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The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a law on Tuesday banning any and all loitering outside of SF nightclubs. This, it seems, will help stop violent crimes that happen in front of nightclubs. Now thugs looking to punch or murder other patrons will have to walk a few feet away from a nightclub in order to commit their preferred acts of violence. A dirty, evil loiterer is, for those of you who don't know, a person who "remains a pedestrian for a period of over three minutes within ten feet from the entrance of a nightclub or within ten feet from any point on any lines formed at the entrance to a nightclub." If a loiterer is caught in the act of mischievous loitering outside a nightclub, according to SFBG, they will be "fined $50-$100 and/or community service. But if charged with a misdemeanor, they will be punished with a $200-$500 fine and/or community service, or six months in the County jail, or fine and jail." In related news: You weren't using those First Amendment rights anyway, were you?
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Yay! No more waiting in line at will-call! Everyone will just magically get instant access!
No, you're not loitering if you are within ten feet of a line. But, if you are in line, does that make you within 10 feet of a line? Can a thug join the line and thus not be a loiterer?
I think the intent is to let the SFPD just beat 'em all and let God sort 'em out.
Great, so if I want to loiter evil-ly outside a nightclub, I only need to stand 10 feet away from the entrance, but if I want to have a smoke I need to move 20 feet away?
umm. so what if you are just smoking outside? I know it takes many smokers more than 3 minutes. And although technically they aren't supposed to smoke within 10 feet, let's be honest. All bars and clubs let smokers stand right outside their premises and smoke before coming back in.
Well, yeah. It's annoying that they allowing suspected no-good-niks to stand, legally, 10 feet closer to an establishment than a smoker (assuming said smoker is not a loiterer but is patronizing the establishment.
But you're right about the lack of enforcement about where smokers actually smoke (in my case, about 2 feet away from the door, especially if it's cold and or rainy). And I'm pretty thankful for that, especially considering how much I drink and smoke. But that leads me to worry, conversely, that the loitering crackdown is just going to be another law that nobody is going to bother enforce.
If I was a habitual loiterer, I wouldn't be worried at all about this.
I actually think this law is written deliberately vague enough to allow them to stop and harass people who they think will likely be trouble. Think North Beach dudes waiting to start the inevitable 2:15 am fight.
Or the gangstas milling around flashing signs, etc...
but when they see you and your friends "loitering" outside cassanova, you're probably safe like before.
This means the 1st amendment point is not without merit.
Since I imagine it will definitely be up to interpretation, and having personally been subjected to awful lot of stops/searches/cold shows/ etc... i'm wary about the State having that kind of power.
I think this is perfectly constitutionally legal, despite my wishes that it weren't. My impression is really that it will give police instant reasonable suspicion to stop anyone who is "loitering," because a loiterer is presumed to be dangerous. This is like when police are patrolling "dangerous" neighborhoods. They don't have to have a reason to stop any single individual really, because everyone is presumed to be dangerous on account of them being in a "dangerous" neighborhood. That seems to be enough for the law. Although it may be that smokers are not going to be targeted as a matter of policy, I just worry that this may happen because well, not all cops really care to make a distinction.
I think there might be a different intent here, in that, let's say a bouncer removes someone from a club, and they decide to hang around in front and be a nuisance. This gives them grounds to call the police and have the person moved. As for smoke breaks, etc., it's a matter of how they choose to enforce the law.
As for the "You weren't using those First Amendment rights anyway, were you?", the freedom of assembly clause has been interpreted as the right to assemble and petition for the redress of grievances, i.e., to protest. It doesn't say "anybody can stand anywhere they want whenever they want."
Not saying this is a great and wonderful law, but it's not a cut-and-dry evil, either.
It's a dumb policy.
The way to get around it: you are waiting for the bus, or you are smoking. It's not considered loitering!
Can we apply the same rules to homeless loiterers?
Not if Chris Daly has anything to say about it.
clearly no one here has had the misfortune of being on Broadway after midnight on a saturday night - there are hundreds of guys out on the sidewalk, amped-up, drunk and looking for a fight. i'm 6'2", 210, and i genuinely fear for my safety there if i were to bump into somebody accidentally...
as for the law, isn't it more of an issue that SFPD beat the crap out of a completely innocent bystander and then we all have to pay for the settlement out of our tax dollars?
You ain't kidding.
I don't think anyone is poo-pooing the safety issue here. I just like to bitch about my smoking rights.
As much as I can't stand walking past Slide or the Ambassador at night or smoking in front of Whiskey Thieves or the Nightcap, I usually don't have any reason to fear for my well-being. North Beach, from what I read and hear is a more dangerous story entirely.
