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.
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