City plays ‘Baby Shark’ on loop to drive away homeless people
Officials in the city of West Palm Beach, Florida, are hoping a continuous loop of children’s songs played throughout the night will keep homeless people from sleeping on the patio of a city-owned rental banquet facility.
West Palm Beach parks and recreation director Leah Rockwell told the Palm Beach Post they’re trying to discourage people from sleeping outside the glass-walled Waterfront Lake Pavilion, which she said rakes in some $US240,000 ($A341,445) annually from events.
“People are paying a lot of money to use the facility,” Ms Rockwell said. “Thousands of dollars. We want to make sure people paying this money had a facility that was clean and open and continue to use it in the future.”
The loop of “Baby Shark” and “Raining Tacos” is a temporary fix to keep homeless people off the patio, officials have claimed.
Ms Rockwell added that the city wants to formalise hours for the facility, which should make trespassing laws easier to enforce.
One man who has been experiencing homelessness told the Palm Beach Post “it’s wrong” to try and chase people away with music. But he added, it won’t stop him from trying to sleep outside the building.
The elevated patio where the music plays all night offers a place where he can stay dry when it rains, Illaya Champion told the newspaper.
“It don’t bother me,” he said, “I still lay down in there. But it’s on and on, the same songs.”
News of West Palm Beach’s decision to try and keep rough sleepers away with the highly repetitive children’s music spread quickly, and the city was soon copping backlash on social media.
“It's like they think that by making their human rights abuses cute and ‘funny’ we won't notice that they're human rights abuses,” one woman said on Twitter.
Another added: “So instead of attempting to offer some help to the homeless this is what they choose to do??? Disgusting.”
Singer-songwriter Parry Gripp who created ‘Raining Tacos’ in 2012 –– one of the songs being used by the city –– spoke out against his music being used in such a way, tweeting: “This sucks! I’m talking to my lawyer about it.”
This is not the first time children’s songs has been weaponised. According to The Guardian, Barney the Dinosaur’s song ‘I Love You’ was used by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, as "futility music" to convince prisoners of the futility of maintaining their silence.
With AP
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