Three arrested, accused of illegally feeding homeless

Used to live in Orlando and had friends in FNB.

The police would harass them at every corner and make them throw away food and leave parks!!! FNB mostly dumpster dives local businesses to find fresh food and make meals out of it. It's all volunteer and nonprofit. One of my friends was chased by cops because she was trying to give tomatoes away.

This activity has been going on for at least 10 years. Ugh!!!!!!!

There is actally a law in FL that also states one cannot be held accountable if the food is bad that you give away for free. So any justification of arrest is immediately voided by a whole separate law!!!!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but nobody has mentioned this little "gem" that was in the OP's article link. Regarding the permit needed to make their little gathering legal--"It requires groups to obtain a permit and limits each group to two permits per year for each park within a 2-mile radius of City Hall.

I don't care what anyone says, that is the whole reason behind this law. You can feed homeless people all you want, just don't do it in our backyard-- So says City Hall. Someone else here mentioned that the citizens were the ones that wanted the law in the first place. I've never been to Orlando so I wouldn't know if the parks within that 2 square mile radius are popular with the residents, the tourists that come for Disney World, or the workers at City Hall. Who coincidentally enough, are citizens of the city who could have wanted that law.

On the other side of the coin, a quick search turned up the fact that Orlando FL. encompasses 110.2 square miles. I find it hard to believe that the homeless people and FNB could not find somewhere else to congregate. They had a total of 108 square miles to choose from, yet they chose to do all this within 2 miles of City Hall?

Call me crazy, but it looks like someone was asking for it.

reply to post by Taupin Desciple


This park is nowhere near Disney, but sort of in Orlando's downtown. They want to keep homeless people out of downtown, just like every other city in FL. It's the only reason for this ridiculous statute. 3 people gathered to give away food = arrest? Really? The park is massive and surrounds a lake.

Most parks in Orlando are near schools hence a larger homeless population in a park not close to one. LE park has gatherings all of the time because it has an outdoor ampitheatre. It's also a 'richer' area. I think it was a just cops on a power trip. They do not like FNB in orlando even with a permit.

reply to post by Taupin Desciple


You are right on that but they still put that law in place to limit the feeding of the homeless. If i remember correctly even with that permit you can only feed about 10-20 people or else you risk getting arrested as well. I watched a documentary awhile back about a group of people who got around this law by getting about 10 people to get permits and set up locations around the city but even then its extremely difficult to feed them and thats what puts most people off, most people dont want to go through the whole process of obtaining permits and then making sure they have the the permits to set up in a certain area considering its quite hard to maintain a group of 20 people when your trying to feed for charity, kind of ruins the point when only certain people can receive it..


Its a bull# law either way, you should be able to give the man sitting next to you a well cooked meal without obtaining the cities permission to do so.

WOW

The governments all across the country WORKING HARD to generate revenue and IMPOSE FEAR at the same time.

They probably wouldnt have gotten arrested if they were wearing MONSANTO T Shirts.

What can we do to start acting back?????

Gotta love it. So homeless are like animals now in a zoo that you can't feed? Who the heck are they to tell regular folk what they can and can't do, especially if it comes to feeding another human being. Regardless of anyone's opinion on homeless taking it to the point of arresting people that chose to give money or food to the homeless from their own pockets is beyond idiotic.

The unemployment rate is cooked by the .gov to seem artifically low = there really are not enough jobs = some people want to work yet there are no jobs = you do not seem to understand that there are not enough jobs by a long shot.

Corporate welfare has made the modern corporations as dependent upon the dole as welfare recipients and if we add it all up, all the needless yet job creating wars and all the rest of the many ways the government feeds the rich and wealthy especially when considering the disproportionate number of poor versus rich, we would find a huge imbalance in overall government welfare spending and thus I conclude that the entire system is dependent upon welfare and that the rich are the biggest Bums of all...

I was homeless once, I was a teenager so not really my idea yet it happened...
We slept in a catholic church/basketball gymnasium with maybe 400 other people and with donations from the congregation the children were housed and fed during the say yet the adults could not stay and had to go look for work yet they did get one meal each evening.

Ever been homeless?

I got tired of having no food money clothes so at the age of 14 I strapped on my "stomp your face in" georgia boots and headed off to a nearby construction site where they were building 1000's of mcmansions. No drivers license is a serious hindrance to a young person who wants to help so of course I was turned down for even odd jobs as they saw me as more of a liability then anything yet darn if there wasnt 100's of what most certainly appeared to be illegals jumping into trucks every day heading to that same mcmansion factory...

