There have been numerous complaints from the community about bad behavior at the park at Ninth and Astor streets.

The Astoria City Council has supported taking a zero-tolerance approach to bad behavior at the park on Ninth and Astor streets after complaints from residents, business owners and visitors.

Mayor Bruce Jones said city councilors have received a number of complaints about the park, a common gathering place for the homeless with a port-a-potty nearby and regular food distribution by Filling Empty Bellies.

Police Chief Geoff Spalding described a general feeling of lawlessness around the park, which accounted for 470 calls for service in 2020, more than half related to the behavior of people frequenting the area. The park has already gathered 80 more calls for service in January, including two high-profile cases involving a stabbing and an attack with a machete.

Sarah Lu Heath, the executive director of the Astoria Downtown Historic District Association, said bad behavior downtown has further damaged businesses already hurting from the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’ve heard complaints of individuals trying to have phone consultations, but somebody is screaming outside of their door,” she said. “We’ve had a business owner recently physically chased inside her business, and she needed to lock the door and call an APD officer to come.”

With homeless people unable to pay fines and no-camping ordinances difficult to enforce, police have taken a more hands-off approach of directing people toward social services, Spalding said. But the approach isn’t working, he said, and police want the backing of the City Council before pursuing a more direct response that could create pushback in the community.

“Very few people are going to spend any meaningful time in jail or pay a fine that they don’t have money to pay,” Spalding said. “Again, though, we do need to make sure the message is clear that you don’t prey on people in the community, and you follow the rules like we expect everyone else to in the community.”

George Hague, a resident of the Columbia House condominiums several blocks west of the park, warned that police have cracked down on behavior there before, only to have issues shift elsewhere. He called on the city to invest in making the park a destination.

Teresa Barnes, who volunteers at the park and at the Astoria Warming Center, stressed that city councilors should remember the disadvantages homeless people face.

“In this difficult year, when a lot of people have been coping by using alcohol and marijuana, that’s only a crime if you are homeless,” she said. “If you’re doing that inside the comfort of your home, then that’s, ‘Dealing with quarantine.’ It’s also not a crime to be messy unless you’re homeless.”

City councilors recognized the concerns about safety and the reality that bad behavior at the park is only a symptom of larger issues, such as a lack of affordable housing and mental health care.

City Councilor Joan Herman, whose ward includes the park, said she has no issue with people nonviolently congregating.

“I guess, for me, there’s a line we cannot cross,” she said. “And that is when somebody feels threatened, physically. When there’s violence committed, we should not tolerate that at all. We need to respect the rights of people to earn a living downtown.”

City Manager Brett Estes said city staff plans to create a more in-depth recommendation on where services like Filling Empty Bellies could go.

“It’s not a mechanism to close the park permanently, but rather to be able to redirect some of the energies we’re seeing, and some of the activities we’re seeing there now,” he said.