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you can still shoot the breeze out front after you pick up the mail. ”
“I used to do that,” the resident replied, “but I’d be damned if I’d do it now."
Commonwealth’s Attorney Peter Luke said that he met last month with Sheriff John Henry Woodward, several property owners and leaseholders of businesses around the square. The problem, Mr. Luke said, is that the loitering is happening on private property, not the public streets.
Loitering ordinances “are not favored in the law,” Mr. Luke said, adding that there is enabling legislation in the Virginia Code to allow localities to enact such legislation, but that most such ordinances can be successfully challenged in court. “It’s not uncommon for them to be thrown out as unconstitutional. They are usually overbroad; written to prohibit ‘hanging around’.”
In enacting such ordinances, Mr. Luke said, “what people usually mean is that it’s okay for some to hang around, but not others. However, the ordinances do not discriminate between innocent talking and more sinister goings-on.”
There are ways to approach that, he explained, by targeting the ordinances to specific behavior, such as loitering for prostitution or drug sales. However, “if the ordinance is made specific enough to pass constitutional muster, it won’t prohibit, what you want prohibited.”
Added to the constitutional questions, Mr. Luke said, “The town has an additional problem - they have
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