University of Oregon students are concerned about the actions and heavy presence of Eugene Police Department’s party patrol, an overtime enforcement effort by the EPD to curb illegal party-related activity around UO.
Students say enforcement levels have been excessive, making them afraid of the police.
In spring 2022, there were several parties with around 500 to 1,000 attendees. Police officers faced attempted assaults or were injured at some of these parties, according to EPD press releases. EPD Chief Chris Skinner said the large parties and volume of noise complaints caught the EPD off guard.
Skinner said the EPD wanted to set a tone early in the fall.
The EPD sends out press releases announcing the start of its party patrol, which wasn’t as staffed during the pandemic, Skinner said. According to EPD spokesperson Melinda McLaughlin, party patrol is cyclical, occurring in fall and again in spring.
Party patrol issued more than 200 misdemeanors, violations and arrests between Oct. 1 and 17. Almost 100 of those occurred on the weekend of Oct. 15, according to EPD press releases.
Although EPD did not put out a press release about the weekend before Halloween, students testified at a Nov. 14 Eugene City Council meeting that the actions of party patrol, especially during that weekend, were over the top. Several students recalled being handcuffed or cited as police dispersed parties.
‘I was treated like a criminal’
At the city council meeting, UO junior and Phi Gamma Delta member Jack Stoutenberg said he was handcuffed by EPD officers at a party in the Phi Gamma Delta, also known as Fiji, fraternity house located on East 15th Avenue in Eugene on Oct. 28. Stoutenberg said the officers asked the residents to come outside to be written up for an unruly gathering violation.
When not enough residents gathered, an officer said he would start arresting people for not following orders, Stoutenberg said. Stoutenberg didn’t know what was going on outside and was heading out of his room to walk a friend home when an officer stopped him, he said.
“I spent more than an hour in the van handcuffed, I was treated like a criminal and I spent the entire night in jail over an unruly gathering that I was barely part of,” Stoutenberg said.
Johnathan Bitrous, another Phi Gamma Delta member who was present that Friday night, said the police came back again at around 1:45 a.m. with a search warrant. The warrant was to locate and confiscate a stereo system in the house, according to Stoutenberg’s testimony.
Joshua Oladipo, a student who was present at Phi Gamma Delta during the search, testified to City Council that he and a friend who lived there had their laptops confiscated by police during the search.
Skinner said EPD is returning the laptops to the individuals.
“Technically, was it our authority to seize those laptops? The answer is yes,” Skinner said. “Was that the right thing to do at that time? The answer is no.”
After police arrested some residents of the Phi Gamma Delta house, they commanded students who did not live there to leave the party, Bitrous said, and some students received minor in possession citations as they were leaving the party.
Some of the residents who were on the property during the party were given unruly gathering citations, Bitrous said. Three of the residents were charged with criminal misdemeanors, he said.
Spencer Smith, a junior at UO, experienced a similar situation with police, who he said arrived at a party at his house at about 10:30 p.m. on the Saturday before Halloween in response to a noise complaint.
Smith said an officer told him if he didn’t get everyone who lives at the house outside as soon as possible, he was going to arrest him.
Only one of Smith’s four roommates was at the party, and Smith said he tried to explain to the officer that they didn’t know where their other roommates were. The officer wrote tickets for criminal misdemeanors for both Smith and his roommate, Smith said.
Smith was confused why the officer threatened to arrest him right away instead of asking him to shut down the party, he said.
“I wasn’t drinking that night,” Smith said. “I went out super respectful, doing everything that I was supposed to do, and I was still treated like crap.”
Smith and his roommate attended the court date on Nov. 14. The prosecutor dropped Smith and his roommate’s misdemeanor charges, instead charging each with a noise ordinance violation, leaving the students to pay $100 instead of the full $375.
A rising need for student legal services
Many students that have been cited or arrested by Party Patrol have gone to ASUO Student Legal Services, which can provide legal counsel or even represent students in court in some cases.
Andy Kraushaar, one of the three attorneys contracted by ASUO Student Legal Services, has represented many of the UO students that have been charged with criminal violations related to parties over the last three months.
