Seattle City Councilmember Tim Burgess plans to introduce an anti-panhandling law. Here we go again.
Apparently, Burgess wants to take us back 15 years to the era of Mark Sidran and Margaret Pageler. As former city attorney and City Council member respectively, Sidran and Pageler authored the notorious "no-sitting" and "parks exclusion" laws and other anti-homeless "civility" ordinances.
It was one of the most divisive times in Seattle's political history, pitting churches, civil liberties groups, social services and homeless advocates against the downtown establishment and chamber types. The contentiousness spilled out into street protests, sit-ins, marches, civil disobedience, numerous unruly public hearings, court challenges and even death threats.
Sidran and Pageler came to be characterized as insensitive and callous towards the poor - a label that played a significant role in putting an end to their electoral careers in this town.
In a recent radio interview Burgess said his bill would ban panhandling at intersections, freeway entrances, around ATM machines, when people got into and out of their cars and during nighttime hours.
However, in a meeting with homeless advocates, he indicated his proposal might be more narrowly focused, barring panhandling around ATMs and targeting aggressive and/or assaultive behaviors that may occur while people are panhandling.
The bottom line: Such laws simply don't work and are unconstitutional, to boot.
AN UNNECESSARY LAW
There's an array of tools and laws already in place to address aggressive and/or assaultive behavior by panhandlers or anyone else at ATMs, intersections, entrances to freeways and the like, and at any and all hours of the day.
To name just a few, we have laws against assault, pedestrian interference, expectoration, trespass, urination, property defacement, theft, graffiti, drug loitering, stalking, littering, public drinking, menacing, malicious harassment and obstruction.
And we already have an aggressive panhandling law, making it a crime to stand, sit or lie in such a way as to cause someone to take evasive action (whatever that means) and allowing police to arrest someone panhandling with intent to do harm or in a manner that would lead someone to believe reasonably that that they would cause harm.
Even interim Seattle Police Chief John Diaz agrees: In a recent memo to Burgess he pointed out that it's not a problem of not enough laws already out there.
Further, only three people were charged under the current aggressive panhandling law in all of last year, so why would Burgess's new proposal produce any more arrests or prosecutions? Like the current law, enforcement of his proposal is difficult because such cases require someone not only to file a complaint but be available to testify later in court. And if a case ever does get to court, it's likely to be tossed out as unconstitutional.
Just recently, the Ninth Circuit held that regulations of active solicitation in public forums are unconstitutional unless the restrictions are "narrowly tailored" to achieve a "compelling government interest." While public safety is an important government interest, Burgess's broad catch-all hardly meets the "narrowly tailored" standard.
Measures like this anti-panhandling ban, the no-sitting law and pedestrian-interference law give police broad authority to arrest or cite people for non-criminal conduct clog our courts with folks whose only crime is that they are poor. This diverts limited police resources away from their mission to address serious, real crimes.
It also creates a shortage of jail space, leading to demands to spend millions for a new jail.
A DISCRIMINATORY LAW
The Sidran laws passed in the early '90s were touted as a solution to the presence of unruly conduct on our streets, but their underlying goal was to sweep the streets of the poor. Of course, they haven't achieved either goal.
Unfortunately, when such laws fail, as they inevitably do, there are always calls for more draconian measures that go even further in stripping people of their dignity and rights.
These laws are racially discriminatory and anti-poor, which makes them that much more objectionable morally and ethically. Surveys of those arrested under the parks-exclusion law, trespass-admonishment laws and other anti-homeless laws indicate that more than half of those arrested, cited or admonished are people of color - even though these communities represent about 20 percent of the city's overall population.
Burgess claims that panhandlers are not homeless or jobless. Further, he says there's an array of social services that make it unnecessary for a deserving poor person to beg for change. We strongly disagree. A great percentage are indeed homeless, especially in this era of 10-percent unemployment, declining real wages and unaffordable housing prices.
More troubling to us, separating the deserving poor from all who panhandle (who we must assume are up to no good and thus have no claim to our sympathy) effectively stigmatizes a whole class. That's what makes it easier for some to justify violence against these folks: Every year in Seattle, many homeless are beaten and some are murdered.
REAL SOLUTIONS
Instead of moving forward with this or any other social-control law, a review of current laws is needed to uncover their impact on courts and jails - and on the homeless, themselves.
Most importantly, let's look to real solutions like expanded housing opportunities, livable wage jobs and, for those with disabilities, more community-based treatment, counseling and services (linked with housing). Measures like Burgess's proposal are hurtful and simply pit the haves against the have-nots.
John V. Fox and Carolee Colter are coordinators for the Seattle Displacement Coalition (www.zipcon.net), a low-income housing organization.
Reader Comments
Posted: Friday, May 21, 2010
Article comment by:
Frank Plante
This article is, in part, not quite spot on. I am constantly asked for money, in front of my U.S. Post Office, which is across the street from three active bank ATM machines. The people asking me for money are young, and most are either obviously high on drugs or smell of liquor. Do you think I am going to have a sympathetic attitude toward that? They have no interest in assistance except MINE and the next person who walks by. I see the same ones, and even though I have spoken to them to either get their lives straightened out (my daughter was a cocaine and heroin addict, and when she hit the bottom, she got help and is now a productive citizen again) or find themselves soon not breathing. This article actually feels sorry for people who are not given a handout. Bunk! P.S.: I am also a recovering alcoholic. Anyone who gives money to these people and thinks they are doing a charitable service is a fool.
