Responding to business owners, council to discuss expand police, medical service downtown

After calls from several downtown business owners to clean up downtown, Salem city councilors on Monday will discuss plans to add more police patrols and pair medical responders with mental health specialists.

The council won’t vote on any new policy or effort, but they’ll consider a new report compiled by city leaders which includes possible immediate, near-term and long-term solutions that could be applied to alleviate homelessness and improve public safety downtown.

Those plans include bringing back the downtown police bike team eliminated last year due to budget cuts, using overtime to enhance police visibility downtown, bringing on two additional Homeless Services Team police officers in the next year, and partnering ambulance workers with mental health specialists to deal with calls related to homelessness.

A mass stabbing at the Union Gospel Mission downtown on June 1 elevated calls to improve public safety downtown. During a June 9 meeting, Mayor Julie Hoy asked Salem Police Chief Trevor Womack to prepare a report on how to address the issue.

The mayor’s request also came after a number of business owners sent councilors letters and gave public testimony complaining about homelessness downtown.

A group of downtown business owners gathered in the ballroom on the third floor of the Reed Opera House on Wednesday to discuss their concerns about trash, crime and vandalism with City Manager Krishna Namburi, Womack, Fire Chief Dave Gerboth and other city officials.

An employee who works at Bentley’s, the restaurant inside The Grand Hotel, spoke to the group but did not provide her name.

“I almost want to cry, and I’m a little bit shaky, because it’s unreasonable,” the employee said to the group of dozens of downtown business owners. She said she and her coworkers have had their lives threatened and have been sexually harassed while downtown.

“I’ve got two young children and have been downtown as an employee for five years now … And I’ve built poor relationships with homelessness, with people on the street, I’ve had bad interactions with them, so now I’m seen as an enemy. So when I’m here with my children or on my own time trying to support other local businesses, I don’t feel safe with them,” she said.

The event was put on by the Salem Main Street Association, an organization dedicated to improving downtown.

The group’s president, TJ Sullivan, previously told Salem Reporter that he and his family have never had an issue downtown, but businesses face a perception problem that downtown is not clean and is unsafe.

Owners at the meeting described being physically threatened by people on the street, having to step over human feces and needles near their businesses, and said they experience acts of vandalism and theft.

Womack told the group that Salem has two “glowing hotspots” where police are needed most: northeast Salem and downtown.

Womack said while vagrancy and public indecency is unsightly and bad for business, the police department must prioritize violent crime over everything else as a steady increase in violent crime over the past decade eats into dwindling police resources.

He also said the department is already focusing on downtown as part of the department’s initiative to address the highest risk parts of the city.

The department’s initiative is outlined in the new city council report as an immediate way to address public safety concerns downtown and works by shifting limited police resources between downtown and northeast Salem each month.

“The downtown area is the focus area for June. It was our focus area before the UGM (Union Gospel Mission) attack. We were already directing extra resources into downtown,” Womack said. “Sometimes you might not see it or feel it as much because you don’t see the bike team, but we are refocusing patrols, actually using some extra overtime, to increase our presence in the downtown area.”

Womack said one of the hardest decisions he has had to make during his four year tenure as chief was cutting the department’s downtown bike team.

In the council report, restoring the eight person bike team by adding new police positions in the city’s 2027 budget is listed as a long-term plan for addressing public safety downtown.

Also on the list of long-term goals is to preserve funding for and expand the Salem Outreach and Liveability Services team which works with the police department’s Homeless Services Team to clean up debris across the city. Funding for that team runs out next summer, the report said.

Trash and debris was a major concern among business owners.

The report said that with more sustainable funding and three new parks maintenance operators and a parks project coordinator, the team could expand services to seven days a week.

The total cost for the expanded services would be about $1.7 million dollars including a one time payment for new equipment of about $180,000, the report said.

At the Wednesday meeting, Gerboth, Salem’s fire chief, said downtown, including the eastern edge of West Salem, and northeast Salem are also the two biggest hotspots for his agency as well. Frequent calls for service related to homeless residents is a drain on limited resources, he said.

“We finally started collecting data in the last couple of months and that is certainly one of the biggest challenges we have downtown. Just to be frank,” Gerboth said.

He said half of the department’s fire calls are related to homelessness, including encampment fires, structure fires and burning rubbish. Overall, 17% of the department’s calls are related to homelessness, he said.

“It is a significant challenge. We are an extremely busy organization. We are routinely stripped of resources to where we have nothing left in the city and we are depending on mutual aid.”

A near-term plan in the council report is to form teams of paramedics, emergency medical technicians, and mental health experts who would respond to incidents involving emotional disturbance, overdoses, and other health emergencies, the report said. The teams would also work to provide outreach to prevent emergencies before they occur.

The new model would rely on funding from Marion County to pay for a mental health clinician position.

The program would be a six-month pilot program and the team would operate five days per week. It would cost about $196,000 for Salem fire personnel and equipment, the report said.

“We know at least from our experiences that homelessness is typically symptomatic of other things,” Gerboth said at the meeting. “What we see on a daily basis is substance abuse and mental illness, and that is what we are responding to. And that takes a lot of our resources.”

Contact reporter Joe Siess: [email protected] or 503-335-7790.

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