A couple of weeks ago I saw this sign (nearby) excoriating Randy Leonard for his “HIT” squad. Randy’s HIT squad is made up of inspectors from three different Portland city bureaus (Police, Fire and Development Services) and personally directed by Randy (“I’ll tear it down with my bare hands”) Leonard himself. I’m a native Portlander, but even I couldn’t remember what stood in the vacant lot now bearing the I hate Randy sign. So I did a little digging and found out it used to be Cindy’s XXX Book Store. See the pictures of what the site used to look like nearby.
Previous stories by the Portland Tribune (which has done several stories about “Cindy’s”) and now recent ones by Willamette Week ( Here and here) follow the story of Leonard’s heavy handed and, I believe, capricious use of city resources to shut down businesses he doesn’t like. Now, I’m not a fan of porno shops, but unless Randy rewrites Oregon law to allow for legally zoning out flesh shops, theoretically he can do little about them. Unless, however, he gets his HIT squad in there to write ticket after ticket after ticket for code violations. So that’s what he did. The Trib reported here:
The task force uses “very aggressive actions” including building and fire inspections, to shut down trouble spots that, Leonard said, are clearly “egregious” in their violations and linked to criminal activity. The tactics are “cutting edge,” and represent actions that “other cities shy away from,” Leonard said.
Doug Jones, supervising inspector at the Bureau of Fire, Rescue & Emergency Services, admits it looks a little strange that a 2005 inspection found only two code violations, while one earlier this year found 30.
Randy also admits that his choice of targets is a bit subjective, telling Willamette Week,
“It’s like Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography,” Leonard says. “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.”
Randy admits using heavy handed tactics, telling the Tribune:
“I make [the HIT team] call me, and I go through the building,” he says.
The combination of enforcement authority from three bureaus with different enforcement mechanisms gives the HIT team a potent arsenal.
“When you combine all three, you could find just about anything,” Leonard concedes.
Bureau employees say Cindy’s is owned by four people, one of whom is a bad dude (who was prosecuted in connection with a murder and has served his sentence) and was the scene of a lot of illegal activity. They claim that these kinds of stores attract bad actors and increase the crime rate. Here’s how the Trib reported it last year:
Cindy’s has long been a subject of police attention and neighbor complaints. But in the spring it came to the attention of a task force headed by city Commissioner Randy Leonard, one that has been conducting inspections of substandard downtown residential hotels to help clear out drug dealers and prostitutes. “Cindy’s has historically been a magnet for criminal activity,” says Portland Police Sgt. Matt Engen, who has worked Old Town for 12 years.
I’m sure Cindy’s attracted a lot of bad folks doing bad things. I don’t doubt that for a minute. But I wondered now that it’s been bulldozed has the crime rate gone down? I wondered and consulted the city’s website. I’ll get comps on soon from 2006 or so but, seriously, how much worse can it get than this? Check out the crime rate NOW. Hint: where you see red is where really, really bad stuff happens. I’m no genius but there doesn’t seem to be much of an improvement after Cindy’s was bulldozed.
Randy is trying to clean up bad businesses. I appreciate that. The problem is picking and choosing the businesses you don’t like for targeted enforcement is a prescription for abuse. This appears to have been what has happened. Well, at least that’s what is alleged in the owners’ $1 million dollar lawsuit against Randy and the city (story here). Randy admits he doesn’t know exactly what qualifies a business as a target for a HIT squad action, but he knows it when he sees it.
The Trib reported:
So far, Leonard says, the team has targeted eight or nine properties. Three were squalid single-occupancy hotels in Old Town. The city bought out the owner of the largest of the three, the Grove Hotel. Then the team went after Cindy’s Adult Bookstore, also in Old Town. The city shut it down and it was razed. Next came the Greek Cusina, forced into foreclosure by HIT team liens, and a single east-side target, an after-hours club called the Mansion, which has since been demolished.
The owners of the property claim the city is after their property because it’s along their beloved ‘couplet’ and close to the Pearl. The site where Cindy’s once stood is for sale, but in this economy no one is buying. And considering that slice of Burnside frontage real estate is on the city’s radar no one would be willing to buy it at this point. The question is whether Randy is using city resources to bully Cindy’s out of business so the city has more say in how the land is used by planners? Government is generally no good at picking winners and losers–even losers like porno shops. But nobody wins when property rights are trampled. Nobody.