Ever been homeless and considered too young to work? = helpless unless yer brave enough to sell drugs which I was...

No? then you dont know do you?

Few do yet they all seem to have powerful opinions, pass all sorts of statutes and codes to make sure that it will not be in their faces in their backyards in their nice communities as they would rather build a bigger prison then give a building to shelter the homeless, a new mcmall with a fuddruckers and a kfc then provide food to the homeless etc etc...

I dont care how many people you have helped or not helped... if you have never been in that position then you do not understand and can only feebly attempt to know what its like.

You do not know what its like, times change, things are getting harder not easier...the opportunities to pull yourself up by the proverbial boot straps like many of my fore fathers may have done, in many cases no longer exists or at least not in the same capacity...

To survive the great depression my great grandmother pulled my grandfather around in a wagon as she sold and traded eggs for a living... uhm, an existence... today, the regulations that apply to raising that many chickens and selling or bartering that many eggs would probably prevent her from being able to make an "existence" without welfare as there certainly was not and still are not excess jobs or jobs that anyone would want, in this deprived locale.

What it's like...


yet please, through all of this, please never forget thats its just a ride...

This is just totally stupid. Now you are suppose too let people go hungry. What idiot wrote this law?

Originally posted by neo96
i have never been arrested so i guess i am better than them.

and i do follow the rule of law no matter how stupid it is.

Congratulations, maybe someone will give you a cookie for that the day they lawfully order you to line up for the FEMA train to Camp Halliburton.

Arrested for What ?

It just goes to show how far our Bureaucrats have gone to maintain more payees into the system.

Giving away food to the less fortunate is now an arrestable offense.

These people were arrested for essentially helping others. A very commendable act I might add.

Currently in the US, being arrested has now essentially become a money making for profit activity.

Arresting someone for violation of a statute is used to support the non productive bureaucrats.

Enforced by none other than their revenue acquisition watch dogs, no longer peace officers, now called Law Enforcement.

It's all about money...

Because you are incarcerated until you pay up !! Another form of Debtors prison.

And we actually have the nerve to call ourselves Civilized !

After all of these centuries of so called progress, I wonder what Jesus would think about this ???

Originally posted by NewAgeMan

Originally posted by SelfSustainedLoner
They made this law on the basis of "Feed them and more will come".

What do you know?

I was homeless for a good 8 years. I know a lot. I would go where there was food. Homeless people know how to use a phone... meaning they would call their buddy's up saying "- Common down!

Feeeding the homeless is to be banned by Westminster (London) Council

But a heartless group of Tories have ­revealed their true colours by banning charities from running soup kitchens for the ­homeless.

Conservative Westminster council in Central London also wants to make it an offence to sleep rough – while slashing £5million of funding to hostels.

Astonishingly, town hall chiefs claimed soup kitchens only “encourage” people to sleep on the streets.

Westminster council, one of the richest in the land, wants to bring in a bylaw making it an offence to “give out food for free”, punishable by fines. The twisted move blows apart David Cameron’s Big Society boast that an army of ­volunteers will flock to help those worse off.

Daily Mirror


I am at a loss for words, we have a huge housing crisis in the UK due to the lowest house building for a hundred year, what is available is expensive and a growing population.

What are those youngsters who have been thrown out of home or left because of abuse to do, let alone the many homeless who suffer from mental health problems, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.

When I worked with the homeless I met many who were intelligent, articulate etc., but life had thrown the wrong dice.

reply to post by neo96


something given has no value?
i find that untrue.
if you were lost in the desert and had no water and were dieing of thirst
and i decided to give you some of my water.
mk, that has no value
maybe i should just let you work for it yourself?
i feel like something given can have just as much value as something you have worked for.

Originally posted by OverMan


Ever been homeless?

Yes, I have. It only lasted about 6 months until I was able to get myself straight both physically and financially. I think what helped a great deal was that I kept myself to myself. I used the money I got by donating plasma to keep myself clean by using the $1 dollar shower at a cheap hotel I knew in Phx. I always kept a monthly bus pass for the city bus and I divided my eating between the dumpster behind Dunkin Donuts and the soup kitchen in Mesa. You wouldn't catch me dead in downtown Phoenix, too many bums.

And that's the thing right there. I was homeless, I wasn't a bum. There's a difference and I made it a point to remind myself of that every day when I woke up. I kept myself clean, didn't push a shopping cart with all my belongings, kept as good of an attitude as I could considering the circumstances, and stayed away from people who didn't fit in with what I was doing with myself and how I was doing it.

Ever been homeless and considered too young to work? = helpless unless yer brave enough to sell drugs which I was...

