Actually, about 4 years ago, DART Police was able to and did enforce City Ordinance violations from open container of alcohol in CBD, curfew violations, and eating/drinking on the train. The reason that they stopped enforcing them is that the Chief at the time was upset because he was getting in too many complaints from the people that were given tickets for violating the ordinances so he stopped the Officers from enforcing them.

As a general rule, I do not make it a habit of getting involved in public forums.

However, I do happen to be a >strong>DART Police Officer and I can assure you that the officers I work with are doing the best that they can with what is available to them.

Your posting is correct about us being able to write city ordinance violations a few years back.

At that time, we were advised that the JP courts were no longer going to accept ordinance citations because they were county organizations and had no jurisdiction over the city violations.

Since that time, we have been working to get state laws enacted to cure this issue.

Also, while we do have the ability to issue criminal trespass warnings to violators, and we do our best to keep them off the system, the reality is that (just like any other city in America) there are far more violators than there are police officers and we cant be everywhere all of the time.

[Ed Note: I would encourage you, as a police officer, to participate in this forum! The best way to solve a problem is to hash out a solution. There are times when you're in a decision-making role, and what you discuss here, may lead you to ideas you hadn't thought of before.

Also, if it is any consolation, we are aware that DART's top management reads this website regularly (along with pretty much every other public official whether they deny it or not). I imagine, after the preceding comment, they'll read it even more often!]

Panhandling is a result of poor social services.

The chronically homeless tend to be between roofs due to addiction, mental illness, or both.

A society can either pay taxes to keep them warehoused in state owned faciliaties as was more common pre-Reagan, or put up with a more direct form taxation: panhandling.

Naphtha

[Ed Note: Interesting take on things]

Panhandling is not a result of poor social services. It is the result of laziness. People would rather stand on a corner than go and get a real job. Some panhandlers are homeless and/or mentally ill but many are just lazy.

I find it unsettling that you find her behavior acceptable. I flatly refuse to be threated by anyone for any reason. I find it even less acceptable when the only thing I have done is to tell you that I don't have any cash on me.

How about this for a scenario? I'll show up at your house and demand your cash. When you don't give me any, I'll just tell you that I'll be back to steal your TV and your stereo. That make you mad? Well, I don't like being hassled either.

I used to buy in to the whole propaganda that we, the working tax payers, just needed to throw more money at the problem it would go away.

Then one week, I was driving to work on my usual route and I noticed that while the children and sign stayed the same, the woman presenting herself as their mother rotated daily. Concerned that the children were not in school, I called the aforementioned social services. It seems that these gals (all 6 of them) had pooled their children (4 kids - 11, 9, 7, and 5) and were taking turns panhandling at a busy intersection all day because they were brining in about $1000 day. Nevermind that 1) the children are learning that you beg for money and 2) not getting any kind of an education to prepare them to have a real working life.

My eyes were further opened when a friend of mine, who is a police captain in a suburb here, took me around to show me his local pandhandlers. One of them, finished with his hard day of mooching, heads off down an alley and drives off in a brand new Chevy Surburban. Another was presented with a sack of groceries which he promptly dumped in the trash. This man's sign stated that he needed to buy food for his family. When my friend asked him why he threw the food away without even looking in the back, he said, "I''m here for the cash. If they *gestures at people driving past* see the sack of groceries, they won't give me any more money." The third one was spotted in bank parking lot totaling up his take for the day on a new laptop, sitting on the hood of his Honda Accord.

I'm told that this is pretty typical for many of the people who you see on the street corners with their cardboard signs. I've not seen any reason to doubt it.

All DART PD has to do is to "Criminal Trespass" the people they know are panhandling.

This keeps them from being on their property to even ask for your money.

Granted the panhandler would need to have an active trespass warning issued, and a DART officer would have to catch them on their property in order to arrest them.

[Ed Note: DART has issued criminal trespass warnings in the past. My understanding is that they're only good at the one address where issued. There are several other laws that could be used if DART PD wanted to remove panhandlers from the premises. It's just, as Recent Coin points out, they just don't seem to care!]