Flags banned while drug dealers protected

[from the Daily Mail]:

The manager of the Oaks Apartments in Albany, Oregon, has banned tenant vehicles (including motorcycles) from displaying American flags — oh, and flags of other countries, as well.

And the ACLU is cool with this.

“I’m trying to avoid any conflict. I have a problem when tenants’ rights to free speech come into contact with other tenants’ rights of peaceful enjoyment. This policy is not a violation of anyone’s civil rights. We’re a diverse community here, and we’ve had previous problems with this sort of thing,” Barb Holcomb told the Democrat-Herald newspaper.

She is the nonresident manager of the Oaks Apartments at 1440 Geary Circle S.E., owned by Stan Keller.

Excuse me, what kind of person is upset by the American flag?

Members of the ACLU apparently.

“It is my understanding in Oregon that an owner of private property can apply those types of restrictions,” said Jann Carson, the associate director of the ACLU of Oregon.

Um, not really. This summer, the ACLU fought a ban on drug dealers as tenants in Indiana — citing the First Amendment.

Rebecca Green of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reported:

For more than 15 years, the city of Fort Wayne has forced landlords to evict tenants implicated in any type of drug activity.

But that policy is under attack by the American Civil Liberties Union and a local landlord who says the ordinance violates free-speech rights.

The ordinance, dubbed an “anti-narcotics bill,” took effect in January 1993 and was largely the culmination of efforts by a local landlord. Thomas Ostragni began a crusade in the late 1980s, taping drug transactions at his properties, meeting with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and pressuring City Council members.

The ordinance says in part that no person who owns real estate shall knowingly allow it to be used as a site for any use or sale of illegal narcotics. It fines landlords $2,500 a day for every day they fail to initiate and complete eviction proceedings against tenants who deal or consume drugs.

So there you have it.

On Planet ACLU, landlords can evict you — and Holcomb warned one man she would — for having an American flag decal on your car, but landlords cannot evict for being a drug dealer.
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