Representatives from Oregon’s police and sheriff’s departments told lawmakers Monday that under the current legal landscape, they lack the tools to address the most visible parts of the state’s ongoing drug crisis.
But those representatives didn’t seem to agree on exactly what lawmakers should do as a legislative committee rushes to develop proposals to disrupt the drug trade, curb public drug use and steer users into treatment.
Some, like Lincoln County Sheriff Curtis Landers, have joined colleagues in urging the legislature to recriminalise possession of small amounts of drugs.
“We want to see people get help,” Landers told lawmakers on a new committee on addiction and community safety response. “But making it a crime probably forces it a little bit.”
Sgt. Aaron Schmautz, president of Portland’s rank-and-file police union, was more circumspect. Reinstating criminal penalties for low-level possession would give police more leeway to search people, seize drugs and at least disrupt situations that officers currently have little power to stop, Schmautz said.
“The cry I hear over and over again in downtown Portland is, ‘There’s this person using fentanyl in front of my kid’ [or] ‘I’m in a park and this person is clearly struggling,'” Schmautz said. “What can we do? We need to be able to mitigate that.”
But returning to the days when drug possession was at least a misdemeanour could have problematic ripple effects, he noted. Courts are understaffed, and the state’s threadbare public defence system is unable to handle existing cases. Flooding the system with thousands of new drug cases isn’t likely to help, he noted.
“If you’re going to give the police back [the ability to arrest people for possession],” Schmautz said, “I think it’s very, very important to recognise the significant cultural change that’s going to happen there.
The comments reflect the delicate balancing act lawmakers face as the February legislative session approaches.
With Ballot Measure 110 in 2020, Oregon voters signalled that they wanted to treat addiction as a public health issue, not a criminal one. But many of those same voters have soured on the policy as overdoses, open drug use and homelessness have skyrocketed – in Oregon and other parts of the country.
Democrats, who earlier this year insisted that Measure 110 must be given a chance to work as intended – complete with a robust slate of statewide treatment services getting off the ground – are now promising a more muscular intervention. The question is what that looks like.
In the second hearing of the new addiction task force, law enforcement officials pressed for more power to steer people into treatment by using criminal sanctions, which most said they didn’t really want to use.
“We don’t believe a return to incarceration is the answer,” said Hermiston Police Chief Jason Edmiston, “but reinstating a [class] A misdemeanour for possession with diversion is critical.”
Under Measure 110, police can issue tickets to people caught with illegal drugs. But these tickets have no teeth and can be ignored with impunity. A state-sponsored hotline set up to encourage drug users to get into treatment has by all accounts been a flop.
A coalition of lawmakers, law enforcement and other officials recently travelled to Portugal to study its decades-old decriminalisation policy and to understand other ways of getting drug users into treatment. Some of those on the trip had their travel and accommodation paid for by supporters of Measure 110, who also organised the trip.
Two of the law enforcement officials who spoke on Monday made the trip: Schmautz and Salem police detective Scotty Nowning. So did three members of the committee they spoke to: Sens. Kate Lieber, D-Portland, and Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, and Rep. Rob Nosse, D-Portland.
It was unclear Monday what ideas or policy changes the Portugal trip might inspire. Schmautz and Nowning both talked about the possibility of police officers partnering with treatment workers on street patrols to direct users to treatment options.
But some form of tougher criminal penalties seems almost certain to emerge from the committee. Senior Democrats have talked up the possibility of creating a new crime for public drug use – a high priority for Portland city officials – and tweaking the crime of delivering a controlled substance to make it easier to convict drug dealers.
Ahead of Monday’s hearing, a number of law enforcement groups and city officials unveiled a list of proposals that included creating three new criminal penalties: one for possession, one for public use and another for public use in a confined space. The coalition pushing for these changes said it favoured giving people charged with these crimes a chance to avoid criminal penalties if they seek treatment.
It is unclear how far lawmakers will go. Some committee members on Monday seemed open to some sort of criminal consequence for possession. Prozanski, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked witnesses whether it would be feasible to make low-level possession a Class B or C misdemeanour, less serious than the Class A designation they have called for.
“What I’m hearing is that law enforcement needs the interventions that they used to have,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be a class A.”
Landers, the Lincoln County sheriff, disagreed, saying only a more serious misdemeanour charge would give law enforcement enough leverage to convince a person to seek treatment.
Lieber, a former prosecutor who had just returned from Portugal, said she was conflicted.
“It’s the idea of criminalising addiction,” she said. “I struggle with the idea of using the criminal justice system [to get people into treatment].”
Lawmakers also heard from Oregon State Police Superintendent Casey Codding, who walked them through data suggesting that overdose deaths have exploded in the state. According to the state medical examiner, 1,468 “drug toxicity-related” deaths were reported last year, a 35 per cent increase from 2021.
Codding said police are seizing more fentanyl than ever – more than 170 pounds so far this year. That includes two pounds seized in downtown Portland, where state troopers have begun sporadically assisting city police on drug patrols. Since the partnership began in October, troopers have gone out on six operations, Codding said.