May 9th, 2025 by WCBC Radio

One of the problems facing the revitalized downtown Cumberland is a holdover from the old downtown mall – vagrancy. Shopkeepers are dealing with individuals loitering, leaving trash and dropping cigarette butts – in an area deemed to be no smoking.  At Thursday’s Downtown Development Commission meeting, City Administrator Jeff Silka shared that citing individuals multiple times is useless if the courts do not follow up…

   

“I’ll tell you that lifestyle crimes are not taken seriously at the States Attorney’s office, or they don’t go to hearings – they don’t go in there so these people don’t pay their fines. We’ve arrested people for our camping ordinance for sleeping in public places. The States Attorney does not prosecute.”

Silka says there are ongoing tactics to reduce vagrancy but not much success is being achieved…

   

“Just try to make it very uncomfortable for them by constantly enforcing and try to move them on. We have to systematically keep the pressure on but it seems when we move one group away, another brand new group comes in.”