Tempe politicians want police to run collections for campaign reform plan

Tempe city councilors hope people of color, poor won't mind footing the bill for politicians' backbone transplants

In what must rank as one of the most boneheaded moves in Tempe government history, the Tempe city council is considering turning to a regressive fee tacked onto traffic tickets in order to pay for a public campaign system for city council and mayoral elections, all in the name of thwarting the increasing grip that developers have on the upside-down pyramid.

Citing an electoral system taken prisoner by developers, local elected officials hope that adding a fee on top of speeding tickets will raise an independent source of revenue for funding candidates not captive to wealthy real estate interests (presumably these captives include the current council).

Speaking to AzCentral, Councilman Schapira described the current workings of city government in bleak terms:

“Right now in Tempe, if you’re a pro-developer council member who always votes the way developers want you to vote, developers are going to find a way to finance your campaign and you’re basically guaranteed re-election.”

The evidence for his claim is plain to see for most anyone in Tempe with eyes. The pace of new building in Tempe is rapid and, fueled by tax breaks doled out left and right by the city, aims almost exclusively for the luxury market. 

Locals feel increasingly squeezed out. Many have seen their rents sky rocket in recent years. Rising rents are a common complaint on a downtown Tempe neighborhood group, Maple-Ash-Farmer-Wilson (MAFW), which boasts nearly 3300 members.

A recent ABC15 piece pointed out that Tempe average rents have jumped nearly $250 since 2010 with most of that almost certainly coming in the more current end of that range. 

Tempe rents rising steeply (graphs via ABC15)

Clearly there is a problem. City council is basically waving the white flag to developers and telling city residents quite clearly that they have no backbone and that they are helpless before the developer juggernaut. 

But while almost everyone who isn't receiving a massive tax break to build luxury condos can probably agree that stemming the influence of real estate profiteers is a noble cause, there's a big problem with the solution some city councilors are putting forward.

A fee placed on speeding tickets has several serious issues, not least of all questions about the group implementing it and who's going to pay for it. Since the fee is attached to speeding tickets, the task of collection falls to the Tempe Police Department. Let's address that first.

Last November, Down and Drought broke the story locally about massive disparities in Tempe PD's African-American arrest rate. Following unrest in Ferguson sparked by the shooting of Michael Brown, USA Today reviewed arrest reports nationwide. That investigation found that the disproportionate arrest of blacks was common throughout the country, but specifically it noted that many cities, including Tempe, arrested blacks at rates higher than Ferguson PD.

This information recently raised serious questions about the ability of Tempe PD to do their job without a racial bias. Downtown residents took concerns about this data to the city and officials discussed it at a February 10th meeting of the Tempe Human Relations Committee (.PDF).

Via Feb 10th Tempe Human Relations Committee Minutes

At another meeting with the city, Tempe residents were assured that in response to the data, a massive Tempe policing operation known as "Safe and Sober" would be canceled. 

The operation, highly unpopular in the party-prone neighborhoods surrounding ASU, featured over a dozen and sometimes nearly 20 police agencies flooding the area, stopping thousands of drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians over the course of several weekends, ostensibly to combat what the city called "rowdyism." Partying, essentially. Something many locals consider a birthright.

Considering the USA Today data, residents of MAFW demanded that the city account for the racial breakdown in those stops. The city replied that it had no way to track that data because police agencies from other cities took those reports with them when they left. Whether true or not, claiming incompetence is not a very inspiring defense.

Considering the scale of the program and the disparities USA Today had revealed, the city wisely canceled the program. Taking that data into account, for the two years it ran Safe and Sober may have been one of the biggest profiling operations in the country, in the same category as NYC's racist "Stop and Frisk" program.

Graphic via State Press

Writing in the Arizona Republic, Tempe City Councilman David Schapira discussed the USA Today data:

In February, The Republic wrote of disproportionate Black arrest rates in the Valley. The article noted that three East Valley cities, including Tempe, "arrested Black people at a rate higher than in Ferguson, Mo." in 2011 and 2012. Despite initial challenges to the data in the article, our own internal data ultimately showed the same thing.

In the same years examined in the article, our data showed that Black Tempe residents were arrested at nearly three times the rate of White residents, a proportion that is indeed worse than Ferguson.

Not long after, Tempe Police Chief Tom Ryff, the long-serving top cop in town and originator of the Safe and Sober program, resigned. Local media reported that the USA Today data had played a role in his departure.  Again, Councilman Schapira spoke out, saying "I'm excited to see what a new chief can do in terms of building morale in the department and building a culture ...that's a positive one for the city and building really strong relationships in the community."

