Burgess's Safe Streets package is far more than a 'crackdown'
The proposal, bound to disturb Seattle sensibilities, is a balanced approach to helping the homeless while also making our streets more safe. Just ask some homeless and mentally ill people about their fears on Seattle streets.
Thursday’s Seattle Times headline said, "Panhandling crackdown urged by Seattle council member". Seattlepi.com liked the “crackdown” term, too: “Burgess: Put more cops on street, crack down on panhandlers.” The Conversation program on KUOW solicited call-ins by repeating, “Seattle city council member Tim Burgess wants to crack down on aggressive panhandling! Some say he’s really cracking down on the homeless.” The kind of truculent talk that wakes up audiences seems cartoonish in this case.
The proposed ordinance is number three of Burgess’s five-part Safer Streets Initiative. The ordinance included in the initiative would prohibit aggressive solicitation from paid street solicitors as well as from panhandlers. It is expressly designed to preserve freedom of speech as well as the economic vitality of the city. The goal is to improve the quality of public life so that businesses are not adversely affected by street disorder and jobs are safeguarded. It is also aimed at steering people who offend because of mental illness or addiction toward social services.
There is also a broader context. Recommendation 1 in the initiative is to return foot patrols to streets in the downtown core. Recommendation 2 is to go forward with the Neighborhood Policing Plan, and hire more police officers. Recommendations 4 and 5 urge, respectively, coordinating street outreach so that more people who need support services will receive them, and increasing the availability of housing with support services for individuals with mental health and addiction problems.
Some will ask why a new ordinance is needed when “aggressive begging” is already listed in the criminal code as illegal (12A.12.015). Burgess’s office replies that “aggressive solicitation” in the proposed ordinance defines disorderly behaviors more precisely than does the earlier law, whose generality makes it harder to enforce. Under the new legislation, for example, solicitors may not follow people down the street, approach them when they are using an ATM (for obvious reasons), or when they are using a parking pay station (a payer can feel vulnerable during the wait required for securing validation, or feel cornered in a parking lot).
Also, offenses against the new ordinance are classified as civil instead of criminal infractions, to permit swifter on-the-spot police responses. Persons who could not afford to pay the $50 fine would be asked to perform community service.
I share the normal liberal tendency to oppose forces that might further impoverish the poor or disempower the weak. But this comes up against the reality that homeless and mentally ill people are among the most vulnerable to street aggression. I meet weekly for coffee with a man who has paranoid schizophrenia (I’ve called him "Gerald" in these pages). Though his emotional balance is not strong, he has for many years managed his illness with the medications he hates to take. Earlier this week he phoned me to say that he wouldn’t be able to join me as usual because, he said, “The bus stop is so scary. There are so many people dealing drugs, and people come up and ask me for money, and I look like an easy touch. They won’t leave me alone.”
What my homeless alcoholic friend "Benjamin" most fears is being overpowered by street thugs. Young and skinny, he's been robbed more than once of the spare change he manages to collect by standing quietly against a building and (in a free-speech gesture preserved by Burgess’s ordinance) holding out a cup. Seattle’s streets belong to us all.
Support service agencies downtown (Compass Center, YWCA, Plymouth Housing Group, Downtown Emergency Services Center, and others) know that the population they serve is vulnerable to street violence. They support the proposed legislation.
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Comments:
Posted Fri, Feb 26, 9:48 a.m. Inappropriate
Oh please.
How does further prohibition of panhandling in any way protect the homeless from violence?
And the very premise that new "aggressive panhandling" legislation is needed is crass pandering to the law and order sensibilities of a certain part of the electorate.
"Generality" does NOT make the current ordinance "harder to enforce." Aggressive panhandling ordinances are subject to more police discretion than just about any other law, precisely because the meaning of the term "aggressive" is subject to interpretation. Throw in the no sitting ordinance, and police already have carte blanche to move homeless people around anytime they feel like it. And if they decide to cut the homeless a break, there's a private police force-- some of them wearing SPD uniforms while working for various members of the Downtown Seattle Association, others wearing Metropolitan Improvement District uniforms-- that are more than happy to interpret the law liberally. Indeed, that's part of their job description.
Having the homeless then be required to do community service because they were begging for money-- what a sick joke.
Posted Fri, Feb 26, 11:28 a.m. Inappropriate
I wish Mr. Burgess well but I suspect the truth is that the majority of the offensiveness that annoys downtown shoppers (including me) is going to be hard to define as illegal.
Posted Fri, Feb 26, 5:04 p.m. Inappropriate
Nice job, Judy, going after journalistic laziness and an over-worked metaphor (crack down). Recourse to this reminds me of another unhelpful metaphor, "war" on terrorism. In my biz the saying goes, "Nothing worse than a metaphor that has done its work." Thanks. Tony Robinson
Posted Fri, Feb 26, 7:45 p.m. Inappropriate
"How does further prohibition of panhandling in any way protect the homeless from violence?" and "required to do community service because they were begging for money" -
Oh, Trevor, what a pity you can't read what is on the page. It must be a real problem for you in this day and age.
Posted Mon, Mar 1, 12:02 a.m. Inappropriate
I'm happy to see recommendations 1 and 2 at the top of the list. As for number 3, it sounds like Tim is pandering to someone. I don't fault him for that, that comes with his job. However, 1 and 2 would be sufficient to crack down on aggressive panhandling. Not clear that 3 makes much difference.
Posted Mon, Mar 1, 11:29 a.m. Inappropriate
I don't see how creating an overbroad, unnecessary public ordinance as a shrine for peoples' fear of The Other is the reasonable business of our City Council. I recently stood at an ATM downtown and while my cash request was in process, someone approached me and asked for money. I said no. End of story. I've been approached a few other times and I've said yes or no; it's my decision and I don't feel afraid to make it, because ATMs are not located in the middle of a dark wilderness; they're in public places. If you are afraid of people who don't look like you and ask you for things, you should probably stay home. If you do leave your home and feel that you are being threatened, call the police. That's what you'd have to do anyway if Mr. Burgesss' proposed ordinance goes through.
The overused metaphor is "war on terror", not "war on terrorism." The latter would actually be more appropriate to the situation. Otherwise, I'm not sure what Mr. Robinson was attempting to say.
Posted Mon, Mar 1, 11:30 a.m. Inappropriate
There is a cultural malaise about Seattle that upsets lots of people, the eventual result being tension, alienation, disdain for others, resentment, rudeness, disorderly conduct, criminality, etc. I blame automobile-related business interests for Seattle's ruinously alienating traffic.
Posted Mon, Mar 1, 12:28 p.m. Inappropriate
...and Trevor was 100% on point.
Posted Tue, Mar 2, 10:23 p.m. Inappropriate
nobody with a brain can support this initiative because it simply has nothing to do with actual street crime, nothing to do with improving street outreach services and nothing to do with improved housing for the poor -- all imputed by Burgess as coinciding with the agressive panhandling ordinance. This does one thing. It erases the boundary between the poor and crime. They panhandle, therefore they must be the drug users/sellers. It's such a slippery slope and the deciders will be distracted citizens now told to be afraid, and police who are now under attack fro not stopping street drug crime. Those who say this will protect the vulnerable on the street are not paying attention at all. This is one more permission to sweep those at risk. And it is all about business, which would be better served by two things; that is, free downtown parking, and less chaos on the city streets with regard to getting around. I'd bet more than 50% of the region avoids driving in downtown Seattle,...
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