was the possible shaming of the johns as a deterrent like many, many other cities both in the US and abroad do.

Commander Mike Crebs said:

--it's not the City's business to be humiliating johns,

--the City could be sued for publishing johns' names and faces for the purpose of "humiliating" them,

--a newspaper could publish names/faces if for the purpose of "informing the public," as long as one type of crime wasn't singled out.

--"Reputations need to be protected."

Once again we, Montavilla In Action ask the City to not try and "reinvent the wheel" and start from scratch in developed a fully integrated plan, but look at what other cities having been doing and what has been working. We urge the City Council to learn from other cities that have larger budgets and have been proactively addressing the many issues.

This link below cites a recent article in USA Today regarding this tactic:

"Tired of arresting and re-arresting prostitutes, police in communities across the nation are increasingly targeting their clients with an old technique ? shame"

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-28-shaming_N.htm

Over 280 US Cities use shaming of the john techniques and the article states that use of these techniques appears to be increasing.

We urge you to simply outreach, "Google" and see what is working across the US, let us learn & benefit from these cities efforts.

Multnomah County already has this site that is online now, how can we evolve it to include this public tool that should be a practical, low cost additional tactic in addressing this issue:

http://www.mcso.us/PAID/Default.aspx (you don't have to fill in a name, just hit the "search" button),

This page links to sex offenses:

http://www.mcso.us/PAID/BookingDetail.aspx?ID=zKu0o0eDBSsvxy8N65Yn7A==

Put us on a task force, give us a equal voice, we have done our homework, we urge you to please do the same. There are effective & proven solutions, treatments & tactics out there.

Please we cannot take another year of promised "real solutions" while our neighborhoods and especially now our neighborhood women & young girls safety is in jeopardy - merely do to the fact that they are women walking in the radius of know red light district & dangerous new criminal turf war.

Once again we do not want to displace the problem - we are not from "NIMBY" mindset, other cities too have been very successful in being proactive to the the changing elements of the crime, we ask our City to realize the pattterns sooner and learn from cities, on the broad issue of displacement.

Thank you,

Montavilla In Action
www.MontavillaInAction.blogspot.com

posted 4 years, 8 months ago
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Hello neighbors we hope that you will go to our blog to read our open letter to the City Council. http://montavillainaction.blogspot.com/

On our blog is a link to our rebuttal to the Mayor's "prostitution talking points" as he refered to them on his website. We do not need talking points, we need a well executed plan that has buy in, adequate funding and addresses the complexity of this crime. The city stated a year ago that they were going to come up with "real solutions" as they abandoned the PFZ (Sept. 30, 2007). Now 1 year later organized crime has moved in and made the Avenue into a criminal "turf war", where young women are now blatantly & freely traded day & night, neighborhood women & young girls safety is now being compromised, fatalaties have occured, residents safety & livability is effected and now Mayor refers to his talking points as an important begining?

We plan to have our "March on 82nd Avenue to Reclaim Our Neighborhood" on Saturday September 20. Please go to our blog for the flyer & more info.

We also plan on presenting our Petition to Reinstate the Prostitution Free Zone to City Council, to commemorate with the 1 year anniversary (Sept. 30, 2007) of that negligent mistake. We ask that the PFZ be reinstated in addition to all of the city's proposed plans. We also stress once again that the City leaders look to Seattle and see how they took our law and PFZ ordinance and made it effective. Petition to Reinstate the PFZ - which we will be presenting to the City Council on Sept. 30th to commemorate with the 1 year anniversary of its abandonment.

We ask now more than ever that the City please reinstate the PFZ in addition to the proposal that they have just begun the start of that still does not have approved budget or buy in from all appropriate dept. After seeing all of the "Ifs" and layers to the proposal and were it can all break down, plus there has been no timeline presented to the plan - that we feel now more than ever the PFZ is needed in addition to the plans the City is now working on.

