City takes next step toward enacting changes to reduce downtown disruptions

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) — Six weeks ago, Mayor Paul TenHaken and Police Chief Jon Thum held a joint media conference to address a noticeable, dramatic rise of panhandling and disruptive behavior downtown — particularly from homeless people — with alcoholism playing a role that discussion.

Thum said the growing number of complaints and calls dealing with this issue had dominated his summer.

"Homelessness is not a police issue, not a criminal issue," Thum said in that Aug. 8 presser. "But bad behavior is."

On Tuesday, the Sioux Falls City Council took one step closer toward making the policing of bad behavior easier in an effort to curtail disturbance and make the streets safer and more comfortable for those who live, work, shop, dine, play, and frequent downtown.

Two ordinance changes — both proposed by Thum — were motioned into a second reading on Oct. 2 by a unanimous vote of 6-0.

Thum presented the first amendment — a change to the city's ordinance on disorderly conduct, which had not been updated in over 30 years.

He called his proposed amendment a "tweak" to make the language of the ordinance match the state's disorderly conduct laws.

He said it is not a drastic measure, but simply one that gives clarity to what officers are allowed to do when attempting to deal with unruly and incompliant behavior — and deal with it quicker.

This language change would remove what Thum called the burden of officers to give a warning. They could just go into enforcement action, which, in most cases of disorderly conduct, is issuing a citation, and not an arrest.

"We're not criminalizing or creating new charges," Thum told Dakota News Now in an exclusive interview before the meeting.

"We're simply working with what we already have to clean it up to make sure the officers can take the steps they need to take, and when the public reports an issue, then we have the power and the authority in the language to do what we need to do."

After the meeting, Thum told DNN that the most important result of this ordinance change is officers can more quickly diffuse incidents involving transient panhandling and after-bar-close noise issues, particularly downtown. Those two things, Thum said, tend to go hand-in-hand.

"This still gives officers discretion," Thum told the city council. "There are circumstances with which people need to be moved along, but there are also issues where this language clean-up comes into play, in particular, is so many of the issues we have with just creating a safe pedestrian traffic environment, and that's on the roads, as well.

"It's reasonable that the sidewalks are for the movement of people throughout the commercial district or the residential district, and this allows us to proactively say, yeah, you can't obstruct the sidewalk."

The second ordinance change would prohibit the consumption and possession of alcoholic beverages in Siouxland Libraries. The motion to move that measure to a second reading on Oct. 2 also passed, 6-0.

Believe it or not, there has never been a city law addressing alcohol in libraries. The director of those facilities told Dakota News Now on Monday that such a measure was not needed until the last several months.

Jodi Fick said having and drinking alcohol have always been forbidden by the libraries' rules of conduct for as long as the libraries have existed. The rules allow the library staff to ask those who were caught by security guards or security cameras drinking or possessing booze to leave.

"For the first six months of last year, I had nine incidents of people who brought alcohol in, where I had to say, 'You need to stop doing that. You need to leave the library,' and they obeyed," Fick said.

In the first six months of this year, the number has gone from nine to 141. Every incident but one occurred at the downtown branch.

Of those 140 incidents, the police were called 27 times because the violator refused to leave after being asked to do so.

As of now, police cannot take action on a person— in most cases, a citation, as in the disorderly conduct cases — for drinking or possessing alcohol in city libraries.

That would change with this ordinance change, which will align libraries with how alcohol is handled in public parks — prohibition.

Fick told Dakota News Now she didn't know why the number of incidents and complaints had spiked so dramatically and rapidly, but she had a decent hunch.

"When we talk about nuisance behavior, there has just been a marked increase in our downtown area this year, and it has impacted the library," Fick said.

"When people get into addictions, it is really hard for them to be thinking logically — 'Where am I allowed to drink? Where am I allowed to make solid decisions?' And, that's the sadness of alcohol."

Thum and TenHaken addressed that alcoholism tie to disruptive behavior from transients in their Aug. 8 press conference. They mentioned the role of the city's three homeless shelters, The Link triage center, and other behavioral and addiction centers in helping break the homelessness and alcoholism cycle that many panhandlers experience.

But TenHaken urged citizens to not give money to panhandlers, that it was only feeding their addictions.

"85 percent of people who are struggling with homelessness in our community want to out of that cycle," TenHaken said. "They want help. They need help, and we have incredible partners that are doing great work. But we have 15 percent that, they don't want help. They don't want to get better. They want to take advantage of our community."

At that Aug. 8 presser was Tami Brown, the owner of The Spice & Tea Exchange near the corner of 12th & Phillips Avenue. She said the dramatic increase in both panhandlers and inappropriate behavior was hurting her business and other businesses downtown, not to mention making downtowners feel uncomfortable if not unsafe.

"When you get to the corner, either side of my block, if you're greeted by people who are openly drinking, intoxicated, yelling, it's probably going to be intimidating," Brown told Dakota News Now on Monday.

"I've watched people cross the street and move on. I'd rather have them walking on my side of the street."

Six weeks later, Brown told Dakota News Now she has seen a dramatic improvement since TenHaken and Thum vowed to clean things up. For one, there is less panhandling.

"Staff feels better walking to their cars, which is the most important thing," Brown said. "We just have noticed less hanging around our corners, bothering people in a way that's a little bit borderline inappropriate sometimes.

"I haven't seen the open containers, I haven't seen the intoxicated people slumped over on benches or on the ground or anything like that. Very, very much reduced compared to what it was."

Downtown Sioux Falls director Joe Batchellor told DNN on Monday that other business owners have noticed the improvement, although he's found a variety of opinions.

Brown credited the removal of downtown public benches that had been occupied by transients and the work of Downtown Sioux Falls Ambassadors , who she said talk to panhandlers and point them in helpful directions.

Before the council meeting on Tuesday, Thum told DNN he agreed things have improved in short time.

"We're doing what we've always done, just to a higher level with more emphasis on more officer presence," Thum said. "However, this is not going to solve the issue, as we've been clear."

Thum then echoed the words he had said six weeks earlier.

"I think homelessness is not a crime, right," Thum said. "Bad behavior is what we're talking about. We need to focus on the services that are there and make sure they get those services so they can take those steps they need."

The ordinance changes that he proposed Tuesday represents his efforts — and the police department and city officials' efforts — at doing their part to help fix the problem.

Even if Thum doesn't consider the "tweak" to be a drastic measure.

"When we had our press conference, we challenged not only ourselves internally but the public to look at what are our practices, what are we doing," Thum said.

"What are the small degrees of change or modifications that we can make before we (take) drastic measures or anything along that line? And this is just something that, as we evaluate our existing ordinances about what we can enforce, how we encourage our enforcement officers to take action when necessary.

"Again, it was well overdue."