That's what got me homeless in the first place....drugs. Selling and using. (The case has been dead for over a decade now, there's nothing legal I have to worry about ) So yeah, I know what you're going through and how hard it is to shake a social stigma for the sake of bettering yourself. I can't imagine how hard it would be for a 14 year old in 2011 'cause I was a 26 year old in 1990. You're right though, things have changed socially and it probably is 10 times harder. But one thing hasn't changed. If you want to pull yourself out of whatever hole you are in, you have to do it yourself. Sure there are good people out there who will help you from time to time, but you can't depend on them because they're too few and far between.

Trust me, keep a good attitude, keep yourself to yourself, stay clean, stay away from people like FNB who put themselves in jail, keep yourself with as much legitimate money as you can, and you will eventually get out of the hole.


I'm not gonna lie, it aint easy. But it's not impossible either

reply to post by unicomsol

Wonders what would happen if bardering never took hold.

reply to post by bsbray11


I think people should follow the rule of turth rather then the rule of law,ya think.

Originally posted by MrWendal

Originally posted by ronishia
no words i can give could describe the utter stupidness of this law

But it is in fact not a "law". The article clearly states it is a "statute" and there is a difference.

"Law" comes from common law. It is more or less the way things have always been done and is usually backed by "Case Law", the way the courts have always handled issues. Common Law relies on a body of history and past cases to determine what the rules are.

"Statues" is entirely different in that it comes from Government Regulation. A "Statute" is debated and eventually agreed upon by Government , not by Judges.

Under Common Law it is Judges who make the laws. When a Judge is hearing a case, he/she makes decisions based on previous Case Law. In a situation where there is no law found or any history to draw from, the decision the Judge makes then becomes Law. This is why you see Lawyers always cite "precedent" when they make a case to a Judge. "Precedent" is nothing more than another word for "history" in regards to Law.

Herein lies one of the many problems with our Police. They are too busy enforcing statutes that Government bodies have told them to enforce. As usual with Statutes or anything that comes from Government, it criminalizes behavior in which there is no victim. No one is hurt, no property is damaged, no one is violated, yet the act of feeding a homeless person is "illegal".

Exactly, the topic should be edited. Its a statute with the force of law, it isnt the law. If you continue to address these rules, codes, and legislation as law, then it will be your law. Thus your own enslavement.

One thing though (and im sure you know this, just letting some others know), judges now in North America are all administrative judges (no real judicial authority delegated to them) If there rulings used as case law is in contradiction of the law of the land it is void ab initio.

Originally posted by Demoncreeper
The law exists because the people who used the park for pleasure, feared some of the homeless, when being approached for food, money etc. Take your kids to a park, stepping in human feces, is awesome.

It is SUPPOSED to discourage the homeless from being there, "scaring" or "Harassing" people. A LOT of homeless people that live in parks etc, live there because there are always people to "harass" for money etc..

The world is supposed to be kind. Want to blame someone? Blame the people that whined about it. The law didn't come into existence to be a controlling fascist state. It was asked for, by the people.

Hence the law.

Cops treating the people, who are kind hearted enough to feed these guys, like crap isn't right. The law is supposed to keep the parks clean, safe for use by taxpaying citizens.

But if they are breaking the law...then don't feed them in the park.

Actually this is incorrect:-This is ATS and we deny ignorance Demoncreeper.
A. This is not a law. It is a city ordinance. There are differences.
B. This Ordinance was somehow passed with 9 speaking for it and 43 against it. (Sound democratic?)
C. At the heart of this ordinance the speaker for this being passed was a rich developer who has a 90 million dollar development project being built around the park who is in Bed with Mayor Buddy. Investigation
D. They did not break the law. They challenged a corrupt ordinance passed to remove homeless people and raise property values.

The only logical reason I can see for this law is that it's for safety reasons. It could be dangerous to just let random people prepare and hand out food like that with no sanitation inspection (kind of like how vendors at fairs and events have to have their food inspected to make sure it's prepared at the right temperature and that the workers are using clean utensils and wearing gloves and whatnot to prevent food poisoning). Still ridiculous that they actually got arrested for it. I'd think that a warning and explanation of why it's not allowed would suffice.

reply to post by Charizard

It could be dangerous to just let random people prepare and hand out food like that with no sanitation inspection (kind of like how vendors at fairs and events have to have their food inspected to make sure it's prepared at the right temperature and that the workers are using clean utensils and wearing gloves and whatnot to prevent food poisoning).

Well then we better get busy monitoring company picnics and family cookouts, dontcha think?