The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2026-01-27
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (19,478 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council Community and Public Safety Committee met on Tuesday, January 27, 2026, beginning at 2:30 p.m., with roll call, a statement of conduct, and unanimous-consent approval of December 9, 2025 minutes. The bulk of the session featured a presentation on human trafficking in Portland, marking Human Trafficking Prevention Month, with speakers from an anti-trafficking service organization, a regional survivor advocacy program, the Multnomah County DA's office, and the Portland Police Bureau's Human Trafficking Unit. Testimony covered survivor experiences, statistics on trafficking along 82nd Avenue, illicit massage businesses, resource and staffing constraints, and historical context including the sunset of prostitution-free zones; figures cited for staffing, funding, and case statistics were stated inconsistently across speakers. Discussion and clarifying questions followed on resource allocation, victim-centered policing, and identification/data protections. The committee then considered an ordinance amending the Chronic Nuisance Property code (Chapter 14B.60) related to human trafficking, gun violence, and administrative challenges, with a presentation from council staff and the City Attorney's Office describing proposed changes to violation thresholds, timeframes, and abatement remedies. Two councilors from District One offered remarks, one expressing cautious support and one raising concerns about displacement and enforcement impacts. Public testimony included survivors, sex workers, hotel owners, and community members expressing both support and opposition. Council members discussed further outreach and deliberation before any vote; votes, if any occurred, are recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting adjourned with the next session scheduled for February 10.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 Good afternoon. I call the meeting of the community and public safety committee to order. It is Tuesday, January 27th at 2:30 p.m. Diana, can you please call the roll?
1 Good afternoon.
2 Smith here.
3 Here.
4 Are you here? Zimmerman here.
5 Novick here. Christopher, can you please read the statement of conduct?
6 Welcome to the meeting of the community and public safety committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance in the committee agenda at ww council agenda, community and public safety committee, or by calling 311. Information on engaging with the committee can be found at this link. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In person. Testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, state your name for the record. If you're a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent, and virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
7 Thank you christopher. This meeting, the community and public safety committee will hopefully approve the committee minutes for December, receive a presentation on human trafficking and consider an ordinance regarding nuisance properties. Dan, could you please read the first item.
8 Item number one December 9th, 2025 community and public safety committee minutes.
9 So the first item is the approval of the December 9th, 2025 committee minutes. These minutes are available online as part of the meeting agenda. If there's no objection, the minutes will be approved by unanimous consent. Seeing no objection, the minutes are approved. Diana, can you please read the next item?
10 Item number two presentation and discussion on human trafficking in Portland.
11 Thank you. I want to acknowledge that January is recognized as human trafficking month. The time to spread awareness of the issue, educate the public, take action to combat the problem, and to support victims and survivors of human trafficking. As we'll hear today, the problem is severe. It targets the most vulnerable residents and communities here today, both from those who've escaped human trafficking and those working to combat it. Thank you all for being here today, and begin when you're ready.
12 Oh.
13 I'm I'm more than happy. For the record, my name is bree brown. I'm the legislative analyst for the public safety service area. We have an array today. We have representatives from the empowered network, robin miller, we have esther garrett from safety compass, Oregon. We have senior dda j.r. Ujifusa from the da's office. We have sergeant robert from Portland police human trafficking unit. We'll start with robin.
14 Hi. Thank you. Good afternoon. Co-chairs and council members. My name is robin miller. I'm here today. And to support and share my why the reasons why I support this ordinance. One 4014 .60 I come before you, not only as a professional who has worked in anti-trafficking and survivor services for over a decade, but as someone who has lived experience of what happens when businesses repeatedly, repeatedly allow violence, exploitation and organized crime to operate in their businesses and their properties. I was trafficked in Portland, Oregon. I was controlled through force, fraud and coercion by my pimp. I was bought and sold out of hotels, motels across the city. I was bought and sold out of the hot tub establishments and other small businesses like would. Some of the hotels and motels ran like hourly rooms and stuff. I was beaten, raped, drugged and held against my will in these establishments by my trafficker and by the men who purchased access to my body. However, from the outside it might have looked like I was going willingly. I was paying the rates every morning to the managers. I was coming and going what looked like freely sometimes. Sometimes I was seen dragged out of the rooms, dragged into the rooms. None of these things happened quietly. It happened with heavy, heavy foot traffic at all hours of the night. I was going in and out of those rooms. Men were coming in and out of those rooms. Pimps and drug dealers were coming in and out of those rooms, sometimes for a 48 hour cycle, because when you do some drugs, you stay up that long. It happened alongside drug dealing, drug use, assaults, threats and weapons. It happened while children were present, harmed and exposed. This is what human trafficking looks like. These properties were not ignorant. They were reliant on my refusal or my ability to recognize what was happening to me in the moment. I love that man. I wanted to be with them. I wanted a family. What this ordinance names as nuisance activity survivors know as organized, predictable patterns of exploitation patterns that are visible, repetitive and impossible to miss. When a property owner, owner, or operator chooses to look the other way, it is accompanied by assaults and menacing, sexual abuse, firearms and violence, drug trafficking, theft and criminal mischief, disorderly conduct, noise complaints, repeated police responses. Exactly the behaviors that are listed in this ordinance. So when this ordinance defines chronic nuisance property as one with repeated nuisance activity within a 90 day period or activity occurring or within 200ft of a property, it is not over. It is not overbroad. It is accurate. Today, as a service provider, I can tell you that this is still happening. The same establishments 25 years ago that I was bought and sold out of, beaten, raped and tossed out of are the same establishments that I pick up. Little girls that I serve on my case. Some of the same hotels, motels and businesses that knowingly facilitated and profited my exploitation are still operating today. They still show up in police reports, they still try to trafficking cases, and now they involve the children that I get to serve. This ordinance matters because it finally addresses what survivors, neighbors and first responders have known for decades. When these businesses repeatedly allow exploitation, violence and organized crime on the property, they are not passive bystanders. They are enabling harm. It doesn't criminalize, and it does. This doesn't criminalize the people who are bought and sold. So if you are actively engaged in a consensual transactional relationship and identify as a sex worker, this won't bother you. You can still do your business, but it does protect those who don't want to be there or holds accountability where it should be. If a business cannot or will not implement these steps, the steps may be responsible or steps that they may already be taking. We must ask a hard question how many more shootings, how many more rapes, how many more overdoses? How many more murdered women and girls or men buyers are murdered. Again, this doesn't just happen in hotels and motels. These are happening in also strip clubs, right? Like those are businesses where trafficking flourishes. How are these properties? A lot of times they're also across the street from schools, playgrounds, parks where activities happen, you know, where kids go to play sports and all of those things. I'm going to end with just telling you a story about what happened to me one night off of 82nd at a motel that will go unnamed. The motel is directly across from a high school and an establishment where kids do activities. I drive by this establishment often, and I see women and girls exiting and clothing that is just not right for the weather. I. So what happened? I was living in this motel with my pimp. I was likely in and out of that room just as much as I talked about earlier. In and out, in and out, in and out. Dropping off money, turning tricks, sleeping, you know, going in for the night, all of that. One night I was in there with a buyer and the buyer wasn't happy with service and he was wanted his money back. He jumped on me, put his hands around my neck, choked me, tried to kill me. I did not have. I was absolutely not dressed for the weather or anything. I did not have any clothes on, but what I could, I did, I screamed, fire, I ran, I kicked him, I fought him off me, I got off and I ran straight out that front door. The front door exited directly above the manager's office where the managers lived. I screamed fire like nobody's business. They came out. I looked at them. They looked at me. The guy left. I went and bought dope. But I stayed there and I lived there. That happened in the middle of the night. So I don't know, you know, the school wasn't interrupted, but I could tell you another time in the afternoon, at that same establishment, my pimp dragged me down the stairs and beat me. Beat my face, beat my head, kicked me right on the street where everybody saw. And the people who ran that business saw. I've run out of those hotels or those hot tubs, hourly rentals. So I urge you to adopt and fully enforce this code, not just for survivors like me, but for the children who are trying we are trying to protect today. Thank you for this opportunity to testify.
