City to revamp panhandling rules
Ordinance to be introduced at next council meeting, changes sought
The Eureka Police Department gets a lot of calls about panhandling, but the U.S. Supreme Court decided that cities can’t cite people for simply being in a given place and asking for money.
In order to stay current with the law, the Eureka City Council will be introducing an ordinance at its meeting Tuesday that would repeal the portion of the Eureka Municipal Code dealing with aggressive and intrusive solicitation and replace it with a section about prohibiting aggressive and obtrusive conduct in general.
The previous ordinance restricted the types of places a person could panhandle, such as being restricted from panhandling 100 feet from a controlled intersection, but that is no longer allowed, said Eureka Police Chief Steve Watson.
“The bottom line is that it doesn’t appear under the current state of existing case law that we can continue to retain those portions of our ordinance,” Watson said. “At the same time we have concerns, and I have concerns as police chief, about certain aggressive conduct that some panhandlers engage in.”
The new ordinance isn’t about regulating free speech in anyway, so it can apply to anyone, Watson said.
Seeking charity could not be restricted or regulated by the city for First Amendment reasons before 2015, but it could create regulations around panhandling for public safety reasons.
That changed in 2015 when the Supreme Court decided to limit the kinds of regulations cities could impose on those seeking charity.
Aggressive conduct includes any conduct that is “intended or likely to cause a reasonable person to fear bodily harm;” touching or threatening to touch someone without their consent; continuing to follow someone after they’ve made it cleared they don’t want to be followed; using threatening gestures; or using profane, offensive or abusive language, according to the ordinance.
“When someone’s following someone else and refuses to stop when they’re told to or uses
threatening or obscene speech, or blocks their way, those all raise concerns,” Watson said.
The ordinance defines obtrusive conduct as “intentional blocking or disruption, whether by personal position or the use of physical objects, of traffic, pedestrians, wheel chairs or bicycles on public roadways, crosswalks, sidewalks, driveways, entrances to businesses or public buildings, bicycle lanes, bicycle paths or recreational trails.”
No one is allowed to engage in any of those behaviors in a public place or a place that’s open to the public under the ordinance.
All of this type of conduct was regulated to some extent through the former
ordinance and other laws spread around in the penal and municipal codes, Watson said, but this ordinance puts it all in one place and gives the police department tools to consider using when encountering aggressive or obtrusive conduct.
“If they’re not violating any law, it’s just not going to be something we’re going to be responding to,” Watson said. “But we will deal with other criminal behavior.”
There are some exceptions, he said, such as people panhandling on certain private property, but he said most of the time people are panhandling on a public sidewalk where they have a legal right to be.