WASHINGTON (7News) — Last month, D.C. Councilmember Brooke Pinto heard from residents on several issues, including a call for the city to bring back its loitering law.
Georgene Thompson’s Players Lounge is an institution on Martin Luther King Avenue. It’s been there for about 50 years.
On most days, outside of the restaurant, you can see men loitering, shooting dice on the sidewalk or passed out from drugs or alcohol.
“I think it’s terrible. I think it’s really terrible,” Thompson said.
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She said she hopes the mayor’s new loitering bill is enacted, since the past repeal of D.C.’s loitering laws means police cannot do anything, at least that’s what they tell her.
“The police told me that they can’t touch ‘em unless they’re fighting or arguing,” Thompson said. “They said that the only time they can bother them.”
The issue is costing the restaurant business.
“We have a lot of older customers that have been coming here for years, but now they are afraid to walk through that, so they keep going, they have told us,” said Robin Garris. “They’ve called and want us to bring their food to them in their car. They just don’t want to get out.”
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While the ACLU opposes such anti-loitering laws as a violation of constitutional rights, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has moved ahead with a bill to give the police chief the right to declare an area off-limits for up to five days.
“Yesterday, they came out here and they had a whole table sitting right there, playing cards on the table and shooting dice,” Garris said.
Thompson said the new chief is aware of the problem.
“Even the new chief of police came up here, right. And she visited and saw them out there,” Thompson said. “Did they make nobody move? No. They didn’t make nobody move.”
The D.C. Council is expected to hold hearings later this month on Mayor Bowser’s crime bill ACT or Addressing Crime Trends Now. A big focus of the hearing will be loitering.