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Mother Nature Law & Order: Prosecuting Litterers

By Brenna Angel

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wuky/local-wuky-964602.mp3

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Fighting crime isn't easy. It requires the coordinated effort of witnesses, law enforcement, and prosecutors. As Brenna Angel reports, the same challenges faced in murder and robbery cases also exist when cracking down on litterers.

Every day, especially this time of year, thousands of people are inspired to do lots of environmentally-friendly things, like cleaning up a local trash dump. These dumps are illegal piles of garbage, including the one off Spurr Road in Lexington. It's filled with tires, an old sink, and plumbing pipes.


"Some builder has paid somebody to clean their properties up. You know there is a lot of construction in the area. This is building materials; it's stuff off of other lots that they might be clearing," says police Lt. Scott Blakely, who is also member of the Keep Lexington Beautiful Commission.

Blakely says the material most likely came from a new construction or remodel in a nearby neighborhood. The dump is one of several on City Code Enforcement Director David Jarvis' list.

"We had a site over on the other side there of Spurr Road. There were four dead coyotes that someone had shot and dumped over there. You can image the kinds of problems that's going to present. We find everything, appliances, you name it."

Illegal dumps pop up on both private and public land, and Lexington government spends around half a million dollars each year cleaning up trash and litter. Jarvis says the criminals need to be held responsible.

"We're going to set up cameras and we're going to find out who's doing it and we're going to prosecute them to the fullest extent."

"We have to have some evidence of the person dumping," says Blakely. "And that's what we can do with some of the cameras and those kinds of things. As you can tell, this one's kind of off the beaten path. Once you turn off of the road, no one can see you. So people just come here and they dump stuff. We can go through it; we can look for identifying tags and stuff on the material, find out who bought it possibly."

In 2010 the Fayette County Attorney's office prosecuted three felony dumping cases. They all resulted in guilty pleas but the charges were amended to misdemeanors.

It's easy to understand why illegal dumping is a crime. But there's actually a lot more law-breaking that falls under Kentucky Revised Statutes Chapter 512: Criminal Littering.

"I've seen a bag of fast food, ash tray, you know someone dumping out their car ash tray, or just a cigarette butt," says Assistant Fayette County Attorney Ashley Chilton.

Yes, tossing a cigarette butt on the ground is littering and it could land you a $500 fine. Chilton says her office handled 85 criminal littering charges last year.

A conviction requires evidence, and just like with the illegal dumps, that can be hard to come by. If you spot the driver in front of you throwing trash out the window, your testimony alone probably wouldn't be enough.

"So for example, you write down the license plate. We can get the owner of the vehicle information, but we still are missing links to determine that the owner was the person who happened to be driving the car that day and who happened to be littering."

Most of the criminal littering charges Fayette County prosecuted last year ended in guilty pleas or were merged with other charges. About a third were dismissed and two cases were sent to a diversion program, or community service.

Lt. Blakely says he'd like to see more of that.

"You know if you catch somebody littering a good alternative would be to make them pick up so many pounds of trash or something. So they understand that it affects everybody."

Think of it as justice for Mother Nature.

Have you seen an illegal dump?
Contact your local code enforcement department. In Lexington, call 859-425-2255 or visit their website.

See a litter bug?
Report it to Bluegrass PRIDE.