The D.C. Council on Tuesday closed a legal loophole that left D.C. police essentially powerless to ticket drivers and their passengers who throw garbage onto city streets from their vehicles.
Legislation adopted by the council unanimously attaches littering to the list of moving violations. Metropolitan Police Department officers will be empowered to dispense $100 citations to drivers who throw just about anything out of their vehicles.
The common litterer has long been subject to a $75 fine. But the law was murky, until the council action Tuesday, as to how an officer could ticket a driver for the violation. Enforcement was virtually nonexistent.
“As a police department, we cannot pick and choose the laws that we will enforce,” Police Chief Cathy Lanier said Wednesday in a statement. “If the bill is signed into law, we must enforce it. Writing tickets for any offense can motivate people to change their behavior, particularly if fines are imposed.”
The legislation adds $25 to the penalty “because tossing a bottle out of a moving car could be more dangerous, likely is more dangerous, than simply dropping a gum wrapper on the sidewalk,” said at-large Councilman Phil Mendelson, chairman of the public safety committee.
“People are tired of litter in this city,” said at-large Councilman Kwame Brown, who introduced the measure. “People are tired of people being able to just throw trash on the ground and no one holding them accountable. It’s time for us to be proactive.”
The bill also includes a fine of between $100 and $250 for any person who is stopped for littering and refuses to provide his or her true name and address to the officer. Ward 1 Councilman Jim Graham had taken issue with the high-end fine for failure to disclose information, but dropped his objections and voted for the bill.
“I always keep in mind that 25 percent of the people in Ward 1 live below the federal poverty level,” Graham said when the bill was debated last month. “It’s easy for us to say ‘$250 fine.’ But a $250 fine to people who are scraping to make ends meet on any given day and any given week is something that needs to be approached with very considerable care.”
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