Property that is kept clean and well-maintained can improve property values. But what if a property contains derelict vehicles or appliances, transforming a plot of land into what resembles a junk yard?
The city’s property standards division establishes the required minimum standards specifying how a property should be maintained. It is the responsibility of the property owner to ensure that clutter is kept to a minimum and that grass is trimmed to a reasonable height.
But what about those cases in which someone maliciously throws trash or oth-er clutter onto property? That’s where the Shreveport Police Department’s new Environmental Crimes Unit comes into play.
Sgt. Clarence Van Wray said that during the mayoral campaign, Adrian Perkins talked about cleaning up the city of litter and illegal dumping. “So they got together with the (police) chief and the (city) council, and they decided to make a unit called the Environmental Crimes Unit.
“It consisted at that time in June of myself and one other officer, and what our job was, was to address any complaints about illegal dumping, whether it be tires, construction material or anything like that.
“We also started riding the highways and byways looking for those loads of trash or metal objects that are not covered that come out of those trucks or trailers and get on the highways, that litter the highways.”
Although the new unit is not officially an offshoot of property standards, its officers will sometimes follow up on property standards if they find any infractions. “We do an investigative part of it, and we’re able to issue summonses to appear in court. We identify offenders and things like that. So it is an offshoot somewhat,” Wray said. “But we use the Louisiana State Code, and we use some of our city codes also to enforce that.”
Wray said, “What we do is, we look at what we call 30:2531, and that’s a revised statute on what has to do with intentional littering. Like intentional dumping. It’s not like property standards deals with not keeping your premises up. We look at more somebody who’s intentionally doing it, which becomes a crime and which we can issue a summons to appear in court to answer to that crime.”
The emphasis is on the intentional aspect of the crime, in which a perpetrator deliberately dumps trash or litter onto a property, not a homeowner who has not property maintained his property. “What we deal with is more that somebody has taken stuff that should have been taken to a landfill and dumped it on a private lot or dumped it on a lot that’s been adjudicated or dumped it near the street — those intentional-type litter problems,” he said.
“As far as personal property, can we issue a citation? Yes, we can, because under the statute it says, litter — basically, anything that can be moved by wind, rain and that kind of stuff — but, yes, we can issue that. But normally, if it’s private property and it’s not kept up to the standards of property standards, then property standards usually takes care of that. We deal mostly with intentional type (cases).”
How do you determine if a dumping is “intentional”?
“Basically, ‘intentional’ means, like, they don’t own the property. It may be a bunch of tires or construction material. Did they come from a house nearby? Is it in an open field? Is it along the roadway? Somebody intentionally put it there. Someone took it from somewhere else and put it somewhere else.”
Cpl. Angie Willhite said, “They’ll dump this stuff because it costs money at the dump. You have to pay by pound or by the ton to dispose of it, so they dump it off in places in the city, and the city is left to absorb all the costs of removing it. This unit goes out and tries to find the people who are doing this illegal dumping. They’ve been very successful at it, and they’ve been responsible, making them start going and doing it the right way and disposing of it down at the dump on Woolworth Road like they’re supposed to.”
How do they locate the guilty parties? Wray said, “We do have citizens that call in, which we appreciate. And we have other investigative means to identify those people that are doing that.”
Wray said that the Environmental Crimes Unit has so far investigated 40 cases from June to December 2019 and issued 18 summonses for illegal dumping. “So we’ve been doing pretty well,” he said.
To report infractions, contact Sgt. Wray of the Environmental Crimes Unit at 318-584-2214.
THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN THE February 21 ISSUE OF THE INQUISITOR