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 launched a new program that allows officers to issue panhandling citations in six zones where squeegee work is most common. The planned enforcement marks a major turning point in the city’s approach.
