OAKWOOD – First reading on an ordinance prohibiting “urban camping and solicitation” was approved unanimously by the Oakwood City Council Monday evening.
“The intent here is to have a balance where we don’t have situations that put people in an unsafe situation, an uncomfortable situation, and we don’t have people out there scamming the public,” City Manager Stan Brown told council members. “That’s the bottom line.”
“We’re just trying to be proactive, really, before we have a big problem; get ahead of the curve,” Brown added.
“Particularly if our neighbors are adopting similar type ordinances it just makes us a good target if we don’t have something on the books,” Brown said referring to a similar ordinance about to be voted on in Flowery Branch.
Mayor Lamar Scroggs said, “Since the publicity has come out in Flowery Branch that they’re doing their ordinance on panhandling…and it’s maybe pushing a little of it up this way.”
Councilman Sam Evans asked if the problem was manifesting itself often within the city’s jurisdiction. Brown deferred the answer to Police Chief Randall Moon.
Moon answered, “We found that it was the same people that kept coming back…so we started taking pictures to document it that way, but without this ordinance we really didn’t have a leg to stand on.”
Moon said there appeared to be several common threads with those his officers have had to deal. “They seem to like Walmarts. (And) the biggest problem we were having were Romanians. They are known to travel and work areas.”
“We found out that they moved up from Doraville to Suwanee and just kept coming this way.They’re not THE total problem but they’re 90-percent of the problem,” Moon added.
Brown said that frequently the solicitors worked as a family.
“The Chief can attest the fact that sometimes they use children as part of their presentation,” Brown explained.
“Yeah,” Moon agreed, “they’ll line a whole family up out there. And they’re real aggressive.”
“I’ve sat and watched them…they don’t just beg. They aggressively seek out cars. And when we approach them they just (use) constant lies, one lie after another, and its hard to identify them because they don’t have identification on them,” Moon stated.
When asked after the meeting how his department knew the solicitors were Romanians, particularly in light of the fact that they didn’t have identification, Chief Moon answered, “In speaking with them you could finally get it out of them where they were from.”
“We had also contacted a local FBI Agent, who is just a friend, and he had passed on some information to us where they are from,” Moon said.
“Are they here illegally?” I asked Chief Moon.
“That I couldn’t tell you,” he answered. “I would assume that they were…whether they are illegal or not I couldn’t verify.”
Moon went on to explain, “Because we were just strictly handling it with warnings, verbal warnings and all (no arrest being made), we didn’t really dig for ID.”
Moon added that should an arrest be made the Hall County Jail would be the agency to determine the immigration status of the individual in custody. “The Jail does the automatic status check when you lock anybody up that’s a foreign national.”
A second reading of the ordinance will be required before the City Council votes on its adoption. That will happen at their next scheduled meeting.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2015/9/335437/oakwood-okays-first-reading-of-law-targeting-panhandlers-and-urban-campers