I was caught by the police for camping in my car in the library parking lot in Westport, WA. It was an embarrassing situation. It was about 1:30 am and I was woken up by the cop rapping on my window. I couldn’t even use the excuse that I was using my computer because everything was turned off. I simply dozed off and that is where my actions became illegal.
It is very frustrating to be advised that what I do in my car is illegal. It’s not like I am exposing the naked parts or anything. It’s not like I fell asleep at the wheel, which is far more dangerous. I wasn’t robbing the place. I was just sitting in my car minding my own business.
The laws within cities are the ones that have gotten more harsh on people. It’s not so much Federal Laws that directly impact us, it’s the city ordinances. Whenever the Federal Government comes up with a new law, the city tries to find ways to make it even tougher, ok? They are the junk yard dogs of new laws. The cities don’t want to look like they are taking a soft approach to crime.
The Federal government should have no laws against sleeping in your car. Although they will not let people sleep in the parking lots of Federal Land. Whenever the law started against sleeping on Federal land is when curfew hours across the Nation got serious, especially within city limits.
I was told by the cop that I can sleep on county land. I have to drive outside the city and there are spots that I can park and sleep. That got me wondering if the GPS could ID county land from city property. The laws change a lot between the boundaries. It would be very helpful to have an indicator that shows whether I am in city jurisdiction or county.
Many times people will get stopped by a city cop outside their jurisdiction on county land. This can cause a case to be thrown out of court very easily. I’m sure there are exceptions to it though, like a hot pursuit. But besides that, a regular city patrol can only protect within the borders of only their own city. The tax revenue to pay for the cops salary comes only from city property, not county.
As a homeless man who has to sleep many different places, I would find it to be very helpful to have a GPS that can show me the city/county borders. In fact, Google Maps is starting to show city borders when you look up a city. This is very helpful for studying the map of a city. Now all I néed is more mobile support for when I’m actually running around trying to figure it out.
Can someone collect this data? Thank you.
Carefully Choosing Words 