Mayor D.C. Reeves and the Pensacola City Council cannot claim that they are unaware of problems concerning MLK Plaza’s sunset curfew. Downtown business owner Dan Lindemann told them about the issue with the police enforcing curfew at the council meeting on Dec. 12, 2024.
Details
On Dec. 2, 2024, Lindemann was walking across Martin Luther King Plaza on his way to the CivicCon Awards at the Studer Community Institute when he was unexpectedly stopped.
“I was stopped by a police officer, Officer Roper, and he said, ‘You can’t be here,’” Lindeman recounted. When Lindeman replied, “I don’t understand. What’s the problem?” The officer stated that the plaza “is a city park, it’s closed at night, can’t be here.”
The encounter left Lindeman “confused” because he had never known that a well?lit downtown sidewalk could be treated as off?limits to a resident on an ordinary evening walk.
‘A misdemeanor for walking on a city sidewalk’
Lindeman said he deliberately waited overnight to cool down before emailing the mayor the next morning to describe the incident and what he had been told. In that message, he wrote that the officer had given him a warning and indicated that “the next time I was in that park at dusk, I would be cited and issued a misdemeanor.”
- “So the DIB can light it up, put a beautiful tree canopy on it and invite people down. Yesterday, the city had a market on the Martin Luther King Plaza. At night, thousands of people were down there walking. So we invite people to come downtown and walk,” Lindeman told the council. “And then the next day, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to cite you and give you a misdemeanor punishable up to a thousand bucks, 90 days in jail and an appearance in Escambia County Court.”
An Insult to taxpayers
What stung most, Lindeman said, was the message this sent to ordinary residents. “I was insulted, and I think anybody that’s a citizen in this city would be equally insulted that I cannot walk on a city sidewalk that you have invited me to enjoy and that my tax dollars have paid for,” he said…