Canadian city wants panhandler out of town

WILLIAMS LAKE, British Columbia, July 25 (UPI) -- A western Canadian city in British Columbia has mounted a legal campaign to send an allegedly abusive panhandler out of the city limits.

Scott Nelson, mayor of Williams Lake, 350 miles northeast of Vancouver, said Robert Inglis is "a chronic, repeat offender who has problems and is intent on making a community's life a miserable hell," the Globe and Mail newspaper reported.

Nelson wrote a letter to Crown prosecutors seeking an expulsion order for Inglis, who has also been banned from the city of Prince George, about 200 miles north, where he was convicted of mischief and uttering threats, the report said.

In Prince George, police received more than 100 complaints about him, and the city passed a no-panhandling bylaw in May, 2006, the newspaper said.

Complaints in both cities allege Inglis targeted women coming out of banks, and said he became verbally abusive if he was given only $1 or nothing, the report said.

Robert Holmes, president of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, told the newspaper banning an individual from a community just moves "problems down the road without resolving underlying problems."