When speaking before the city's Human Relations Commission, Chief Ryff and Director Brenda Buren justified the data by saying, essentially, that it showed that police nationwide are racist and that Tempe PD may only be targeting blacks who drive through the city. Again, not much of a defense. If you have to indict your entire profession, you've lost the argument. Tempe historically was a "sundown town," a city where after sunset African-Americans and other people of color were strongly encouraged to get out of town. Tempe PD's assertion that they target out of towners lines up with this disgraceful tradition.

This is all highly relevant to the city's proposal to fund its clean elections program with speeding tickets. After all, TPD's documented racism, acknowledged by the city, will obviously effect the way it enforces speeding tickets. The truth is, not everyone catches TPD's attention equally, and as a result, these fees, tacked onto speeding tickets, will disproportionately come from people of color, particularly Tempe's black population and any African-Americans passing through or visiting Tempe.

The city seems bent on projecting a progressive attitude lately, with its recent changes to its discrimination law. But piggy-backing your election "reforms" on the backs of the Valley's non-white population, collected through a police department with well-documented and officially acknowledged racism, hardly seems in line with this objective.

Councilwoman Kuby says it's not a tax.

Further, given the income disparities between blacks and whites, we can reasonably  extrapolate that the poor in particular will also be disproportionately affected by these fees. And it just so happens that African-Americans and the poor are also the most likely to have been deliberately excluded from the electoral system through just the kind of racially-biased policing that Tempe engages in.

And the poor are the most likely to see little value in participating in formal politics, a position city council clearly must have some sympathy for, given that they themselves are about as enfranchised as it gets and yet at the root of this reform is city councilors claims that even they are helpless before wealthy developers.

___________________________

"For a city that distinguished itself recently for arresting blacks at a higher rate than Ferguson, you'd think Tempe would be loathe to court another comparison to a city emblematic of systemic racism."

___________________________

In a recent Twitter exchange with Down and Drought, Councilwoman Kuby seemed averse to calling this a tax, but the fact remains that it's a compulsory contribution, administered by a racist police force, taken from those least likely to protest it. It's an easy fee to assess, passing the buck onto people who can't afford it, and for whom the disruption of arrest that would come with non-payment would be the most crippling. After all, not paying a traffic ticket can land you in jail and when you're broke even a few dollars can make a big difference.

Kuby's error seems mostly centered on a desire to accomplish what she thinks is a larger good. But this still doesn't excuse ignoring the details of how it will be implemented and who will be implementing it.

Schapira's backing of the new fee is even more troubling, indicating a peculiar selectivity when it comes to TPD's racism. While he was clear in his June 9th Arizona Republic editorial about TPD's racism and its impact on Safe and Sober, he was somehow unconcerned about it just a few weeks later when defending Tempe's new ordinance banning smoking with children in the car.

In that case, he was not bothered by Tempe PD's documented racism and its impact on enforcement of the law.  Quite a reversal!

"We fashioned the ordinance to treat violations as secondary offenses. Officers will only cite those pulled over for something else.

In other words, if a cop busts you for speeding and sees a lit cigarette in the ashtray and a kid sucking fumes in the back seat, you're going to owe $50."

What's the difference? How could it be that safe and sober was a racist policing operation while somehow other enforcement measures, like the smoking law or the proposed fee-financed public campaign system, are immune from such biased policing? After all, a racist police force that is documented to target blacks will certainly likewise cite them more often for secondary offenses. You can't be cited for a secondary offense if you're not stopped in the first place, and we know who TPD likes to stop. This is carceral progressivism and should be opposed. City council needs to reverse course immediately.

In our opinion, the shocking data detailing Tempe PD's disproportionate arrests rates for African-Americans ought to have the City of Tempe pulling back on all enforcement and seriously questioning its application across the board. Instead, they seem to be charging headlong into policy territory -- public funding via criminal fees -- reminiscent of Ferguson. For a city that distinguished itself recently for arresting blacks at a higher rate than Ferguson, you'd think Tempe would be loathe to court another comparison to a city emblematic of systemic racism.

The bottom line is, it's not fair to make the city's most marginalized populations pay for the city council's lack of backbone. This fee is a regressive tax extracted at gunpoint by a racist police force. Further, it will raise money from groups most excluded from or most fed up with politics. If the city council can't find the wherewithal to stand up to developers and real estate interests seeking handouts, then maybe they don't deserve their jobs in the first place. Poor residents and African-Americans in Tempe are already paying out of proportion to their numbers, is it right to make them pay again?

