> For example, in Kansas City a bus stop at a particular intersection was attracting drug sales and loitering. So the police called the local transportation authority and had the bus stop moved.
> “I think within a week, maybe not even that, that immediately cut down on the loitering and foot traffic,” Capt. Jonas Baughman told the local press.
As an outsider, I have no words for how absurd this is to me. The fact that "cut down on the loitering and foot traffic" is somehow presented as a good thing is beyond surreal and infuriating. It is really difficult to comprehend a free society where standing still in a public space is a crime, and where the priority of police is to make people walk less and not hang out in public spaces.
Also tough shit if you were used to catching the bus there and now have to find and probably walk farther to another stop.
There used to be 'beat cops' whose job was to just walk around neighborhoods and be familiar with them; not the most efficient approach to policing, but also not the most intimidating or heavy-handed. Now you only see police outside a cruiser if they're doing crowd control, managing a crime scene, or doing community outreach, as a form of PR.
Because humanizing your chattel is a poor idea. It leads to corruption, favoritism, and being soft on the law. Community policing is a great idea, except for enforcers who realized that having people from the same neighborhood enforcing violence on the population tended to leave those enforcers a little soft.
It really depends on the specific situation. Public space is for everyone’s enjoyment. Unfortunately, some people take advantage of their right to the space in a way that detracts from everyone. Take a park for example. Typically, a great place to take your kids. However, if someone strung out on heroin loiters in the park, it suddenly becomes a much worse place for everyone else. Technically, being high on heroin in a public place isn’t a crime. This person is well within their rights to use the public space. But in many cases, people like this form a small minority that ruins the public space for everyone. Discouraging this type of person is actually maximizing the utility of public space.
> Technically, being high on heroin in a public place isn’t a crime.
That's hard to believe. If it's apparent to anyone else, it will be a crime in a few different ways. For example:
> A person is guilty of disorderly conduct if, with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he or she:
> (1) Engages in fighting or threatening, or in violent or tumultuous behavior; [or]
> (2) Makes unreasonable noise or offensively coarse utterance, gesture or display, or addresses abusive language to any person present
Do you really think people stung out on heroin do so "with purpose to cause public inconvenience"?
That said, chances are most jurisdictions have some variation of "dunk in public" that isn't as particular about the intoxicant. Even so, the criminal justice system hasn't proven itself to be an especially good solution to substance abusers.
> Do you really think people st[r]ung out on heroin do so "with purpose to cause public inconvenience"?
No, but as you'll note that is not an element of the crime. It suffices to act in a way that "recklessly creates a risk of public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm".
Well, sure, if you can't read more than 14 words in one sitting. But for everyone capable of reading entire sentences at once.. no, that's not the language of the statute, you would have to be intentionally misreading it to make that statement.
Sorry, I’m not understanding what you’re seeing. The law says “purpose to cause” and then lists two things joined by an OR clause. But you’re arguing that the “purpose to cause” language is irrelevant. I don’t see that in my reading. Can you break it down for me?
If people here, in a place where many people write logic for a living, cannot parse simple logic out of a statue, imagine how a judge or a jury would do it.
I feel like often people in criminal justice do not understand meaning or intent of a statue and wing it, often slanting towards the side of punishing defendants. The law doesn't matter when your goal is to lock people up.
Maybe… however in the debate of this law, one side is saying “the law says you need purpose to cause” and the other side is saying “no it doesn’t. If you could read more than 14 words you would know that.”
I’m not a lawyer, but I imagine an objective observer would find the former argument more compelling than the latter.
> however in the debate of this law, one side is saying “the law says you need purpose to cause” and the other side is saying “no it doesn’t. If you could read more than 14 words you would know that.”
> I’m not a lawyer, but I imagine an objective observer would find the former argument more compelling than the latter
Now, I decided not spend more time and money on law school about half way through when I decided I’d rather stay in technology, but I don't see how anyone can argue with a straight face that the mental state requirement “with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm or recklessly creating a risk thereof” (emphasis added) fails to apply to people recklessly causing a risk of public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm just as much a to those acting with purpose to cause such inconvenience, annoyance, and alarm.
> I’m not a lawyer, but I imagine an objective observer would find the former argument more compelling than the latter.
I like to think that an objective observer might read the statute before deciding which argument he thought was more compelling. Certainly a lawyer would.
