Sleeping on the sidewalk. Drunk at Dundas Station. Naps on the ground in Queen’s Park. Gerry Williams was homeless in Toronto for a long time, and such scenes constituted the rhythm of his life.

That, and the tickets. About 430 of them over the years, issued by cops and transit officers for a litany of non-criminal offences, like getting drunk in a subway station, jaywalking across University Ave., carrying open booze on the street, loitering, littering, trespassing and more. The mountain of tickets also came with a price tag: More than $65,000 in fines.

Williams said he never cared in those days — he didn’t care about anything — but after he got sober, he realized the hole he was in.

Then the Ontario Court of Justice gave him a boost.

In a ruling Monday afternoon, Justice Katrina Mulligan agreed to wipe out $65,000 in fines amassed against Williams during his years on the street. The judge approved a Crown-defence deal to have Williams serve two years’ probation and complete 156 hours of community service for a single conviction: “Soliciting in an aggressive manner,” an offence for panhandling under the Mike Harris-era Safe Streets Act.

A happy but quiet Williams tried to take it all in Monday.

“I’ve been stuck in limbo,” he said, almost inaudibly, standing in a black hoodie and jeans with his eyes staring down. “My mind’s still on the street.”

The 45-year-old from a First Nations reserve near James Bay, in northern Ontario, spoke on the steps outside Old City Hall after the decision. In his shy and quiet manner, he told of how he has tried to climb out of the hole of his alcoholism and homelessness, and how the fines prevented him from addressing such banal modern concerns as improving his credit score and getting a driver’s licence. There was also a psychological effect: The fines were a bothersome connection with a past he wants to walk away from.

Dan Ciarabellini, an Osgood Hall law school student, has worked with Williams to appeal of the fines since he walked into the Fair Change legal clinic for help last year. He said the clinic, which helps low-income and homeless people deal with the justice system, frequently deals with cases where people living on the street are buried under a slew of “street tickets” with fines they can’t pay.

“Pretty much every homeless person you pass on the street owes the city money, and in the case of Gerry Williams, he (owed almost) $70,000,” Ciarabellini said. “He’s certainly the largest appeal we’ve ever done.”

According to a study by Canadian Observatory on Homelessness at York University, it cost more than $1 million in police time to hand out at least $4 million in panhandling tickets under the Safe Streets Act from 2000 to 2010. Ninety-nine per cent of them were unpaid at the time of the study, in 2014.

Joanna Nefs, a lawyer who also worked on Williams’ appeal and founded the Fair Change clinic, said the case highlights how fining people that live on the street for offences like panhandling is counterproductive. “He got his life together and it had nothing to do with the (almost) $70,000 in fines,” Nefs said. “It was actually holding him down.”

Ciarabellini added that it might be better to dole out hours of community service instead of fining people for offences like open alcohol, public drunkenness and panhandling.

In Williams’ case, Ciarabellini said it was a “gigantic appeal” that swallowed almost all the clinic’s manpower, even after they brought on a dozen more volunteers. He hopes the case helps convince the province to streamline the appeal process for non-criminal tickets like this. “We could easily do all the appeals we currently have in the time it took to do yours,” he told Williams while they were speaking with the Star on Monday.

Brendan Crawley, spokesperson for Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General, said the province is open to considering changes to make the process more efficient. “As part of our commitment to a more efficient and user-friendly system, we would be willing to review this suggestion,” he wrote in an email.

Williams also talked about the cops, and how he felt powerless when being ticketed during his time on the street. “I was homeless. I was vulnerable,” he said, adding that he doesn’t blame individual officers, but suspects they were sometimes trying to meet quotas for tickets or create work for themselves. “I’m sure they’re just doing their jobs, right?”

Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash declined to answer questions about Williams’ case and the service’s ticketing practices because the matter was in court on Monday.

TTC spokesperson Brad Ross said transit officers do not have ticketing quotas, but acknowledged in an email that the transit agency has had issues with panhandling and loitering. Last year, for example, transit officers issued 305 tickets for panhandling on TTC property. “For some, the problem is a persistent one and the only means we have to ensure these individuals don’t simply ignore our efforts is to issue tickets,” Ross said.

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As for Williams, now that his debts have been tossed, he said he’s ready to move on and try and land a job, maybe in the restaurant industry like he used to before the homeless years. But ideally, he said, he could do something to help others, like him, who have struggle with addiction on the street.

“I’m still stuck,” he said, “(but) I feel pretty good.”

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