As I said yesterday, I had an e-mail conversation with Larry Bloom who is the security director of the CCC, and I now understand the verdict of “nolle prosequi” (“prosecutor decided not to pursue”) on St. Jude Bum’s recent “throw missile/begging/gaming prohibited” charge and his contempt of court charge.
The main thing was, the maximum punishment for the charge St. Jude Bum faced was 5 days in jail, and he was already on his 4th day by the time he got to court. He would have to be credited with “time served,” which meant at most he would have served one additional day. For the additional trouble it would have caused (keeping officers in court all morning to wait to testify and stuff like that), it wasn’t worth pursuing.
The actual charge, by the way, was sleeping on a park bench. How that translates to “throw missile/begging/gaming prohibited” is as much a mystery to Larry as it is to me.
So, as they say in the police business, St. Jude Guy beat the rap, but he didn’t beat the ride. He still spent 4 days in jail waiting for his court appearance. I was happy enough with that explanation.
Then, later in the day, something occurred to me. Another of our career panhandlers, who routinely charges people to park at meters near Beale Street, has had 6 of his last 10 panhandling cases thrown out as “nolle prosequi.” I questioned Larry Bloom about that one. “The maximum penalty for panhandling is a $50 fine, with no jail time at all,” I pointed out. “So there is no ‘ride,’ no ‘time served’ in jail waiting for a court appearance. So if the verdict is ‘nolle prosequi,’ how is our panhandler being punished at all?”
Larry went back to St. Jude Bum’s case for a minute, telling me that there was more to it than just those 4 days in jail. He had to sign a court order stating that he would not engage in that type of offense again. If caught, he has now violated a court order, and will go to jail for that reason (which is more serious an offense) than merely the charge itself.
Larry is working with Judge Potter and prosecutor Don Siemer (who was the prosecutor in St. Jude Bum’s case Monday) to set up a similar system for panhandlers. The first time they’re caught, they may get off, but they’ll have to sign that court order saying they won’t panhandle again. Then if they do get caught panhandling – and most of our regulars have been caught dozens of times – instead of looking at a $50 fine that will probably get thrown out, they’ll find themselves headed to jail for violating a court order.
So things are in progress to attack the panhandling problem from a legal perspective. They’re doing what they can to work their way around Tennessee’s antiquated legal system, which states that offenses like panhandling are civil, rather than criminal, and carry a $50 fine that is not a deterrent to anyone (talented panhandlers can earn that much in a few hours).
I owe Don an apology for calling him a “lazy prosecutor” in yesterday’s post – I wasn’t aware of all that was going on behind the scenes. However, I’m not sorry I made the post, because the panhandling/court order thing has been on their to-do list for a long time, and now they’ve remembered that it’s time to get serious about implementing it.
As for St. Jude Bum, he’s back on the streets for now, but not for long hopefully. Mike King and I have started checking the “regulars” daily for outstanding warrants, and when we find them we post to the Handling-Panhandling forum to tell everyone to be on the lookout. We have another one with an active warrant right now, and Mike has printed out copies of the warrant and handed them to Downtown safety patrol officers.
It’s frustrating at times but we gotta keep fighting the good fight.