15 Thank you.
16 Thank you counselors. Hello. My name is esther garrett and I'm the ceo and founder of safety compass. We are a regional program that provides community based, free and confidential advocacy for survivors of human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation in Multnomah county, as well as marion, Clackamas and Washington counties. Today, I'll be focusing on our work here in the city. A little bit about who we are. I personally have worked within the city. I'll be an advocate for 23 years. In April, I've been focusing my work in the metro area around Portland since 2006, and provided advocacy in the city of Portland since 2008. So I've seen a spectrum of work and trouble on 82nd since that time. I myself am a survivor. I met my pimp in Portland and was exploited outside of Portland. We do peer based advocacy at safety compass, which means that we employ and involve many people with different kinds of lived experience associated with the sex industry. We do a 24 hour response team that responds to the scene. If law enforcement calls us child welfare, juvenile departments and emergency rooms, we're kind of the first response mechanism within continuum of care in three of the four counties. And our focus is on serving people 25 and under. Although we will take referrals of people over 25, if it's a high lethality dynamic. Next, please a little bit about our services. We provide that crisis intervention. Once we provide that crisis intervention, we'll work with people to establish safety and self-sufficiency through case management and then into our survivor leadership program, which can last for life. There are some folks in that program who I've known for more than 16 years, and they're just doing beautiful things with their life, very much privileged to see that. And then the other thing we do is provide training and technical assistance to first responders on how to identify and work with trafficking survivors in trauma informed ways. A little bit about our work on 82nd avenue. We're attached to Portland police bureau's human trafficking unit. It's only a sliver of our work. We're really only attached to approximately one day a week. But we do involve advocates. Even though we're community based, we are not part of the criminal justice system. We believe that when people interact with the criminal justice system, they deserve to have someone who's a third party neutral and supportive of them and their experience as they do that. And we work very closely with the police department, really lucky to have great collaboration there. They're very welcoming of our advocates and hopefully we are as well. But the goal there is to be a neutral party. On behalf of the survivor. We have performed some events, as well as the sort of weekly attendance to their ongoing work. For example, just last week we did light up the night, which was a street based outreach to provide referrals to medical services, transportation to safety, emergency housing, and then just some basics like water holidays, hand warmers because it was very cold, and access to community health on site. So just trying to get people access to services, options and safety. As I've said, we were attached to Portland police bureau, just a sliver of our work in that role. We both have office time co-located within the bureau, but we also provide an advocate when they're out on 82nd avenue. And the hope there is that if they're talking to someone who needs help or to get out right, then we can work with them and then move that conversation into a truly confidential space because we hold advocate privilege, just like all community based advocates in the state of Oregon, so that what they tell us privately cannot be subpoenaed to court really offering as much choice as possible. Next, please, just some photos of our community events that we do. And folks bring their kids and it's beautiful. Go ahead. A little bit about our training. We believe that education hopefully can just change the way that systems respond and make them more understanding of people's trauma and the concept of choice, or lack thereof, in environments where it's pervasively kind of contained sort of through a hierarchy of power, power and control. And that's really how traffickers control not only individual victims, but also the entire 82nd avenue corridor through ownership of environments, through doing their own version of policing, by watching corners and sort of holding turf. And as we educate not only community members and businesses and hotels, but also law enforcement, our hope is that that changes the way we all respond. And in this case, I'm just glad to be here to do the same today. Next slide please. In terms of statistics on 82nd avenue, safety compass has served more than 2100 people in the last eight since 2018. For those folks, we've served over 50,000 supportive contacts to them. Of all the people we've served in a four county region, more than 93% of them have had exposure to the city of Portland in their exploitation experience. So what that tells us is that regardless of where they've come from, Portland is a destination site and 82nd avenue specifically is a destination location. Other survivors we've worked with who have been trafficked on 82nd avenue. The youngest was age 12, the oldest was age 65. And if you look at the businesses and establishments that operate off of the track, but along the track, the youngest was six years old, which that's shocking, but I think it's worth looking at. When we talk about choice, we're talking about some small children of the folks we've worked with. Speaking of types of vulnerability, lack of access to documentation, documents being held is also a common tactic. We're not just talking about domestic victims. We work with people from throughout the united states and other territories like guam, china, taiwan, somalia, haiti, romania, canada, mexico, guatemala, el salvador and venezuela. Some of them have also been organ trafficking victims, and they've had body parts removed to keep them compliant while they've been for sale. Last but not least, of all the crimes we see, you might call them nuisances. I would also call them sexual assault, rape, kidnaping, physical assault, labor trafficking, sex trafficking, domestic violence, stalking, torture. And I forgot to include homicide. Next slide please. If you'd like more information, you can follow up with us. I'm excited to be here today. I'm very grateful that you're looking at this topic and trying to address it from a multi-pronged approach. And I'll turn it over to j.r. Thank you.
17 Good afternoon. Councilors. My name is j.r. Ujifusa. I'm a senior deputy district attorney in Multnomah county, and I run the human trafficking team at the da's office. I have been the primary prosecutor for human trafficking cases since 2008. So this will be my 18th year working on prosecuting trafficking cases. I'd like to thank robin and esther for being here today, and I really hope that you listen to their comments, because I think it's very important to hear their experiences go to the first slide I was asked to I presented I provided some slides for the council, but as you know, this is an enormous topic. So I just wanted to pick out a few. Some of my stats will be not as good as esther's because they are, of course not boots on the ground people. They're they're, you know, published studies from organizations and universities. But I want to give you a little bit of history, historical context of what we're talking about. In 2008, when I began doing this work, many of you may remember the prostitution free zone, which was a city ordinance sunsetted. And the rumor throughout the nation was that it was legal to engage in commercial sex in Portland. And Portland had a huge uptick in violence, in trafficking, in victimization along the streets of Portland, including 82nd avenue. As we know, between 2010 and 2018, commercial sex and prostitution also moved online, and websites like backpage and craigslist ruled trafficking for a while. And a lot of the activity that were the buying and selling of human beings moved online. But in 2018, the fbi took over backpage.com, and with that, it created some unintended consequences. Those consequences were that websites moved overseas and hundreds of websites flooded the market. To try to take that or fill that vacuum of backpage.com. In addition to that, many buyers and traffickers reverted back to street level sex trafficking. And so that is where we are today. Significant increase in street level trafficking, attracting traffickers and buyers from other states we see. I help run the sex buyers or the john school here in this local area. And of course, we see a significant amount of buyers that travel either not just from Vancouver, but throughout our neighboring states to come here to purchase sex. In addition to that, I'm going to show you some stats later. We see a huge significant increase in illicit massage businesses as well. Go to the next slide. This is the national statistics, a heat map from polaris, which is the one 800, the national trafficking hotline. And as you can see, the west coast, we are part of what is called the west coast circuit. I-5 is a corridor in which traffickers bring their victims throughout the west coast. You can also see there's a huge red dot in hawaii. Part of this west coast circuit, which is also follows traditional drug routes, goes all up and down the I-5 corridor into hawaii and then into the salt lake area, las vegas area, and so forth. And so we do have a problem. I hesitate to ever say what ranking we are as Portland, because enough is enough and there are children being hurt. And that should be enough for all of us here in the city of Portland. Next slide. Some of the other national statistics, as we know, through the pandemic and other things that more children had access to chromebooks and social media, we've seen a huge rise of recruiting and grooming online. But once again, that recruiting and grooming, grooming of children online ends up on the streets in Portland, in massage parlors, on on street corners, not just on 82nd avenue, but that is where a concentrated group is as well. There is some statistics that say 1 in 6 or about 19% of children who run away will be. Trafficked, targeted by traffickers to exploit them in commercial sex. Next slide. I wanted to bring some local statistics. I actually will defer to statistics in some ways, but just just to remind you or to show some statistics. Psu did a study, a four year study on children, or at least individuals who were trafficked. They found the average victim was 15.5 years old. That seeks services, which means those studies that, say the average individual entering into trafficking is between 12 and 14 years old is pretty accurate. The youngest here that they were able to identify, that was seeking services as a victim of trafficking was eight years old. I want to pause there, because what that means is there is a demand. There are men who purchase children as young as eight and I know younger. And so not only is this an issue where traffickers seek those individuals, but they seek them because there is a market for those individuals. 96% of those victims were female. In this study, there was an overrepresentation of people of color, and many of them were dealing with addiction issues and gang related issues. Next slide please. Some other local information. We believe based on when backpage was up and running, it was a clearinghouse. It was probably the most used website for trafficking, that there were 11,000 attempts to purchase per week in just the city of Portland. I'm not talking Beaverton, I'm not talking Clackamas. I'm talking just Portland. 11,000 attempts to purchase another human being per week. And we estimate that that is roughly a $60 million a year, which is the demand at any given time. Mcso, when we had an intelligence sergeant, would identify between 70 to 95 traffickers in custody. Those aren't traffickers just charged with trafficking crimes, but those are individuals who are trafficking people who are in for other matters as well. And then another study that was done throughout the state through a year period of 2018 to 2019, identified 750 victims of human trafficking. Once again, they confirmed that the average age of them being noticed, which means they had been trafficked before their notice was 15.5 years old. So why Portland? That question gets asked to me a whole bunch over the years that I've been doing this. One is there are rumors that you can make a lot of money and not get caught. As I just mentioned, there's a huge demand for purchasing children and adults, human beings in this city. It is. There's great access to prolific trafficking locations such as north of us and south of us. We have some tolerant laws and society, hence why we are trying to work to find creative solutions. And there's a high percentage of legal adult establishments, which I think everyone on this panel will say are not only used to groom individuals, but also that there is trafficking going on in those establishments. Who are these victims? Who are these individuals that we talk about, that we serve, that we try to be informed and victim centered? They are from all ethnic backgrounds, all socioeconomic classes. I will tell you that I've had victims in every high school in the Portland metro area, every single one of them. They are the most vulnerable victims in our community. They have self-esteem issues. They have lack of choice and control. Many of them are trafficked through familial family members. They usually, I would say, almost all have sexual, physical or mental abuse history in their home. Many of them are frequent runaways and foster children, and they're looking for love and attention. That describes a lot of teenage people we know. I wanted to also bring up illicit massage industry, because I think that this city, as well as other cities and this state has seen a huge uptick in illicit massage businesses. The network is a national organization that identifies illicit massage businesses. I am not talking about legal massage businesses. I am talking about businesses that if you go online, they have advertisements and and ratings and comments where individuals have talked about the amount of money they've paid for sexual acts in this establishment. In January of 2025, the network updated that they have identified that they could be confident in at least 301 suspected illicit massage businesses in Oregon. If you can see there's a huge concentration in a little part of our state, you can move to the next slide. Put that on a map. This is just Portland, Oregon. We have seen a simple growth rate in the last six years of 425% of illicit massage businesses. These are massage businesses that are engaging in prostitution activity, which means there are individuals benefiting from that. There are third parties that are holding individuals using manipulation, force and control to have those individuals, both that are both minors and adults, engage in commercial sex for the benefit of someone else. That also means that there are a significant amount of buyers who are visiting these local establishments, and these are in neighborhoods. These aren't just on 82nd avenue. I get calls weekly from neighbors and different neighborhood groups to talk about what they can do as they see these popping up in their neighborhoods, across from schools, across from daycares, across from other areas in which communities go. So what are the challenges investigating and prosecuting these cases? Well, our goal is to hold traffickers and buyers accountable and protect and serve those victims. I will tell you, I have worked in various parts of the da's office. I've worked on homicide cases, child abuse cases, gang cases, sexual assault cases. These are some of the most difficult investigations and prosecutions we see. There is a need to be more creative than traditional investigations and prosecutions. Victims are fearful, controlled. They do not testify, they do not self-report, and they do not self-identify as victims. And if they do, they are groomed and told and made to feel as if they do talk, that there will be harm placed upon them. The traffickers are cunning, violent, manipulative and premeditated. I very rarely do I see crimes that are premeditated more than traffickers, in which they focus on individuals sometimes weeks, sometimes months, sometimes years, to groom them in order to turn them into a money maker, so to speak. These crimes happen behind closed doors and businesses and motels where there are no witnesses. Beyond the offenders and the victims, there are not enough resources to just arrest our way out of this problem. We need to be creative and efficient tools to make it less attractive and profitable to those individuals who seek out Portland as a way to sell both children and adults, other human beings, I will say that we will continue to work to find those tools. Many of you have heard of rep trans massage bill. That was a state bill that helped to criminalize and go after some of these illicit massage parlors. I'd like to thank councilor Novick and his staff for working with us and the city attorney's office to look at the chronic nuisance statute as it was, and to try to make it better, to try to make it a better tool to help us reduce the amount of victims in this city. Thank you very much for your time. I'll turn it over to sergeant robert.
