Harm Reduction Group in Oregon Endured Illegal Spying From Police, ACLU Says

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Oregon filed a lawsuit in August against the City of Medford, Oregon, alleging that its police department has spied on progressive organizers in violation of state law. The case is notable not only because it alleges significant abuses of police power, but also because of its links to a pair of issues that have drawn the nation’s attention to the Beaver State in recent years: its drug decriminalization initiative, called Measure 110, and its record high rates of homelessness.

“Concurrent with an anti-Measure 110 lens of policing in Medford, there is also an ‘anti-unhoused folks’ bent to their style of policing,” Alicia LeDuc Montgomery told Truthout. LeDuc Montgomery is the attorney for two of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit: nonprofit organization Stabbin’ Wagon and the organization’s former executive director, Melissa Jones. “Jones and Stabbin’ Wagon’s outreach efforts definitely intersected with both of those policy issues and were at odds with law enforcement’s stance on them,” LeDuc Montgomery said.

Stabbin’ Wagon provides harm reduction-focused services to people in southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley, where Medford is the largest city. Jones started the organization in the wake of the 2020 Almeda Drive Fire, which burned through several small towns south of Medford, displacing thousands. When Jones began volunteering to support unhoused fire survivors in a local park, she noticed a need for supplies like syringes and naloxone. She began offering them out of a wagon, giving the nascent nonprofit its name.

Even before the fire took the region’s affordable housing shortage from bad to worse, parts of Medford were developing a reputation as sites of homelessness and drug use. The park where Jones first started offering supplies was one such place. Another was the Bear Creek Greenway, which links Medford to smaller towns along a tributary of the Rogue River. A City of Medford Homeless System Action Plan published in April 2019 stated that the Medford Police Department (MPD) conducted several sweeps of the Bear Creek Greenway each year. In February 2020, city authorities allocated another $300,000 to trail-related “improvement efforts,” including some funds for “cleaning up homeless camps” and adding trash cans and sharps containers where unhoused people were living along the trail.

MPD also launched a police squad called the Livability Team in September 2019, which, according to its webpage, “performs weekly outreach and cleanup efforts” with the city’s unhoused population and “strike[s] a balance between a hand-up, hand-out, and enforcement approaches.” (The City of Medford declined to answer questions when contacted for this story.)

LeDuc Montgomery told Truthout that while the Livability Team is marketed as a feel-good initiative, it engages in the same kind of punitive policing of unhoused community members that the neighboring town of Grants Pass recently argued for at the Supreme Court, leading to a ruling that de facto criminalized homelessness. “Historically, most of the folks who have been staffed on the Livability Team … have engaged in very belligerent or hostile actions against unhoused people,” LeDuc Montgomery said of the Medford team.

When pandemic precautions shuttered some services for Medford’s unhoused population in March 2020, joggers on the Bear Creek Greenway began to notice more tents, debris and sometimes needles scattered on the sides of the trail. When Stabbin’ Wagon began offering services a few months later, the organization drew ire for what some saw as a contributing factor — when police swept the trail, the encampments seemed to shrink; when Stabbin’ Wagon handed out needles, observers imagined them used and discarded near the path.

Proponents of decriminalizing drug possession and homelessness argue that things are not that simple. To those who favor harm-reduction approaches, policing might obscure these problems for outside observers, but it does not solve them and has negative consequences for those it claims to serve.

“People need services at the end of the day, and when we meet them where they’re at, that is the only way to offer genuine and productive support. Giving people ultimatums about whether they have to go to jail or be forced into treatment is not productive,” said Sam Strong, an organizer with Stabbin’ Wagon. Strong is also co-founder of the third plaintiff in the lawsuit, the Rogue Valley Pepper Shakers, an unincorporated association engaged in reproductive justice, housing justice and LGBTQ+ organizing.

Oregon tried to break with conventional drug policy in November 2020, when voters passed the Drug Decriminalization and Addiction Treatment Initiative, known as Measure 110. The initiative decriminalized possession of small amounts of illicit drugs and earmarked funds to establish addiction treatment, harm reduction, housing and peer support programs. However, parts of the measure have since been rolled back. This April, Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek signed House Bill 4002 into law, recriminalizing some forms of possession. New penalties went into effect on September 1.

Police opposed Measure 110 from the jump. The Oregon Association Chiefs of Police was a vocal opponent, and the Oregon Narcotics Enforcement Association was among the top donors to a ballot measure committee registered in opposition. After the measure passed, police departments complained that the initiative hurt their bottom line: To funnel dollars toward addiction support programs, Measure 110 reallocated cannabis tax funds that had gone to cities, counties and state police. Some cities cut police funding to absorb the revenue gap, and state troopers saw their pre-Measure 110 share of cannabis tax revenues drop by over $30 million.

