A Sitting Ban in Berkeley Would Punish the Wrong People

By Dan McMullan

Monday’s San Francisco Chronicle had a front page story that put in writing what many of us have known for a long time. Sitting laws, touted as a way to run off legions of wayward youngsters, have mostly come down on the grey and balding heads of the aged and disabled. The ones too addled to get out of the way.

Our Berkeley Mayor and his Republican rubber stamp council has known these results and have still pressed on because the Berkeley law on the November ballot is not about sitting at all.

It's about favors to campaign contributors (Berkeley Chamber of Commerce) and a sly way to transfer an unequal amount of Police protection to Shattuck Avenue and other commercial zones. While the police are “move along, move alonging” on the avenues, transferring no-shows to court, testifying, etc., we are being told there will be a wait for a police response to the psycho in our driveway.

Hundreds came out to city hall in July to express what a bad idea this is. But one man from the chamber sealed the deal. In my neighborhood we know that if you need help from the City, you don't call Councilman Darryl Moore, you call Kriss Worthington. Kriss, Jesse and Max are the only ones not wrapped up in the cocktail circuit and begoggled by real estate tycoons.

The Mayor and the council members that support this tell me that it is only $27,000, like $27,000 is nothing. But $27,000 is a ton of money when you are feeding the hungry, saving a mortgage or keeping a shelters door open. And that $27,000 is a lie. That's just to put it on the ballot. That doesn't factor in the police hours, court costs, lawsuits and the untold suffering visited upon people already at the end of their rope and the costs to our neighborhoods in losing more police availability at a time when property crimes and shootings are on the rise.

Dan McMullan is the director of the Disabled People Outside Project.