After major drug bust at Portland convenience store, neighbors ‘wait and see’ for improvements

When Andrew Champion and his partner decided to buy a home, they considered leaving Portland’s Eliot neighborhood. Instead, they bought a place barely a block away from their apartment.

“We like Eliot,” Champion said. “You can walk or bike to just about anywhere in the city.”

He spoke with a lamenting tone, however, fully aware that his neighborhood, just north of the Moda Center, has also been at the epicenter of some of Portland’s most headline-grabbing challenges: drug use, homelessness, sex trafficking.

Their duplex, where they live in the basement-level unit, gave Champion a view of all those problems meandering by his front windows. He now lives next door to the convenience store that has been at the center of a year-long drug trafficking investigation by Portland police.

“It was extremely stressful,” Champion said, seated in front of a window where eye-level meant looking at parked car tires and the shoes of passersby.

“You’d have a car parked right in front of this table, where we’re sitting now. People would jump in and out of a minivan to make a transaction,” he said. “I spent a whole day watching somebody do that kind of thing.”

In early March, police busted a drug ring that had been operating out of the nondescript minimart at the corner of North Williams Avenue and North Stanton Street. The case culminated in the proprietor’s arrest and seven felony charges.

City officials celebrated with a press conference at Dawson Park, a long-cherished neighborhood park that has seen an increase in drug crimes and gun violence. Officials cautioned the arrest that it won’t solve the issues overnight. Portland Police Chief Bob Day called it a “small step.”

Champion, who attended the press conference alongside several neighbors, said he’s hopeful. He noted it has taken a while for the city to be proactive.

“It was very difficult to get action taken once that hole started being dug,” Champion said of the issues. “We have suffered in this pocket of extreme vice and violence at this intersection.”

Neighbors are cautiously optimistic it will have at least some positive impact on the area and its park.

“Who knows whether this will be the final nail in the coffin, or if it’s just another bump along the way,” said neighbor Allan Rudwick.

Drug sales via EBT card and a ‘safe haven’ for dealers

When the Portland Police Bureau moved to arrest the store’s proprietor Donald Sharma, he reportedly made a telling remark: someone must have snitched.

Sharma and his Stop N Go Mini Mart had become a criminal nexus for the Eliot neighborhood by the time of his March 4 arrest. Sharma’s arrest was first reported by Willamette Week.

OPB obtained records that cite an affidavit for a search warrant and seizure order. The documents shed new light on the allegations against him

Sharma, the documents alleged, allowed people to buy drugs with EBT cards at a 50% markup. He would front them cash in other instances.

When police drove through the area, the records said, Sharma opened his doors to other drug dealers to come “hide their stash” and stowaway temporarily until the police left the area.

OPB was unable to obtain the entire search warrant records, which were sealed by a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge.

Pat Dooris, a spokesperson for the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office, said the records remain sealed because the investigation is active and “revealing the search warrant could make it harder for investigators.”

Law enforcement built their case using confidential informants, records show. Investigators conducted multiple interviews, sometimes months apart, to deduce Stop N Go’s alleged role as a criminal hub.

The informants bought drugs from Sharma directly, according to the records. The convenience store sold “crack pipes, Brillo pads or anything else” needed to use drugs.

Stolen goods were reportedly bought and sold at the market, as well. Police noted in September a “prolific organized retail thief and burglar” left an “armful” of boxes at the store.

After police arrested Sharma during a traffic stop, he reportedly admitted that “five to six people” regularly stashed drugs at the store. He admitted to selling crack pipes to crack smokers — and said he was ashamed.

While Sharma faces multiple felony counts, neighbors were incensed to learn that a technicality spared him one other serious drug dealing charge because the nearby Montessori school did not statutorily qualify as a “school.”

Multnomah County District Attorney Nathan Vasquez shared their frustrations at a recent press conference.

“I believe that this conduct — being so close to a school, being so close to (Legacy Emanuel) hospital, being so close to churches — is absolutely unacceptable,” he said.

