Mayoral candidates weigh in on banning criminals from downtown

[The Straight Story]

EUGENE, Ore. -- An incumbent mayor versus a former mayor: Eugene's November ballot will decide if Kitty Piercy retains her office or if Jim Torrey regains the mayor's seat.

David Walker of KVAL TV asked you to send in your questions for the candidates. Then he sat down and got answers.

The issue for Tuesday, Sept. 23: the downtown exclusion zone, which bans people convicted or even accused of crimes downtown from the downtown area. | STORY

Tune in at 6 p.m. or 11 p.m. to hear the candidates respond to your questions.
David Walker: There's a lot of talk about the downtown eugene exclusion ordinance. You've talked about it a lot. What's your stance on where we are with that and what you think of it?

Kitty Piercy: You know I did actually have a press conference on that where I took the position that I am not a real fan of exclusion zones, but in our case I thought we had a real serious situation downtown.

I was supportive of a very narrowly focused exclusion zone for repeat offenders so that we can keep them out of our downtown so we don't have to keep dealing with the same folks doing wrong things in our downtown area, and we're in the process of putting the protocols in place. I hope it will be a very useful tool and help our officers and make our downtown a safer place for everyone.


http://www.kval.com/news/29747709.html

[varkam]

1. Constitution? Hello? Anyone?

Yeesh. As another poster here put it, everyone wants to punish criminals just a little more than the last person who spoke.