18 Good afternoon. My name is robert. I am the human trafficking sergeant here for the Portland police bureau. To start out, just to kind of piggyback off, j.r. Human trafficking cases are complex, with multiple identified barriers such as repeated trauma exposures, trauma bond with traffickers, and fear of retaliation. The survivors in these cases are often reluctant to come forward to make reports or continue through the criminal process. As a unit, we are committed to be trauma informed, victim centered, and with our advocates and the da's office provide that care and resource that they need. So as you can see, we are a very small unit and we are one of the only teams around in the state of Oregon. We are we have one sergeant, which is myself to detective, four officers, one analyst and we have Portland police bureau have advocates. And we also partnered with safety compass. So what do we do as a unit? We investigate trafficking investigations. We do. We we investigate promoting compelling. And we also commit missions in terms of where we go out in 82nd avenue and also areas that are high in prostitution crimes. And we address those problems as we see them. We also review community complaints. Tips from the community members, and also tips from the patrol officers who are out there kind of seeing what is going on. We investigated crimes that we see from massage parlors, and also we coordinate with outside agencies to go help to help us go investigate some of these things that we are seeing. Since we are the only team in the northwest, we also provide a lot of educational training to other law enforcement groups that are one starting their own human trafficking unit or that are seeing it in their area. We provide those trainings to kind of help them, kind of. See it and also how to combat it. So what is victim centered approach? It's where we place the victim at the center of our investigation. It's where we, not all victims that are coming that we come into contact with need the same thing. Some have priorities which are going to be housing, some might need some medical services, some might need education or some might need, hey, I want to come forward with my case and kind of move it forward. So we place them at the center and let them kind of dictate where they want to go with their case or where they or what services they would like to start with. This was a shift in practice for us back when we first started. When the unit first started, we used to arrest the providers and through that there was a court mandated services in which we were they were forced to attend. We used to warn the buyers and then release them. And then we were less focused on the traffickers. And so now again, we are now more victim centered. Through our missions. We try to identify juveniles, as you heard with esther and jr, the average age is 15 years old. And so they're out there and our goal is to come into contact with them and provide that service and get them out of the life. And we also disrupt demand by doing missions. And once we and then lastly, prosecute the traffickers. Like you heard from j.r. A lot of these events are driven by the demand side of it, which is the buyer. So that's why you have the buyers. One, because they fuel the market, they bring the money in. And then next you have the traffickers who exploit their victims to earn revenue from the buyers. And then lastly, you have the female victims who are bought and sold for profit. And again, just for a stat for you guys, on average, 20,000 victims were trafficked in the united states each year. So a little bit more about the directed patrol missions that we conduct on the Portland blade. And for context, the blade is an area that is known to solicit where buyers could go to find sex. And so for us here in the Portland area, it is 82nd avenue. And so one of the things we do with disrupt demand. So we do missions where we're out there, we usually have partner agencies that come and join us. We partner with the advocates. And as people are trying to buy the providers, we stop them, arrest them, and we provide the providers with resources in terms of advocacy and whatever else they might need. So we contact the providers. We have outreach, and we also try to identify traffickers as well through part of our investigations. And lastly, we try to once we're done with our operations, we go back and figure out which hotel the providers were using. And we again try to educate the hotels in terms of the trafficking that is going on in the area. So you're asking how do traffickers find their victims, their their victims through social media, internet, sometimes their own neighborhoods, schools, clubs. And like jared talked about earlier, sometimes it's familiar where it's a family member, traffickers and trafficking victims through the promise of protection, love, adventure, shelter and opportunity. And traffickers capture victims through fear, violence, intimidation, and threat. One of the things we've seen in a lot of cases that we encounter is sometimes as officers, you go to a a report of a domestic violence, assault, sometimes robbery, theft, even a traffic stop, or sometimes a runaway and homicide. And when you look back, it all ties back many times to trafficking. So it's one of the things that we're educating our police officers as well to, to be aware of all these. So what may seem like a domestic violence sometimes has more to it in terms of there's trafficking aspect going on as well. This is the reporting and resources that we provide that we provide, but that that's available. You have the Oregon child abuse hotline, and then you also have the missing center for missing and exploited children. Again, we partner with safety compass. There are a huge help for us. And then we also have our own victim services here at Portland police bureau that we work with that assist, assist us in our investigations. So I guess the main question is what can we do? What can be done? One of the things that could be done is to meaningfully address human trafficking, and we must take a approach that is meaningful and kind of holds people accountable. We have to provide that advocacy. And the wraparound victim services. And lastly, we must be trauma informed and develop legislation and put them into action. I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to us today. Thank you.
19 Thank you very much. Thank all of you colleagues. We have some time for questions and discussion. Councilor Zimmerman.
20 Okay, no one's jumping in, so. As soon as I walked in, I wrote down the name and I circled it. Diane maciel, who I worked for at Multnomah county as her chief of staff. And it's where I met j.r. Some 13 years ago. I think that's correct. So there are some new faces, and there's some faces I've known for a while on this topic and in this realm. So I having sat through and gone through every one of the after actions for at least a short period of my time there, I nothing that you said today, unfortunately, was a surprise. And everything that you said today is something that this community has been trying to organize around and improve for a long time. And you all have the history and the scars to tell us that. So I just appreciated that it it does get complicated in our in our community. You noted just some of our the variety of reasons why that was. And so thank you for that. And I know that the the next item will be about this nuisance ordinance in particular. And and I'll save some comments for that. But just appreciation for your work in a world where the a lot of the resources that we had in 2010 to 15 have really waned. And so that number is smaller, the faces have changed. And so I see that I understand that. And and I'm sure the need exists. One question I have, it's it was very interesting to me coming back into this topic to hear this, that as the online buying systems reduced, we saw a return to I don't know if this is an offensive term or not, but the street walking, street buying. The online systems were very much such, and it seemed like such an easy way to target children. Do you see, I notice you, you said 15.5. That's the average age. But have you seen in your time that you've been around especially, you know, j.r. I'm looking to you because I just know you the best. But others as well, by going to street level, buying again, does that make it harder or is it no change to the youth aspect of buying or of selling? I guess in my mind, my assumption, my hypothesis is that walking 82nd would be. Harder to do under age than it would be online, where you're being trafficked by somebody online to show up at a place in a closed, excuse me motel. Can you help me understand that new nuance a little bit?
21 Sure. Councilor Zimmerman, nice to see you. Thank you for that thoughtful question. We the online it's complicated. As you mentioned. I think the grooming and the recruiting is still vastly online and it targets children. Absolutely. I think the challenge is, is that there is a resource issue. We don't have officers out 24 over seven at each one of these establishments. And what I see in police reports and dhs reports is that these children are trafficked not only in the well-known areas where there are buyers there, but in the lesser known areas of adult establishments or outside, or parking lots of strip clubs or, you know, on street corners in their neighborhood where they're walking around. And the challenge is, is that with I think there's a strain on resources for investigators and all those sorts of things, we're looking at ways to, you know, part of this chronic nuisance city code is to educate and abate some of the problems and educate those managers and owners to say, hey, you've got an issue. Here's what will help and work with us to do that. And we're hoping that because we don't see a reduction in children being trafficked, we don't see a reduction in buyers looking for children to be, you know, to purchase that. This will help provide additional eyes, additional tools, additional ways that we can abate this and remove it from areas in which it's very difficult to investigate. It's very difficult to identify because although, yes, there are children out on the street, if you actually were to look at the amount of time they stand on a street corner before someone picks them up, it's within minutes. Especially children who look young. I would say a young woman I've worked with recently who was trafficked from 13 to 18, sorry, 13 to 16. She was trafficked every day on 82nd avenue. She didn't spend a lot of time on the street because she was picked up over and over and over again. And so even though common sense tells us, well, if they're out and they look young, it would be obvious they're not walking for very long because the demand is so high for those children. So I hope that helps answer your question. It is a complex issue. I'm happy to talk further about it. If you.
22 I think it's wildly alarming and enlightening, frankly. So I appreciate the candor there because it challenges some assumptions. I think, that we we make about the online presence that I think we we talked about early in some of those timelines. You said to now and some of those assumptions may be even that I held having been around now for a while, deeply alarming. So and the john school still exists.
23 It does. Absolutely.
24 Okay. You're both new faces to me, but I appreciate meeting you and your organizations and hearing and thank you for sharing those. And the sergeant who used to sit in your chair was chuck lavelle when I was working. So just appreciate that. And j.r. And him and I'm forgetting a couple names. We'd sit up there and go through every report after a while just to get a sense of like, was the program on the right track? So appreciate everybody. Thank you.
25 I think I just missed you. I came in right after chuck lavelle.
26 And I was esther nelson then, but I was. The data set from 2008 to 13 was the actually came from the unit that I managed from stark.
27 Got it from stark. Yeah. Okay. There we go. Yeah. I don't think many of us actually probably would be, as in this work if it wasn't for commissioner Mcneill's work at the county to really get this off the ground in that 2009 time frame and the partnerships that we had with the ausa and the da's office and the sheriff's office and Portland police made Oregon made Portland area, I think for the first time a very you said multi-pronged approach before. And I think that that those I just want to give her a lot of credit because a lot of us know each other because of that. So thank you.
28 Yeah.
29 Councilor Morillo.
30 Thank you, chair Novick. First.
31 I just want to say thank you so much to all of you for being here to present today. But specifically, I really want to give special thanks to you, robin. I think it takes immense courage and grace to come up here and to share your lived experience and to push for something that is deeply important to you and to all of us in the community. So I just want to say thank you for being here and for being someone who is trying to help other people in the community, too. So thank you. I have a few questions about the policy because I think we all agree with this. As far as the intention of what it is trying to do, and I am curious about the equity considerations that went into the policy. When we're talking about demanding that government issued ids are shown, because from what I saw in the data, it looks like trafficking victims are primarily or many of them are from vulnerable populations. They're people of color. They could be immigrants. So how is that data being protected when it's being handed over? Maybe this is a question for the da's office to the d.a. Or to the police, or is there a way of protecting that data?