Sharma has denied selling drugs, according to court records. He pleaded not guilty to all seven felony drug charges on March 12.

‘Pioneer Square for Black Portlanders’

The Stop N Go Mini Mart sits kitty-corner from a historic landmark for many Black Portlanders: Dawson Park.

Once viewed as an emblem of “Black cultural, social and recreational activities” according to one longtime neighbor, recently it has struggled with issues including gun violence and public drug use.

Investigators in the court records described the half-acre plaza as a “high vice area that supports a bustling open air drug market, stolen property sales, sex trafficking, shootings and other crimes.”

James Posey, president of the NAACP’s Portland chapter, has lived next to the park for more than four decades and has had a close view of its complicated history.

Throughout the 20th century, generations of Black Portlanders were pushed and pulled by unjust housing practices, redlining and eminent domain. The vast majority of Black Portlanders were segregated to the North Portland neighborhood of Albina, near Dawson Park.

Residents invoke images of social functions, people playing dominoes, games of pick-up basketball and children clambering on the playground – the “Pioneer Square for Black Portlanders,” Posey said.

But the park and much of the neighborhood has been in a skid for nearly two decades, he said. Another outside force – gentrification – has pushed longtime neighbors to other parts of the city. Home values more than doubled from 2013 to 2023, according to census data.

At the same time, gun violence spiked near the park. Police have investigated a handful of shootings in the neighborhood, including last summer when an unsolved shooting littered an intersection with more than 80 shell casings.

According to state records, Sharma and his partner obtained a liquor license at the Stop N Go in 2020. Records provided by the OLCC showed it garnered no complaints until the bust.

The steady pressure applied by the real estate market combined with the spate of gun violence have wreaked havoc on the Eliot neighborhood, Posey said. He criticized city leaders and police for taking a lax approach.

“This whole community has been neglected, if you ask me,” he said.

Where do we go from here?

Many neighbors told OPB they’re pleased that Portland police investigated and eventually busted the Stop N Go. It may not be a panacea, they acknowledged, but it’s a start.

In recent years, as gun violence and drug use became more prevalent, neighbors installed baby gates and pet barricades on their front porches to keep malingerers off their stoops. Wrought iron fences have emerged outside nearby churches and businesses.

Many attributed that behavior to the drugs flowing out of the market, which they said was no secret to locals.

“Not a surprise,” Posey said, when asked about his reaction to the drug investigation. “We could have predicted it. There’s been many, many years of them selling.”

Following the bust, the OLCC recommended suspending the Stop N Go’s license.

The property owners, who live in Vancouver, Washington, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The city and neighbors still see opportunity for change. Rudwick, an Eliot neighbor since 2008, said “a lot of different pieces” have to contribute to a solution – like making something out of the neighborhood’s unused, or underused, lots.

“I think there’s something about that store – and the way the neighborhood is around that store – is making it a conducive place to deal drugs or do crime,” said Rudwick, who sits on the neighborhood association.

Perhaps with the convenience store out-of-operation, he said, the neighborhood’s reputation as a drug marketplace will fade among users. If families start using Dawson Park more comfortably, he’d call the drug bust a success.

“I don’t feel like anyone’s ready to just wholeheartedly jump into that. We’ll see how things go over the next month, six months,” Rudwick said. “It’s a little bit of a wait and see.”

If it remains a convenience store, Posey said, it should sell goods that will nurture the community and eschew cheap liquor and lottery tickets. It could be a launching pad for a young entrepreneur, he said.

For Champion, who lives right next to the store, he wants to see it torn down and turned into housing.

“I would be perfectly welcoming of anybody who came to live here,” Champion said.

Maybe the fences would start to come down, Champion said, as he nodded to a row of plastic posts outside his basement-unit window. The posts prevented cars from idling outside the market during drug deals.

“I’d love to get the plastic posts removed so that my neighbors can just park wherever,” he said, “instead of having them occupied by drug dealers and users.”