Vagrants, break ins and general suspicious characters came up during a Fountain City Town Hall meeting last night with KPD officials and three city councilmen in attendance – Finbarr Saunders, Nick Della Volpe and Duane Grieve.
David Massey, the city’s neighborhood coordinator also showed up.
Generally, the meeting was borne out of concern by some of the neighborhood’s residents who wanted to know what to do about they called some of the vagrants and potential n’er do wells on the streets.
Police answered questions about whether people can stay in cars on a person’s property (they can, with permission, but it may fall to a codes violation), what the rules against aggressive panhandling are (not as stringent as you’d think), the prevalence of complaints regarding vagrants and the like (not as common as you would think), and what to do when a suspicious person is in the neighborhood.
Here’s what you do: Call the police’s non-emergency line: 215-4010.
Folks living in a neighborhood know their neighbor’s cars, and the people who generally should and should not be there.
That said, the public has every right to be on a sidewalk. And if a cruiser sidled along them, there’s no reason that a random person on any given street sidewalk must speak with an officer. Nonetheless, a police presence can provide deterrent for potential baddies looking to do harm.
But that guy in the hoodie might also be looking to get trim.
“It’s called exercise, for a fat guy like me,” Della Volpe joked.
Overall, there didn’t seem to be any link to the meeting – which was sparsely attended with about a dozen or so folks - and any increase in crime reporting in the area. This seemed to be more of an informational type of thing.
And I was there for a different reason, which we’ll get into sometime later.
