BALTIMORE — When it comes to young people squeegeeing in Baltimore City, many people have opinions on two opposite sides of the spectrum.
"I live there, when an incident happened where a guy was shot here. That's one of the reasons that made me think about moving," Idris Coleman, a resident in the neighborhood, said.
"I know they get in the way a little bit sometimes, but they're just trying to make some money," said Bryan Chancay, another resident.
"I'm at the corner where the squeegee kids are all the time and I've never had a problem," said Mike Weiss.
Last July, Timothy Reynolds was killed after an altercation with a squeegee worker right in the intersection a Light and Conway, but on Tuesday, city leaders say it's the first day officers will begin enforcing a no-squeegeeing policy at six of the busiest locations in the city.
When asked why specifically those six locations, Deputy Mayor Faith Leach said data was the deciding factor.
"We actually use data to drive our decision making. What we did was we identified some areas where there were some safety challenges. For us, this is about safety, it is about the safety of our young people and it's also about the safety of motors and visitors on our roadways," Leach said.
Deputy Mayor Leach says data from 311 and 911 calls for service show patterns of traffic accidents and issues in those intersections including at President and JFX, Mount Royal and North Avenue, Wabash Avenue and Northern Parkway, MLK Boulevard and I-395, and Light Street and Conway.
But many neighborhoods believe even though they won't be allowed at these corners, they will likely take their business elsewhere.
"We have people doing a service but they haven't been vetted so we don't know what their behavior will be, [or] who they are. We don't know anything about them, but they're interacting on a daily basis with thousands of people and they haven't been vetted and I think that's just difficult," Coleman said.
Deputy Mayor Leach says this is just a start to a much bigger squeegee collaborative comprehensive plan that will eventually blanket the entire city.
"There are multiple community-based organizations that are on corners right now, this isn't just a law-enforcement approach, we got the community that is out there on street corners connecting young people with resources," Leach said.
