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United Way Solicitors Hobbled by Panhandling Crackdown
Asking for money downtown runs afoul of law
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Published on October 07, 2004
It's well known that since Police Chief Ronal Serpas took charge earlier this year, there's been increased enforcement of anti-loitering and anti-panhandling laws. Anybody with a hand out asking for money in downtown Nashville is subject to citation, or even to being led away in handcuffs.
This crackdown on downtown panhandling has some downtown office United Way solicitors looking over their shoulders.
Every fall the campaign to raise money for the United Way gears up, with offices all over the city filled with admonitions for workers to "voluntarily" contribute.
"Not everybody is happy to see me coming with my bundle of personalized pledge cards," says one legal secretary who has acted as office fund-raiser for several years. "And now I've heard that I can be reported for violating the anti-panhandling ordinance. It just doesn't seem right."
While there apparently have been no arrests of United Way solicitors, the perception of being anti-charity has the Metro Police on the defensive.
"We don't really go looking for these kinds of United Way violations," Serpas says. "But if somebody calls us to report that it's going on, we have to investigate, just like we have to if somebody calls and says a homeless guy is harassing pedestrians. We have to enforce the law equally."
This neutral position, not surprisingly, doesn't sit well at United Way headquarters.
"There's a huge difference between a homeless guy asking for money directly and a United Way solicitor asking for money to help the homeless," says Mark Desmond, the president and CEO of United Way of Metropolitan Nashville. "And we are very careful with money—about 90 cents of every dollar donated goes to charity."
Local homeless man Jimmy Vetella counters: "Hey, 100 cents of every dollar given to me goes to a homeless guy. But," the under-the-bridge denizen concedes, "I don't have a stable of accountants and I can't give a receipt for tax purposes."
(The Fabricator is satire. Don't believe everything you read.)
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