The city’s new panhandling ordinance, which has not gone into effect, is not about arresting people, both police Chief Shane Guyant and City Attorney Geoffrey Davis told the city council Tuesday.
“We are not trying to find new ways to arrest people, but this behavior is a nuisance and it brings about a negative image for our city,” Guyant said today. “If this ordinance is a tool that helps us to eliminate a nuisance then we consider it a quality tool in our tool bag for enhancing public safety and having a more positive perception of our city.”
One of the matters at issue in the ordinance is aggressive panhandling, Guyant told the panel.
(Related story at this link)
Aggressive panhandling, he said, is when a person continues to solicit after being told no. It also applies to physical contact with a person without consent, blocking the path of a person being solicited, blocking the entrance of a building or vehicle or using abusive language.
“Our first goal is to stop the behavior and as many attempts as we can have to legitimately stop the behavior from happening, that is what our intentions are,” Guyant said. “If the behavior continues on, we have the ability to write a state citation.”
He said the purpose of the ordinance is to address the complaints officers have received.
Since the first of the year, there have been between 15 or 20 calls and police have had no ordinance to guide them. “We currently have nothing in our tool bag to prevent this from happening.”
Guyant ran the ordinance by the City Attorney Geoffrey Davis.
“Right now without this panhandling ordinance, if law enforcement sees a complaint … that someone is aggressively soliciting money, that would essentially be like somebody picking up the phone and calling law enforcement that somebody’s out in this same place wearing a green shirt,” Davis said. “At this point, without this kind of regulation, law enforcement is essentially in the same situation if somebody called in and said somebody is wearing a green shirt.”
Davis said the point of the ordinance is not to arrest people. “If they go 30 days and show that they don’t have any more violations, then they can’t be prosecuted. That was one of the things that Chief Guyant and I spoke about.”
If they meet that criteria, Guyant said the DA’s office will dismiss.
There is no scenario where a city “could absolutely say no panhandling at all,” Davis said. “That’s not legal. That goes against First Amendment rights as far as speech and assembly and all of those things we hear in civics in high school. This does establish legal time, place, and manner restrictions, that is the restrictions of not doing it after night, not doing it within certain distances — things that go to making sure the public feels safe in going out while still creating a scenario if somebody does want to engage in panhandling it gives them some guidance as how they can do it legally.”
He said, “The purpose of this is to regulate it, encourage people to do right and if they’re going to engage in panhandling and they do get caught up in the system to give them some structure where if they address it and they move into compliance with it, then we can resolve that, potentially without any jail time towards them or any kind of fine if they comply.”
Guyant said, “We have historical evidence of people panhandling in this city that we have gone into our own pockets to help these people get back home, get them where they need to be and we have done that such as buying a bus ticket.”
Said Guyant: “We just want to curb the behavior. We have to curb the behavior the best we can. We have zero tools in our tool bag to do so. We definitely understand the mental health options. We do try to find as much mitigation as we can for these people in these situations, but we have to curb the behavior and we have to make sure we have a tool in our tool bag to do such.”
