Dwight Perry stood in front of the Justice in a black and grey pinstripe dress shirt, tucked into wrinkled jeans held up with a brown belt, and he said loudly and clearly, "not guilty."
Perry was fighting a charge for allegedly violating Ontario's Safe Streets Act, by soliciting "a person who is waiting at a taxi stand or a public transit stop."
Turning 61 in April, Perry is a regular downtown Hamilton panhandler. His regular spot is at a grey box on the corner of King and MacNabb.
In provincial offences court Monday morning, his pro-bono lawyer Peter Boushy, argued that Perry was not anywhere close to a taxi stand or a public transit stop to warrant being charged.
"We don't even have an observation of a person being solicited," Boushy said in court.
Sgt. Stephen Tamm, from the Hamilton Police Service ACTION team, said he saw Perry was emptying money from a ball cap. It was later revealed that at that time, Perry was standing more than 10 feet away from the nearest public transit stop, and Sgt. Tamm had not seen him solicit an actual person.
Boushy asked for charges to be dismissed, and he got it.
"There is no evidence of solicitation being done," said Justice Lillian Ross. "The non-suit motion wins. Case is dismissed."
The grey box where a man is sitting is Perry's usual spot. The day Perry got this ticket, he was sitting against the pole on the pedestrian island on the far right. (Peter Boushy)
Perry has hundreds of tickets to his name, given over a decade or so. He owes north of $20,000 in fines before he could ever get a driver's licence or his own housing again.
In the last year, he says, police have started giving him a version of a panhandling ticket that requires him to go to court. This was one of those court dates.
Ticketed repeatedly by ACTION
Part of Boushy's defence was that the ACTION sergeant was using the Safe Streets Act incorrectly, having charged Perry on the basis that he was soliciting near a public transit stop, rather than actually at a transit stop.
Sgt. Tamm argued it was the language commonly used when issuing tickets such as the one Perry got.
The ACTION team's tactics have been controversial. In 2016, four Hamilton police officers from the ACTION team were on trial for writing fake tickets. Sloppy note-taking and officers' inconsistencies in tickets and notebooks were on display.
During the trial, it was also revealed that officers will give out tickets to the same group of people repeatedly, despite knowing they have no intention of paying the fines.
Sgt. Michael Dunham said at the time that they "deal with probably the same 25 people, day in, day out, 365."
Perry is one of those 25 people.
While one of his several charges was dismissed Monday, he has another one lined up in April for a similar alleged offence — asking for spare change in the area of King and MacNabb.
"It's ridiculous. That is just crazy, man. I'm only asking for a quarter," Perry said.
Dwight Perry had collected $9 from passersby by early afternoon on a weekday in August. (Kelly Bennett/CBC)
'An abusive process'
Boushy said he's helping several others just like Perry who face numerous court summons from police for the same panhandling charges.
And with Perry's charge dismissed, he's hoping it'll set a precedent for similar provincial offences moving forward.
"He really shouldn't be charged with these offences," Boushy said, noting the officers' incorrect use of the Safe Streets Act and their strategy to target the same panhandlers at the corner of King and MacNabb.
Seeing how the Justice had found there to be no evidence for the Sgt. Tamm gave to Perry, Boushy said "it would be an abusive process" for the province to prosecute these offences.
And in Toronto, a legal clinic has launched a constitutional challenge against the Ontario Safe Streets Act, on the basis that it targets certain groups of people who are disproportionately represented among panhandlers.
Boushy said the regular ticketing of panhandlers need to stop.
"It's not right, you know. It's not right," he said.
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