32 There is a way of protecting that data. And that data focuses mostly on the traffickers and buyers who are if they're showing ids to rent the rooms, for example. But it also goes back to, you know, these are confidential investigations, similar to sexual assault investigations or child abuse investigations. So there are limited amount of individuals who have access to this data. Of course it's discovered, but usually under a protective order. So I hope that's answering part of your questions. The other part I would focus on is that many of our investigations are reactive. We have a child come in who says, I was trafficked for the last six months in these areas, and we have to go back and recreate who visited these hotel rooms, who rented these hotel rooms, who was driving this car, who dropped them off, who was using this bank account and this phone number and all those things. And so some of this is for us to identify who are the players, who are the offenders, who is this adult individual that rented the room for you, that sort of thing. So hopefully that helps you understand that we're we're hoping that instead of what's happening now, which is sometimes no record or a handwritten note where we see the name bugs bunny as who rented the hotel room, that we can actually hold people accountable, that rent hotel rooms or go into a bar, or go into an adult establishment, or are driving a car that we can identify them for purposes of holding traffickers and buyers accountable, especially for children.
33 Gotcha. So the system is supposed to primarily target the actual traffickers, not the people who are being trafficked. Absolutely. But in an instance where, for example, I think what robin talked about earlier was that sometimes the person who is being trafficked will be renting the space itself. How is that differentiation being made so that the people who are being trafficked are not being targeted?
34 Sure. So the chronic nuisance focuses on the businesses that are doing so to focus on the hotel. For example, in robin's example, it would focus on focusing on that hotel or motel to hold them accountable for allowing these things to happen, that there's some accountability. And two, it actually corroborates when robin comes into our office or Portland police bureau and says, this is what happened to me. It corroborates that she was a registered renter at the hotel at that time. So it actually corroborates her story and helps with the investigation to show that, you know, what she's saying is truthful and accurate and can be shown through records as well.
35 Rachel.
36 Can I add, it is not often that the rooms are in the survivor or the victim's name. I was unique, maybe in the 90s my trafficker also would lose his id he was so. But that is not always the case that the victim is providing the the identification to rent the room.
37 Gotcha. Okay. That's that's very helpful clarification. Perhaps for councilor. Novick, can you describe a little bit more about what outreach was done to the business owners? Who would be the ones who are handling this? And I am a little bit curious about the potential impacts of having them turning over their own security footage and everything to police because of how that could be tracking every individual who's coming into, like any individual who's coming into a hotel, rather than making sure that we're specifically targeting the individual that we're trying to target.
38 Can I defer answering that question until we reach? We're actually we've gotten a little ahead of ourselves because the idea is to have an hour describing the issue of human trafficking. Robin did make some remarks about the ordinance, but I wanted to conclude this hour with these speakers of asking questions about the general problem, and then we'll have a presentation on the ordinance. And definitely your question is one of the ones that we anticipated.
39 Okay. Gotcha. Well, then I will pull back. Thank you so much for your presentation, all of you.
40 Thank you. Thank you.
41 Councilor Smith.
42 I too, like councilor Zimmermann, have known a few of you because of my relationship with commissioner Maciel. Prior to that, I worked for senator wyden, and we worked on a human trafficking bill. And then when I was elected to county commissioner, I was able to tag team with commissioner Maciel on some of the efforts we did at Multnomah county. It doesn't do my soul any good to know that the problem has increased since that time, and I do believe that any effective community response to sex trafficking must include a comprehensive service for victims, and a coordinated effort by law enforcement to punish the traffickers and the buyers who drive this criminal industry. And I believe that we have the tools to do it. But if you take the demand away, and I appreciate you all doing the the john school, but I always had a problem with it to a degree, because you had a school for johns, but you didn't have a school for traffickers because I think all three are victims in this in this whole ecosystem of human trafficking. And then we pick and choose who are who are the winners. And I wonder how we distinguish between the trafficking of people and everyone's not human trafficked by someone. Sometimes there are people who do this for themselves. And how do you distinguish between the 2 or 3? But I think that the first thing that I was just floored by today when you said robin, six year, six year old.
43 Six.
44 And I couldn't fathom that my head, because my youngest grandchild is he's four years old and I have a six year old granddaughter, an 11 year old. And so even those numbers, they they they knocked me down because I just cannot imagine them having to go through this. So as we're talking about it, and I'm not going to get into the ordinance right now, but I think the work that you all have been doing has been amazing and and outstanding and that we we need to have some continuity and we need to stay on this in a way that's meaningful. That would allow folks to come forward and tell their stories. I think the courage that you had to come and tell your story about some things that are probably a little bit uncomfortable to talk about, and I appreciate you. And I think that just by doing this, somebody's going to watch this and they're going to be helped by it. And I know that that we're in this, this gap right now of trying to fill our operational gaps. But I do know that what was helpful that I partnered with commissioner Maciel on was with the the ywca, and we had a place for women to go when they were being trafficked in. The big problem was they didn't have any place else to go, a private place. So they always went back to the folks who who put them in the situation that they were in. And when we did that. So I think so my question to you is, do you think that is still the biggest issue, one of the biggest issues of not having a place for girls to go or women. That is out of the way from from their normal life. Is is that an issue still?
45 It is a huge issue still that we don't have housing for survivors.
46 Where to begin on this one? It's a good question. It's and it's a complex answer. And if it's not a complex answer, it would be an untruthful answer. Yes. We saw some positive changes with about seven years of concerted effort on the track in about 2000, 14, 15, 16. We were reaching a pretty good impact. And so I think part of it is resource allocation. Again, we've gone backwards from that, at least on the track. Right. But I also think that a lot of times we've focused anti-trafficking efforts on a home. And I say that kind of in air quotes like, if we could just put people in a home, it would solve everything. And, you know, human trafficking is the intersection of all oppressions in one place at one time. You can't talk about without talking about all the other forms of vulnerability in your community. There's a lot of intersections. But what what worked at the time was understanding the order of a continuum of care. And we put resources that were that were responsive 24 over seven immediately on the front end. And then we created options and we ordered it. Right, because we needed people who could maybe go into emergency detox or into emergency housing. Right? They don't all fit the same. You know, it's not cookie cutter. Right? And then some of those people needed to go into long term stabilization housing. Some people didn't, and then some people needed to be able to get a job. Some people still needed detox, right? So so we needed to build it in sort of an order on maslow's hierarchy of needs. But you needed to have an emergency response mechanism that was culturally appropriate, that could meet people when they were trying to figure that out. We had that then, and it worked. The system broke down for numerous reasons and also COVID, but we don't have the resources in the county or the city focused on the front end anymore, like we used to. And so I think there's a gap between identification and resources allocated to identification. And then the next steps, we have housing options in the county. Not enough. There will never be enough. But we do have them. We do have detox services, but they're not ordered. And there's nobody at the beginning to help navigate. So we broke the system.
47 Yes. Segregated in particularly identified and set to the side and said this is these wraparound supports are for women who are coming out of the life and wanting to do better and have an opportunity for some of these folks to to get their children back who are now in our foster care system. So I hear you and I thank you for doing the work and continuing to do the work. And I want to talk to you after this to try to figure some things out. Thank you.
48 Thank you, councilor Smith. Councilor Kanal. Thank you.
49 Co-chair Novick. I first want to thank robin and esther for being here, sharing your experiences with us and for sharing information that that helps us understand the work you do now. And thank you for the work you do in our community. Also, thanks also to brie and to councilor Novick team for helping put together the presentation and of course to sdda and sergeant honest for the info you shared, I'm going to keep my comments on the ordinance and questions about that later on. I'll also know I don't have a lot of questions for for robin and esther, because you were actually very clear in sharing things. And so I really appreciate that. But feel free to jump in if there's anything I'm directing most of my questions to your left. I think what this has done a really good job of showing as a presentation that there is a problem, it's not being addressed fully, and I'm really understanding the problem statement here, but I want to understand a little bit of of what the mechanisms have been that haven't worked. So to our colleague from the da's office, you spoke to the end of prostitution free zones in the past. Can you speak to exactly what those were, why they weren't retained, why that's not something that's being brought back up now or in a different format.
50 Sure.
51 To the best of my ability, it was in 2007, so the prostitution free zones were tied with also the drug free zones. So there are areas in the city in which once you are trespassed from then officers, instead of making probable cause for a new crime, could make probable cause for a criminal trespass and arrest you for that trespass of that area. So what happened was we found that, unfortunately, and that's part of what sergeant roberts was talking about. It was focused on criminalizing victims because they were out on the street. They were the ones visible. And so there were a lot of problems with the dfc zone, drug free zone, as well as then, of course, as we talked about being victim centered, it's the opposite of that. So although it kept people trespass out of hi vis areas, what it did when it sunsetted was the rumors were bigger than the actual reality, which is Portland is the place to be to make money. And so what we found is we became a hotbed, a targeted destination area for the entire united states, if not broader, to come here to bring your victims to traffic them. So although it had some good at the time, and I think the community would say it had some good at the time, it actually had a much larger negative effect when it left because of the rumors and because of what messages were sent.
52 Thanks. And then the other question I had was, are you facing resource allocation or prioritization issues within the da's office? Because it seems like you talked about sort of declining capacity relative to the need. And so I'm trying to understand, has your capacity in terms of your unit changed over time? Has there been a downsize, or is simply that the problem is growing and the capacity staying the same?
53 It's a little bit of both. So it used to be two prosecutors that were specifically designated trafficking crimes. It's now down to one and a half. So we're down a half fte of a prosecutor whose full time job it is to focus on trafficking cases. In addition to that, we are seeing. The Portland police bureau being stretched very thin with doing other things and allocation of overtime. Things like missions take a lot of resources. You know, having officers do it safely and being able to focus on an area with multiple officers for a long time to focus on a specific crime rather than just to respond to calls, takes a lot of resources. So we've seen the the frequency of missions and the frequency of the proactive police work that is needed because as I talked about earlier, these victims don't raise their hand and say or call police and say, hey, I'm a victim and I need some help. It's mostly through proactive work. We've seen a reduction in the overtime and the resources allocated to the city. We actually lost a position in the Multnomah county sheriff's office. That was an intelligence sergeant that identified victims and traffickers and offenders from the jail. So we have lost some resources, and yet we continue to see this uptick in the recruiting and grooming and and the complex organized crime that is commercial sex.
