Dictionary Definition:
loi·ter (loitr)
intr.v. loi·tered, loi·ter·ing, loi·ters
1. To stand idly about; linger aimlessly.
2. To proceed slowly or with many stops: loitered all the way home.
3. To delay or dawdle: loiter over a task
:
Prince William County Code Sec. 16-16 states as follows:
Any person who remains or loiters on property, whether such property is publicly or privately owned, in such a manner as to impede or hinder the passage of pedestrians or vehicles, or in such manner as to interfere with or interrupt the conduct of business, or who remains or loiters on such property knowing that an offense is being committed, or under circumstances which justify a reasonable suspicion that such person may be engaged in, or is about to engage in, a crime, or with the purpose of begging, shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor; provided, however, that such person shall have first been instructed to move on by a law-enforcement officer and shall have failed or refused to comply with such instruction.
NO LOITERING signs have been up all over the place for years. Some of the signs are to keep kids from gathering and hanging out. Signs are put up to keep people from taking advantage of store fronts. In general, the loitering ordinances are to keep people from gathering where other people (usually shop owners or local governments) don’t want a crowd hanging out.
This post and resulting thread are to discuss loitering in general, not the specific case brought forth by the ACLU. Please keep case specific comments on the other thread. How are loitering laws used? Are they necessarily bad? Good? How do they help communities? How do they hurt communities?
Again, please honor the request–nothing specific here to the PWC case.
The laws are good and rarely misused.
Do no loitering laws ever smack the face of right to assemble and if not, why not?
@Moon-howler
Good question, MH. Let’s hold a public meeting near a no loitering sign and find out 🙂
To be accused of loitering, you have to be obstructing the way, which means you won’t move, right? So are protesters loitering? The loitering law is too open to interpretation and abuse, IMO.
Question..why not talk about that specific case? My feelings on loitering, any large groups of people need to assemble in their own yards or houses.
Not SPLC,
You can talk about the specific case all you want to, on the ACLU post. I specified that this thread was to discuss loitering in general. It seems to deserve its own attention.
Where have you seen loitering signs in the past? Who did they target?
The first time I saw one was at the A & P when I was a kid. It targeted the vagrants who wanted to sit and drink out on the dog food bags. Most of the time they didn’t comply. I don’t know who enforced it. My memory isn’t that good.
All property is either owned by individuals, businesses or government. Who decides what is loitering? How does loitering differ from trespassing?
Society cannot have it both ways…would anyone be upset if the police chased away teenagers who were skateboarding? This skateboarding call is a constant police call. The police move the kids on and nobody is upset (except maybe the kids) yet when the exact law is applied to people who are just sitting in front of a 7/11 or another business (often times right underneath the “no Loitering” signs) suddenly everyone is up in arms. Don’t those businesses have the exact same expectations that people sitting around will be moved on as the skateboarders would be?
Should we allow skateboards to hang out and ride on the sidewalk or in front of someone’s business because they are kids and not people looking for work or just chase them away? Under the loitering law, there is no legal difference between the violators.
The PWCPD by policy, do not respond to loitering calls unless there is a complaint and it is dispatched. A warning and explanation is given by policy and legal requirement.
@Lucky Duck
What I am upset about is this: it’s fair to “shoo” people away and/or ask them to move along if they are in the way or crowding or whatever. It is NOT fair to randomly pick out a group, demand ID and then arrest them without asking them to leave first.
I would take it one step further–a cop “shooing” people away should explain why s/he is asking them to leave. I don’t think this is unreasonable.
Sorry, Lucky, you already said “A warning and explanation is given by policy and legal requirement.” But if I get arrested, how can I prove I got that warning?
Can “mall rats” be arrested for loitering? You know…those kids who sit on mall benches inside and just talk to their friends?
@Lucky Duck,
I am not sure what that means. Will you elaborate? If I called and said there are a bunch of men loitering in front of my house, would that be a complaint or does there have to be more to the loitering?
I think everyone should have to go by the same rules. Kids, day laborers, you name it.
My problem is private citizens getting involved and attempting to bend laws and law enforcement to meet their own wants and wishes. I feel that behavior has made the county more vulnerable.
Pinko, I think if you own or operate a business it is more than fair to shoo people away who are taking up space and not buying anything. People just hanging out and not contributing to the business (like buying something) are hurting the business.
Even if you go in and buy a soda, a beer or a cup of coffee, unless there picnic tables, move on off the premises.
Kids on wheels of any sort are pests, IMHO.
@Moon-howler
“I think if you own or operate a business it is more than fair to shoo people away who are taking up space and not buying anything.”
