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It’s a Sunday afternoon and, just across the street from the downtown Seattle Art Museum, a panhandler by the name of Gerald is walking a fine line in the eyes of city law.

As pedestrians pass him at the corner of First Avenue and Union Street, Gerald thrusts out a paper coffee cup and asks for change. At other times, he walks up to passersby with his cup, in some cases coming up behind them after they have passed.

No one appears troubled by the nearly toothless 52-year-old, who says he got hit by a car years ago and hasn’t worked since. He’s been homeless off and on and now lives in a subsidized downtown studio, which he pays for with $339 a month that he gets from a state disability program. But that, he says, doesn’t cover food, clothing or laundry. “The only way to earn my living expenses,” Gerald says, “is with panhandling.”

If Gerald were to step in front of anyone, he could risk being charged under a 1993 Seattle law that prohibits aggressive panhandling as a form of pedestrian interference. But in the near future, if he keeps walking up behind people or should get too close to a parking meter or bank machine, a controversial new law proposed last week by Seattle Councilmember Tim Burgess could subject Gerald to a $50 ticket from a police officer, whether or not a passerby complained about him.

Burgess says his aggressive solicitation ordinance is patterned after a similar law passed in Tacoma in 2007 and is narrowly aimed at specific behaviors – including yelling, following a person or asking for money within 15 feet of a bank machine or parking meter – that he says people find intimidating and only add to downtown’s growing crime problem. In the past year, he says, robberies and thefts downtown and in the South Lake Union area have increased 22 percent.

Burgess, who chairs the council’s Public Safety Committee, is also calling for the city to start police foot patrols downtown and provide more social services outreach to the chronically homeless, who may suffer from alcohol, drug or mental health issues.

But those elements, detractors say, aren’t actually in the current ordinance, which Burgess’ committee will start discussing March 17. What is, they say, is language that does little to address crime while giving the police broad power to move along the homeless – in violation, some legal and homeless advocates say, of their constitutionally established right to beg.

What’s critical, they and some social service providers say, is exactly how the new law would be enforced.

Unlike Seattle’s current pedestrian interference law, which requires a victim or complainant to press charges and appear in court, Burgess’ law would make aggressive solicitation a ticketable civil infraction requiring no complainant. Police would decide when to issue the $50 ticket, creating another reason for bench warrants to be issued when the poor and homeless fail to pay, as they often do, says John Fox of the Seattle Displacement Coalition.

“It is a ban on panhandling as a practical matter and goes well beyond any kind of constitutional legal standard,” says Fox. “It gives the police very broad authority to target whatever group or individual they choose to.”

“For your failure to pay, you get an arrest warrant,” he says. “Then, as more and more people are subject to arrest, the police can just order [homeless] people around whenever, wherever.”

Not so, say Burgess and City Attorney Pete Holmes, whose office worked with Burgess on the legislation. Both say police officers will be well trained in the types of situations in which to issue tickets and that the law will serve as a tool to help get people off the street and into services offered through the city’s specialized drug and mental health courts.

Following Tacoma’s example, Burgess says, officers will start by handing out information sheets to panhandlers 60 days prior to enforcing the law, which Burgess says will act as a deterrent on its own: Tacoma, he says, has never actually had to enforce its own ordinance. Councilmember Richard Conlin says he supports the measure, as do several downtown nonprofit housing providers, including the Downtown Emergency Service Center and Plymouth Housing.

“This is not some draconian measure that we’re implementing. This is a tool to help us deal with a problem,” Burgess says. “The problem here is people coming up to you and harassing you, intimidating you [and] causing fear, because they won’t accept no for an answer, so they keep following you down the sidewalk.

“They might touch you. They might use offensive language,” he says, and “if it falls in these categories, the police will be able to step in and say you can’t do that.” To say that would pick on the homeless, he adds, “is not only false… it’s offensive to people living in poverty and the homeless” because it fails to recognize they need safe streets as well.

Even supporters, however, question whether the measure gets at the issues that concern Burgess and downtown businesses. “When you look at downtown,” says David Dillman, chief operating officer of the Downtown Seattle Association, “there’s not that many ATMs and when you look at where [they are], it’s not in proximity to where we normally see panhandlers,” he says.

And, “The aggressive component, the real threatening component,” Dillman says, “is few and far between.”

That doesn’t stop people perceiving that downtown is unsafe – something Burgess and other councilmembers point to as a prime reason for the ordinance. The problem with that, says Councilmember Nick Licata, is that “you’re trying to legislate away people’s fears [when] what’s intimidating to one person is only an annoyance to another.… Intimidation is a really difficult legal measurement to nail down.”

Licata and other councilmembers say they plan to closely scrutinize the measure. But Bruce Harrell, for one, says he doesn’t think the ordinance really gets at the problems Burgess has identified.

“To be candid, I don’t think it’s going to significantly change much,” Harrell says. “I believe we have serious crime problems in areas of downtown, for example, and this makes it appear as though we’re addressing the issue and I’m concerned we’re not. Has there been a public outcry about panhandling around ATMs I have not heard about?” 

The Seattle City Council’s Public Safety Committee is scheduled to take up Tim Burgess’ proposed ordinance on aggressive solicitation on Wednesday, March 17, 9:30 a.m., with public comment planned at the start of the meeting. City Council Chambers, City Hall, 600 Fourth Avenue.

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