In the wake of the Mercury’s news lead this week, I chatted with Commissioners Randy Leonard and Erik Sten—city council’s two most vocal critics of the Drug-Free Zones—about what the arrest vs. exclusion numbers could mean for the future of the policy, which will be up for council renewal shortly.

“I have serious concerns to begin with on the civil liberties impacted by the zones,” Leonard said. “I have no tolerance for drug use, but I’m not convinced that the exclusions are consistent with due process protections. When we do anything that tries to get around the Constitution, there’s probably something inherently wrong with it.

“If those [exclusion] numbers pan out, I’d probably not support the renewal. In a way, I kind of hope these numbers are accurate, because it would eliminate my angst over the zones. It would make my vote a lot easier.”

Even though there was a long delay in establishing the oversight committee for the DFZs, which was promised last year, Sten gives Potter credit for pushing the police bureau to finally release the exclusion numbers, which were kept under wraps for years.

“To the mayor’s credit, he’s the reason these numbers exist,” Sten says. “For years, they’ve been saying that these zones don’t disproportionately target minorities and limit drug trafficking,” but they’ve been able to make those claims because they never showed any numbers to prove otherwise.

“I’ve been a solid one-person vote against the northeast zone, because I had fears that it would disproportionately affect minorities,” Sten added. “I see downtown differently, since the people who are caught there don’t typically live there, and it’s not like excluding someone from a neighborhood park. At times, I’ve given Potter the benefit of the doubt, and last year he came to agree with a lot of where I was at, but at this point, I don’t think I’d support renewing the northeast zone.”