— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
Not sure where I stand on this one. On one hand, I’ve spent plenty of time just hanging out on the sidewalk and/or stoopin’ it NEAR the sidewalk. On the other hand, this ordinance was proposed because of the disaster that is Haight St., a street I admittedly don’t walk down anymore because of the giant fucking mess of ex-suburban drifter kids that beg for change to pay off their private college loans. Oh wait, you don’t care about my opinion? Oops.
Comments (3)
I’m no fan of the suburban “one wild summer of gutter punk” parade along Haight St. either, but all they need to do to fix that problem is have some SFPD actually get out of their donutmobiles and WALK their beat for a change. Criminalizing sitting on the sidewalk in the entire city to take care of this one problem is terrible public policy.
I don’t think that the current laws are effective:
When critics complained that current laws could accomplish the same goals as sit/lie, Barrett pointed out that San Francisco police cannot legally require people who are blocking sidewalks to move unless they have a formal complaint from a citizen. That leaves the person making the complaint open to retaliation.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/27/BA8M1C7QRQ.D…
Usually when you make a complaint aren’t you open to retaliation? If someone is murdered, a person usually needs to come forward as a witness. All that is needed in this case is someone to say, ‘hey i don’t want that guy sitting here’. it can be done anonymously. Also, everyone knows that the cops will make someone move if they want already.