Fortune telling in Warren to get harder

BY STEVE NEAVLING

Tough restrictions are in the cards for fortune-tellers in Warren.

The city is on the verge of passing one of the nation's most stringent regulations for fortune-tellers by requiring licenses, fees, fingerprints, criminal background reports and employment histories for anyone who earns money forecasting the future.

If approved by the City Council on Tuesday, as expected, Warren will join a growing number of communities nationwide to crack down on fraudulent fortune-tellers who prey on the vulnerable. Anyone who violates the ordinance would face up to 90 days in jail and a $500 fine.

"By registering them, we know who they are and where they are working, so hopefully it will discourage any nonlegitimate fortune-tellers from coming to the area," Councilman Keith Sudowski said. "We also need some enforcement in place to regulate this industry and prosecute anyone who preys on innocent people."

Warren police asked the council to approve the regulations after hearing about fraudulent fortune-tellers victimizing people across the country.

Neysa Werner, a Warren fortune-teller who says she can communicate with dead people, supports licensing requirements but said the background checks and fingerprinting are invasive.

"They can't have my private information," Werner said. "They might as well put a Star of David on us like the Nazis did to the Jews."

A similar effort to oversee fortune-tellers failed in Eastpointe when the City Council dropped the debate in 2006. Eastpointe Councilwoman Veronica Klinefelt, who spearheaded the effort, said she might reintroduce an ordinance similar to the one in Warren.

A federal court in Tennessee in 2004 ruled that outright banning fortune-tellers violates their right to free expression.

Still, at least nine metro Detroit communities have ordinances that ban fortune-tellers, although officials in most of those cities said they weren't aware of the ordinances until contacted by the Free Press. Most of the local bans were written in the 1950s and 1970s.

"I'm shocked that we still have that ordinance," Macomb Township Supervisor Mark Grabow said.