Cops say what they really think about ASU Professor Ore in online fourms and it's not pretty

Just keyboard warriors? Behold one cop's response to the arrest of Professor Ore. Here's what a bunch more had to say. Are you mad yet?

REM870 is a reference to a shotgun commonly used by police

On August first, ASU English professor Ersula Ore will be sentenced for "passively resisting an unlawful arrest" after Officer Stewart Ferrin confronted her for jaywalking and obstructing traffic in closed off a construction zone near the university.

The case sparked outrage, protest and even some drama at one of the Tempe city council candidate forums when outraged community members vocalized their frustration with local cops. As the scandal put pressure on ASU, the officer was put on leave and the two top bosses at the university cop shop were eventually replaced. Local dissident cop blog, The Integrity Report, has been documenting the internal shakeup which at least some officers seem to hope will create an opportunity to rein in a police force that they allege (with a good deal of evidence) is unaccountable and out of control.

Professor Ore (Photo via Phoenix New Times)

But since Ore took responsibility for her act of self-defense, much of the tension has dissipated from this once highly controversial and contentious case. Coverage was mixed in the media but it has mostly dropped off the radar as she moves towards sentencing.

Notable exceptions include a recent exchange of letters to the editor, one by former Mesa cop Bill Richardson defending Ferrin's character, followed by a response challenging it ("Letter: Police officer's personality doesn't matter"), both run in the State Press, ASU's east campus newspaper. Over the course of the scandal, one particular local weekly news blog/magazine left some very interesting things out of the story, but we'll come back to that at the end.

We at Down and Drought pay a lot of attention to the police, including cop online forums. So when we saw last week that New York Magazine had run a piece focusing on the comments from officers on various cop websites regarding the recent death of a cigarette vender, who appears to have died as a result of very rough treatment by the NYPD, we thought we'd give the Ore case the same treatment. We thought: let's see what cops have to say online about her case, under the cover of (what they think is ) anonymity.

As the NY Magazine article points out, in order to post on cop forums like PoliceOne.com, you have to register and be verified as an actual cop or retired law enforcement officer. PoliceOne.com boasts over 200,000 members and claims that they "confirm the status of all officers registering... by calling that officer’s department directly." Which means when you read opinions from commentators on their forums, you can be pretty sure you're getting the thoughts of a cop or former cop.

We were able to track some of these officers back to their departments ourselves through basic internet searches and confirm that they are in fact cops, but we weren't able to link any of them directly to ASU -- although some of the comments we looked at demonstrated knowledge of policing in Tempe and Arizona.

READ: TEMPE POLICE HAVE A STINGRAY CELL PHONE SPYING DEVICE BUT THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT IT

That said, it's important to note that the comments we're sharing here, while outrageous, weren't out of step with the general tenor of comments we found. No comments defended Ore and most posters thought that Ferrin had been too forgiving with her. As we've demonstrated before, Phoenix and Tempe police have notoriously bad senses of humor (see here, and here, and here). So there's no reason to think that they are any better than online cops in terms of their opinions.

So let's dig in and see what some cops had to say about the Ore arrest. To get things started, here's one officer making a joke referencing sexual assault. Remember, Ore objected vocally on the video about Ferrin's manhandling of her causing her dress to hike up. Thus an officer naturally thought this was an appropriate joke to make.

 In the same comment thread, another officer chimes in:

In a different post on the same site, user "SgtDavidWilliams" rushes to Ferrin's defense, counseling that she's lucky she didn't get the rougher treatment he thinks she deserved:

Advocating for less tolerance and a higher degree of violence was common in the online cop forums we looked at. Most officers took the position that Ferrin had been too kind in his interaction with Ore.

Officers also frequently argued for liberal use of the Taser. One user hinted in a "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" sort of way that "I did see a taser on his belt, correct?" In the comment below, the reference to "sparky" (the taser) may or may not be a double entendre also alluding to the ASU mascot, but it certainly indicates a casualness that is disturbing when it comes to the use of a weapon that has been linked to many deaths over the years.

Along similar lines was another comment boasting that the "college professor would've met the pavement far sooner had I been arresting her." Yet another joked that Ferrin should "probably work on that straight arm bar takedown." Later in the thread another member says, "She really needed to taste the color of the paint on the hood."