Agreed!
“My problem is private citizens getting involved and attempting to bend laws and law enforcement to meet their own wants and wishes. I feel that behavior has made the county more vulnerable.”
Absolutely!
Yes, PAP, “mall rats” are in fact, banned from Potomac Mills and Manassas Mall on a regular basis. The security force at Potomac Mills moves them on and obtains trespass warrants against them for repeat offenders. In Manassas, they call the PD to move people off the property if they refuse to leave when told.
MH, if someone calls in and complains the police will respond. There is no legal distinction between kids on wheels and men sitting or standing on your property.
I have a problem understanding where Freedom of Assembly as protected by the First Amendment ends and loitering begins. I understand the concept of trespassing on private property and wonder why laws applicable to that issue aren’t sufficient.
Opinion – it IS private proerty.
oops my bad
Right to assembly kicks in on public property I guess. I can’t imagine that it would be an unlimited right though. The City of Manassas requires a permit, obtained in advance, for any type of legal demonstration. I don’t know how they handled Hillary Clinton being at Metz. Probably because it was School Board Property, their ordinances were not enacted.
I would guess that the permits required by the City of Manassas and other Government entities apply when public property is involved (a demonstration on a public street, for example) and public safety is an issue. If that were not the case, we would need a permit whenever two or more gathered for any reason such as Church services, boy scouts, etc. etc. etc. I would rather err on the side of freedom to assemble (and any constitutionally protected right in general) vice rules limiting first amendment rights.
I think the City says if you carry a poster, or do something in unison, like pray or chant. I am sure it could be challenged also, if someone had the time and money to invest.
It sounds to me that the loitering law is reasonable, and very understandable. I’d like further definition of the term ‘begging’. Are there cases where people are ‘begging’ for work?
(I came close to the line, but I don’t think I stepped over it. What say you MH?)
Lucky Duck, how does the PD protect itself and the taxpayers from suits that may arise because a certain ethic group of loiterers may become targetted by call-ins? The City of Manassas had a similar problem with its anonymous hotline for overcrowding. A disparate number of calls (most unwarranted) were called in against Hispanics. It makes it appear that a protected group is being targetted even though the police aren’t picking the target.
Not admonishing, SA.
That is a good question. How about those dudes who stand in the median strip holding a sign that says will work for food. Is that begging? I think of begging as panhandling.
I take some offense at the term ‘protected group’ in some of the posts. So no one wants to ‘protect’ my rights as a natural born citizen? You have to come from somewhere else to be ‘protected’? Hell of a way to treat your citizens I’d say! Perhaps someone can explain.
Censored, what the agency would do if there is one particular group that has been arrested, ticketed etc. is demonstrate and prove the demographics for that particular area. What a reasonable person would expect to find is the standard.
For example, if someone who is White complained that an Officer profiled them based upon race in Lake Ridge or mid-county, the County could demonstrate that a vast majority of residents in those areas are, in fact, white, so a court could reasonably expect that most stopped in those areas would be White.
The county would go so far as to use what are termed “beat areas” for the Police Department. If someone in Williamstown complained about the majority of people being ticketed or arrested in Williamstown were Black,the County would show that the majority in that beat area are, in fact, Black. So why would you again, not expect most arrested in that area to be Black?
The vast majority of day laborers at both the Coverstone and the Rt.1/Parkway 7/11 are Hispanic. The County can prove this via photos and research and documented interaction with these individuals. So it would be reasonable to assume that the majority of those arrested at both locations would be Hispanic.
Believe me, these scenarios have been thought out, played out and prepared by the County.
SA, the federal government determines “protected groups”.
Lucky Duck, thanks for the info.
Yeah, well it was the federal government that sent my ‘unprotected’ @ss overseas! So what group exactly isn’t ‘protected’ if I might ask? Any guesses?
Lucky Duck, we are very fortunate to have you visit this blog. Nothing beats reliable information. It trumps rumor and inuendo each and every time. Thank you.
Answer one question and you get 10 more. Just for my clarification, will the police not stop for loitering unless there is a complaint?
I would imagine that no complaint implies they have permission to be there? they = loiterers.
No, the PWCPD will not enforce a loitering complaint unless there is a specific complaint called in. The officers do not drive around looking for people standing around.
The exception would be if there have been several complaints in a particular area and it has been designated as a “tracker” area (meaning all police actions are documented or “tracked” for a reply to a BOCS member or citizen group who complained about the violations) and the beat officers would be aware of that and take action(s) under the enforcement mandate of the tracker.