The same reallocation of cannabis revenues that reduced police budgets benefited Stabbin’ Wagon and the people it serves in the Rogue Valley. After the measure passed, the organization applied to the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) for funding and received almost $600,000 in Measure 110 funds and an additional $1.5 million to open a peer-run respite center. The smaller grant allowed Jones to upgrade her wagon to a cargo van filled with boxes of naloxone, needles, pipes, fentanyl test strips, soap and hand sanitizer. Strong, who often joined Jones in the new cargo van to distribute supplies, told Truthout: “Measure 110 funds have saved lives.”

Kelly Simon, legal director at ACLU of Oregon, told Truthout that the fundamental antagonism between MPD’s political objectives and Stabbin’ Wagon and the Rogue Valley Pepper Shakers’ work led the plaintiffs into police crosshairs. “The police are spying on groups with political viewpoints opposite of those police advocates are lobbying for in the Oregon legislature,” she said.

Following the announcement that Stabbin’ Wagon would receive OHA grant funds, the first evidence that would become part of the ACLU’s lawsuit against the City of Medford emerged. According to emails published by local reporter Sam Becker in September 2023, the Medford chief of police and deputy chief of police coordinated with top city authorities and local nonprofit executives in a failed attempt to block that funding. “All of the legitimate non-profits in our area are outraged,” wrote Medford City Manager Brian Sjothun in one email. Emails from the chief of police and the lieutenant responsible for overseeing the Livability Team show both contacted OHA in attempts to intervene in the funding process.

“The city doesn’t like Stabbin’ Wagon’s policy positions or political associations and viewpoints, so they frame Stabbin’ Wagon and its work as harmful, as negative, as not legitimate,” LeDuc Montgomery told Truthout.

The ACLU lawsuit alleges that those emails and other communications going as far back as March 2021, obtained in public records requests, show that MPD maintains dossiers of the plaintiffs’ political activities and affiliations.

“What those public records show is the police are not only trying to essentially undermine Stabbin’ Wagon’s work, but they’re also keeping tabs on Stabbin’ Wagon and its members’ political activities,” LeDuc Montgomery told Truthout. The suit condemns this as a “blatant violation of Oregon law.” Specifically, its argument hinges on Oregon Revised Statute (ORS) 181A.250, which prohibits law enforcement from collecting or maintaining information about the “political, religious, or social views, associations, or activities” of individuals or organizations unless that information is connected to a criminal investigation.

The City of Medford refuted allegations in the lawsuit in a statement to the press, writing that MPD “reviews publicly available social media to address legitimate public safety concerns related to public rallies and protests.” Using phrasing from ORS 181A.250, the statement further claimed MPD does not conduct “information-gathering specifically about the ‘political, religious or social views’ of individuals.”

Learning that police may have been monitoring their activities was distressing for Jones and Strong. “What’s especially chilling about invasive surveillance is you often don’t know it’s happening, but you’re being impacted by it, and that can really hurt a person’s sense of self, security and freedom,” Simon told Truthout.

Additionally, Jones and Strong were arrested in August 2023 when police arrived unannounced at a Stabbin’ Wagon-sponsored low-barrier HIV testing and sex education event. When officers took a young person into custody at that event without apparent cause, Jones and Strong shouted in protest and were also detained. Dashcam footage later revealed that one of the arresting officers had said, “Those activists are literally the worst human beings ever, and I am very happy they are going to jail.” The pair have also faced online doxxing from right-wing groups.

The alleged surveillance and other harassment and police encounters led Jones and Strong to step down from their positions at Stabbin’ Wagon. Strong left in October 2023 but returned recently to help establish the organization’s peer respite center. Jones has not returned. In January, LeDuc Montgomery filed a tort claim notice against the City of Medford on behalf of Stabbin’ Wagon, the first step in a potential lawsuit seeking damages.

Meanwhile, the ACLU lawsuit seeks injunctive relief, meaning a mandate prohibiting MPD from collecting or maintaining any further information on the plaintiffs’ activities. “We want the Oregon courts to make clear to the Medford police that this type of surveillance that they’ve been engaged in against our clients and other groups in Oregon violates Oregon law, and it needs to stop,” Simon told Truthout.

Strong said they hope the lawsuit might empower other progressive activists and organizations to stand up for their rights. “This lawsuit, I think, is important in the sense that we are setting a precedent for other organizations in other counties to fight against the oppression and the surveillance that they’re experiencing.”