54 Thanks. And you set me up very well for my questions to the sergeant there, which is is your unit straight time and additional detail. That's itself only overtime. Is it entirely on top of another role. Or put another way, is each of the members of of your team, is this their primary role or is this something they also do?
55 No, this is their primary role.
56 Okay. But there is an overtime component as well.
57 No, they used to be an overtime component, but due to budget constraint that's gone away. So most of the missions that we conduct are on straight time. So we adjust our schedule to conduct those missions.
58 Okay. That's that's a little surprising because we passed a budget note in June, which specifically deprioritized some of the other items on overtime and prioritize a list of issues which the list was copied and pasted entirely from pbs's budget request last year, which included human trafficking specifically as a priority for overtime budget. Note Kanal ten. And I'm surprised to hear that there's not resources going into that when one of the things that's explicitly been deprioritized still gets $240,000 a month of overtime towards it, which is protest response at the ice facility. So I don't want to put you on the spot on that, but I'm just signaling here. I'm going to follow up on that, because that's money that should be available for you. And the work that you do is the historical staffing levels of your unit. You said you have seven total people who are sworn in. One analyst. Right, is that is has that changed over time?
59 Yes.
60 In what way?
61 So I think we have a captain here who was the previous sergeant of the unit for when he started back in 2020. So can you help me answer this question a little bit?
62 Sure.
63 Good to see you, captain foxworthy.
64 Thank you for having me. Derek foxworth, captain east precinct.
65 I need you on the mic for just so that the people online can hear. Sorry to put you on the spot.
66 I had the unit shortly after I retired. Chief leavelle left human trafficking unit. The unit has grown and shrunk over time. During my tenure there, we were able to build it up. We had two sergeants, we had four detectives, and we had four officers. In addition, we had three embedded advocates that were grant funded. That grant expired in 2022. I remember correctly, and we lost all those three embedded advocates. So there has been a reduction in capacity and size of the unit, which also has a direct impact on the amount of cases that they're able to follow up with.
67 Got it. And when you were in charge of it, were you a sergeant at that time too, or did they used to have a lieutenant or something as well. Sergeant okay, okay, great. I think everything else that I might ask is going to be related to the ordinance. So thank you so much everyone for the info.
68 Thank you very much.
69 Thank you all very much. And to the extent you can, if if you can all stick around, it may be that in the discussion of the ordinance, questions will come up that we'd like to ask you. Or maybe, frankly, if the question comes up that one of you wants to say something, councilor Kanal is going to take over the meeting for the discussion of the ordinance. But I suspect that if one of you stands up and waves your arm saying, I'd like to take that, I think he would probably be receptive. So thank you all so, so much.
70 Can I add one more thing about the j.r. And I mentioned it before we started today about the outreach that has gone into hotels, motels, hospitality industry in this in the city, east Portland rotary, the late great dana Clark started this outreach. I have myself been up and down 82nd delivering soaps to establishments to invite them to a free hospitality training where they can understand and identify red flags. And I guarantee you, most of those establishments don't show up. The big chains show up. We get a lot of a lot of participation across the city, but those high frequency locations where this is, this is happening are not coming. And so, I mean, they are and again, this is not going to this ordinance does not impact the people bought and sold, even the people selling traffickers. It's really the establishments that we're talking about that are knowingly participating in this crime.
71 Thank you so much.
72 Thank you.
73 Dan, can you please read the next item.
74 Item number three, amend chronic nuisance property code to address human trafficking, gun violence, and administrative challenges. Amend code chapter 14 b .60.
75 And is our practice in this committee. Then when either councilor Kanal or I of the sponsor of something that's before the committee, we turn over the gavel for that discussion. So I hereby turn over the gavel.
76 Thank you. It's going to take me just a second. I think we're still getting ready up there, too. So I appreciate the the patience here with the transition.
77 Hello. Committee members, co-chairs. Thanks for having me today. My name is spencer knowles. I'm chief of staff for councilor Novick presenting today for you amendments to the chronic nuisance property code chapter 14 b .60. To begin do we have the slides up? There we go. A summary definition would be a property with continuous or repeated nuisance activities on or around by people associated with the property. Those chronic nuisance properties may be required to implement abatement measures, and if those properties do not do so, they could be forced to do so by a judge. Nuisance activities are listed in the ordinance, and they're criminal and civil violations as defined by the code. Things like disorderly conduct, criminal trespass, drug crimes, discharge of a firearm, and many more. Abatement measures are not currently defined in the code, but these amendments would add them in or some suggestions in. But they could include enhanced security, improved lighting, staff training, community outreach, and more. I think it's important to note that currently and moving forward, chronic nuisance property is a tool that pbb uses as a last resort after they're not able to abate the nuisance activity through previous engagement. Next slide so quickly. Just to clarify, because this can make some people up chronic nuisance property and property nuisance violations are a different thing. Property nuisance violations are under title 29. They're typically environmental nuisances. Things such as your grass has overgrown or there's too much graffiti on a building. Chronic nuisance property refers to criminal activity that's happening on or around a specific property. Next slide please. And then I'd like to turn it over to city attorney mike porter to provide some background and context on this ordinance and on chronic nuisance properties in general.
78 Thank you. Spencer. Committee chairs, members of the committee, mike porter with the city attorney's office. I began working on this project about two and a half years ago when the east precinct commander, Multnomah county district attorney's office, grew and the human trafficking unit came to me and suggested that an update to the chronic nuisance ordinance would add a tool to their toolbox. I think you've heard adequate sufficiently on on why they would need that tool. It is a broader tool than just human trafficking. This tool is is intended to deal with criminal activity that's concentrated in specific areas. For that reason, we looked at other jurisdictions, including Washington, d.c. Where they used chronic nuisance to address drug trafficking, gun violence near gas stations and other community stores. And that and to build out this ordinance as it relates to human trafficking and the need for this in the city. They were identified three specific areas where the ordinance could be improved to make it give it greater utility. So the first is the criminal codes were expanded and updated to reflect changes in or citations, types of crimes and crimes that were were more associated with the behavior that we're seeing in areas like 82nd street. The window for the triggering a chronic nuisance action was was lengthened and the number of violations was lessened, be in part, as you heard, because resources were thin and the ability to get back to areas and to document violations in the short amount of time allowed by the current code proved a barrier to using this ordinance to effect change. And then the third. The third thing that we noticed is that the ordinance has written, did not articulate what would be expected of businesses and entities that violated our code and did not have remedies that were really effective in bringing businesses into compliance when they were violations. So the solutions were that we we updated and added those code, those criminal code provisions to to give a larger context and to give more tools to be used and to realign them with the issues that we were seeing. There was a larger window to identify those violations to allow for greater enforcement and the abatement activities, which is a list of potential remedies. It's not a required remedies that can be used, depending on the situation and the need of the business was expanded. Some examples, as spencer mentioned, were things like security cameras, lighting, security guards, and identification and councilor Morillo about that identification piece. And the idea is to get to create solutions to the issues that plague a particular business so that they can come into compliance with our code. And furthermore, to give the court a road map we found in the d.c. Situation, given having the remedies that are in the ordinance, be, the remedies we present to the court was an effective way to increase compliance and also to add a due process component. So so there are concerns about how the city is enforcing it. The courts can come in and make those corrections. Currently, there's limited data on the effectiveness of the current chronic nuisance code. In part, that is because the city attorney's office for a period preceding me didn't had had not been willing to bring these actions. I don't know why that would preceded my tenure here. When I came in, we revisited the issue and we brought it back before the current city attorney, robert taylor, who agreed to take them on. And then the other issue is just that, as we talked about resources, it was just difficult to identify issues and then stay on top of them such that a case could be built. And so those are the those those recommendations came from those entities. We put them in the ordinance. Spencer then made some additional improvements. And we're here today.
79 Thanks, mike. And thank you, mike and j.r. And PPB for collaborating on these amendments and allowing us to to move them forward. I think you covered, actually, most of what is in the rest of this presentation. So I may run through it somewhat quick and we can follow up during q&a. The summary of the amendments are, as mike talked about, administrative challenges, there's some additional nuisance nuisance activities. And then we've added those abatements and remedies and created a synergy there. The amendments for administrative challenges, as mike talked about, were lowering the violation threshold, expanding the violation window, changes in procedure to reflect the new violation threshold, and some potentially flexibility in who can initiate chronic nuisance property process. Although I'll note that the change from city administrator from chief of police or precinct commander is primarily a charter driven change. There's amendments to additional nuisance activities, which you can see here. And and one of one, the ones I'd like to call out would be operation of a massage business in violation of or six, eight, seven. That's additionally relevant. Thank you. To rep tran's work down at the state legislature last year. Then we have about the amendments for abatements and remedies. They include, but are not limited to in both instances, all the things that you see on the slide in front of you. And then there is a simple flow chart to help understand how the procedure might work. So if this were to pass, the multiple nuisance activities would occur. A letter would be sent to the property owner. They would be asked to work with PPB or the city administrator to develop an abatement plan. Agreed upon abatement plan. That plan would go into place and be monitored. If the activity continued, there would be continued engagement or if it's just proved to have no plan or no result, it could be referred to the city attorney to or, and then referred to the circuit court for a judge to order specific abatements. If a nuisance activity no longer that no longer occurs after the abatement plan, then the property would be dropped from the nuisance property designation. Available for questions. Today we'll have myself, mike porter, captain foxworth, and j.r. Ujifusa from Multnomah county district attorney's office. Thank you.
80 Can you go back? One slide. There. It got to it pretty late. So I just wanted to make sure we all had a chance to see that one. Thank you. Does that conclude the.
81 That concludes the presentation okay.
82 Then what I'm going to do at this moment is ask if anyone would like to get in the queue for clarifying questions or to daylight any potential amendments. And then after that we'll do testimony and then open it up for actual council discussion. And those can be clarifying questions. The presenters are to our our experts here. And I see councilor Smith is in the queue. Is that a yes. Go ahead.
