by Boris Gaidai
On February 19th ECSO deputies arrived outside the Alfred Washburn Center to “clean up” Murphy lane. To do this, they threatened to arrest the homeless people who were waiting outside the center unless they left so the street could be cleaned.
In a little over an hour, the street was cleaned, and another half hour after that all the people who were told to leave had come back, now without basic necessities like tents, sleeping bags, and blankets.
Two days later, one of those homeless people, a man named August Bucki, died of hypothermia. He isn’t the first homeless person to freeze to death in Escambia County, not even the first one this year.
While you may have heard of HB 1365, the bill that made being homeless illegal in Florida, being passed in 2024, Pensacola has been a trail-blazer in trying to criminalize homelessness.
In 2013, the much maligned “blanket ban” was passed by the city council. While the media and public focused on the fact that the city prohibited sleeping with a blanket, that was only one part of a wider series of ordinances.
These ordinances, No. 17-13 through No. 20-13, sought to criminalize any kind of public camping, using public restrooms for personal grooming, using the restroom outside of dedicated facilities, and “aggressive” panhandling.
While these ordinances apply to everyone equally, it is crystal clear that the only people that will be in violation of them are those who are homeless.
When they were passed, the public was rightfully outraged at the ban of sleeping with a blanket, so they protested against it. Later in 2014, that specific ban was lifted, but all the others stayed. In fact, the city was later sued in 2017 when they tried to expand the panhandling ban.
These ordinances are still on the books today. Even if they were repealed, that would do nothing against the statewide ban on homelessness. Until something is done, the death of August Bucki is only a sign of what is to come.
