A police officer then approached.
“He told me that it was against the law for me to do that,” Burns said. “I told him I heard different and he told me, ‘No, it’s against the law.’”
In fact, what Burns had heard differently is true. Costa Mesa City Hall in March issued a moratorium on enforcing its controversial anti-solicitation ordinance.
City officials agreed to the moratorium with three civil rights groups, which had filed a lawsuit on behalf of day laborers claiming the ordinance is unconstitutional. Costa Mesa agreed to halt enforcement of the city law until the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rules on a similar case involving another city.
But Costa Mesa Police Chief Christopher Shawkey said not enforcing the law doesn’t mean his officers can’t inform people about it.
“We are not enforcing it, that doesn’t mean we can’t contact people to tell them about the ordinance,” he said.
It’s also too hard to tell what the circumstances were on that day when the officer approached Burns, Shawkey said.
“It might’ve been from a safety standpoint,” he said. “It could be that the officer saw the guy going on the roadway; maybe the driver stopped in the roadway, which is a violation.”
Burns said he wasn’t in the way of traffic nor did the driver stop to speak to him. He said the officer told him he can hold a sign, but that he couldn’t approach anyone to ask for work.
“I didn’t give him a reason to come up to me,” Burns said.
Shawkey would not allow his officer to speak to the Daily Pilot to give his account of the 3-week-old incident.
Belinda Escobosa Helzer, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California’s Orange County office, sees the case differently than the police chief.