It’s kind of too bad the City of Manassas didn’t use those arguments in the overcrowding lawsuit. I said it before – it stood to reason that unfortunately, a majority of the overcrowded houses were occupied by Hispanics. That didn’t mean Hispanics were being profiled, and if there had been a large number of whites overcrowding houses they would have been affected too.
It’s only profiling when for example, the police pull over a large amount of people of one ethnicity for speeding, when of course people probably speed in equal numbers among different ethnic groups.
I’m not sure what happened in the Manassas case, but they should have been able to show statistics that Hispanics were not overly represented in terms of the percentage of overcrowded houses that were complained about.
I’m glad to hear though the county has done its research on this, and is well prepared to show that evidence in court if it comes to that.
GR, Hispanic residences were overly represented in complaints made to the hotline. The majority of complaints were unfounded. Yours may have been one of the very few exceptions.
MH, thank you for your comments, but there are a lot of insightful people whose comments shine light on positions!
Lucky Duck, it concerns me that a BOCS member -possibly spurred on by a particular group – may have the PD track a specific area. I think we can guess which BOCS members and which group would have the most concern about the 7-11s. I know county staff, including the PD, respond to Supervisor’s suggestions and requests on a routine basis. If the loiterers at the above-mentioned 7-11s are predominantly Hispanic, how does one tease out the prejudices of certain groups who place the calls?
I’m not in favor of loitering but I think one can’t dismiss the history of HSM, Stirrup, Stewart in our county’s immigration debate and how some of those 7-11s came to be targetted to begin with.
The 7-11 is not targeted. The loiterers are. You seem to have a very warped view of what is actually happening, based on preconceptions.
And, Rick, you’re naive if you think our county’s recent history won’t become part of the problem. The 7-11 owners weren’t the ones garnering publicity about chasing the day laborers off their properties. They appeared unwilling to go to court. HSM is the organization that began the big day laborer chase.
You are right Lucky Duck. You do come along though when we seem to get bogged down and set the record straight. And for that I thank you.
Censored, I was frustrated and calling the police personally before there WAS an HSM.
Rick, I don’t think individual or personal calls to the police about loitering would put a target on our (PWC’s) back. The orchestrated effort by HSM did that. The speakers with the red circles at the marathon meeting, the camo-clad vigilante patrols at the 7-11, the posts about the day laborers complete with Greg’s play-by-play account, the equating Hispanic to “illegal” – those things are what hurt the county’s reputation and leave it open to lawsuits whether the suits have merit or not.
Skateboarding kids and loafers at the mall are not targeted because of an additional characteristic – that of being a much ballyhooed “illegal”.
Every single sentence that you wrote above is nonsense. And lawsuits were being used to further the intreets of illegal aliens – I’m thinking especially of the Bush Justice Dept. suing the City of Manassas and encouraging lawsuits aginst them – before there was an HSM.
Censored, I did NOT imply that any day laborer area was the subject of a police tracker. I used the tracker as an example when an officer may make self initiated activity.
You would be surprised at the number of BOCS trackers that are sent to the police department during the year. These can range from loud parties to suspicious vehicles. The vast majority of these trackers are on the east end of the county, very few come from the west end supervisors.
Lucky Duck, I wouldn’t be surprised by the number of trackers sent to the police department (or other pertinent departments) during the year. Squeaky wheels often generate/demand more attention as do actual valid complaints. Sorry if I inferred that the day laborer areas were actually tracked. My mistake. Again, in an ethnically or racially mixed area, how do you tease out which complaints are generated by prejudice if the practice is to rely on called-in complaints. The police can be perfectly evenhanded but the caller may not be. If the police only respond to call-ins, they may be at the mercy of bigotted or scared people.
Rick, you’re mistaken if you think there is a big time gap between the action against the City of Manassas and the formation of HSM. Any common players?
Yes, when did the Justice dept go after the City? I seem to remember reading about that over on the dark screen in another life. I think there definitely was an HSM when that happened and they couldn’t do jack about it.
Maybe HSM wisely decided to stick to the county where it had some control and influence over several of the county bocs. There didn’t seem to be as much cohesion with the City and HSM.
The ordinance on overcrowding was established December 2005, repealed in January 2006.
By June 2006 the City was responding to harassment from HUD.
HSM was established April 2007.