No way is this constitutional
How much BoS and City Hall time was spent on writing this PR opportunity of a law that is uneneforeceable and will go unenforced by SFPD while the City faces a massive budgetary crisis?
The BoS and Mayor continue to fiddle while the City burns...
Also, there are probably half a dozen laws on the books already that could be used by any police officer with half a brain to break up a crowd on a sidewalk or skulking around a club entrance.
Just off the top of my head:
-Public Drunkeness
-Disorderly conduct
-Trespass
-Vagrancy
-Unlawful assembly
-Enciting to riot
-Interference with official acts
I'm sure Kamala Harris is just waiting anxiously to drag some North Beach hooligan meathead into court and throw the book at him using this new law (or accept a plea bargain that keeps Kamala from stepping foot into a court room and puts the hooligan into some drug diversion program on the City's dime).
this is dumb....fuck cops.
Leave it to the most inept board of supervisors on the planet to come up with yet another unenforceable, utterly ridiculous *cough*, "law."
I'm sure that the first rich kid to get arrested for standing around has daddy's rich lawyer to get the whole thing declared unconstitutional and tossed out of court.
End of jokey, nonsensical "law"
From what I heard tonight on the news, the doormen cannot do their jobs, and it is just the bridge and tunnel that hang around waiting for a drunk fight, or to harass some of the strippers as they leave their work. It will help with the random violence and some of the shootings that seem to plague some of the clubs in North Beach.
By a first amendment issue, are you claiming that that these drunken fools are "assembling for the purpose of disseminating information". I do not think that loitering is the same as the right of assembly. Many cities have anti-loitering laws, and do not believe that they are unconstitutional, unless they are use to prohibit some form of political discourse. I do not believe that this is the intent of these laws and hard to prove in this case.
As I said above, this law is not unconstitutional at all. The freedom of assembly does not guarantee your right to express yourself everywhere in public, and I believe the Supreme Court has already held that loitering laws are perfectly legal. I should probably check on that one, but from my knowledge of criminal procedure, I'm fairly certain it has already been decided. Furthermore, the law, by defining someone as a "loiterer" after they've stood outside for more than 3 minutes, is basically saying that the police can presume you are dangerous and may therefore stop and frisk you. This may act in the same way that city governments sometimes label specific neighborhoods "dangerous," thereby allowing police to presume anyone in the neighborhood who is out in public during certain hours poses a potential danger. This presumption thus allows the police to stop anyone they want.
Is it police-state like? Yes. And I'd point out that although this law appears to be giving SFPD cart-blanche power to stop anyone they want in front of a bar/club, police may already justify their actions in other ways. However, this law will make it so that the rich kid who does get stopped while loitering in front of his favorite club won't be able to sue the city government for damages, because the police are relying on a presumably valid law. If the law is invalid, they won't get damages, but they will be able to enjoin the city from enforcing it. I'd point out that we've been a police state for a very long long time. Things are getting better--minus that slight detour period between 2001 and 2008. Police are more educated today than they used to be, and as long as the laws are enforced in such a way that we don't feel we are living in a police state, people are usually content.
Finally, a bit of history: Former California Supreme Court justices (Bird, Grodin, and Reynoso) were booted off the bench by voters, when big corporations ran a smear campaign against them for their opposition to the death penalty. In reality the corporations had funded the smear campaign because of the justices stance on corporate liability, which corporations knew voters might actually sympathize with. Under their jurisprudence (later overturned), businesses had been held liable for anything going on outside as well as on their premises (like parking lots), period. Bar owners were responsible for the activities of loiterers, and if they didn't take appropriate actions to prevent foreseeable harm (to anyone), they were held liable for any injuries. This also meant that bar owners could take affirmative steps without incurring liability from the loiterers themselves, because they could assert this as an affirmative defense. This is now no longer the case of course. Bar/club owners can and must only take affirmative steps to prevent more injury in emergency situations (basically after the fact), and this usually amounts at a minimum to calling the police. What this also means is that bar and club owners could be held liable for trying to take any affirmative steps against people loitering in front of their premises. In respect to liability, this new ordinance is seen as a useful tool, since it gives bar/club owners a mea culpa, so that they can really say "you've got to leave, or else!" Thus, when the bouncer gets into a brush with the loiterer who won't leave, and the loiterer gets socked in the face or restrained, he may not successfully sue the bar owner--depending on the circumstances of course.
I never thought I'd be defending the police state... I will say this though: whether or not the new ordinance will be seen as a success or just an unnecessary extention of police powers will all depend on how it is enforced.