“This fall, since October, has been a flood of students getting cited,” Kraushaar said. “Not only is that visible through my work with student legal services but also, regularly appearing in the courtroom, it’s not uncommon to see the 8:30 a.m. or 10:00 a.m. docket full of students.”
Kraushaar said this is his first time seeing this kind of demand in the three years since he began working with ASUO Student Legal Services. However, this kind of rise in student citations is not completely unheard of, according to ASUO Student Legal Services director and attorney Ilona Givens.
Givens has worked as a contracted attorney with UO since 1987 and has seen rises in citations and student arrests a number of times – most notably in the mid-to-late nineties and again in the early 2000s.
Givens said EPD’s party patrol efforts have continued to exist over the last 20 to 30 years, but they weren’t as intense or concentrated as they have been this fall. Citations rates normally rise during events like the football season or Halloween, and drop during periods like the summer when fewer students are on campus.
“It’s a cycle, but it’s not a predictable one,” Givens said.
According to Givens, arrests and citations associated with heavy drinking or alcohol near campus, especially around Halloween, are not unusual. However, Givens said she has seen more active policing in these last three months.
“We’re now hearing about people being stopped, as a group, by an officer just to engage them in casual conversation and see what comes,” Givens said. In these situations, officers might be looking for the smell of alcohol, asking for drivers licenses or asking to smell what’s in a water bottle or cup, she said.
Givens said the severity of the consequences for party-related activities has caught some off guard because of local laws making loud noise and open containers criminal offenses, which is not the case everywhere.
The Social Host Ordinance, or the Ordinance on Unruly Gatherings, passed in 2013 holds people criminally responsible for hosting “unruly” gatherings. The criteria for what is considered an unruly gathering are broad, Givens said.
Unruly is defined in the ordinance as a gathering where alcohol is served or consumed and there are two additional offenses. The additional offenses can be any of the following: disorderly conduct, noise disturbance, criminal mischief, public urination or defecation, littering, assault, menacing, harassment, intimidation or a violation of city or state law relating to sale, service, possession or consumption of alcoholic liquor.
Eugene municipal code 4.190, which addresses consumption or possession of alcohol in public, states that the behavior is prohibited and, according to a brochure released by EPD, is a criminal offense.
There is no requirement that people cited for an unruly gathering or open container offenders are to be arrested or spend the night in jail.
“They could cite it as a crime and release them,” Givens said. “They don’t have to take them in just because they’ve cited it as a crime. To arrest them on the criminal charge is an officer’s discretionary decision.”
Party patrol has eased, for now
Skinner said it’s an interesting dynamic to try to be responsive to community calls for help while trying to hold people accountable to a level that doesn’t feel heavy handed.
“From time to time we hit that mark,” he said. “And sometimes we don’t hit that mark, or at least, it’s perceived that we don’t hit that mark. But that’s that constant balance that we’re always trying to think about.”
EPD responses to parties are mostly complaint-driven, Skinner said, while its response to minors in possession usually is not. Some at the city council meeting said students are too scared to call 911 in moments of crisis after seeing the actions of party patrol.
“What I can assure all of the students is, if you’re a victim of a crime, you’re a victim. We’re not there to cite you for the MIP,” Skinner said.
Skinner said EPD is only able to measure the effectiveness of party patrol anecdotally, but he considers the fact that Eugene hasn’t had the same level of parties as spring a success.
The overall goal of party patrol is not to deter students from drinking, but rather to disrupt the cycle of large parties that occur in fall and spring and make students mindful before they do something illegal, Skinner said.
“We’re going to have drinking. We’re going to have parties. There’s going to be underage drinking, as much as we can debate whether that’s good or bad, or just a part of the culture, we know that that’s going to happen,” he said.
Although party patrol was more assertive and visible this fall following the wave of spring parties, its presence looks similar to party patrols done before the pandemic, Skinner said. Unless things start to get out of control, EPD doesn’t have plans for party patrol past Thanksgiving, Skinner said.
“My staff is exhausted in overtime right now,” he said.
