| City council is being criticized for targeting the homeless in a proposed new bylaw that would crack down on people urinating, defecating, spitting, fighting, carrying a visible knife or loitering in public places.
The bylaw was approved by a city council policy committee, but still has to go back to a full council meeting for approval. It would allow bylaw officers or police to fine people $250 for fighting, $300 for urinating or defecating, $100 for spitting, $250 for loitering or obstruction, $50 for carrying a visible knife and $50 for standing or putting your feet on a table, bench, sculpture or planter.
"It’s just a way to go after homeless people… they’re the people we don’t like so that’s who we’re going to apply it to. That’s the way these things tend to happen," says Stephen Jenuth of the Alberta Civil Liberties Association.
Jenuth says he also has concerns about under which circumstances police and bylaw officers would charge people with loitering.
"I think the history of loitering or vagrancy-type statutes has been one of abuse and it’s one you’d have to look at very carefully (as to) how such a thing is defined and secondly how it’s used in practice," he says.
"I don’t know that people shouldn’t be just allowed to be able to use public space and if that means they hang around that’s not a bad thing. It’s the whole ‘move on or we’ll arrest you.’"
Charging homeless people who don’t have access to a bathroom with urinating or defecating in public is also problematic for Jenuth.
"If there’s no place to go what do you do? You probably run into a necessity defence. It’s funny on one hand, but if you have to go you have to go," says Jenuth.
He says unlike other large cities Calgary doesn’t have many public restrooms that homeless people can access.
Ald. Joe Ceci is in support of fining people for carrying a visible knife and for fighting, but he says fining people for loitering, urinating, defecating or spitting is going too far.
He says Calgary needs more public toilets and then people wouldn’t have to go to the bathroom outdoors. Ceci shares Jenuth’s concern about who will be charged with loitering.
"Try being homeless and see how little sleep you get, how deprived and exhausted you are… and then kind of draw a line between that experience and loitering and you can probably see a connection. If a person is lying around on benches, sleeping in doorways there’s probably some connection. They’re feeling pretty tired and exhausted and miserable and they’re trying to get some rest," he says.
But Ald. Madeleine King supports the bylaw because she says it’s important to have "clear rules and expectations" about public behaviour.
"When we don’t then we all suffer as a result," she says. "The rules are set up to make it more possible for a large number of us to live together in close proximity and they’re the sort of thing if they are followed then we can have more chance of living together harmoniously."
However, King agrees with Ceci that the city needs to install some public toilets. She says administration is currently studying the issue and consulting with police due to fears that public toilets could be used for drug deals.
"I actually think that we might see the first few in the reasonably near future," says King.
When asked about concerns about how the loitering charge will be enforced, King says she wouldn’t be opposed to someone being charged if they occupied a bench or a street for hours.
"My experience is that when someone is choosing a bench to sleep on all day, every day, then that’s not available for other people and that’s not helpful for what it was put there for," she says. "If you get a sidewalk that’s no longer for instance available to the public because some people are occupying it all day long, every day, then I think it might be fair to say, ‘hold on a minute.’ This is not what the sidewalk is for. It’s for everyone, not for a certain group of people to take up residence there."
King says she’s confident that those enforcing the bylaw will use "sensitivity" in deciding who to charge. She disagrees that the bylaw is targeting the homeless.
"I think that it’s important to have a welcoming and diverse community and what this is doing is targeting behaviours, not targeting the people," she says.
King says she suspects that police or bylaw officers would give people warnings to move on before levying fines. |
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