83 Thank you so much for bringing this forward. In district one we have massage businesses operating late night hours that attract ongoing criminal activity. How will this ordinance specifically apply where the nuisance activity may be tied to the massage business violations and and related conduct? And what does coordination look like between pb and the city's regulatory and licensing? I know that's a big that's a mouthful, but it's the struggle is is is really real, particularly in district one with massage parlors. And I worked on this issue. It's it's very broad and complex in terms of how we do that. Any thoughts.
84 Councilor Smith I can start and then you can clarify or we can bring other people up to to round out an answer to your question. So I think one of the biggest tools came to us in January, which was the the update to the Oregon revised statutes as it relates to unlawful massage parlors and creating a criminal penalty for that operation. That amendment to the statute allows both pbb and the county district attorney's office to bring criminal enforcement to bear on businesses that that violate that regulatory process. So while we haven't yet developed how that handoff between our administrative or regulatory body and the police and the dea will be developed, we have talked internally that it is lawful and that it is a new tool. And this this ordinance will be one more.
85 You're talking about, senator farms bill from the legislature?
86 Yes, I believe I am.
87 Yeah, yeah.
88 Yes.
89 And that's the one you're talking about, right.
90 It allows for misdemeanor for the first offense and a felony for the second offense, which then creates the tie for our law enforcement partners to take action. In addition to the regulatory authority that the city had before.
91 Okay. Perfect. And with this new ordinance, what is the estimated annual cost to to enforce this with your staffing time, investigations, the legal work and physical securing of properties? And how much of that cost do we realistically expect to recover through penalties and cost recovery?
92 I can't say I have a good answer for that. I think if I were to guess that there could be some cost savings because this could help the to work more efficiently in combating human trafficking, running fewer missions and using this tool in its stead. But I can't say that with any true amount of certainty.
93 Councilor Smith I can speak to the courts and to the city attorney's office. I don't believe there's going to be an additional cost for the city attorney's office and the courts enforcing the existing criminal statutes, and our ordinance would would not increase cost to the city. Whether we can recoup costs for for bringing in action. There's a mechanism for that. There's also a balancing the court goes into that weighs the person, the entity before them and their ability to pay. So that's that's an unknown as far as the mcda and the pvbs costs. I couldn't answer that.
94 Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
95 Thank you. Before we continue with the q, I, I was a slightly mistaken. We actually have two pieces of two invitees to come up and speak. So I wanted to first invite up our city councilor and council president to councilor from district one, Jamie Dunphy. And then after that, we're going to call up city councilor from district one, Candace Avalos.
96 Thank you.
97 Well.
98 Thank you, colleagues. For the record, I am Portland city council president Jamie Dunphy. On behalf of my east Portland neighbors, I want to voice my cautious support for this ordinance. Vacant commercial properties becoming hubs for bad behavior is a real community concern in district one, and I really appreciate councilor Novick's office for their leadership and follow through on this. You know, 82nd avenue touches districts one, two, and three, and neighbors, regardless of which district they are in, reach out to me all the time on this. I recently attended a community listening session with the human trafficking unit, and was very impressed with the information that the the human trafficking unit staff were able to get. But I also just wanted to note that I was really appreciative that spencer, from councilor Novick office, was there and on a first name basis with everybody in the room. So. Based off of that presentation and the one we heard today, it is clear that we do not have the tools that we currently need to ask owners of these properties to be the good stewards of their neighborhood. Nuisance codes like this have an extremely checkered history. What is being proposed is a powerful tool. At 90 days and two violations. People who are acting in good faith as well as in bad faith can easily get caught up in this system, so careful deliberation and calibration is necessary. But I really like that this is an administrative approach, not a criminal one. I like that it's not the police involved, and I like that there are not awful compliance steps outlined in code. But I think and I think that the sponsor is trying to be responsible. And I really appreciate that. I would like to just note as a bit of an aside, though, in 2011, the council passed an amendment to 14.120 the time, place and manner ordinance related to liquor serving establishments. Among other things, this ordinance expanded the quote shot clock for nuisance violations from to making the shot clock to expanding it to 60 days from 30 days, and that new shot clock interacted with noise ordinances and triggered an era that we now refer, remember, as when all the black owned clubs got shut down. That is the risk with laws like that and we do not we need to not do that again. So if if this ordinance is about addressing real issues with trafficking, drug use, fire setting, etcetera, noise doesn't belong on the nuisance list. I look forward to working with members of this committee to help find a balanced bill that will support my district one neighbors without triggering a new era of racial, racially discriminatory nuisance enforcement. Thank you.
99 Thank you, council president. Councilor Avalos, welcome.
100 Thank you. Hello, chairs, Novick and Kanal and members of the community and public safety committee. My name is Candace Avalos. I represent district one alongside council president. I have a prepared speech that I'm going to say. I just want to start by saying this issue is really personal, actually. And so it's actually pretty emotional and tender. So what I'm sharing with you is I want to speak to the many voices that I'm hearing from, but just know that it's a personal matter as well, that I'd love to share more of my own experience, but not on the record. Human trafficking is real in east Portland, and I see it in my district, particularly along outer corridors like 82nd. It disproportionately impacts immigrant communities, people of color, queer and trans people, and people living in poverty or housing instability. Survivors of trafficking deserve to be centered, believed and supported, and their safety must be a core priority of this council. I really appreciate the intentions behind this proposal and the outreach work that went into the policy. At the same time, we need to be honest about how policies like this land on the ground in district one, and that's what I'm here to talk about. Sex workers in our community include people who are being coerced, people who are surviving under extreme circumstances, and people who are working consensually. Often those lines are not clean or static. Many people experience a mix of choice, circumstance and coercion over time, especially immigrants, trans women, and people with limited economic options. That's why it's critical that we do this work with the communities most impacted. What we are hearing from survivor advocates and from sex worker led organizations with district one constituents, is concerned that this ordinance will not reduce trafficking, but instead will displace people into more dangerous and related conditions. When people are pushed further underground, it becomes harder for outreach workers to find them, harder for survivors to seek help, and easier for traffickers to exert control. That is not a theoretical concern. That's based on a lived experience in my district. We also have to acknowledge the role of enforcement in east Portland. Increased police contact does not automatically translate to safety, particularly for immigrants and communities of color who are already navigating fear of law enforcement. And right now, the very real threat of ice policies that increase surveillance and enforcement can unintentionally silence the very people that we are trying to protect. The city's own impact statement acknowledges that this ordinance will disproportionately impact lower income and racially diverse communities, especially along the 82nd corridor, which is exactly where portlanders are already facing the highest levels of vulnerability. So the question before us is not whether trafficking is real. It is, and it's a real problem. The question is whether this approach actually reduces harm for the people most at risk, especially in east Portland. If survivors, outreach workers, and impacted communities are telling us that this will make people less safe, not more, we have a responsibility to pause and to listen to them as we organizers like to say nothing about us without us, and especially in east Portland. Thank you.
101 Thank you, councilor Avalos. We'll come back to the queue if there's any other clarifying questions. Thank you both for being here.
102 Thank you.
103 I think Novick sorry.
104 That's it.
105 No no no we'll have we have public comment. But if anyone wants to lay out an amendment or ask any clarifying questions, we do that first. Councilor Smith, that's a legacy hand.
106 Yes.
107 Okay. All right, then we'll move into public testimony. Would you please call the first list of testifiers?
108 Yes.
109 First up, we have hannah lewis, followed by emmie Koyama. And then elly stanger. Hannah is online, and you are welcome to unmute and begin your testimony at any time.
110 Hello. This is my first time testifying, so bear with me. My name is hannah lewis. I've been a resident of the sumner neighborhood for 12 years and a part of district one. I chair a crime and safety committee in our community. But today I come to you strictly as an individual and strong support of amending our chronic nuisance code. I'm testifying because of our community's lived experience. I took time to read through the other testimonies submitted, and I want to thank my peers for taking time to engage with council on this topic. Regardless of our position, it is clear we share a common goal of reducing exploitation, trafficking and violence. Where we may differ is in how we achieve this. I want to highlight a key example which is at 8247 northeast sandy boulevard. The quality in the link between property and trafficking dates back very far. But in 2022, a fatal shooting in the lobby of this same building was confirmed by Portland police bureau's human trafficking unit and tied to an active sex trafficking ring. Fast forward to November and December of 2024. This kind of goes back to what councilor Avalos said listening to the most impacted. But we have voices that we can't hear from. Three people lost their lives at this location kimo henriquez, benjamin walker and malik devon henson. They were shot and killed in that hotel's parking lot. And under our current code, the 30 day documentation window is too narrow to capture a pattern of violence effectively. Police sergeant kevin allen, after these three homicides, stated to kgw that deeming the property a chronic nuisance was a long process. If we had the proposed 90 day window and the two incident threshold, these individuals may still be alive today. My community knows this firsthand to be true. We made personal attempts to contact the property owner of the quality inn who lived in Beaverton. We sought to connect with them, connect them with local resources, and take a collaborative approach that could aid in uprooting the organized crime growing in our neighborhood. We contacted choice hotels, who holds the franchise for the quality inn. In all attempts, we are. We were ignored and disregarded. The community watched helplessly for years as the property deteriorated, attracting crime that spilled over into our streets and threatened our families. Under our current system, the process is agonizingly slow. The goal is not to increase arrests, but to disrupt conditions that allow organized crime to take root in communities council, please consider how crime of this magnitude deteriorates a community and desensitizes us all to the cruelty of exploitation, primarily our youth, who are routinely solicited and approached and recruited. Thank you for your time.
111 Thank you for joining us today for your first time testifying. Appreciate it. Is either amy or ellie. I see you're both online, actually. Ami.
