Last week Tom Potter said he was going to let the controversial drug free zones expire. Here’s a letter from Pastor Lynne Smouse López, chair of the Community Campaign to End Police Racial Profiling, to Potter, on the subject:

Dear Mayor Potter,

On behalf of the Community Campaign to End Police Racial Profiling, I want to thank you for your courageous decision to allow Portland’s drug-free zones to expire. This act is a triumph for compassion and justice.

Information from a report released on September 26th supported the concern that exclusion zones targeted African-Americans for arrests for drug crimes in Portland’s three drug-free zones at significantly higher rates than whites or Latinos. Yet we know drug crimes are committed by all segments of the population. We see your stand as an important statement against police bias and a step toward eliminating all racial profiling which is defined as the inappropriate reliance on race as a factor in deciding to stop and/or search an individual.

Our Community Campaign to End Police Racial Profiling also seeks an end to other police enforcement tools, such as pretext stops, warrantless searches, and discriminatory curfews targeting specific neighborhoods. We believe these tools encourage and reinforce racial profiling and are destructive to community. These policies, like the exclusion zones, allow the police to be the prosecutor, judge and jury, and increase the degradation, humiliation and unfair punishment that flows from racial profiling.

We applaud your commitment to equality under the law and look forward to working with you to completely end racial profiling.

Sincerely,

Pastor Lynne Smouse López, chair
Community Campaign to End Police Racial Profiling

“I think the mayor needs to be praised when he does the right thing,” says Alejandro Queral of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center. And I agree with him. Good on the mayor, regardless of whether his hand was forced by incontrovertible data.