Ronicca Whaley, a nationally known chef, said she and her staff have been getting threatening phone calls after filing the lawsuit.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A downtown St. Pete restaurant owner said she wants to set the record straight and focus on solutions for helping homeless people, hoping a lawsuit would spur the city to act.
Speaking exclusively to 10 Tampa Bay News Thursday night, Shiso Crispy owner Ronicca Whaley, nationally known from appearances on Food Network, said instead it has spurred threats and harassment online and at her Asian-fusion restaurants.
She opened a location about a month ago across the street from Williams Park, where people without permanent shelter like to sleep and camp. She said some of them keep coming up to customers and workers and verbally abuse them, take food and drinks off tables, and threaten violence.
Whaley showed 10 Tampa Bay News videos and pictures of homeless people urinating on tables and customers and defecating on the sidewalk.
“That’s when we really started noticing that there was a problem with the health and public services,” she said.
She filed a lawsuit against the city last week, requesting an injunction for the city to enforce the new state law that took effect in October that prohibits sleeping or camping on public property.
Whaley said she’s more interested in another provision of HB 1365 that few know about, which allows counties to set aside land for homeless encampments if they have basic services on site, like clean water, security, medical and mental health services, and register with the state Department of Children and Families.
She told 10 Tampa Bay News her challenges with people experiencing homelessness are one thing, but she said the hate hurled at her since the lawsuit is unhinged.
“They’re adults that want to do what they want and I get that. So let’s provide, as the law says, a place for them to flourish safely and securely that is better for both sides,” she said.
But since the news spread, Whaley said she and her staff are being attacked online and threatened over the phone.
“We have to make a space for our people to thrive, and they’re not thriving down here because they don’t have any resources,” she said before describing the threats. “They’ve called my 18-year-old staff with threats to murder all of us and to shoot us up.”
Diana Martinez is a cook along with her daughter and said she’s the one who took that call.
“They called and said that they were going to come and shoot up and kill everybody,” she says. “Some people are just against what we’re trying to do, but it’s the right thing that we’re trying to do, just people not understanding it.”
St. Petersburg Police report they’ve made more than 250 arrests so far this year for sleeping in public or in right-of-ways. Whaley said it hasn’t made a difference.
As for the idea of a designated public space for an encampment, only counties can do it, and Pinellas County said they have no plans to do so right now.
The city said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation. It hasn’t been served with the lawsuit yet, according to county records, and no hearing on the injunction is set.