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The county’s code, in effect in unincorporated areas since 1965, requires simply that a person “shall not be a vagrant.”

Using archaic language, it defines a vagrant as a person “without visible means of support” who may be loitering around “houses of ill-fame, gambling houses or places where liquor is sold or drunk,” a person who uses gambling devices, uses “any trick or device” to obtain money or “who shall be engaged in any unlawful calling.”

A judge presiding over the federal lawsuit last fall temporarily blocked the county from enforcing the vagrancy ordinance. Council Chairwoman Lisa Clancy, D-5th District, said the county’s legal staff recommended the council repeal it.

But the council is split about how to move forward.

While Clancy proposed a bill to repeal the ordinance outright, a version by Councilman Ernie Trakas, R-6th District, would still empower police to ticket aggressive panhandlers who would cause “a reasonable person to fear bodily harm.”

The council voted 4-3 last week along party lines not to take up Trakas’ bill. Clancy said Monday that she doesn’t think Trakas’ proposed restriction on aggressive panhandling is necessary because there are already laws against harassing and assaulting people. Allowing police to decide case by case when a reasonable person feels threatened, she said, “allows for lots of implicit biases to take shape.”

The council discussed the issue in depth on Tuesday and voted 5-0 to table it while members work on a compromise.

County Counselor Beth Orwick told the council that Trakas’ version of the bill was narrowly tailored and regulated people’s actions — and not their status — and said “we certainly hope” it would pass constitutional muster.

During a two-hour hearing, a handful of county residents said they expected police to have authority to crack down on aggressive people loitering in their community. Julie Alnadawi, of Lemay, told the council that her children have to walk to school past people hanging out under a bridge and that some of them have also followed her “trying to carry on a conversation asking for money. I felt very intimidated ... I feel unsafe.”

Two St. Louis County police commanders told the council their officers needed an ordinance that would allow them to take action against aggressive loiterers and that they have been powerless during the injunction.

“There is no mechanism, without a vagrancy ordinance, to move” the people who are bothering Alnadawi, said commander of the police department’s South County Precinct.

Schneider said he felt some council members mistakenly think the loiterers are harmless. But he said the police have files on a small group of sophisticated troublemakers who stand in easements where it’s difficult to determine whether they are trespassing, use cars to get around — and are usually not homeless. “I’m talking about criminals that we’re dealing with.”

However, Schneider said the department only issued 43 citations for vagrancy in 2018 and just four in 2019, and most of those cases were dismissed by the county counselor’s office. Orwick said she could not comment on why her predecessors generally did not prosecute vagrancy cases.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Limbaugh Jr. in October granted a preliminary injunction against the county from enforcing the vagrancy ordinance, after a federal lawsuit filed by Robert Fernandez.

Fernandez claimed that the county police have issued 39 tickets to him for violation of the vagrancy ordinance and two others that regulate solicitation. Fernandez, who is in his 40s, begs for money at certain major intersections in St. Louis County, often in the median at the exit from northbound Interstate 55 to northbound Lindbergh Boulevard.

His cardboard sign reads: “Homeless. Anything Helps. God Bless” and includes a Christian cross. In a sworn statement, Fernandez said he begs for money to support his female companion “who is disabled and who depends solely on me for assistance with her day-to-day living.”

He says that he begs passively by smiling and carrying his sign, only approaching motorists who indicate by word or gesture they will give him something. And he has twice obtained solicitor licenses, although he continued to solicit after they had expired.

Fernandez claims the county is citing and prosecuting him to restrict his speech “all because he is a homeless person engaged in the expressive speech and expressive conduct of begging for money,” the suit says. He is asking the court to strike down the ordinances and award him damages for malicious prosecution. The case is set for trial in April.

Fernandez’s lawyer, Bevis Schock, said, “It’s clear that people in the county don’t like homeless people hanging around in front of businesses and engaging in aggressive behavior, and that’s what people want to stop. And that’s within their right to stop that aggressive begging and blocking entrances. But what they can’t do is stop a guy from standing on the sidewalk with a sign.”

Fernandez is also asking Limbaugh to block the county from enforcing two other ordinances used by police to cite him: one that restricts pedestrians from soliciting rides, employment or charitable contributions from people in cars and another that regulates the county’s licensing of solicitors. Limbaugh has not yet ruled on the request.

The county’s lawyers have argued those ordinances are constitutional, and have not asked the council to make any changes to those.