welcome back to the civil rights lawyer channel you may have seen the video of travis hines getting run out of turtle lake wisconsin for the crime of allegedly loitering if you haven't seen that take a look at this footage and then we'll discuss the interesting law behind this took a while to turn on huh right here i guess i'll get out no you don't need to get out but it's uncomfortable sitting like this so well you're sleeping like that laying down well what's the what's the what's the law about you can't light her in our town okay is that what ordinance do you mark that as it's our village ordinance we can't order in our town okay let's go bottom line just get in your car and get out of turtle lake simple as that yeah i mean i'll be making my way out but no now i'm not enough we're done we're done here you don't want to cooperate just get in your car and leave are you a chief or something i'm the police chief yes i am all right good job are you that's an elected position we're not here to debate who i am what i'm doing i've told you who i am i told you i was the turling police department when i arrived okay oh yeah and were you were you called or no or you just come up on your own to it doesn't matter you've been here i told you i've been here all day you've been here all day you have okay don't turn my words around we're not going to play the game we've all been here i mean for a while we're asking you to leave our town completely we who's we you didn't get elected village board put me in charge of enforcing the ordinance so it's a village board tells me that they don't want people lightering in this town you got a mayor they have a village president okay so he's not elected he's yes he is then why would you call it we're not going to debate this similar to mayor if you don't want to id yourself just get in your car and let's be gone we're not here to debate it you need to believe need to believe you need to leave you guys you guys are really crazy no we're not i mean this is a this is a realtor you don't want to id yourself so let's get back in your car take your stuff and head out of here i'm willing to exchange information so let's take a look at the turtle lake ordinance that prohibits loitering it says that no person shall loiter in or about any public street public sidewalk street crossing alley bridge public parking lot or other place of assembly or public use after being requested to move by any law enforcement officer and upon being requested to move a person shall immediately comply with such requests by leaving the premises or area thereof at the time of the request so loitering laws in general basically you have these municipalities who historically have created this offense of loitering which is a crime with really for no apparent reason your mere presence is the crime there's a lack of any criminal intent whatsoever and that's the problem it's been used for potentially legitimate reasons by law enforcement in the past with gang activity with drug dealers with prostitution things like that or at least in the eyes of the public but it's also been used by law enforcement for other things such as using it against homeless people using it against anyone that they don't like you know the poor or the other groups that the police want to target for some reason the big constitutional defense to this is what's known as the void for vagueness doctrine and this is when a law by state law or municipal law state or local law fails to inform the average person basically what's what conduct is prohibited so there was a 1972 u.s supreme court case um papa crystal versus city of jacksonville now this was a loitering case i think it was the first one this is where you know taking a daily walk could be considered loitering and the court struck it down as being overbroad or unconstitutional for vagueness so is it a daily walk or is it the criminal offense of loitering as the court wrote in the opinion the net is cast large so the individual police officer is getting to decide what is a crime and what is not that's ultimate discretion so who is loitering and who is taking a walk so the police in other words can target the poor and the unpopular so as a result of the papa christu decision 1972 most loitering laws around the country were essentially rewritten and how did they rewrite them to include specific offenses associated with loitering inside the the the statutes themselves so this ordinance here in turtle lake doesn't appear to have been rewritten or initially written to include any specific offenses so as not to just give ultimate discretion to a police officer who may decide to just run you know poor john rambo right out of town with disastrous consequences so i actually did some seventh circuit researches as is the federal circuit that indiana's in there's a couple cases that if you're interested you can look at there's a 1983 case from seventh circuit waldron versus mccaddy and it discussed it didn't strike down indianapolis's loitering statute based on something that you don't need to know about called right now called abstention doctrine however it strongly implied that it would have been found unconstitutional had they agreed to make that decision and there was a very strong dissent in that opinion discussing and laying out exactly why indianapolis loitering ordinance was unconstitutionally vague in 1983 about a decade later there was a 1994 case out of the seventh circuit case of uh weimers i don't know how you pronounce that weimerslodge walmar sloggy versus maine township high school and couple interesting things in that case i mean one they define loitering but they also discuss the 1983 u.s supreme court case of co-lander now in that case as the 7th circuit you know was interested in the supreme court determined that the loitering statute in california that required anyone who police thought were loitering to go ahead and provide their id and demonstrate with incredible evidence you know their identity who they are to law enforcement that was giving law enforcement too much discretion allowing them to use that to misuse that to do the wrong thing and that's sort of what we're seeing here this ordinance itself in my opinion is very clearly likely unconstitutional as void for vagueness on its face it just gives too much too much discretion ultimate power to law enforcement to decide who's a criminal and who's not without actually pointing to any reasonable suspicion of actual criminal conduct and i think that's clearly this demonstrated in the video so thanks for watching and you know please check out the blog the civil rights lawyer dot com please make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any updates or new videos and please if you enjoy the content here and support what i'm doing consider joining as a member on youtube remember freedom is scary deal with it i'll see you next time you