Saturday, July 22, 2006

Is It Legal To Starve And Die In A City Park?

One city, Las Vegas, has now made it illegal to feed the homeless in city parks. How compasionate.

Gail Sacco, who operates a mobile soup kitchen seven days a week, said the city doesn't have adequate homeless services and that she is undeterred.

"There's no way for people to get out to those services in triple-digit weather," she said. "My plan is to do anything I feel is needed to keep these people alive."

The law defines a homeless person as an indigent "whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive assistance."

American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada lawyer Allen Lichtenstein said the language makes the law unenforceable.

"The ordinance is clearly unconstitutional and nonsensical," he said. "How are you going to know without a financial statement who's poor and who's not poor?"

"It means they can discriminate based on the way people look," Lichtenstein said.

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