In July, Louisville police charged a 67-year-old woman with holding an open alcoholic container in downtown Louisville. Less than a month later, and just a block away, they charged her for sleeping on a blanket on a public sidewalk alongside her belongings, stowed in a shopping cart.
After the woman didn’t make her court date in September, a Jefferson County judge issued a bench warrant calling for her arrest. She has no arrest record in Kentucky, but has faced two evictions, the most recent from a retirement community in 2021.
Now police can detain her on sight, alongside at least a dozen other unhoused Kentuckians for failing to appear at her court date for sleeping outside, on public property.
According to advocates, this is becoming a familiar story in Louisville and across Kentucky. Under the Safer Kentucky Act that went into effect this summer, “unlawful camping” is now a crime in Kentucky. On the first offense, “unlawful camping” is a violation that doesn’t carry any jail time.
But advocates warned before its passage that many people without permanent housing would struggle to show up for a court date. When a person fails to appear before the judge, prosecutors can and have been asking for bench warrants, and judges have been granting them.
Out of the more than 40 people who have been charged with street camping in Louisville, more than half at one point had a bench warrant taken out against them on that charge. Some are also facing other charges too, in separate cases, like drug possession, shoplifting, or terroristic threatening.
When a person fails to appear before the court, even on a minor violation like a first offense street camping charge, the county attorney has the option to ask for a bench warrant. It’s basically an order for police to arrest that person. The language of the Safer Kentucky Act also explicitly prohibits local governments from discouraging prosecutors or police from enforcing the street camping ban. It also empowers the state attorney general to sue the local government if they have any such policy.
Read the rest at Louisville Public Media.
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