More police presence due at New Columbia

Park fights - The Housing Authority also will try to find ways to help keep teens busy
Thursday, August 03, 2006
STEPHEN BEAVEN
The Oregonian

After a series of fights and other disturbances at North Portland's New Columbia development, the Police Bureau said Wednesday that it plans to open a community policing office there in the next month and assign two officers to patrol the area on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, the Housing Authority of Portland and the Parks Bureau are talking about developing more activities and placing adult volunteers to defuse growing tensions in McCoy Park, in the middle of New Columbia.

"When we see the emergence of negative activity, we want to jump at it," Steve Rudman, the executive director of the Housing Authority, said after meeting Wednesday afternoon with police, the Parks Bureau and others.

The moves come after fights last week involving groups of young people armed with sticks, rocks and bottles forced the early closure of McCoy Park on successive nights. Police officers say they're seeing more activity from gang members in the area, including some youngsters displaced last year by Hurricane Katrina.

New Columbia is a 15-month-old mixed-income community that includes market-rate homes and public housing. It's built on the site of the former Columbia Villa housing project, which included community policing before it was demolished.

But the Housing Authority, which developed the site, didn't plan for a specific police presence in the new community because it and the Police Bureau lacked the resources, Rudman said.

North precinct Cmdr. Jim Ferraris said two officers would be permanently assigned to New Columbia, patrolling in the afternoons and nights four or five days a week. He said he hopes to find grant money to pay for a third officer, ensuring a police presence every day.

They'll work at an office on North Trenton Street in the heart of New Columbia, across from the park, Rudman said.

But he cautioned that the community policing office wouldn't be a permanent addition to New Columbia. Rather, he said, it would be open for "the next couple of years as the community takes form."

In the short term, however, the Housing Authority expects to give teens more to do at the park at night and to increase adult supervision.

It's important to establish such measures in the next few weeks to get a head start on next year, when the development will be completed, said John Keating, the Housing Authority's assistant director of community building at New Columbia.

"This is like a dress rehearsal," Keating said. "We're waiting for the big opening next summer."