Ordinance committee narrows enforcement, extends notice period and sends amended camping ordinance to full council

The Brockton City Council’s Ordinance Committee on April 3 amended and voted to forward an ordinance revising the city’s ordinance prohibiting camping on public property, setting a written-warning then criminal-complaint enforcement pathway and extending the written-notice window to 48 hours.

The change would keep a warning as the first step and make a criminal complaint the next formal enforcement step for subsequent violations. Councilor Jeff Thompson, who sponsored the revisions, said the amended version "fix[es] some of the definitional issues" and narrows who writes citations while preserving a path to criminal complaints for repeat violations.

The committee debated several legal risks and operational questions before acting. Assistant City Solicitor Stacy Verdi summarized recent legal guidance, telling the committee that a 2022 decision in Scituate and a pending Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court opinion could affect local anti-camping measures. Verdi said those rulings raised constitutional questions under the Eighth Amendment and…