Burlington, Vt. - Police say panhandlers and transients are back out on Chittenden County's highway on and off ramps and it is creating a safety hazard.
"They're creating problems with the traffic, the flow of traffic, impeding traffic," Vermont State Police Lieutenant Marc Thomas said.
"Everyday that I'm out here I'm two feet from death," Panhandler, James told us.
Thomas says Pan Handlers seem to appear every time the weather is nice.
"Certainly if we've dealt with them before and we've warned them, then we try to fix the behavior either with a criminal citation or with a traffic citation," Thomas said.
But it is not enough to keep them away.
"I've got hundreds and hundreds of dollars in tickets," James said.
When State Police actually succeed in driving transients off the highway, they have to go somewhere. Many times, that can be another high-traffic spot: Church Street in Burlington.
"It's not illegal to be homeless. And it's not even illegal to panhandle. The Market Place has an ordinance downtown that aggressive pan-handling is something that officers can respond to," Brooke Hadwen from the Burlington Police Department said.
But Hadwen also says guesses that more than 50 percent of the transient population has an addiction problem. That is when police say, the courts and legal system also need to help.
We called Chittenden County State's Attorney, T.J. Donovan, to get his take on the prosecution of law-breaking panhandlers and transients. We did not receive a call back.
