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CITY PAGES
EXILE FROM
BARBER STREET
Can Chief Lumpkin Kick out
The Bad Guys?
Bruce Lee, proprietor of Lee's Package
Mart on Barber Street, steps from behind the
bullet-proof glass he had installed after the
armed robbery incident of three years ago.
He points outside — to an African-American
man cruising across the sidewalk in an emer
ald green warm-up suit on a Thursday after
noon.
“That guy in the green, he cannot come in
the store," Lee says in heavily accented
English. “He's always begging money. He has
n't been able to come into my store for the
last two years."
Approached outside, the man in the
green jumpsuit has no comment Six hours
later, when the sun has fallen. I find him
hanging out on the curb behind the dump
sters of the Golden Pantry with a friend He’s
ready to talk — after I give him the $2 he
asks for.
He is Troy Anderson. 40. He says he and
his sister are going to picket Lee's Package
Mart. “I'm banned from the store because I
asked for a quarter." he says “That's dis
crimination. man."
On the subject of banishment. I ask
Anderson’s friend Uirry Johnson, 38. if he
thinks Chief Lumpkin's recent proposal — to
banish people arrested for drugs and prosti
tution from either the neighborhood or the
entire county — is a good idea.
“I understand what they’re trying to do,
but it’s against people’s constitutional
rights." Johnson says. “They could bust you
for just sitting here, you know?"
Anderson: “Athens is loaded with prosti
tution and drugs, but it’s at the University,
too. not just on the streets. They’ve got just
as much over there."
Johnson: “Athens is still an old
Confederate-ass town with that bullshit ...
They’ve got these
good old boys saying
[here he breaks into
a nasal, nerdy white-
guy voice], ‘Me and
my wife don’t like
what’s going on
down at the Golden
Pantry.’... This is a
free country. I don’t
want to spend my
life behind doors.
They’ve got crime all
over — they're tar
geting the street,
though "
The pressures
shaping tie debate over banishment from
Barber Street are familiar ones in 1990s
America Some of the people who hang out
in the street feel persecuted. Liberal city-
types’ progressivism is challenged as they
weigh civil liberties against law and order
And the police chief, who is African-
American. confuses preconceptions of how
the debate should shake out racially by tak
ing a strong stance in favor of kicking law
breakers out (Larry Johnson, also black.
says of Lumpkin: “He’s selling motherfuckers
out, but he's doing what he going to do to
put bread on the table.")
No one denies that the corridor of Finley
and Barber streets between Broad and
Boulevard is a place where unlawful acts
occur. From Jan. 1. 1997. to the present,
police made 28 drug arrests, two prostitu
tion arrests and five arrests for solicitation
of sodomy, according to Margie Butler of the
ACC Police Department.
But not everyone
in the neighborhood
thinks a banishment
plan — the specifics
of which are still
unclear — is the best
way to solve the
problem
Bruce Lee of Lee’s
Package says that
when he first went
into business about
five years ago as
many as 20 people
would be hanging
out in front of his
store. But Lee says
police response to his complaints has been
adequate: “Right now. it's much better." he
says He does not support banishment.
Housemates Amy Dykes. 21. and Su Lee.
23. of 160 Barber Street see alleged johns
picking up alleged hookers all the tune They
say their yard is used as a place to stash
stolen goods until they can be transported |
elsewhere But they’re not ready to see peo
ple banished — at least not from the county.
“I think banishing them from the county’s a
little harsh." Dykes says. “Maybe from the
neighborhood."
Su Lee says banishment would “put
[offenders] out of the county — but isn’t
that just displacing the problem?"
This is the question many policymakers
raise when it comes to the topic of banish
ment. On the same grounds, a California
court in 1959 declared it was beyond judges'
power to banish people from counties, a
decision that is still operative law there.
In Georgia, banishment from the state is
forbidden by the state constitution, but
courts have ruled that banishment from spe
cific areas within Georgia is OK In Athens,
judges regularly keep people from certain
areas or from the county as a condition of
probation — even as a condition of bond,
before a case goes to trial. Magistrate Court
Judge Michael Coleman says. “We have, on
some occasions, made it a condition of bond
that a person... not go to a certain place
while under bond."
ACC Assistant Police Chief Mark Wallace
told Flagpole it was too early to talk about
how the proposal would work, but if the
police want the Clarke County Commission
to pass banishment ordinances for drug
dealing and hooking, they might not have
much latitude, because the crimes are usual
ly dealt with in state court Solicitor Ken
Mauldin, who says he fully supports Chief
Lumpkin's proposal, says that the county is
allowed by state law to adopt its own prosti
tution ordinances, and thus is able to make
banishment part of sentencing. But drug
crimes are fixed as state crimes over which
the county has no jurisdiction
Assistant Chief Wallace says. “The people
Bruce lee. proprietor of lee’s Packaqe Mart on Barber St.
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