Karl Merton Ferron
BALTIMORE (AP) — Tyemaur Scott started 2023 with an important New Year’s resolution. He vowed to leave the ranks of Baltimore’s squeegee workers, whose intractable presence at busy downtown intersections remains a source of heated public debate.
A deadly confrontation last summer — when a teen windshield washer shot an irate, baseball bat-wielding driver near the Inner Harbor during evening rush hour — galvanized disparate opinions about the practice. And on Tuesday, police could start issuing panhandling citations in six zones where squeegee work is most common. The planned enforcement action marks a major turning point in the city’s approach to squeegeeing.
To some city residents and officials, the young men who wash windshields for cash are hard-working entrepreneurs trying to survive under difficult circumstances. They represent a host of systemic problems facing Black Baltimoreans, including deep-seated poverty, racism and long-term disinvestment in communities of color. But other downtown drivers consider them to be a nuisance and public safety hazard.
While city leaders pledged to finally address the root causes of squeegeeing, members of the public expressed skepticism about whether this latest effort will provide anything more than a Band-Aid solution.
Past initiatives have come and gone with little impact. Baltimore City Council outlawed the practice in the 1980s, with white council members passing the ban and Black members opposing it. The...
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