In Lents, those pesky crack pipes just won't go away! Two years ago, the notably affable neighborhood association member Jeffrey Rose took up a campaign to get local convenience stores to stop selling the tiny rose vases that neighborhood ne'er-do-wells typically used as crack and meth pipes. Under neighborhood pressure, the stores stopped selling the little glass vases but then the covert pipes started to pop up again in September.

Now Jeffrey's at sort of a loss of what to do. Looking for guidance from the neighborhood, he posted a poll on the Lents discussion board trying to gauge the right course of action - should they sue the stores? Picket them? Give it up? Right now the poll is leaning toward the mild choice: "I think we should push convenience store owners to get rid of the stuff."

Well that's not very helpful. How should the neighborhood push, exactly? I made up this little poll to find out, including some 100% Portland Conflict Resolution TacticsTM.

What should Portlanders do about convenience stores that sell tiny vase crack pipes?

One night in mid-October, I met up with the Montavilla in Action neighborhood patrol squad in a parking lot just off 82nd Ave. The group gets together a couple nights a week and wanders the streets in shiny orange vests, shining their flashlights into darkened parking lots and among shrubbery looking for prostitutes. I expected the crowd to be preachy, but the stroll was actually a lot of fun as the upbeat crew laughed about the ridiculous situations they'd encountered and pointed out places where prostitutes used to hang out. Former hot spots like the infamous McDonald's on the corner of 82nd and Stark were now vacant and we went home without reporting a single problem to the police's non-emergency line.

The disappearance of prostitutes from 82nd led me to ask where have they gone? Based on an uptick in Craigslist ads, I thought a good number of women were operating online or in motels instead of from the street corners, but an article in North Portland's Sentinel reveals that neighbors in the areas around Interstate have been seeing more prostitutes recently. That suggests the police stings and city attention on 82nd have pushed prostitutes out to Interstate. This hits home that an effective response to prostitution isn't just a legal crackdown on one area - say, a Prostitution Free Zone that targets only a few miles of the city - but serious treatment programs for people who want to get out of sex work plus jobs and housing accessible for people in danger of being forced into it.

So it's Saturday night and a mother and daughter are cruising down 82nd Ave, snapping photos of women they think might be prostitutes. This is part of the Montavilla in Action neighborhood activists' plan for Community Patrols: people taking to the streets, shooting photos of women who look like prostitutes and sending those photos to the police. Montavilla in Action leaders hope the photos will help them agitate for the reinstatement of the Prostitution Free Zone, a law enforcement policy the ACLU says is unconstitutional.

edit: Montavilla in Action emailed to say they do not encourage taking photos of prostitutes by members of their community patrols. I got the impression in conversations that this is what they were asking neighbors to do - document the prostitution in their area with cameras - but I don't have any specific quotes in my notes about it, so you'll have to take their word for it that they never officially told members to take photos of suspected prostitutes on 82nd. end edit

So the mother and daughter vigilante photographer team rolls up next to two women sitting on a bench near 82nd and Burnside who "flash some photos" at the mom & daughter. But when the passenger points her camera toward them, the two women on the street get up and run toward the car, sprayed mace at the activist neighbors as they frantically tried to roll up their windows.

One of the downsides of vigilantism: sometimes when you're trying to protect the public good by taking photos of suspicious-looking people on the street, the people you deem suspicious get mad. And they carry mace.

Also: Montavilla in Action warned its members to stay safe after the attempted macing, saying "a mother and daughter were attacked by two prostitutes." But there's no definite proof the women sitting on the street were for sale other than the way they were dressed and this confusing photo-flashing. Maybe they're a mother and daughter pair, too, creeped out by a car taking photos of them?

The neighborhoods along 82nd Ave are all in uproar this month over that perennial hot button issue: prostitution. What's really interesting to watch is how the conversation has played out on the internet, where a degree of anonymity and the ability to link together like-minded people across the neighborhoods have led to a flurry of active and heated discussions. The debate over how to solve prostitution on 82nd has turned into a battle of the blogs.

First off, there's the moderate Save NE 82nd, organized by Madison South activist Dawn Rasmussen. Tonight is Save NE 82nd's big, long-planned (and hilariously named) Prostitution Town Hall, which Rasmussen hopes will be a "positive, solution-oriented conversation" that lays out all the ideas for how to improve the dire situation of 82nd. And there are so many ideas.

Last week, Mayor Potter announced his plan to solve prostitution in the area, including putting $500,000 toward treatment for prostitutes. That press conference was hijacked by an outspoken neighbors organized via their own blog, Montavilla in Action who demanded the City reinstate the Prostitution Free Zone. "Before we get philosophical, we need to immediately stem the crime," said organizer and press-conference-crasher Liz Sullivan, "We're at critical red alert on our streets."

More hot and bothered frustration is obvious at the the Montavilla Neighborhood Association Yahoo group, where a lot of neighbors to have freely vented their anger -- sometimes articulately and reasonably, sometimes not. "The blatent strollers or those who just hang out on the Avenue has increased to the point of being very, very obvious," reads one post, " I am not low-class, nor is this neighborhood, but what is allowed to occur here is ghetto behavior. What the heck is going on??"