Another set of comments focused on Ore's race and gender, reflecting the usual tact and sophistication that one tends to expect from the reactionary right.

 

 

  

In an era of increasing skepticism and worry about the police, even on the traditionally law and order right, comments like those we found don't do cops any favors in the PR department. If white middle class people -- the traditional base of support for law enforcement, no matter how brutal -- are worried about their interactions with police then it's an indication of something significant going on. Police should be worried. The carte blanche they've had for, well, basically forever may be in danger.

And those curious omissions I mentioned at the beginning? One of the curious features of the Ore coverage was the oddly reactionary treatment from the Phoenix New Times, spearheaded by Ray Stern. Stern went pretty hard against Ore. He conceded Ferrin's approach appeared "mildly thuggish," but when Ore pleaded guilty he pronounced somewhat smugly that, "it looks like Ore's done fighting the good fight. We're not expecting her to follow up on the threat she made in the video to sue the (bleep) out of the officer or ASU."

Read: If ASU can't protect faculty from its violent police, what does it mean for the rest of us?

In one article, Stern in passing gives us a brief history of Stewart Ferrin, who it was revealed early on hails from a law enforcement family and had long harbored aspirations of continuing that legacy. But what legacy? Strangely, Stern fails to mention another little bit of Ferrin law enforcement family history -- one detailed in the very archives of the Phoenix New Times itself!

In a September 1998 article entitled "Thrust and Parry," the New Times detailed in a feature article the story of Alvin Yellowhair, a Native American student at ASU who alleged that Stewart Ferrin's father, John Ferrin, then an officer with the Tempe PD, had beaten and sodomized him with a nightstick after arresting him at a party.

"Advocating for less tolerance and a higher degree of violence was common in the online cop forums we looked at." 

The case, which involved missing evidence and allegations of obstructionism from city officials, was eventually ruled in Ferrin's favor, and he came out the winner in a lawsuit by Yellowhair, too, which was finally resolved by jury in 2005. But the case led to allegations of an out of control police force without proper supervision and the revelation that the senior Ferrin, at that point, had had four citizen complaints against him which the city didn't want to reveal. Does any of this sound familiar? White cop, civilian person of color, ASU, use of force, out of control police force, potential cover up and lack of investigation? Quite an omission, if you ask me!

But Stern's probably right when he says that "ASU's very sensitive to the pubic perception, especially given President Michael Crow's goal to attract 100,000 students to lucrative online-degree programs." Indeed, the University should be concerned about how they will be viewed by prospective or returning students and their parents. Especially if those students aren't white.

Nothing to see here!

As Professor Ore faces sentencing, with a shakeup going on at ASU PD, and with residents in the surrounding neighborhoods increasingly fed up with both the actions of local cops and the complete failure of the politicians to do anything about it, the university and the city would each be well-advised to consider taking immediate public steps to address these concerns with concrete actions.

Locals have put forward several options, from repealing the loud party ordinances that so quickly can escalate under heavy handed policing, to canceling the upcoming "safe & sober" campaign (in which cops invade the neighborhoods and detain residents at rates higher than NYC's "stop & frisk" program), or selling off controversial spy equipment like the Stingray mass cell phone monitoring device.

How about a program of de-militarizing TPD in general? In an era of mass corporate tax giveaways downtown, why not raise some cash by selling off that useless cop clutter? On a related note, does the Tempe Citizens’ Panel for Review of Police Complaints and Use of Force even meet? Down and Drought has been following the public page for this supposed oversight board for a year now and have yet to see a single posting for a public meeting nor any updates on what they're up to.

Meanwhile candidates for city council have to be forced by angry crowds to discuss the police, and the only solutions they seem to have is lavishing them with even more expensive toys which residents can be assured they will abuse. Increasingly, Tempe government looks completely out of step with a public that is asking themselves just what the hell is going on with the cops that patrol their neighborhoods. Does the city have any answers for them? It appears that answer is, no.

Scumbag Tempe creates free public transit, criminalizes using it

Let's hearken back to 2007, shall we? Tempe was dreaming big.  Centerpoint Towers, now reborn as W6 after temporarily pooping out mid-development, was still in progress.  The twin towers steadily rose to unprecedented heights, along with the city's prospects, it was hoped.

So can this can be used arbitrarily? Yes.

And Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman was championing the transformation of the city's public transit system to reflect its New Urbanist vision -- a city of easy transport and just as easy-to-get-to entertainment and work. Easy money, you might call it. The city envisioned an expansion of the existing free transit system, the Flash Forward and Back, into a neighborhood system. Small free buses would snake through the areas surrounding the university, delivering students and shoppers to various city destinations.
 
Quoted in an official city press release at the time, Mayor Hallman described the purpose of the free Orbit system in broad, inclusive terms.  Not only was the system meant to be a simple, green means of getting to work, it was also supposed to serve the old and disabled.  "Many residents — young, old, disabled or those simply desiring to reduce vehicle emissions — are in need of alternative transportation," he said.

Read about Tempe's counter-insurgency strategy in downtown

So it might be surprising to know that a few weeks ago Tempe essentially made taking the city's neighborhood buses a crime for elderly and disabled people.  And probably poor people, too. And probably just about anybody that doesn't fit into the city's yuppie vision for the future. And not only that, the may have turned taking the bus into a potential Fourth Amendment nightmare.

On January 24, 2014, the city council passed a troubling expansion of the city's sidewalk sitting ordinance into the surrounding neighborhoods, effectively criminalizing sitting on the ground while waiting for the free bus. Given that the system utilizes a “flag” stop arrangement, meaning that residents and visitors can essentially wait for and wave down the bus anywhere along the circuitous route where it is reasonably safe for the bus to pick them up, this change in the law represents a dangerous expansion of the ability of police to harass and criminalize people using the system, or just hanging out in front of their own homes minding their own business.

The only no vote came from Councilman Kolby Granville, who questioned the broad language and potential arbitrary enforcement of the ordinance.

Before the vote, Granville questioned legal counsel, asking, "So if I was sitting on the sidewalk in front of my own house, conceivably, could I be violating this rule?" To which counsel responded in the affirmative.  Cops would use their discretion, came the reassuring response.  And when it comes to the police, we know what that means: it will be open season on the poor, people of color and mentally ill and other perceived undesirables.

The passage of the original Tempe sidewalk sitting ban was controversial at the time.  Starting in 1999, community members engaged in a series of protests against the law, and then local ASU graduate student (now a professor at Prescott College) Randall Amster challenged it in court. In an unusual move, the 9th Circuit Court, based out of San Francisco, took up the case and heard the case in Tempe, in a public forum at ASU. Sadly, the court upheld the law. Ironically, it went into effect on Martin Luther King Day.

Down and Drought contacted several city officials for comments on the new ordinance, including Councilman Corey Woods. As the only African-American council member, we were curious if he would have any concerns about potential profiling that may result from the law. In his response to us via Twitter, Woods said the city had considered the effect of similar laws in Phoenix and Mesa, and that their "analysis didn't show profiling happening in those cities."

We requested that data and followed up with Woods via email, who then put us in contact with Bill Amato, police legal advisor to the city. Amato didn't include any data in his response but reiterated the claim that the city had run a "best practices analysis with other jurisdictions that had similar language," and found no reason to suspect increased "4th Amendment or racial profiling claims."

The term Fourth Amendment claims refers to cops using the pretext of police contact made via enforcement of the sidewalk sitting ordinance as cause for a search, which otherwise wouldn't happen.  This troubles Granville, who told us via email that while he's not a legal expert on the question, 'I do not know if violation of the city code is considered to be "an arrest" subject to a search, or if it is something different.  However, my concern is that it may be.'

More coverage of how the City of Tempe is trying to domesticate downtown for developers

But after those initial comments, things get a little tricky. In his response, Amato reminds us that racial profiling and police harassment are not "ordinance specific," meaning that a police force that generally profiles is just as capable of profiling with any law at its disposal. Neither Phoenix nor Mesa have stellar records in this regard.

Readers may recall in 2010 when police assaulted and handcuffed Phoenix City Councilman Michael Johnson as he was checking on a neighbor whose house was on fire. Indeed, we here at Down and Drought broke a story last year involving a racist tweet from a Phoenix police officer. In 2012 a community group accused PPD of racial profiling during traffic stops. And a statewide review of traffic stops by DPS in 2008 by the ACLU revealed widespread bias in police stops in Arizona. And of course, many Tempe residents remember the Sgt. Schoville affair. And just recently we saw allegations that Tempe police offered protection to a frat that threw a racist party. So there is certainly cause for concern.

Criminals up to no good in Tempe?