>>>> PRIORITY REASONS AS TO WHY THE PFZ SHOULD BE REINSTATED (UNDER EMERGENCY STATUS):
>>1. The research that the Mayor cited when lifting the ordinance did not even mention prostitution in the entire 18 pg doc it was lumped with the issues surrounding the DFZ http://www.portlandonline.com/mayor/index.cfm?a=169712&c=46244

>>2. According to the Neighborhood Response TEAM (NRT) back on 7/23/08- calls regarding prostitution have quadrupled since last year this time. Cause & Effect - Zone is gone = crime has grown considerably & formed deep roots

>>3. We the citizens around 82nd Ave are having our safety compromised each & every day (read our blog to hear comments from your neighbors: how neighborhood women are now being harassed, neighborhood young girls are being propositioned in daylight by johns that circle and speed through our streets.

>>4. Crime from all over is now coming to 82nd Ave ? it is well documented that the women are being trafficked from Seattle, LA and beyond to work on the avenue due to our laxed laws. In addition, johns from all over the State & WA state are coming to our neighborhoods ? we have taken on both States? issues..

>>5. Until the city?s ?real solutions? are in effect & working, we need to immediately stem the crime that has taken over our communities to bring back the safety & livability of the neighborhoods & their residents.

Montavilla In Action does not want the crime to be driven else where.

We are very aware of this and this is why we outreached to many of the adjacent Neighborhood Associations (Mount Tabor, Park Rose, South Tabor, Argay, etc). So we all are united in efforts and that this blatant crime will not be tolerated by all of these communities. We have asked of our City Council that we as a City need to react quicker - look at how quickly crime - the pimps, took over this area since the PFZ ordinance was dropped just last September! The city needs to start realizing patterns sooner, so we are just not pushing this around or letting it reach such a critical & unsafe level again. In June of this year calls to the Neighborhood Response Team for SE Precinct regarding Prostitution had quadrupled. Why did the City not react when the calla had doubled prior to that?

John Campbell, whose study (on the Drug Free Zone only) the city used when lifting the Zones, has said in one public address, referring to the "moving-the-problem criticism", he said that such crimes are "a plant, not a rock. By that I mean, the one thing they don't do is stay the same. If you leave it alone, it will take root and grow. If you uproot it, you will at least stunt its growth."

We too ask of the City Council: what is planned by the City to target the demand/the johns? This should be at the heart of the Mayor's recent "talking points" on his website. In the Mayor's talking points it did not address the johns at all and this alarming to us. Our neighborhoods are being overrun by johns from all over Oregon and Washington State. "Our" problem is truly everyone's problem and should not be tolerated. If the johns knew there was going to be tougher laws would that help as a deterrent? We think so. An organized media blast/campaign of the City's new "No Tolerance Policy on johns": higher & consistent impound fees/ policy - if dual names are on the car title (usually the wife) both have to get the car out of impound (or notary), posting johns online/newspapers (it's public record: over 280 US cities do this), what if the johns have to do work crew - pick up the used condoms in our school yards, parks, or in the parking lot of businesses and churches, literally clean up 82nd , john schools ? have them pay a substantial fine it goes towards prostitution outreach programs.

We have asked our City's Leaders to PLEASE look to our neighbor ? Seattle. Seattle in particular is one city that we learn from. That took our exclusion ordinance & added stronger, consistent convictions and they have had some very positive results with essentially the PFZ and additional tools, all integrated and working together. They even target & have an enforcement process for motel prostitution. So once you clean up street level prostitution, the city of Seattle had the foresight that it would move inside and began the process dealing specifically to motels, as well as online now too. The crime changes and we as a City need to react by relying & collaborating with other cities for for help on strategies that are proven to work.

Prostitution Free Zones do not solve the problem of prostitution. Nor are they suppose to, they do help citizens reclaim their neighborhoods, however, and that in itself is a solution to the problems plaguing many in our city. If making an area safer and more livable isn't the purpose of these ordinances, we don't know what is. If years of experience and statistics aren't showing that this ordinance helped to keep this problem in check in areas where they'd otherwise run rampant, we all know too well that this is true, since we as residents are currently in the crossfire of this new turf war because the zone is simply now gone. If the crime moves - so should our efforts.

We look forward to working with the Mayor & the City Council on their new proposal of ideas. We hope that includes us as key stakeholders in their efforts. We look forward to their response and we thank them for their efforts.

Thank you,
Montavilla In Action
www.MontavillaInAction.blogspot.com

posted 4 years, 8 months ago
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