> you’re arguing that the “purpose to cause” language is irrelevant. I don’t see that in my reading.
Does it alarm you at all that the responses you're getting consist of (1) the suggestion that you're not able to read past the 14th word in a sentence, and (2) the observation "I don't see how anyone could say that with a straight face"?
> Can you break it down for me?
The statute is written very clearly on this point. It states two requirements for the offense to be committed; there is a state-of-mind requirement and an actual-conduct requirement. Both elements must be satisfied.
The actual-conduct requirement is satisfied by any one of three prongs (of which I quoted only the first two, because I didn't think there was a reasonable argument that public heroin use might satisfy the third). There appears to be very little dispute about its structure.
The state-of-mind requirement is satisfied by any one of two prongs. It states:
> A person is guilty of disorderly conduct if, with purpose to cause public inconvenience, [14] annoyance or alarm or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he or she...
For your convenience, I've marked the position following the 14th word in the sentence. Your argumentation so far has relied very heavily on pretending the words following that position do not exist. But they do.
Continuing from that point, we see that "public inconvenience" is not part of the necessary state of mind. Someone who intends to commit disorderly conduct may also do so with the purpose to cause public annoyance or public alarm. And more importantly, there is no intentionality requirement at all; the necessary state of mind is possessed by anyone "recklessly creating a risk of public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm". This prong is obviously satisfied by anyone who is high on heroin in public.
We can represent the structure of the statute very easily in Python-like pseudocode:
if ( defendant.intended_public_alarm()
or
defendant.recklessly_risked_public_alarm() )
and
defendant.actually_caused_public_alarm() ):
# the offense has been committed; check whether it's a
# violation or a misdemeanor
You're arguing that whenever intended_public_alarm returns False, the overall statement will also evaluate to False, which suggests a very alarming inability to understand Boolean logic. Or, of course, an inability to see words that occur after the 14th position in a sentence. But there is no good-faith reading of the statute that could be argued to support your view.
Do you seriously intend to argue that the state-of-mind element is meant to include these four categories?
1. People with the purpose to cause public inconvenience;
2. People with the purpose to cause public annoyance;
3. People with the purpose to cause public alarm;
4. People with the purpose to recklessly creating a risk of public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm.
And that, leaving aside the gross ungrammaticality of category 4, the four categories were strung together in parallel in a list with the structure "a, b or c or d"?
I think a guy on heroin in a park could easily not be noticed. This exact scenario happens harmlessly in major cities. You're overestimating the danger of happening to be in the same park as that person.
> It really depends on the specific situation. Public space is for everyone’s enjoyment. Unfortunately, some people take advantage of their right to the space in a way that detracts from everyone. Take a park for example. Typically, a great place to take your kids. However, if someone $PROPERTY loiters in the park, it suddenly becomes a much worse place for everyone else. Technically, being $PROPERTY in a public place isn’t a crime. This person is well within their rights to use the public space. But in many cases, people like this form a small minority that ruins the public space for everyone. Discouraging this type of person is actually maximizing the utility of public space.
Yeah, in my country of origin exactly this rhetoric is used against every minority, from gay people to disabled people. Yeah, they intentionally make places _inaccessible_ for disabled and push autistic children out of schools.
If you remove a vehicle lane then traffic is reduced. Pull up the sidewalks and loitering pedestrians disappear. Remove the parks and there will be fewer people sleeping in parks. Under-inclusive metrics generally lead to poor decisions.
I would really prefer to humanize those people and develop systems in place so they can find the help they need, rather than having sleeping in what is probably the safest possible place they have access to, from a personal safety standpoint.
If it makes you feel better about your own society that society would rather hide its flaws from public view than actually solve them, find solace in the fact that the blight and detritus you identify would also be solved if those people were given the treatment they deserve.
I’m not squeamish about urban areas—I lived in downtown Baltimore, Wilmington Delaware, and Atlanta. But you’re missing some perspective. The captain is talking about gangs. The presence of gang members means that law abiding citizens are driven out of these public places. So the folks who are “loitering” typically aren’t up to anything good.
I just met an Uber driver from Germany the other day. He lives in Georgia (the state) now and was talking about how he moved to this town to get away from the dangerous city nearby. He was happy that his kid could ride around on his bike like back home in his village in Germany. I remember thinking it odd because I had never heard a European talk like that. But I suspect they don’t “get it” until they actually live it.
