A non-profit organization says North Carolina police threatened to arrest members of the charity group for distributing food to more than 70 homeless people in downtown Raleigh on Saturday morning. Love Wins Ministries, a church group that tries to care for the city’s homeless, was preparing to serve breakfast on Saturday. The group had free coffee and sausage biscuits for more than 70 homeless people, but local police stopped the non-profit from handing it out. Police officers threatened to arrest anyone who tried to distribute food, claiming it violates one of the city’s ordinances but refusing to say which one. “This morning we showed up at Moore Square at 9 a.m., just like we have done virtually every Saturday and Sunday for the last six years,” Rev. Hugh Hollowell, the ministry’s pastor and director, wrote in a blog post. “Today, officers from Raleigh Police Department prevented us from doing our work, for the first time ever. An officer said, quite bluntly, that if we attempted to distribute food, we would be arrested.” Since 1998, Sec. 9-2022 of the rules governing city parks prohibits the distribution of food without a permit, but the non-profit claims its efforts were never previously halted. Hollowell was disturbed at the fact that police refused to name the ordinance that prohibits public food distribution, thereby keeping the group in the dark about what they were doing wrong.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 20:59:35 +0000