ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, June 25, 1996 TAG: 9606250028
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SYLVIA B. TUCK
THE CITY of Roanoke continually tries to entice tourists and newcomers into downtown Roanoke with all manner of publicity and promotions. However, the vagrants, winos and delinquent teen-agers are allowed to roam the area, detracting from the pleasant areas of the business district and the City Market area.
This discourages not only visitors and newcomers from wanting to tour the area. It also discourages downtown office workers from wanting to shop and put money back into the economy.
In the course of one recent afternoon, while walking on Campbell Avenue between First and Jefferson streets to shop, I witnessed four winos passing a liquor bottle among themselves while sitting on a bench on Campbell in the middle of the afternoon. This is one of the downtown area's main thoroughfares.
A little later that afternoon, the same bench was occupied by a wino passed out or sound asleep. An empty police car was parked close by, but no officer was making any attempt to do anything about the vagrant.
During that same afternoon, two of my co-workers were exposed to loud, vulgar language from the winos while these ladies were walking down the street.
And, in the course of that same week, my husband was walking up the street and had the unpleasant ordeal of seeing a wino throwing up on the corner of Campbell Avenue and Jefferson Street.
While these incidents aren't life-threatening, the winos and delinquent teen-agers can be quite intimidating at times when they congregate in one area and are being loud and disruptive. It makes employees in our office who need or want to go out on the street fear for their safety and feel uneasy about walking on the streets alone. This certainly shouldn't be the case during the course of a normal business day.
These are not unusual situations, but are common occurrences that happen every day downtown. As stated before, they're certainly not events that would attract anyone to the streets of downtown Roanoke, and they're very disgusting and unpleasant for workers in the downtown area.
Can't something be done to discourage these people from loitering and harassing the public?
Sylvia B. Tuck of Wirtz works as an administrative assistant at a local insurance agency.
LENGTH: Short : 50 linesby CNB