Pubdate: Tue, 27 May 2003 Source: Cincinnati Enquirer (OH) Copyright: 2003 The Cincinnati Enquirer Contact: http://enquirer.com/today/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/86 DRUG LOITERING - GET THEM OFF THE STREET The goal of City Councilman David Pepper's new ordinance is to make drug dealers feel uncomfortable doing business in Cincinnati. "If we don't solve this issue, we are going to have a ghost town," he told the Enquirer editorial board last week. City Council obliged on Wednesday, unanimously passing a drug-loitering law modeled after that of other major cities, including New York and Seattle. The ordinance will let police disperse and possibly arrest people who are engaged in public loitering for the purpose of open-air drug dealing. Citizens in Cincinnati neighborhoods who feel threatened by drug dealers on street deserve security. This ordinance provides police with another tool to push the pushers off the sidewalk. But its success will depend on the judgment of the street cops, some of whom worry about being accused of racial profiling if they tell groups of people to move along because they are suspected of being drug dealers. That is a valid concern. Most open-air drug dealing occurs in Cincinnati's poorer neighborhoods, and police can't assume that everybody standing on the sidewalk in these neighborhoods is dealing drugs. The law states that the race or ethnic background of the person or the racial or ethnic make-up of a neighborhood within which a person is loitering will not be considered in determining a person's specific intent. Good. What we don't need is more strife between the police department and its citizens. What we need is more trust and cooperation, and that is what this new law aims to create. Indeed, it was calls from concerned citizens begging for help that led Pepper to propose it. The new law specifies obvious signs of open-air trading that police can cite when invoking the ordinance - passing or receiving items to or from cars, operating as a lookout, warning someone else of a police presence, loitering in an area that is notorious for unlawful drug activity. This law doesn't aim to arrest dealers so much as to force them to move their operations elsewhere. The theory is that any business, even an illegal one, can't be successful if it has to constantly relocate. Curbside drug dealers are like cockroaches. If you shine a light on them they will scurry away. This ordinance helps turn on the lights. - --- MAP posted-by: Jackl