WEST COUNTY : VENTURA : 1 Cited as Police Get Tougher on Begging

Ventura police said Monday that they cited one man on suspicion of panhandling during the first weekend of a crackdown on aggressive beggars who are driving customers away from Main Street.

Philip Van Patten, 37, was cited by a foot patrol officer Sunday on suspicion of panhandling on Main Street, Lt. Mike Tracy said.

The city assigned an officer to a special foot beat on Main Street to focus on problems caused by transients, after downtown merchants complained that they were frightening customers away.

Tracy said Van Patten asked a woman for money near the corner of Figueroa and Main streets at 11:50 a.m. Sunday, then blocked her way when she refused to give him any. The woman spotted the foot patrol officer, David Wilson, and asked him to arrest Van Patten, Tracy said.

Wilson issued a citation to Van Patten, ordering him to appear for arraignment in Ventura County Municipal Court before May 16 on a misdemeanor charge of panhandling, Tracy said.

On Saturday, Wilson arrested three people on suspicion of drinking in public on Main Street and two on outstanding warrants. He received a complaint of someone panhandling outside the Thrifty Drug Store on West Main Street, but “he got there within a minute and there was no one around,” Tracy said.

On Sunday, besides citing Van Patten, Wilson arrested four people on suspicion of drinking in public, one on suspicion of being drunk in public and one on suspicion of possessing methamphetamine, Tracy said.

“I’m sure the word got out that we were going to have a foot patrol officer down there,” Tracy said of the lone panhandling citation. “Maybe some of these people who were panhandling took the weekend off.”

Ventura County Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin De Noce said his office will prosecute alleged panhandlers under a state law saying that “anyone who accosts other persons in any public place . . . for the purpose of begging or soliciting alms” is guilty of a misdemeanor. Convicted panhandlers probably will be fined or jailed for one or two days if they were unable to pay, he said.

De Noce said prosecutors have decided that there must be evidence the beggar was “rude or insolent,” a phrase that he said “strikes the proper balance between the destitute people’s right to ask for money and the public’s right to be left alone.”