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Updated Tuesday, April 1, 2008 0:00 am TWN, By RICHARD FAUSSET, Los Angeles Times

Robot raises the ire of homeless advocates

Anita Beaty, the task force’s executive director, said the shelter is misunderstood. She says it provides employment referrals, mental health counseling and other services. The problem, she says, is that local government has not come to grips with the magnitude of its homeless problem. Beaty’s group estimates that as many as 68,000 people in the metro area are homeless in any given year.

(The city estimates that there were about 2,700 “unsheltered” homeless people last year in Atlanta and the urban counties of Fulton and DeKalb.)

Beaty says local governments do not maintain enough shelter space for all the homeless. This, she says, is the last place for them to go.

Beaty is convinced that the city is trying to move the homeless off Peachtree Street, Atlanta’s signature thoroughfare. The city has plans for a sweeping aesthetic makeover of Peachtree: Business boosters have talked about a Georgia version of Paris’ Champs-Elysees.

“The emphasis has always been on beautifying Peachtree to get rid of those poor homeless people, to get them out of town,” Beaty said. “We say there’s no way to do that. It’s just inhumane and silly.”

Beaty said the Bum Bot doesn’t help matters: “Not everybody outside our building is a drug dealer, and when they are, we want them arrested as much as (Terrill). A robot is not the way to solve anything.”

But Terrill said the robot has done a good job scaring off the law-breakers. On a recent Wednesday evening, he ambled toward the day-care parking lot with his creation rolling along at his side. When he arrived about 11:30 p.m., the lot was empty.

(Later, however, after he packed up the robot, dozens of men would swarm the place, hooting after passing vehicles.)

Terrill, an engineer who has designed weapons systems for the military, says he is targeting the people who are causing trouble, not the ones trying to get ahead. He has no problem with those people. In fact, he says, he has employed about 70 men from the shelter at his bar over the years.

But overall, he says, the shelter is doing more harm than good. He believes the nonprofit keeps it on Peachtree just to keep the issue of homelessness in people’s faces.

“It needs to go,” he said.

Terrill said he consulted the police before rolling out his robot about six months ago. At first, he wanted to arm it with a stun gun or paint gun. “But they said if I shot someone I could technically be charged with assault,” he said.

Meanwhile, back at home, Terrill has worked up plans for a Bum Bot 3000.

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	Rufus Terrill uses his remote-controlled robot (complete with water cannon) to disperse prostitutes and pushers who gather near his bar. (Photo for the Los Angeles Times by Erik S. Lesser) Enlarge Photo


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