It’s crappy that we have homeless people. However, this guy is trying to make a living. Would I walk over a homeless person to enter a store? No.
People don’t have a right to loiter all day in front of a business whether it’s a homeless man or a bunch of teenage kids. I don’t care if the business is swanky or a mom and pop hardward store.
The dilemma of where the homeless go on cold days (and hot ones) --no workhouses, no debtor’s prisons etc…one place they end up is the public library. Many homeless use the library’s bathrooms as places to try to get clean; they sleep in the chairs; they eat (or drink) in the stacks.
I live in a middle sized suburb of Chicago-and we have our few homeless regulars that come to the library. I am sure that a city as large as NY has this happening.
I am not against the homeless using public areas for the purposes those places were intended. Where do you draw the line? If a man is found strip naked in the men’s toilet, trying to wash up–does he get arrested? Should he? Where else is he to go? How else does he get clean? Everyone says, not here, buddy-not on my patch, but that doesn’t solve the problem.
Most of these people (in my experience) have some degree of mental illness–the state institutions were at times horrid, heartless places–but is this a sound alternative? Why do we allow this to happen at all?
I can see where this is a nuisance to the business owner–he has a right for his business to run un-impeded. I can’t believe the city isn’t liable to some extent–if the charge of loitering or similiar is made, surely the police need to step in? How about disturbing the peace? Then again, the guy might just be standing there-not disturbing anything, but getting on antique owner’s nerves. I don’t see a clear answer that solves the problem.
Question-since when has public urination NOT been illegal? I would think that would be a no-brainer?
Ask the people that ran in the NYC marathon
http://chubsucker.com/2005/11/nyc-marathon-7-mile-piss-break.html
Yes, there is a fine if you are caught. I don’t know how much the fine is.
I was at court at a fly-in community, where the proceedings were held in a community hall that did not have a washroom. At one of the recesses, the judge, prosecutor, defendant and I went outside and relieved ourselves against the wall.
The next day, back in the city, I saw a fellow convicted for peeing against the back alley wall of a hotel.
Sometimes life just isn’t fair.
Bricker is right, suing the police for not doing their job well (short of brutality or other official misconduct) is a non-starter – the cases I recall were much graver than this (along the lines of not responding to a 911 call in time to stop a murder in progress), and the court said, too bad, there’s no specific degree of protection or quality of police services to which you can legally hold the government in a tort action for misfeasance.
Poverty is a red herring here. The guy is not trying to set up a shoe-shine stand outside the store, is clearly eating enough to keep body and soul together, and could get one of about fifty jobs that are probably going begging within a ten block radius of there (yes, they’d be dishwashing jobs or drywall jobs, which are instead going to immigrants). Insanity and poor moral character are the issues. I thought we’d gotten past the point of invoking “poverty” and the concomitant class war (remember when Reagan stole all those poor people’s homes from them?) as the main root cause of criminal vagrancy.
Deinstitutionalization and meddling courts’ refusal to enforce sensible vagrancy and loitering laws are root causes. I remember one court adjudicating a case where a city tried to evice a foul-smelling bum who was ruining a public library. The court questioned whether he really smelled bad at all, noting that “one man’s malodor is another’s ambrosia.” Well, that kind of stupidity and blinkered view to what real life is like for those plagued by vagrants got us where we are here.
Finally, while the sidewalk may be public property, I’m pretty sure (no, sure) that the doorway of a store (where bums frequently urinate and sleep) is not. In fact, in walking around big cities like New York, look down at the sidewalk and you’ll often see embedded plates near buildings, to the effect of “Private Property – Permission To Pass Conditionally Granted By Owner.” That is, the owner’s lot line extends out to what we think of as part of the “sidewalk” for some feet in front of his building. Don’t know if it’s the case here, but it certainly is in front of many buildings. Well, that conditional easement can be revoked at any time.
Which pretty much sums up most of the posts here in support of the business owner. I am willing to stipulate that if the bum was:
[ul]
[li]urinating in public[/li][li]trespassing[/li][li]sleeping on the sidewalk (if that is prohibited)[/li][li]blocking the sidewalk[/li][li]begging (if that is prohibited)[/li][li]verbally assaulting people[/li][li]physically assaulting people[/li][li]any other offense prohibited by existing law[/li][/ul]
he should be prosecuted under existing laws. But if the complaint by the business owner is solely that the bum looks shabby or smells bad, will you agree he has as much right to
Which pretty much sums up most of the posts here in support of the business owner. I am willing to stipulate that if the bum was:
[ul]
[li]urinating in public[/li][li]trespassing[/li][li]sleeping on the sidewalk (if that is prohibited)[/li][li]blocking the sidewalk[/li][li]begging (if that is prohibited)[/li][li]verbally assaulting people[/li][li]physically assaulting people[/li][li]any other offense prohibited by existing law[/li][/ul]
he should be prosecuted. But if the complaint by the business owner is solely that the bum looks shabby or smells bad, will you stipulate he has as much right to stand in front of the store as a well dressed, sweet-smelling citizen?
No. I will not so stipulate.
Because I still suspect the bum could be shown to be civilly liable under at least two tort theories I can think of off the top of my head: Tortious interference with business relationships (Tortious interference - Wikipedia) and New York’s broad doctrine of prima facie tort (http://vertumnus.courts.state.ny.us/claims/html/2003-030-525.html).
N.B. that under prima facie tort, the law explicitly recognizes that liability can ensue from conduct that is otherwise-lawful (standing on a sidewalk) if the additional factors (basically, maliciously inflicting economic harm on someone in a measurable degree) are established.
And how do you propose to prove malice? From what we know, the bum’s intent was to warm himself on the grate, not inflict economic harm.
What Bricker said. If only there were a forum and process by which proofs could be adduced and factual and legal propositions tested.
At this point, the suggestion that warmth might be (now) his only motive for remaining on that particular grate is close to as unrealistic as the goofy judge who said, hmm, no way of telling whether that unwashed urine-soaked bum smells bad or “ambrosial.”
Put differently, motive can be (and every day is) inferred from circumstance. If there were only one warm grate in the city, or if there were other grates but each and every one was adjacent to a property owner who felt equally strongly about keeping this guy away, then one might speculate that the bum’s only intent was keeping warm and he had no better choice to do it. But now that he knows this store owner is troubled by his presence, and believes it is costing him money and interfering with his business relationships, his continued insistence that he has to keep warm in front of that particular store and nowhere else can quite readily and plausibly be read as motivated, at least in part, by simple defiance of the store owner’s wishes and disregard for his commercial interests, and not just a desire to stay warm. And that does begin to sound a lot like intentional or malicious conduct.
Who’s the entity sending warm air up through that grate? I’m thinking that hot air is a by-product of some non-vagrant-warming process. I’m also thinking that this by-product coming out at that particular spot is what makes that grate so attractive to these particular individuals (and would probably make it just as attractive to a different set of individuals were Mr. Kemp to succeed in rousting the current set using the court’s pooper-scoo…, err, people-scooper powers).
ISTM that to keep his sidewalk entirely bum-free, Mr. Kemp might want to consider exploring ways to eliminate that sweet, sweet, warm air.
I believe that the majority of these grates are the ventilation system for the subway tunnels, which run underground all over N.Y. City.
Well, then, there’s the guy responsible for the tort. The New York City Subway System, or whoever it is that operates it, is tortiously making an attractive nuisance out of the sidewalk in front of Mr. Kemp’s store.
Think it’ll fly?