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West Lafayette City Council passes ordinance restricting solicitation along intersections

Chief of Police Troy Harris discusses the impact of the ordinance (WBAA News/Ben Thorp)
Chief of Police Troy Harris discusses the impact of the ordinance (WBAA News/Ben Thorp)

West Lafayette’s city council passed an ordinance Monday night making it illegal to panhandle within 50 feet of an intersection with either a traffic signal or a stop sign.

The ordinance has raised concerns among some residents who say it penalizes people for being poor - but doesn’t do anything to connect them to city resources.

Chief of Police Troy Harris said previously people could go where they wanted so long as they didn’t verbally ask for money. He said those requests have created problemswith people blocking traffic.

“I probably received more complaints about solicitors this summer than maybe any other topic in the past two years,” he said. “It was very obvious that our public did not appreciate it.”

Harris said the ordinance moves solicitors into a safe location that won’t block traffic. He said the ordinance also gives police a reason to engage with the solicitors.

“Prior to that, we didn’t have a reason to,” he said. “They had a right to do this in a public right of way, so we didn’t have a reason to go up and interact with them. This will also give us the opportunity to assess if they actually need services.”

Community member Kirsten Gibson spoke out in opposition of the ordinance. She said she doesn’t understand why police couldn’t engage in connecting solicitors to resources before.

“We pay a lot in property taxes compared to the other side of the river and that gets us a lot, right?” she said. “It gets us this beautiful building, it gets us all these resources, but as soon as a sign of poverty is in our community local government agencies are really quick to nip it in the bud and remove it or put it back on the other side of the river.”

Gibson argued that the ordinance, which also allows the police to issue fines, is punitive.

“There’s just a lot of research and studies that have shown fines are ineffective and end up hurting people who are already on the margins of our community,” she said.

The ordinance passed 7-1.