Responding to complaints from citizens, Jenkins starts controlling panhandling on roadways
Frederick, MD 12/8/2018 (RD) You likely have encountered them as you enter the City of Frederick on most major state and county routes. Now Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins is planning to use existing laws to get panhandlers off the roads.
” Right now we are, a concerted effort right now by my men and women are out there on a daily basis because of complaints bu the public. We tried to do this the nice way, earlier this year we started to enforce it. We were writing citations, and those citations were being thrown out of the Circuit Court.”
On a recent Mid Maryland Live Show, Jenkins recently revealed a conversation he had with Judge (Dino) Flores to improve the deputy’s work.
“I addressed it recently with Judge Flores, we sat down and we met, I told him we were going to enforce this, what he wanted to see from the Deputies. He made it clear to me. I told the Deputies to go out and enforce this.write the citations. So in the past month we have written over 36 citations in the month of October.”
One concern the Sheriff has is that the $75 citation fine does not deter an individual who is earning up to $500 per day Panhandling. His hope id to get the people off the roads and on to private property to ask for money.
Recently, more attention has been drawn toward the panhandling issue as a result of an incident in Baltimore in which a woman rolled down her car window to give money to a panhandler and was stabbed to death.
Robert Dacey