FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Nov. 4 (UPI) -- Police in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., cited three people, including a 90-year-old man, for feeding homeless people in a park, the first such charges under a new city ordinance.
A law went into effect in the city Friday limiting outdoor public feeding areas, requiring permission from property owners and that portable restrooms be set up.
The first three people charged under that law were 90-year-old homeless advocate Arnold Abbott and two pastors, Dwayne Black and Mark Sims. The three men were stopped from feeding homeless people on Fort Lauderdale Beach on Sunday.
"One of the police officers said, 'Drop that plate right now,' as if I were carrying a weapon," Abbott, who runs a nonprofit group called Love Thy Neighbor, Inc., told WPLG-TV, Miami. "It's man's inhumanity to man is all it is."
Abbott successfully sued the city in 1999 when it tried to stop him from feeding the homeless on the beach.
"I'm going to have to go to court again and sue the city of Fort Lauderdale -- a beautiful city," he said. "These are the poorest of the poor, they have nothing, they don't have a roof over their heads. How do you turn them away?"
The three men could each face up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine for the citations.