The "hostility and hatred" of the message board sparked another neighbor, a woman named Mika who lives on SE 72nd, to organize his own blog and group 82nd CARES. Mika and a dozen other area residents think the Prostitution Free Zone (PFZ) is a horrible idea. "We can't fix this problem with more police," Mika told me today, "We need to have the services available for these people." That means transition housing and shelters (women's shelters in Portland currently have an abysmal six month wait list). 82nd Cares has also taken to poking holes in the pro-PFZ argument using homemade graphs:

Montavilla In Action states that "we the citizens around 82nd Avenue are having our safety compromised each + every day." Since prostitution between consenting adults does not directly compromise any bystander's safety (although it may be uncomfortable for them to witness it on the street), it must mean that the presence of prostitution is attracting other crimes. Is it true? Here's the chart based on Portland Police Bureau's numbers.

The PFZ expired after the second 2006 point first 2007 dot on that chart and, as Mika points out, while arrests for prostitution have spiked and dropped as police staged stings throughout the year, all other crimes have dropped by 18 % overall. The idea that Montavilla has become unsafe and crime-ridden thanks to the death of the PFZ isn't supported by police data.

Anyway, tonight's the night all these neighbors will be coming out of the internet woodwork and talking face-to-face about all the touchy subjects. How the Prostitution Town Hall will go down is anyone's guess, but getting a "positive and solution-oriented" discussion is definitely going to involve some serious crowd-wrangling.

I just witnessed two outspoken Montavilla neighbors stage an impromptu takeover of the mayor's morning press conference. "They invited us to come and stand behind them," said Montavilla in Action member Liz Sullivan, after the conference dispersed, "and we don't stand behind this plan." What Potter unveiled this morning was the basics of his plan to fight prostitution along 82nd Ave. Equally upset neighbor Brian Wong turned up to the conference with two speeches folded in his back pocket -- one in case he supported the plan the mayor unveiled and the critical one he wound up reading, unrehearsed, in front of the mic while holding up a syringe he found on the street in his neighborhood.

Just a Neighbor Needling Potter

The mayor, the police, the City Council -- everyone recognizes that rampant and flagrant prostitution occurs all day and night on 82nd Ave. Since the city allowed the Drug and Prostitution Free Zones to die last year after investigations showed the Drug Free Zone hinged on racial profiling tactics, reports of prostitution along 82nd have quadrupled. Now, a heated debate swirls around what to do about the problem. A month ago, Commissioner Randy Leonard promised a crack down on prostitution with a Service Coordination Team style approach. The last month has seen series of six major stings along 82nd -- in the last two weeks, police have made 36 arrests. Sources at City Hall say that Mayor Potter seized control of the task and today's conference was a clear sign of that. Potter released information about his plan own prostitution plan, a four-part bullet list that he has yet to christen with a catchy name:

- Increase police pressure on prostitutes, pimps and their customers
- Prosecute prostitutes in Community Court rather than Circuit Court. This means prostitutes would be placed on probation more frequently and allow the police to arrest suspected prostitutes across the city (not just on 82nd) more easily. Potter's office hopes that prostitution could disappear from neighborhoods as prostitutes on probation would be excluded from specific high-whoring areas.
- Encourage neighborhood foot patrols. Like the border's Minute Men, but along 82nd and hopefully not crazy and racist.
- Develop treatment options, including putting $500,000 toward solving the economic and social problems that drive prostitution (like addiction and unemployment) and creating a Service Coordination Team for 82nd.

The Montavilla in Action neighbors aren't digging Potter's plan. "I pray that this works, but I have a lot of doubts," says Sullivan, "It's fraught with 'ifs'." She and Wong pointed out that the plan seems to target only prostitutes, not johns and that the city is relying on the prostitute actually showing up in court.

Sullivan, Wong and the other activists have been doing enforcement of their own recently : snapping photos of johns soliciting ladies along 82nd. They want Potter to reinstate the Prostitution Free Zone (PFZ). "There was and has been no study done on the PFZ," said Wong, noting that the racial-profiling findings that killed both zones were based on data about arrests in the Drug Free Zone. Nowhere in the damning 18-page report is the word "prostitution" or info about whether the same racial disparities existed in enforcement of the prostitution free zone.

John Doussard, Potter's director of communications, is trying to dig up the research on the PFZ, replying to my info request with an email saying frankly, "The chart I've seen is incomprehensible." In the mean time, he makes what I think is an important point: "The main problem with the PFZ is that no one felt it was a solution to the problems. It simply moved the problem from one area to another. Instead, we need treatment options that really address the issues." Doussard mentions that a big difference between prostitutes downtown on on 82nd is that out on the Ave, only 30% have current drug problems. The other 70% are driven there by economic factors. Focusing on treatment seems to me to be the most effective way to actually better the lives of women on the street - I hope that $500,000 is put toward things like securing safe and affordable housing for former prostitutes and getting them training for other jobs.

Other Montavilla neighbors are planning a Prostitution Town Hall this Monday to discuss the root causes of prostitution in the area and effective solutions. Sullivan and Wong did not help plan the town hall. Right now they're not interested in discussion over prostitution's roots, they're interested in getting the PFZ back as soon as possible. "We're at critical red alert on our streets," says Sullivan, "Our focus is the safety and livability of the residents." Sullivan told some neighborhood horror stories -- before each Little League game, parents have to sweep the field for condoms. Sullivan catching prostitutes and johns "in the act" during a stroll through a park on a Sunday afternoon. Women getting harassed and solicited by male drivers while walking alone down 82nd to the grocery store. "It has changed, the whole 82nd Avenue," says Sullivan, referring to the time since the PFZ expired, "It's much more blatant and it's sad to see these women freely traded."