'I'm stashing my beer because I see the police'
YAKIMA, Wash. -- People are drinking alcohol on the street here in Yakima. We know it's against the law, but that isn't stopping it. It's not hard to spot if you go downtown. We wanted to know why it's so prevalent and what people can do to stop it.
City park employee Derrick Ackerman says it doesn't take long for trash cans on South Naches to fill up with empty cans and bottles of alcohol, the rest land on the ground.
"It would take me an hour or more of my day to pick up all the bottle caps just right here in this area," said Ackerman.
He said there are too many to pick up all of them. It's all evidence of heavy drinking it wasn't hard to catch people in the act. We found Joe Castillo and Joe Gallegos along Chestnut Street.
"I'm stashing my beer because I see the police," said Gallegos.
Around the corner in an alley, another man asked us to buy him beer. A handful of other people began running as soon as they saw our camera.
If public drinking is such a problem, why isn't anything being done about it? Action News asked YPD and they said the problem is the people who are drinking don't have much to lose. Even if you give them the $94 ticket they can't pay it. The other option is taking away their license. That doesn't work either, because most don't have one. Jail went away as an option in 1999 when it changed from a criminal offense to an infraction.
That's why last year police only wrote 17 tickets for drinking in public. Three were paid, the rest went to collections. YPD said most of the drinking happens in parks. A recently added ordinance allows them to ban people from parks, if they are caught breaking a law.
The park trespassing law went into effect in October. People caught breaking any law at a park can be banned and, risk being arrested if they go back.
City park employee Derrick Ackerman says it doesn't take long for trash cans on South Naches to fill up with empty cans and bottles of alcohol, the rest land on the ground.
"It would take me an hour or more of my day to pick up all the bottle caps just right here in this area," said Ackerman.
He said there are too many to pick up all of them. It's all evidence of heavy drinking it wasn't hard to catch people in the act. We found Joe Castillo and Joe Gallegos along Chestnut Street.
"I'm stashing my beer because I see the police," said Gallegos.
Around the corner in an alley, another man asked us to buy him beer. A handful of other people began running as soon as they saw our camera.
If public drinking is such a problem, why isn't anything being done about it? Action News asked YPD and they said the problem is the people who are drinking don't have much to lose. Even if you give them the $94 ticket they can't pay it. The other option is taking away their license. That doesn't work either, because most don't have one. Jail went away as an option in 1999 when it changed from a criminal offense to an infraction.
That's why last year police only wrote 17 tickets for drinking in public. Three were paid, the rest went to collections. YPD said most of the drinking happens in parks. A recently added ordinance allows them to ban people from parks, if they are caught breaking a law.
The park trespassing law went into effect in October. People caught breaking any law at a park can be banned and, risk being arrested if they go back.