The stuff’s clear in my head because of my own personal timeline. 2005 a bunch of shady Hispanic people who don’t speak English move into houses on my block, furtively, with hostile glances at anyone who tries to approach them or even looks at them. 2005 or early 2006 I realize the people next to me don’t even know who mows their lawn, can’t speak English, and that I’m living next to some type of flophouse. Some time around 2006 I start to realize what’s happening, that banks are making loians to illegal aliens and that they are using the properties as flophouses, in violation of law, and that our whole set of social constructs is failing to deal with this. 2006-2007 I’m writing angry letters and making phone calls to representatives about what’s happening around me – while dealing with noise pollution, young men leering at my stepdaughter, anonymous men walking around my neighborhood at all hours speaking in another language, people parking in our family’s spots all the time and getting angry when asked to move, lack of parking on the street anywhere near my house, and did I mention noise pollution which was extreme. Also someone takes a bath on our lawn one night and we see that they tried to use the hose nozzle to try to siphon gas. Plus someone breaks into my car one night, plus we find our backyard fence mysteriously open a few times.
2007 HSM is formed and I start to get hope that maybe we the people can make our elected representatives give a damn. 2009 my neighborhood and quality of life is much better. I’m STILL angry and I’ll tell you what, without HSM if I was still living in a Spanish ghetto I’b be 50 times angrier.
because, Moon-howler, while some say “We can deal with the issues of overcrowding and flophouses without having to attack the root cause of illegal immigration” no one ever did such a thing, no one had the concern or energy to do so. And if they had, Bush’s Justice Department would have sued them and made them stop under penalty of lawsuit and legal prosecution. Given the level of corruption in this society there was only one way to move forward. Greg L and HSM did take that path, and my life’s better, and I thank them, and I think that many here are divorced from reality. The details are much clearer in one’s mind if one’s family was uncomfortable in their own house as a consequence of seeing the price of lettuce go down 10 cents.
Of course there are mitigating reasons that I should have to put up with an illegal flophouse next to me and that we should tolerate illegal immigration as a demographic trend :
Obama’s personal experiences with a college friend who was here illegally, and an aunt who lived in Section 8 housing – here illegally, AND with her rent subsidized
Bush’s unsuccessful courting of the Latino vote
Obama’s successful courting of the Latino vote
The perceptions of, and motivations towards charity of, elitist millionaires like Ted Kennedy, John McCain, Lindsay Graham
The way people living behind locked gates feel about things from up in their ivory towers
People’s religious training towards gentle behavior and charity
The desire of the wealthy to keep wages low
The construction industry’s corrupt reliance on illegal labor
The cultural diversity inherent in every fast food chain and restaurant here needing bilingualism on the part of anyone taking food orders
In the face of all that, how can I complain.
Thanks Rick for correcting some of the misinformation that’s been spread around on here lately regarding the City of Manassas and the overcrowding ordinance.
And I was complaining to City of Manassas about overcrowding in my neighborhood at least as early as January 2005 if not even the year before that.
Of course, some here would have you believe I was the one of the only legitimate complaints to the City of Manassas in terms of overcrowding! That actually defies logic, considering the amount of overcrowding in my former neighborhood.
It’s about time some of these repeated misstatements are being corrected. I’ve never been a member of HSM, and I didn’t need HSM or Greg to put ideas in my head that a very bad thing was happening in my former neighborhood. Of course, I don’t know anyone who would need someone else putting ideas in their head to that effect, if they’d gone through what I went through – which I’ve documented enough in the past that I’m not going to repeat here.
Actually, my complaints had to have started in 2004. I did get that townhouse successfully cleaned out twice prior to the city enacting that overcrowding ordinance, and the times I got it cleaned out were more than 6 months apart.
And, there were others on my street complaining about townhouses near them that were similarly overcrowded and causing trouble. At one time we had 5 flophouses on the street. Fortunately, as of last year most had gone to foreclosure. Again, it defies logic that me and the other people on my street that complained were the majority of the “only legitimate complaints”. The city wouldn’t have enacted the ordinance if the problem was not much more widespread, and there were not many many more legitimate complaints. It’s a nice rewriting of history though to lead one to believe that the overcrowding complaints were not legitimate, and therefore the overcrowding problem must not have existed. I wish that were true – probably housing values in my neighborhood wouldn’t have plummeted 67% in just one year time from January 2008 to January 2009, in addition to 40% the year before.
1. What does the City’s ordinance have to do with what happened in the county?
2. How did HSM help you Rick? Name me one thing you think they did in your community to relieve your problem?
3. Do you think everyone here on anti lives in an gated community? I don’t think any of us do.
I don’t know what else I can say to anyone to understand what many people here have gone through with the deterioration of neighborhood standards. Rick, I have gone through just about everything you just described but it didn’t involve Latinos and no one broke into my house. It was many years ago. That doesn’t make it better or worse, just in a different time.