COLUMN RIGHT/ MICHAEL RUSHFORD : Panhandling Is Not Free Speech : Non-enforcement of public-order laws have made our streets and parks unsafe.

There was a time in the not too distant past when families would visit Palisades Park in Santa Monica on a summer evening just to look at the Pacific and let the kids run around. On a hot night in New York, hundreds of parents and children would sleep under the stars in Central Park. In most cities Christmas meant evening trips downtown to join shoppers hurrying along the sidewalks past beautiful window displays. City life wasn’t ideal. There were places decent people did not go at night. You could find bums living along rivers and near rail yards. There were red-light districts with high crime rates. But downtown sidewalks, parks and public places were considered safe places to visit, even at night. Police and government leaders in most cities believed it was their duty to keep them that way.

For some time now, Central Park has belonged to derelicts and criminals when the sun goes down. There are no children playing there on summer nights. People who visit Santa Monica at any hour will find drunks sleeping in Palisades Park, and panhandlers have taken the place of shoppers on many downtown streets. Most people, whose tax dollars maintain these places, are now reluctant to visit them. It is intimidating for a parent accompanying young children to be confronted by a red-eyed, foul-mouthed drunk begging for a dollar but frightening for an elderly lady.

We have been told by “homeless” advocates, civil-liberties groups and network television that most of these street people are victims of heartless government policies. We are told that these policies have made several million decent working people and families homeless. These claims have been disproved by studies showing that several hundred-thousand people, rather than several million, are living on the streets. Most are unemployed, and often alcoholic, men or mentally ill people who should be in institutions closed down by civil-liberties groups 20 years ago. This “politically incorrect” information hasn’t seen much air time on the evening news.

In the 1960s, U.S. Supreme Court decisions voided laws against vagrancy and panhandling in most cities. Encouraged by legal arguments from groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the court determined that in general these laws gave police too much power to harass law-abiding citizens. The decisions had a dramatic impact. In 1969, law-enforcement agencies reported more than 106,000 arrests for vagrancy. Nineteen years later, while the United States population had increased more than 20%, vagrancy arrests decreased by more than 77% to 36,500.

Crime flourishes in places where drunks and derelicts roam the streets. A recent newspaper article reported that this year in Santa Monica, where the parks are clogged with street people, residential burglary has increased 35% and a surge in gang activity has resulted in five drive-by shootings in three months. In a two-month period, police shot and killed three men in separate incidents. One was killed while attacking a security guard after harassing pedestrians and motorists. Another, a drunk, was shot while wandering the beach firing a pistol. In July police shot a transient who attempted to rape a woman after burglarizing her home. That same day another “homeless” man was arrested for the beating and rape of a mentally retarded woman near Santa Monica College. All of this has occurred while Santa Monica’s city attorney has publicly proclaimed that he will not enforce an existing curfew for teen-agers and laws against public drunkenness and panhandling.

Though unwillingness to enforce public-order laws are a problem in some communities, uncertainty about whether the courts will permit enforcement is a national problem. In two recent cases, federal judges in New York and San Francisco struck down panhandling laws with rulings announcing that public begging is a form of constitutionally protected speech akin to solicitations by charities.

Such rulings have served as an invitation for criminals to roam the streets unmolested. Ironically, their most frequent victims are the truly poor, the harmless drunk and the mentally ill. Now as communities across the country attempt to address this problem, civil-liberties groups are seeking court rulings to block them.

While we should continue to fund programs offering food, shelter and assistance in finding employment for the truly needy, it’s time for our courts to recognize the right of working people and their families to the use of their parks, sidewalks and public places free from confrontations with drunks, derelicts and beggars and the accompanying threats to their safety and decency.