Sean Howard: Tell panhandlers were to go, away from here

Re “Panhandling under scrutiny” (Page 1A, Sept. 14): Councilman Dave Lopez may be right in questioning whether regulations work in controlling the derelict element from terrorizing our community, but his plan isn’t strong enough. Many of these people are criminals; either because of illegal substances use, their physical confrontations of citizens to intimidate and extort, or the destruction and theft of personal property to support a choice of a nonproductive lifestyle. And yes, it is a choice.

Besides Police Chief Galen Carroll’s weak position of increased regulations and simply not giving in to their demands, I say the public needs to take it to the next level. Police might not be able to prohibit these criminals’ First Amendment rights, but we, as productive contributors to this community and law-abiding citizens, have the right to tell these people we don’t want them in our community. Silicon Valley did it last year and purged the limited open areas around Google, Intel and other high-tech companies. You know where they dumped them? Right over here. Manteca said they weren’t going to hang out in their parks, Ripon said forget it, keep moving ... it’s time we said, “Move on; you’re not welcome here either.”

This story was originally published September 16, 2015 at 11:12 AM with the headline "Sean Howard: Tell panhandlers were to go, away from here."