Orlando bans night panhandling but fails to enforce day rules

source: orlandosentinel.com/orl-beg18sep18,0,7715362.story

PANHANDLING CRACKDOWN
No begging after dark
Orlando bans night panhandling but fails to enforce day rules

Mark Schlueb
Sentinel Staff Writer

(published) September 18, 2007

Orlando beefed up its panhandling rules Monday by outlawing begging after dark, but a review by the Orlando Sentinel has found that the city hasn't been sticking to the rules already on the books.

Monday's action means those caught panhandling anywhere in the city between sunset and sunrise will face fines of as much as $500, up to 60 days in jail, or both. Mayor Buddy Dyer and police Chief Mike McCoy said the measure approved 6-1 by the City Council makes Orlando safer.

"The concept is ... that you don't have strangers coming up to you after dark asking for money," McCoy said. "It frightens most people."

The nighttime ban is the city's latest effort to crack down on panhandling without banning it, which courts in other jurisdictions have found unconstitutional. Since 2000, downtown panhandlers have been allowed to beg only in a "panhandling zone," blue boxes painted on the sidewalk in about three dozen locations.

But the Sentinel review found that most of those blue boxes no longer exist. Of the 36 boxes painted downtown seven years ago, only five are still visible. Most were never repainted and disappeared or faded to a vague blue smudge. Many were lost to the condo and office building boom.

"They're all gone, with all the new sidewalks and construction," said Chester Kaczneski, 38, who was panhandling Monday morning at Robinson Street and Orange Avenue -- where there used to be a blue box -- after failing to find work in a labor pool.

"I'm looking for work," he said. "But if they catch you out of a box, you're going to jail."

The city's panhandling ordinance also requires the Orlando Police Department to hand out maps showing panhandling zone locations upon request. But a clerk at police headquarters said the department long ago ran out of the maps and no longer distributes them.

Courts have ruled panhandling is free speech that can't be outlawed entirely. An attorney who represents the homeless said the city's ordinance might be on shaky ground because officials haven't maintained the blue boxes.

"If they're going to regulate the time, the place or the manner you express yourself, they have to provide an alternative. For the government to promise an alternative and not follow through raised constitutionality problems," said Jackie Dowd of Legal Advocacy at Work, a nonprofit that provides free legal services to the homeless.

Dyer said there have been few arrests for begging outside the blue boxes because police have instead focused on "violent or aggressive" panhandlers. Arrest statistics were not immediately available.

Dowd wasn't convinced.

"My clients tell me over and over about being hassled for not being in the blue boxes or sitting down," she said. "The police use the blue boxes as leverage to move them along."

Officials said they are aware that many of the boxes are gone. They plan to repaint some and move others.

"It's to our advantage to have defined blue boxes," Dyer said. "We probably need to take a look at redesignating new ones."

The council approved the night ban, with Commissioner Robert Stuart dissenting. He argued that the city should concentrate on educating residents to donate to homeless services rather than panhandlers.

"My problem is, there is no alternative today other than enforcement," said Stuart, executive director of a Christian charity. "This issue needs to have something else that comes along with it."

Mark Schlueb can be reached at mschlueb@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5417.

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[Comment from Scott Maxwell's "Taking Names" column in the Orlando Sentinel, Sept. 18, 2007]


Don't pols beg, too?

The Orlando City Council passed its no-panhandling-after-dark law Monday, brushing aside free-speech arguments that people have a constitutional right to ask for money.

Mayor Buddy Dyer and the council may be right on the legal front. Still, it's kind of interesting to compare the way politicians in this town treat asking for money in very different ways.

Take, for instance, the reluctance to embrace serious campaign-finance reform. Apparently we live in a community where politicians think free-speech laws were meant to protect special interests' right to give them thousands of campaign dollars -- but not the right of the destitute to ask for spare change.