112 Hello? Can you hear me?
113 Yes, we can hear you.
114 Okay, great. And so my name is amy Koyama. No relation to the council. Koyama Lane. Although I'm proud that there's japanese American women represented in council, I'm a survivor who has been on 82nd avenue many years ago, and long time advocate who has worked with people who traded sex on the street. Migrant asian women workers at the massage parlors, as well as dancers working at strip clubs. I've lived in southeast Portland for over 20 years and now split time between Portland and seattle. Just today, I was at the king county council in seattle to receive its formal proclamation of the human trafficking prevention month on behalf of survivors and advocates, and gave a brief remark. I'm testifying in opposition to the proposed ordinance. And first, I question if individuals this ordinance claims to protect people who engage in sex trade along 82nd avenue due to economic circumstances, coercive control, or any other factors or combination thereof will end up being consulted meaningfully. And before this, this ordinance was written. Similar policies in other jurisdictions have not resulted in reduction in sex trade or sex trafficking, but in the displacement of vulnerable populations away from motels and other and other like highly visible commercial areas to left safe environment where they are made more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. This is the same kind of displacement that which I was talking about occurring at the after shut down the back page, and that destabilized many women's lives and put their safety and well-being into even greater risk. There is safety in community, even if it's a street based community that some people may see as public nuisance. And this ordinance further endangers people who are already vulnerable. Second, this ordinance promotes increased surveillance about communities. At the time, the commercial surveillance technology stored data in the cloud and make them accessible not just to the end users, but to federal immigration agents. Technology such as security cameras, access control and electronic payment promoted by this ordinance, create digital records that can be harnessed by the federal government, unrestrained by the constitutional guardrails about the requirement for government issued id, further marginalizes and excludes people of color, trans people, immigrants, and members of other communities who are less likely to carry on addressing human trafficking and abuse and exploitation within the sex trade requires us to meaningfully engage with and listen to the people directly impacted by any policy changes and as as well as remedying socioeconomic conditions that produce an unevenly distributed vulnerability in a predictable pattern in the first place. Thank you very much.
115 Thank you, thank you.
116 You can start.
117 Hi everyone. My name is elle stanger. This is uncomfortable for me to talk about. Thank you for hearing me so much on why I oppose amending chapter code 1460. In the daytime, I work in clinical and therapeutic settings. I'm a certified sexuality educator by the American association of sexuality educators, counselors, and therapists. I graduated from Portland state after receiving my ba in criminology, which is a study of crime. I currently serve on the board of directors for nonprofit, which provides health care and resources to at risk sex workers and to survivors of trafficking. I have worked with emmy. We've I've done a few trainings to Portland street response, and I'm really proud of the work that they do. I'm also a parent to a trans teen who is out and proud of me for saying that, and said I could share. I'm also a longtime sex worker in Portland since 2009. Sometimes I work in district three, mostly in strip clubs, sometimes in homes or hotels. What is amending this code aiming to achieve? If this ordinance is to help address a problem, it does not consider the people who are most impacted and claims that it will help. The problem is that people are invisibly dangerous situations. These are people who are often targeted for violence. These are people who have relatable needs money, housing, food, social and relationship safety. We all seek these things. I say to you, please do not increase potential loitering. Potential penalties for local businesses, threatening businesses who rent or offer transport, or any resource, or just a blind eye to at risk people, results in less options for their survival and a greater likelihood of experiencing police violence, partner violence, client violence, stranger violence. When you force businesses to refuse service to us or turn us in, we go more outside. We do more dangerous work. Please do hear from the peer led organizations who are experienced in survival. We tell you what we need. You've heard from survivors of domestic violence who stated their love and attachment, and on their pimps and family members. The answer is very simple and not complex. We need funding for housing, food, medical care, and child care. Survivors are specific. Earlier the da spoke on johns school. Do the council members know that johns school costs $1,400? If you get caught paying for sexual touch from an adult, not necessarily from someone who is being coerced or underage. It targets primarily men of color and of lower socioeconomic backgrounds, because they're the ones who are more likely to be visibly arrested. Higher end clients have more options. No surprise, johns school also is not educational or scientifically accurate. I say this on record as a certified sexuality educator who could lose my certification, I worked so hard for it is misinformation. We should not be funding what we should be. Funding is resources for people who need them. Why do they do dangerous, criminalized work and stay in dangerous, unloving, at risk relationships because they don't have options? We need to cease funding the end demand tactics that we currently do, mostly, which result in prostitution related convictions, not trafficking. Survivors will report when they know that they are safer to police, should not be part of the rescue process. Let's invest in housing, food, medical care. Thank you for your time.
118 Thank you. Up next we have adam skiles, john lewis and lalit patel.
119 Thank you. Good afternoon.
120 Good afternoon. Councilor. My name is lalit patel, but I go by lucky. I actually managed the property on north interstate avenue. It's a hotel. And I'm I'm actually I'm here mainly because and I'm glad I showed up. I looked at some of the numbers and the facts and kind of mind boggled me in this situation. But at the same time, you know, now I understand the concept of human trafficking and, and other things, you know, it's my main goal basically for our property is to obviously, the reason I'm here is to prevent and learn so we can prevent the situation from happening far as our property is concerned. For the last ten years, majority of our clients are through nonprofit organizations such as central city concern. Multnomah county. 80% of our business is through that and supporting veterans or through Multnomah county crisis hotline. But at the same time, you know, ten years ago, we've been doing this for with the nonprofit organization. But in the in the early 80s and late 80s and early 90s, we had all these issues going on. We've been there for 30 years. So we've seen, you know, a lot of things over there. And working with the Portland police department, we turned a lot of things around, at least on the interstate part of it. So overall, I'm just glad. I'm glad to be here. And I understand the situation. And my goal is to basically learn and help prevent this situation, at least on our property. So that's, that's that's the only thing I can say. And I'm glad that I showed up. And the numbers like, once again, the numbers that I saw, the facts that I saw, the stats are mind boggling and disturbing to me. And anything that I could do to help would be my pleasure. Thank you very much.
121 Thank you for being here.
122 Thanks.
123 Hello, I'm john lacy of kerns. I appreciate the time to talk to y'all. But honestly, though, like, I feel like in some ways y'all are worried about property values and quality of life crimes more than you are with dealing with everyone needs you to be working on, which is your first and only priority. Should be protecting the citizens of this city, including those we have offered sanctuary to the people, not the property. The challenge of your tenure is clear in this. Like, this is what y'all should be cracking down on, not motels. The real nuisance nuisance property is out there in south waterfront. They act lawlessly, gassing us, shooting us, hunting us. And all this time we've been keeping it cute for y'all. Because that's what you urged us to do. Keep it peaceful. So I feel like now is not the time to be worrying about property values or the emotional stability of rich folks and corporate interests. When we have homeless families with kids getting snatched up on the way to the hospital shooting our people. Yellow badges come and arrest us would be an outrage about it. If you're worried about public support for law enforcement and our faith of y'all's abilities to keep us safe, that's a battle you already lost. You ain't safe. Y'all capitulate with these nazis and your moderate conservatives on this council do it with gusto. Can't help but praise cops when they arrest and assault our bravest children. You know, deportations have slowed, and we trust you to keep it. Keep this way, if we keep it cute, allow you to arrest and brutalize us. But this peace you think you got doesn't exist. Not if you don't keep up your end of the bargain and protect minorities in this town and all deportations from the Portland metro, because we will protect them. Don't doubt that for a second how serious I am. Those brave cats activists down there have been given up their freedom, health and resources to push these nazis back. Same deal in minneapolis. The inevitability of moderate leadership's capitulation to trump's forces is maddening, because complete capitulation to these nazis ain't working for a time. It abated it. But we need to secure our city, and you making up a narrative to make your donors and badges feel good. It ain't helping anyway. It would be easy to do. You can see it in their eyes. They're cowards. So that's what I recommend. You should revoke the permit for them to operate out of macadamia avenue there in south waterfront. I suppose I can finish my comments. I find myself getting a little frustrated. But anyway, it is cowardice. And I think the progressive council's fighting a good fight. But I see y'all spinning up narratives about the cops solving this, and there's nothing further from the truth. They've been rounding us up. They've been busting our heads, throwing pavement, throwing veterans against the pavement and, arresting old people, gassing folks, shooting folks. We're keeping it peaceful, man. We're not allowed to do anything except be assaulted. So I guess I ask you that. And I see, like Novick and Zimmerman, I wonder if you guys think that's good, how much you truly do embrace isis campaign against our people. And I just would recommend against that tact of supporting those who wish to ethnically cleanse us. Yeah. By.
124 Next we have roanoke patel, dalia hanson, and al patel.
125 Hello, council members. My name is patel. I'm a part of the asian American hotel owners association. I'm actually an ambassador for our region. I know we've seen councilor Kanal at some of our meetings before, but just to give the other councilors a little bit of information, our organization, our members, own and operate over 60% of the hotels in the state of Oregon and many of those hotels in the city of Portland and the surrounding neighborhoods. As lily was saying earlier, many of our hotels do support our local communities. Churches, council for the homeless Multnomah county hospitals. They are sending people to our hotels, so at least they have a place to stay. And they're not stuck outside in temperatures like now where it's freezing and cold. And, you know, we we've seen instances where people have passed away from being unhoused, right. So we want to continue supporting the city, continue supporting all these organizations in the city and house them at our hotels. One fear we do have is when people are trying to stabilize their lives again. They have hiccups, they have road bumps. And sometimes that does cause us to have to call the Portland police bureau and help us with people who are going through mental health issues. Now, again, we are trying to help these unhoused population people. We want help from the police. And, you know, we want to do everything correctly. We want to help out, but we don't want to be afraid to house people that are coming from these places and then have to call the police. And all of a sudden a business is notified as a nuisance property. Well, you know, for us, we're just trying to help the community. We don't want to stop helping and say, sorry. Randall's hospital. Sorry, providence. We can't accept any of your clients anymore because we're on a watch list. If this ordinance passes as written, it will displace people who are already on thin margins, barely able to afford a room night, barely able to even afford food. A lot of guests that I have seen, they have to choose between sleeping indoors or being able to go to mcdonald's and, you know, buy something off the value menu. That's how big of a difference money makes in people's lives, and how they're able to just live. So I would strongly urge the committee to pause before voting and engage us hotel owners and talk to us, and we can communicate with each other and figure out a proper manner on how to address the concerns of the entire community. The that's everyone that's been here that we've heard from. We want to actively work and communicate with everyone so that we can create a proper solution instead of just attacking businesses, because that's where crimes or things happen. We don't want them to happen at our businesses, ourselves. We want to be safe. We want to have people stay with us in a nice, clean, comfortable room. And, you know, they go on about their day. We don't want to deal with legal troubles. We don't want to deal with gun violence. We don't want to deal with any of these issues. But the reality is we have to. So I strongly urge you to, you know, let's create a collaborative approach. Thank you.
