QUESTION: Is the city of Burlington doing anything to stave off aggressive panhandlers at the main entrance to May Memorial Library?
ANSWER: Unless they happen to have some overdue fines on their accounts, most library patrons will probably find it off-putting to have someone ask them for change when they visit the flagship branch of Alamance County’s library system.
Nor is there any need for them to suffer this irritation on their way into May Memorial Library, according to Tom Meisenbach, a captain with Burlington’s police department.
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Meisenbach insists that the city’s police department currently has both the legal authority and the manpower to address aggressive panhandling within Burlington’s downtown business district, where May Memorial is located.
As a point of clarification, Meisenbach notes that “basic panhandling” has been deemed to have Constitutionally-protected status by the U.S. Supreme Court. He added, however, that there’s no fundamental right to use confrontational tactics to shake up pedestrians – and no court precedent to keep local officials from outlawing this behavior.
“In Burlington,” the captain continued, “we have an ordinance against aggressive panhandling…and if they’re right there at the door, that could be considered aggressive, which would be a violation of the ordinance.”
There was a time not terribly long ago when a shortage of officers had severely limited the police department’s ability to enforce nuisance-related restrictions like the city’s panhandling ordinance. Yet, generous pay raises and aggressive recruitment have recently enabled the agency to replenish its ranks. As a result, the department has been able to devote a greater of its staffing to these quality-of-life issues.
“We now have a full-time resource officer who’s dedicated solely to downtown,” Meisenbach went on to concede. “He rides a bicycle, and he’s been in that role for about a month now.”
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Anthony Menichini, the officer assigned to this particular beat, has other areas to patrol aside from the grounds of May Memorial Library. But according to Meisenbach, anyone who’s accosted by panhandlers at the library’s entrance can easily bring the problem to Menichini’s attention.
“If you call the police department and select option six, you can get to our dispatch, or you can report it directly to the library staff,” he added. “I can tell you that each day that Menichini works he goes through the library at least twice…But I can also tell you that as far as calls for service go, we have not gotten any about this problem lately.
“If people are having trouble with aggressive panhandlers, we want to know about it,” Meisenbach said. “We’re committed to making downtown a safe and enjoyable place to be and that’s why we have a full-time officer there.”
In spite of Meisenbach’s assurances that the police department is on top of this issue, the perception that a gauntlet of panhandlers awaits visitors to May Memorial remains as persistent as ever.
Earlier this week, John Paisley, Jr., the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, publicly scolded the city over this alleged problem when concerns about the county’s library system came up before the board of commissioners. Paisley insisted that he has it on good authority that aggressive panhandlers are driving people away from this flagship library branch.
“The complaint I got was from a current executive at ACC,” he added at the end of a four-hour board meeting on Monday, “who said ‘I won’t take my grandkids there because there’s two or three people by the doorway begging for money, and they’re getting pushier and pushier.’
“There are homeless people lying in the aisles,” he went on to assert. “We’ve got to correct that since many people who really support the libraries won’t send their kids there because of the safety issue.”
Paisley went on to suggest that the commissioners should broach this issue directly to Burlington’s police chief Alan Balog as well as members of Burlington’s city council.
In a subsequent interview, Balog insisted that he has not heard any recent complaints about aggressive panhandlers in front of May Memorial Library.
He went on to confirm Meisenbach’s contention that there have been no similar complaints lodged with either the police department or with the library’s staff.
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