I had been hoping for an upswing in those cities, but unfortunately it has regressed. We moved to Anne Arundel when our daughter started school. My job is tied to DC, but otherwise I’d probably move to Dallas.
Not that. But in my experience, Europeans I meet don’t usually talk about it, because European cities are generally very safe. So it’s not something that is top of mind for them.
Here's a radical idea: invest in mental health, food security & education, and community programs to directly combat the source of the gangs and bad behavior, rather than try to control people's behavior.
That is the distinction you've seemed to miss here.
Controlling others' behavior is ineffective at best. It's treating symptoms with pain killers while ignoring the source of the problem. It's weak leadership, and, it gives broken people the ability to manipulate the system to hurt others.
We have been doing those things since the Great Society programs of the 1960s. After government transfers, real consumption of households at the bottom have gone up dramatically since the 1960s. Conversely, many much poorer countries that don’t have that sort of social spending don’t have gang problems like we do. Gangs aren’t an economic problem, they’re a social problem. Specifically, they’re a social problem caused by a vacuum in authority and hierarchy for young men. That’s why Wilmington has a gang problem and my dad’s vastly poorer village in Bangladesh doesn’t.
It is not a radical idea. That type of massive wealth transfer is only possible on the federal level, where it simply has no political chance.
All the non federal governments can do is like removing bus stops (or letting drug addicted communities flourish when the pendulum swings the other way).
Welp, we don't have the political capital, guess we can't fix anything, only thing left to do is beat the shit out of poor people in the streets. Society!
You've just written a lot of applause lights. What's a substantive proposal do you believe will have a realistic chance of being passed through Congress? If you can't think of one then it may not be as straightforward as you believe.
I laugh at how in this article that foot traffic is seen as a bad thing. HN has seen hundreds of threads opining on how we should get rid of car lanes and open up space for pedestrian traffic. But this article talks of pedestrians as a scourge to be eliminated. Cops in cop cars are out there keeping the sidewalks clear of people. How many pedestrians or mass transit riders, fearing police encounters, will op to travel instead by private car?
A great example of positive action was the story of the Oakland Buddha. Intended to discourage littering but in the end cleaned up the entire neighberhood.
As someone who briefly lived in Oakland around that time, both things can be true. It was (and might still be) pretty rough territory while it had us tech people all moved in. The Bhudda effect sure looked real to me.
It's true - reducing foot traffic, social activity, and on-site jobs (transit drivers) is counterproductive to passive crime prevention. A persistent presence of crime-averse residents, professionals, and activities can inform effective response better than brute force law enforcement labor, often without police involvement.
Outside the context of crime: loitering, yes, foot traffic, not really.
It's possible this particular phrase is a euphemism used in crime reporting, I don't know, but if it is I don't know why they wouldn't just say "officers no longer suspected dealers were using this place" / "informants/word on the street was that distribution moved to xyz ... "
That sentence read strangely to me as well; I think foot traffic is great and my favorite places in America are built around promoting it.
I think it’s both a euphemism and perhaps it’s an area that no longer has regular foot traffic (closed businesses, vacant houses,etc) and the foot traffic was the clientele.
I say this as someone who lives in a high crime area.
That's how they want you to read it. They literally measure it by whether anybody goes to a place or stays in it. So if you make some part of your city into a place nobody wants to be in, then nobody will be there.
And, sure, the people who aren't there won't be committing crimes there. They'll go commit their crimes somewhere else. Or I guess maybe they'll just sit at home until they shoot themselves...
I imagine since in the US, no one walks and there is nothing of interest outside, anyone who is out standing around is probably engaging in some criminal activity.
It’s often in areas that had factories or businesses that are closed and there is nothing but vacant buildings lefts for the underworld and marginalized to live until the next development.
> “I think within a week, maybe not even that, that immediately cut down on the loitering and foot traffic,” Capt. Jonas Baughman told the local press.
As an outsider, I have no words for how absurd this is to me. The fact that "cut down on the loitering and foot traffic" is somehow presented as a good thing is beyond surreal and infuriating. It is really difficult to comprehend a free society where standing still in a public space is a crime, and where the priority of police is to make people walk less and not hang out in public spaces.