126 Thank you. Dalia, you can unmute and begin your testimony.
127 Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking the time to listen to me. I am dalia hanson and I am a sex worker. I want to raise some serious concerns about the proposed amendment. To me, it mirrors legislation that passed in seattle called soap and soda zones, stay out of areas of prostitution and stay out of areas of drugs. The outcomes there were pretty clear it curbed access to social services. It moved drug and prostitution zones just blocks away. It made people that live and work in these designated zones feel profiled, and it gave police power to stop and search people based on their status. I obviously share the concern about human trafficking, but I don't believe this amendment does anything meaningful to address that. Yeah, I just think it's going to increase profiling and harassment. It's proven to disrupt outreach efforts. And I would urge you to oppose it. Sorry, I don't have more prepared. Everybody had so much to say.
128 Thank you for being here with us today.
129 Thank you. I'm going to do one final call for adam and one final call for al. With that, public testimony is completed.
130 All right. Thank you. I want to just note that it's 419 right now. We are scheduled to go till 430. So I'd like to ask, as we get counselors into the queue that we try to maybe feel free to be brief the first time. And if there's time either now or if we're continuing this later to get back in the queue again, we'll open this up for discussion. If anyone would like to get in the queue, please feel free to do so. Councilor Zimmerman.
131 Yes, today is my day to jump first. Okay, so councilor Novick I. I appreciated us meeting yesterday and talking about this a bit, and I will admit that I have somewhat of a change of heart from from our conversation yesterday. So with that, what I, what I would actually like to do is I'll just lay it out. I'm prepared today to vote on the 30 to 90 day part and that's about it. I am very prepared to get into a longer conversation and to dive into some of the points we heard relative to the rest of it, if that interests you. I just wanted to let you know kind of where I'm at. The reasons that I walked in today in support of this is because it didn't make anything newly illegal. It allowed for. I'm going to use the word aggregation of of smaller nuisance things, which is something I care a lot about. But I, I would appreciate the ability to do a couple more steps of due diligence before I bite off the whole chunk. Here. I hear very clearly what councilor Avalos said, similar to some of the things I think I shared with you as well, and to some of the folks who testified. So I just want to be transparent for where I'm at councilor, and I'll leave it at that.
132 Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. We'll go to councilor Morillo next.
133 Thank you. Chair, I, I think I just have a few more questions around. I know we were going to get back to some of the outreach that was done with businesses and with, you know, sex workers and other folks that would be directly impacted by this policy, which I think are a completely different category of people than people who are being trafficked. So I'd like to learn a little bit more about that. I will say, too, I am struggling to to wrap my head around the idea that this will not create any additional costs, because if we lower the threshold, that means that there will inherently be more cases. And if we increase the fines, that raises the stakes, which means there are going to be more legal proceedings and people are going to push more officers, theoretically would be spending more time pursuing things, documenting instances. So if enforcement expands so that this is actually useful, then, you know, staff would need more training to make sure they're not targeting people. We don't intend for them to target data tracking. All of that, I think would have increased costs. So I'm just I would like to hear finer details on the outreach that was done. Or maybe if we are pausing here today, the collaboration and outreach that will be done from some of the community folks that it sounds like, felt a little bit left out of the conversation.
134 Thank you. Councilor Morillo councilor Novick.
135 Yeah, thank you, mister chair. So I never intended to call for a vote on this today. I heard loud and clear what councilor Zimmerman said a couple of meetings ago about how we should think of these committee meetings as not places where we rush something through in the first, first discussion that we start the discussion, and then we have further discussions in terms of outreach. I mean, obviously, you know, that we have talked to some some victim and survivor advocates. They were here today. If there's other victim survivors and sex worker groups that we should talk to, I'm very happy to do that. Mr. Patel. I'm happy to talk to him and the other members of his organization. I have not done that. I mean, you did hear, I think, from robin, that there's been lots of outreach over the years to a lot of hotels that have been of concern, but that doesn't mean that we can't do some more outreach. So and I want to have a discussion with you about surveillance and how that's used and how it'll be useful. And I'm trying to figure out within the context of the public meetings law, how many discussions we can have and how many we need to, like, urge the administration to have with people without us being involved. But we will. But we'll have have those discussions and talk about like why surveillance is useful, how it would be used, how we're going to keep it out of the hands of the federal government or private parties. So I look forward to continuing this discussion over the next few weeks. And that's what committees are for. And we'll try to navigate expanding the discussion without violating the public meetings law. One thing one thing I wanted to mention is that in terms of the added nuisance crimes, one of them is spencer mentioned loitering to solicit prostitution, and that includes the customers, not the sex workers. So that's an example of something that's directed towards the customers, not towards the sex workers, that wasn't previously listed as a nuisance activity. And now is I just wanted to I wanted to call that out.
136 Thank you. Councilor Novick. I am next in the queue. So I just wanted to highlight, there's a few pieces of written testimony that I think are relevant. I do want to thank everyone who submitted written testimony. I do read it. I particularly wanted to highlight a few just because I think as we talk about engagement on this, there's a few that I wanted to that I thought were particularly relevant. And I'll note before I go into this that councilor Zimmerman and I definitely agree on the need to and I know you do too. Councilor Novick not forced through votes and to actually engage in this, but also that we need to build sort of a metaphorical table. And I just want to start by saying, I want to continue to have the people that are already at the table continue to be added, even if we add more people to it. And I just want to get that out. I particularly appreciated the the testimony written in from darren patel, who is the northwest regional director of the asian American hotel owners association, who noted, and I want to highlight that there when you testify and you can put that you support, oppose, support with changes or leave it blank. And this was more to support with changes. Plenty of the folks who are part of this industry did testify as well in a in a oppositional way, but asking for pausing before voting and engaging directly with the asian American hotel owner community, asking for meaningful dialog and collaboration to develop a joint solution that addresses public safety concern without punishing responsible operators or displacing vulnerable people. And one of our testifiers who was here mentioned that I've come to that convention a couple times now, and I was surprised the first time at how much time was spent on human trafficking at that first convention as the regional one. I was not surprised a second time because of how much conversation there was leading into that. I'll also note that there are some logistical factors associated with being a small business owner, especially for many of these folks who actually live or effectively live at their hotels. In coming out and being at trainings and things that we have to navigate together as a as a group of people who are committed to trying to fix this problem. So I appreciate that. And I'd like to to take the opportunity to, to help be a part of convening that with you and getting you in front of folks who might have thoughts to add. And I'll leave it there for now. Councilor Zimmerman, you're back in the queue.
137 Thank you to both the chairs. Councilor Novick, I appreciate how you're setting that up. And so I am welcoming that conversation. I think also I've got some conversations I'd like to have with our police unit and with the dea just in terms of impact and how these might be used. I, I guess the reason I really wanted to put myself in for some last words before I close or before we close out, you know, we started today with a pretty heavy presentation on some of the most disturbing facts of society. And we started today with a lot of information that is really terrible about children, child victims, in particular in our community. And so I am not sensing from anybody on the dais by, you know, looking for. Yes, with changes, as councilor Kanal said, or, or councilor Novick mentioned of like, let's work on the issues. I'm not sensing from anybody ignoring that presentation or not wanting to take it in full weight of what it was. And so I appreciate that. I also know enough. That. To councilor Dunphy's point earlier to others point that that this is an area of our civil law where we can have. Third order unintended consequences. And I want to be very deliberate that if I'm going to make an impact as a voting member, that I intended that impact. And so I think we can both acknowledge the weight and the realness and the importance of today's presentation and take time to do the ordinance that councilor Novick brought forward in a way that. Can acknowledge some of the facts that were brought up today and can ensure that we are protecting people who are victimized and trafficked in this community. And. For the neighborhoods who. I am thinking a lot also, that it is okay for us to admit that there are neighborhoods who are dealing with an issue of of great nuisance nuisance. It seems like not a big enough word on this topic, but it is the word that the english dictionary has given me. I'm speaking solely just because I the to leave today without an action after a presentation like that is not a small decision. And I see you, I hear you. We're going to talk some more. I think that councilor Novick, you've set us up to have multiple conversations on this dais so we can send what I really hope is not something that gets amended at full council, something that has been really baked the right way here for each of our districts, which barbara boulevard has so many similarities to what 82nd has and some differences. And so I just I welcome the the process that you are setting up. And to everybody who who gave your time today and worked with councilor Novick and shared what your organizations are doing in this, I appreciate it because the city council actually has not dove dived into this topic the way that previous councils and the county commission have. So thank you.
138 Thank you. And I'm going to make a final comment and then hand the gavel back to the councilor Novick to close it out. But just it's so rare that I get to say this without any modifiers. I agree with councilor Zimmerman and that's the end of the sentence. I just want to highlight the concerns in public so that we can talk about what I'd like to see discussed. I'm concerned about the primary focus being on leveling enforcement, specifically on motels, as acknowledged in the impact statement, as opposed to the people who are the 11,000 annual attempts to to buy children, as noted by our presenters, that that's less of the focus. I'm concerned about surveillance. Any data you collect as a city, being available to the feds, concerned about disparate impact impacts and subjectivity. I mentioned my concerns about engagement. I do want to say that I support lots of the parts of the abatement section. I like the idea of including those things together, especially the things that already exist. I think it's where some of the new things are coming up. And I also think I agree on the 30 and 90 days piece. As councilor Zimmerman noted as well, I think where I'm struggling with is the sort of you're responsible for what happens within 199ft of you. And I know this is a tension we've navigated before around the central library recently, around who's responsible for what happens on the sidewalk right outside it. And I want to make sure that we're we're treating different types of entities equally, because in st. Johns, for example, we have some of the same concerns around day centers that we're hearing here in terms of things happening within 200ft. So just just flagging that for the future. And I'll say that in d2 we have interstate, which is similar but also different. And I'm excited to have one of our folks who has a business on interstate here and and talking more to people on barber and interstate as well as 82nd also. So with that, I'll pass the gavel back over to councilor. Novick. Thank you.
139 Thank you very much.
140 Thanks very much to everybody who's been here today. I'll be following up with with several of you over the next couple of weeks. Our next meeting is Tuesday, February 10th, and this meeting of the committee on community and public safety is adjourned.