Sandy Springs exploring ‘buffer zone’ between protesters and residents

Sandy Springs City Councilman Andy Bauman said he could support ordinances that address threatening and harassing behavior and the interruption of first responders in the performance of their duties, as long as they don’t tread on people’s constitutional rights.

“We can’t claim to protect public safety by eroding the very freedom we’re supposed to safeguard,” Bauman said at a Jan. 7 work session on the proposed ordinance. “If we’re not careful, we risk becoming the problem.”

Bauman said there was a disconnect at the work session between the ordinance’s language and what the city attorney and police chief said it would accomplish. “I’m a lawyer,” Bauman said in an interview, “and it was confusing to me.”

Sandy Springs Mayor Rusty Paul noted the point of the work session was to discuss the issue in detail, and he pointed out that council members were not being asked to vote on it yet. He added that officials will continue to review the language of the ordinance.

As it’s written, a person who is protesting or handing out flyers could not go within 8 feet of anyone, without permission, along a sidewalk or within a 50-foot radius from an entrance or exit to a school or place of worship. Someone in violation could receive a citation or summons and face a fine of up to $1,000 and up to six months in jail.

At the work session, Sandy Springs Councilwoman Melody Kelley asked what hypothetically might happen if she wanted to educate people about the link between drinking alcohol and breast cancer. For instance, she asked, what if she had pamphlets and was holding a sign and people had to pass within 8 feet of her to get by?

“I’m technically in violation?” she asked. “I’m committing a misdemeanor? Do I run from them?”

She added: “Let’s say you have good intentions. You’re not anti-anything; you just want to help.”

City officials said the proposed ordinance was drafted based on a recommendation by the Anti-Defamation League, an anti-hate organization.

Eytan Davidson, Southeast regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said the organization works with local governments and police to make sure communities are as safe as possible, including by recommending legislation to help local leaders accomplish that goal.

“We have documented a really concerning rise in extremism and extremist tactics and behavior,” Davidson said, referring to the period that began when Donald Trump was first elected president in 2016. “And we think that trend will only continue and get worse. So it is incumbent upon state and local governments to make sure they have the tools available to fight the kinds of threats that are, and will be, coming their way and threatening their people.”

Sandy Springs Police Chief Kenneth DeSimone said at the work session that the legislation would prohibit people from “putting out antisemitic fliers, harassing people at synagogues, temples and even Jewish schools.”

DeSimone told council members that each year the police department has two or three “neighborhood-wide” cases where antisemitic flyers are left outside 25 to 40 homes, though it’s unclear how the current language of the proposed ordinance would address that issue.

Davidson said he’s not aware of any ordinances elsewhere in metro Atlanta containing the same kind of language as the one proposed in Sandy Springs. He pointed out that the Anti-Defamation League assisted with an ordinance in Brookhaven that he said prohibits people from dropping off hateful leaflets outside people’s homes overnight, by barring “soliciting and canvassing” from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m.

In Tennessee, the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County adopted ordinances last year that restrict distributions of handbills on private properties to daytime hours, and that creates buffer zones designed to maintain public safety around public buildings and parking lots.

At the work session in Sandy Springs, DeSimone was adamant about the importance of stopping protesters or “auditors” from interfering with police. He described his own encounter a couple of years ago, outside police headquarters, with someone he said was aggressively recording and entered his “comfort zone.” DeSimone said he arrested the person but that the man broke the chief’s glasses.

“This ordinance will help officers protect not only themselves but the citizens of Sandy Springs and some of our institutions, which we know are under threat with different groups,” DeSimone said.

Richard T. Griffiths, a spokesperson for the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, reviewed the proposed ordinance and said federal courts have taken a dim view of creating such buffer zones.

If Sandy Springs were to approve the ordinance as written, Griffiths said, the city likely would have to spend a lot of money defending it in court. He added that the city would almost certainly lose in court.

“To create an 8-foot buffer zone around everybody just because they are near a government building or an educational institution or a church, that’s not likely, in our view, to pass First Amendment muster,” Griffiths said. “We’re disappointed to see the city of Sandy Springs go down this path.”

Mayor Paul argued that the ordinance would protect people from harassment, without preventing anyone from protesting or expressing their free-speech rights.

“There has to be kind of what we call a halo around first responders, when they are doing their job,” Paul said in an interview. “The public can watch, they can yell, they can do whatever they want. They just have to stay at least 8 feet away so they’re not interfering.”