Seattle evaluates fighting aggressive panhandling at on-campus panel

The city of Seattle is considering implementing restrictions on aggressive panhandling.

The Seattle Human Rights Commission's Public Safety Task Force hosted a panel discussion on proposed restrictions in Sullivan Hall Tuesday night.

The event featured four prominent figures in the issue: city councilmember Tim Burgess, policy director of the Downtown Seattle Association Jon Scholes, executive director of Real Change Timothy Harris, and Anita Khandelwal, an attorney with the Defender Association's Racial Disparity Project. Arthur Shwab, a student at the Seattle University School of Law and member of the Human Rights Commission, helped facilitate the event, asking questions of the panelists and providing introductions.

The forum marked the first time the commission has ever hosted an event outside of City Hall, and it chose Seattle University partially because of its reputation for promoting social justice.

The panel came after Burgess, chair of the Public Safety and Education Committee, outlined a five-point plan to address a rise in crime. In downtown Seattle (the area from South Lake Union to Pioneer Square) crime has risen 22 percent in the last year. A greater number of citizens have complained of open-air drug trafficking, aggressive panhandling and general street crime, according to the Downtown Seattle Association.

The plan, with the goal of balancing liberty and order, would urge the police department to increase fixed foot patrols, continue the Neighborhood Policing Plan, restrict aggressive solicitation, expand scope and coordination of street outreach and increase housing capacity and support services for the homeless, mentally ill and those struggling with drug and alcohol issues.

Specifically, an ordinance addressing aggressive panhandling has some in Seattle uneasy. The new restrictions would ban soliciting within 15 feet of a person using an ATM. Additionally, blocking or interfering with a person whom one is attempting to solicit would be banned, as well as following someone who has denied solicitation. Violations would be a civil infraction, punishable by a $50 fine.

Neighboring city Tacoma enacted a similar policy three years ago.

Burgess said it is important to consider that such proposals come as citizens have filed more complaints that panhandling downtown has become more aggressive.
Critics suggest that the ordinance takes this worry too far.

"It is a quick fix," said Harris, director of Real Change. "It is a banishment program. It is about ticketing people with the knowledge that it is going to turn into warrants and give them [the city] leverage to tell them to leave town."

Burgess believes it is unfair to characterize the ordinance as an attack against the poor.

"Most individuals who panhandle in our city do not cause problems, and they will be able to continue that under this ordinance," he said. "There is a small group of individuals that this ordinance will hopefully act as a deterrent [for], and as the police do their outreach and educational campaign they will set a new standard of behavior that should help cure the problem as it has in Tacoma."

Others noted reservations that the ordinance would not solve the problems completely.
"It did not appear to me that the ordinance would necessarily be responding to the things that people were complaining about," Khandelwal said.

With the City Council voting on the ordinance in April, a major question for officials will be whether or not the changes will violate First Amendment free speech rights. Some opponents of the ordinance cite previous cases including the 1994 Roulette v. City of Seattle and 2008's Berger v. City of Seattle which seem to suggest that such a ban on panhandling may be unconstitutional. Harris contends this to be the case.

"It is a loss of First Amendment free speech rights in public places," he said. "It is something to be opposed."

The City Council has yet to take an official position on the issue.

Dillon may be reached at dgilbert@su-spectator.com.