acceptable and what is not.” Carl says confusion about how to interpret the law has since been clarified, a similar operation hasn’t been done again, and the department is in “close communications” with the prosecutor’s office to prevent similar concerns in the future. Cotton says the officer involved has since received extra training. “It’s a non-issue for us, to tell you the truth,” Carl says. City prosecutor Ellen O’Hara acknowledged through city spokesman Brian Coddington that “the entrapment issue arose” in cases “on or about May 22.” In an email to the Inlander, O’Hara says it’s “not unusual” for some cases to be dismissed, and that “It is the duty of every prosecutor to seek justice, not to simply get as many convictions as possible.” However, O’Hara refused to answer further questions about entrapment concerns or the vehicle interference ordinance in general.
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ndeed, the citations dropped in part because of entrapment concerns are few, but some say concerns about the ordinance — including the low conviction rate — have bigger repercussions. “It speaks to some of our concerns with things like the proposed [extension of the city’s] sit and lie ordinance,” says Rick Eichstaedt, executive director of the Center for Justice. “What sort of tactics are going to be used to make enforcement of some of these laws easier?” In recent months, as city lawmakers have looked to curb issues including panhandling in downtown, passing ordinances about bus plaza conduct and skateboarding on sidewalks, constitutional and financial tensions has come up. A potential extension to the city’s sit-lie law would outlaw sitting or lying on downtown sidewalks except between the hours of 3 am and 6 am. The ordinance has since been postponed, but some councilmembers still hope to see it passed. Breean Beggs, a local civil rights attorney who’s been outspoken in favor of police reform and a set of criminal justice reforms known as “Smart Justice,” says the question is one of dollars and cents. “We don’t want to see these types of crimes processed through the criminal justice system. It’s very expensive. You have to give [the defendant] a public defender, you have to have a judge and a jury. You have to pay for probation or you put them in jail. You’re spending thousands of dollars on a problem panhandler,” Beggs says. “One reason I would imagine they’re dismissing so many is [they] don’t want to spend the resources to actually follow the law.” When Councilman Mike Allen, who sponsored the vehicle interference ordinance, heard about the number of dismissals earlier this year, he convened a meeting of police, municipal court judges and social service providers looking for answers. Today, he refuses to discuss the details of the meeting, but in an August meeting of the council’s public safety committee, he said the judges expressed concerns about who was being targeted by the law. “In our conversation with the judges,” Allen told the committee, “one of the things they shared is they want to make sure that we’re not just targeting somebody who may need help, along the lines of can we show that we’re also trying to get them into our human services system?” Mark Richard, president of the Downtown Spokane Partnership, says he also heard concerns that the law wasn’t being enforced and sought answers from Municipal Court Judge Mary Logan. “She was very passionate about making sure we’re not making it so cumbersome for an individual who doesn’t have access to a car, or maybe has mental health challenges, or maybe has addiction issues, or is maybe living on the street, and you’re expecting them to show up for a court date on the third Wednesday of next month,” Richard says. Logan declined to talk with the Inlander about the vehicle interference ordinance or potential entrapment, but said in an email, “The Court applies the law, regardless of concerns or no concerns.” Allen says he has no second thoughts about the vehicle interference ordinance, calling it a “great tool.” With fewer convictions than he’d hoped for, Allen says he’s looking to a different approach to curb panhandling: The council will kick in $7,000 toward a $25,000 downtown PR campaign aimed at discouraging people from giving money to panhandlers. n
OCTOBER 31, 2013 INLANDER 19