CARLTON FLETCHER: City of Albany right to seek panhandler ordinance

Come on and take a free ride.

— Edgar Winter Group

— After telling an aggressive panhandler four separate times that he did not have money to give him and having the panhandler try and open the door to his vehicle in the parking lot of a local convenience store, a teen driver finally got the persistent beggar to leave him alone by indicating the weapon that was readily available in the vehicle.

— Commuters on Pine Avenue found themselves swerving to avoid a wheelchair-bound panhandler parked in the middle of the busy thoroughfare one recent afternoon. The panhandler wheeled his way into the path of oncoming vehicles and tried to wave them down. Drivers who stopped were asked for money.

— Police were called to the downtown Hilton Garden Inn Friday when guests and staff were accosted by a large man who came in, for the second night in a row, demanding that he be given a complimentary room. He made contact with a Hilton staff member and a guest of the hotel before police arrested him.

Stories like these are becoming the norm in all parts of Albany, as panhandlers, emboldened by the absence of a city ordinance that allows police to curtail their activities, are all but demanding money from often frightened targets.

Mayor Dorothy Hubbard, who admitted Tuesday at an Albany City Commission work session that she’d personally been solicited by such panhandlers, is one of a group of city leaders actively pushing for a city ordinance that would curtail such activities within the city limits.

“Several business owners have complained not only that the panhandlers are in their parking lots, but that they’re also scaring away potential customers,” Hubbard said.

When Hubbard noted that a draft of a potential “aggressive solicitation” ordinance written by City Attorney Nathan Davis did not include penalties for those charged under the ordinance, city commissioners tossed out suggestions ranging from fines to incarceration. That’s when the discussion hit a snag.

“When we incarcerate people, we create more problems,” Ward II Commissioner Bobby Coleman said. “We put more non-violent criminals in our already overcrowded jails. Locking people up is not the answer.”

When Hubbard asked Coleman, “Then what is the answer?” the Ward II commissioner said, “I don’t know. But it’s not locking people up.”

Ward III Commissioner B.J. Fletcher, who owns and manages a number of local businesses, challenged Coleman’s concern for the panhandlers.

“We’re worried about these folks, and, yes, you have to feel sympathy for people who are homeless,” Fletcher said. “But some of these people are not homeless. Some of them make more money in a day than any of us. I can feel sympathy for people who are having a tough time, but I’m more concerned about the citizens and the businesses that are being impacted by these panhandlers. They have a right to operate a business or to patronize our local businesses without being hit up by these aggressive panhandlers.”

Ward V Commissioner Bob Langstaff said that, while he too feels sympathy for the situations that some panhandlers find themselves in, he agrees with the city of Atlanta’s decision to hand out significant jail sentences to a “core group of panhandlers” who cause the most problems in the state’s capital.

“It may be true that for some of these folks, a jail sentence is what they’re hoping for, a place to sleep and three meals a day,” Langstaff said. “But I think we have to do something to get the worst of these aggressive panhandlers’ attention.”

Despite Coleman’s concerns and Ward I Commissioner Jon Howard’s contention that the ordinance presented by Davis would “be almost impossible to enforce,” as well as Howard’s concern that a lot of the people wandering the streets in search of a handout are mental patients, the city is right to pursue an ordinance that will give police authority to respond to citizens’ complaints against the more aggressive panhandlers. As someone who was viciously attacked by one of those mental patients wandering the streets, I know first-hand that the drifters and handout seekers have the potential to be much more than the mere nuisances some try and portray them to be.

Oh, and incidentally, I also know that records released by officials with the Dougherty County Sheriff’s Office indicate that the local jail is not overcrowded, that it is at its lowest occupancy level in several years.

Most of us are sympathetic to the suffering of others, and many of us are inclined to follow the Biblical admonition to help those in need. Sadly, a large number of the panhandlers we encounter on our streets are little more than con men and women, looking for a way to get something for nothing.

Until the city does come up with some kind of ordinance to protect citizens and businesses from the growing panhandler population, I offer a logical course of action. Don’t listen to their sob stories. Don’t allow them to intimidate you. And don’t give them your money. When they find the free ride has run out here, they’ll take their search elsewhere.