A SOUND DRUG POLICY MAY HAVE SAVED JAMES

FORUM * Prioritizing Treatment Over Police Enforcement Would Result In
Fewer Deaths

For the Tribune

If you listen to what people are saying in Northeast Portland right now, you
will hear of many ways that the police can improve their relationship with
the community. There's no short supply of opinions in this part of town
about what the police need to do -- or become.

But we also need to be thinking and talking about the impact of public
policies and funding priorities that favor law enforcement over mental
health and drug treatment.

In fact, over the past two decades, the trend has favored law enforcement
strategies over comprehensive community-based strategies to address drug
addiction, alcoholism, poverty and mental illness. This trend has resulted
in minority overrepresentation in the justice system, and in a distorted "us
versus them" view of minority relations and police.

We need to recognize that these are the result of the choice we made as a
community to favor law enforcement strategies to confront our community's
drug addiction and mental health issues.

Fortunately, we now have a vantage point from which to examine the impact of
20 years of drug policy on Portland's communities of color. The inequities
are now obvious. We can no longer talk honestly about justice and race
without talking about the impacts of the policies on communities of color.

We need to look at the impact of our policy choices and how they contribute
to the environment in which Kendra James and Jose Santos Victor Mejia Poot
were shot and killed. We need to think about the impact of our choices on
our neighbors' civil and human rights.

The answers to the self-destructive drug and alcohol problems, and the crime
associated with those behaviors, is community policing, crime prevention
strategies, education, treatment and addressing risk factors such as poverty
and inadequate housing.

But our current funding priorities and community policing strategies are
back to relying too much on police, courts and jails. Couple that with the
scarce resources for food and housing assistance, and the misery that is
often at the root of drug abuse is only compounded.

This is the context within which we need to examine the tragic consequences
of James' addictions. It is in the context of this community's failure to
adequately address addiction and mental health that is the real tragedy;
James is just one more in a growing list of avoidable deaths. It is in this
context that we should be asking if this community's drug policy is
compassionate and supportive of a person's civil and human rights.

Instead of blaming the police, instead of blaming the victim, we have to
take personal responsibility for how public dollars are spent in this
community.

Ultimately, it is up to all of us to work with our local leaders to commit
the necessary resources, political will and creative imagination that will
strengthen peace and justice, protect the rights of all and assist in the
redevelopment of our economic, social and cultural life as a peaceful
multiethnic community.