So essentially Amato's message to us is that we should just trust the police, despite ample cause for skepticism. However, it seems even the city is having some second thoughts. Amato tells us, 'As one final note, staff will be bringing this ordinance back to Council to add some additional language. The proposed language will add additional safeguards by requiring the conduct to “unreasonably impede the right of way or cause a safety risk”.'

Tempe police sent anti-terror cops to spy on gardeners in a bar

So, if there's no reason for concern, why the need for additional language to prevent the abuses they claim won't happen in the first place? It certainly begs the question as to why the ordinance is needed at all. Is this a solution looking for a problem? Or is this push for increased policing related to other standardization measures in North Tempe, such as increased enforcement of noise ordinances and yard codes?

To us, it looks like a part of a broader attempt by the city to domesticate the valuable downtown area, to make it safe for development and high end condo owners, and to enclose all social life in Tempe in one of three places: in city sanctioned mega events and the bars of Mill Avenue (where they can be taxed and policed), or quietly and meekly inside residents' homes. Our guess is that's exactly what this is, and that's another big reason all residents should oppose it.

To the sidewalks!

Tempe city council pushes plan to domesticate and homogenize downtown neighborhoods

Anystreet, "South Tempe"

Anticipating the repulsion the millionaires that the City of Tempe hopes to attract to downtown will feel when looking down from their penthouses on the unruly backyards of the proletarian masses in downtown Tempe, the city has announced the results of a new study evaluating compliance with residential codes.  And, in these data and the new plan to bring the city up to standard, they provide a glimpse at the bland, suburban future they envision for what they are calling "North Tempe" (but which everyone else just calls Tempe).

This future can be viewed right now, in what they city government terms "South Tempe" (essentially the part of the city that most downtown residents consider Greater Chandler).  The new plan for turning downtown into a clone of its lawn-obsessed, bourgeois minivan driving, go-to-sleep-at-a-reasonable-hour-but-I-can't-sleep-with-all-that-noise southern sibling comes on the heals of recent efforts to turn down the volume on Mill Avenue and a crackdown on parties in the neighborhoods.

Tempe government is making big moves again after the collapse of the housing/condo market several years ago set their big dreams back, giving residents a respite from the relentless development and transformation of the downtown and surrounding neighborhoods.  For several years, the stalled, unfinished twin towers that now go by the yuppie-friendly monicker "W6" stood over the city like a skeletal reminder of the sinister future that had stalked residents, slain at the last moment but too large to drag away, so left to decompose in the town square as a warning to others.

They stood as a warning to the others.

But the beast is back now, and the city is considering deploying three new code enforcers to bring downtown in line with the South.  According to the tally of a recent survey of homes north and south of Baseline Road, the more conformist southern residents scored very nearly perfect ratings (surprise, surprise!), while the north fared noticeably worse.  Now the city hopes to use these new enforcers and their new approach to code compliance to impose "a positive, uniform appearance for residential properties across the community."  That is, to make downtown look more like the south.

In the city's press release, Councilman Kolby Granville declared ,“This is a historic step for Tempe in the way we look at residential code compliance. Our residents will be the beneficiaries when it comes to living in a community that has a more uniformly positive appearance.”

But -- and this is important -- when the city talks about "residents", they don't mean everyone, despite talking in such broad language.  And they don't even mean current residents.  What city planners and politicians have in mind is a virtual population of people not yet living in Tempe.  Aside from the developers and their money, this is their constituency.  It's a demographic more affluent than current residents, and less diverse.  It is a gentrifying settler population, uptight, law-biding, professional and upper class.  The kind that is attracted to a neighborhood and immediately sets about changing it, imposing their values on everyone people who already live there.

This new focus on code enforcement, noise reductions and party restrictions is their way of preparing the battlefield, pacifying the local population and domesticating the neighborhood for investors, yuppies and the second tier spoiled brat children of the wealthy who couldn't trade on mommy and daddy's legacy admissions and instead got the consolation prize of ASU out of state tuition and a new BMW convertible.

Neighborhood residents already avoid Mill Avenue like the plague.  If this transformation of downtown isn't going to sanitize the rest of the neighborhood and displace residents, it will mean standing up to maintain what's left of downtown's disheveled demeanor.  It will mean house parties, loud music and unkempt yards.  It's going to mean demanding that newcomers to the neighborhood come appreciating its general character, not seeking to control and dominate it, or to cooperate with the authorities who do.  It means that they can't come to Tempe expecting not to be kept up by loud music occasionally, or to not find red plastic party cups and empty cans in their yards from time to time.

If they don't want that, then maybe they should move south to Greater Chandler.