Yes, the title of this post is ironic, but upon reading an article in The Gazette, I think Montreal is crazy for considering making squeegee-ing an accepted activity.
Chris Hohaus, 19, stood on the corner of Iberville and Ontario Sts. this afternoon, brandishing his squeegee, waiting for the red traffic light to make his move.
With a certain dexterity he moved from car to car, cleaning their windshields, until the light turned green, for $10 an hour.
But Hohaus’s livelihood is usually at the mercy of his customers’ generosity.
Today, the street youth organization l’Anonyme provided the hourly wage in return for Hohaus’ services to help launch a new awareness campaign aimed at sensitizing people to the notion squeegeeing is a job, not a nuisance.
Joining forces with Le Gang de Rue, a new documentary television show focussed on a group of youth who perform leave a positive mark on the community and hosted by the Quebec actor-singer Dan Bigras, l’Anonyme also wanted to bring attention to the criminalization of squeegeeing in the city.
Although no laws specifically forbid the act, municipal and road safety rules, give police the power to issue tickets for simply approaching a car, sitting on the sidewalk or crossing the street on a red light, said Nicole McNeil, director of l’Anonyme, founded in 1989.
Since 1989? Why don’t we spend some resources trying to get kids off street corners?
“The police give tickets to them for things ordinary people would never get tickets for,” said Genevieve Dorval, 20, a member of Le Gang de Rue, recalling her visit to Montreal youth homeless shelter, Le Refuge des Jeunes.
“They (shelter personnel) emptied bags of tickets for us,” she added, as she handed out information flyers to driver while one of the participating squeegee kids washed his windshield.
Because squeegee kids usually have no permanent address their tickets often get sent to the shelter.
When they don’t pay for the ticket or appear in court to defend themselves, the result can be incarceration when subsequently stopped by police, says Pierre Gaudreau, coordinator with the Reseau d’aide aux personnes seules et itinerantes de Montreal, a network representing 73 community organizations working with the homeless.
Maybe the fear of getting sent to jail would give a dis-incentive to young, able-bodied teenagers from loitering on the streets and dirtying car windshields, no?
It’s in jail where they get exposed to real criminal behaviour, he added.
So let’s regulate squeegeeing and make it legal so that they never end up in jail? Smart. Why not go to the source and avoid the first phase in this decline of an entire generation’s future?
Montreal police don’t keep statistics on how many squeegee kids they arrest per year.
Not enough. Nothing against these kids in particular, but come on, why are we glamorizing this?
Christian Cloutier, commander of the Centre-Sud police station, which includes the area where today’s campaign was launched, said since May they’ve only ticketed people under the road safety laws and not municipal bylaws, which carry a heftier fine. And not all of those people ticketed were squeegee kids.
Police in Centre-Sud however are much “cooler,” says Celia Moreno, a development officer with l’Anonyme.
“Cooler”? We are talking about cops, right? I expect pimps, hookers and drug dealers to be cool. The Police? Not so.
Yet most of the other downtown stations aren’t as lenient, she added.
Hohaus says he’s no stranger to police brutality or their intolerance for homeless youth.
After four years on the streets, he’s lost count of the number of tickets issued to his name.
A fast-talking, intelligent person, who possesses his own brand of eloquence, Hohaus openly admits he’s got dependency problems and that squeegeeing helps feed his addictions.
No word on addressing addiction, let’s make it legal for him to make money off squeegeeing, so he can get his high.
But it’s his way of life and begrudges those squeegee kids he calls “weekend warriors.”
“(What) keeps it going is the fact you got to make it to tomorrow,” he added.
All right, go pick up a history book and find out how Rudy Giulani cleaned up NYC. The first thing he did, he forbid it for anyone (bums, basically) to come up to you while you were in a car, at a stop sign. The rationale was simple, first you go up to cars begging for money, then you carjack someone, then you kill them etc. Let’s stop kids from coming up to you in your car and harassing you (and creating a road hazard…) at the first step people…