I’ve reported a couple of churches that have had workers threatened to call police because I was in their parking lot sitting in my car fighting a gym or spinning a stop that was in a church parking lot. This is Broad daylight and I don’t exit my car or do anything to create trouble And people have come out and told me to leave and even threatened to call police saying it’s private property. I understand middle of the night stuff because that could be suspicious but if there’s a PokéStop there and the church says they are private property then the spot shouldn’t be considered accessible . It would be nice if when you were reporting a PokéStop as not accessible to pedestrians there was a place to put a note so the person reviewing has some knowledge as to why you’re turning in something that looks perfectly accessible on the map.
Thank you for your help understanding this and why these stops continue to be allowed to operate.
I to point out that I’m not playing while driving. I am driving safely sometimes to different spots and then playing once the car is stopped. There’s not a lot of PokéStops within walking distance of my house because there’s no sidewalks or safe roads to walk on
What you should do is give the church the information that they can request Niantic remove the Wayspots. They can even just have raids turned off, or have the gyms/stops closed certain hours. I usually send an email to the place, and they decide what or whether they want to do something about it.
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Thank you. This is my first time using this site so can you please point me towards where I can Ask the church to reach out to? I will definitely do this so that nobody gets in trouble for just trying to play a game.
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There is a form at the top for " * Wayspot Removals"
But I usually just tell them to reach out to Niantic and they can search it themselves, because I know that I don’t like to click on a link that someone I don’t know sends me.
Oh and welcome to the forum!
Don’t know why this is in the Challenges sub forum.
@Ambassadors @moderators Can this be moved to a different sub forum?
Also, @KittenAmyH churches and other property owners can request to have Wayspots removed at the following link with PoGo:
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On it 
And moving to General
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@KittenAmyH
Welcome to the forum.
Could you clarify for me was this one occasion where you were the player or is something that repeatedly happens at this church with others (assuming you did only have one instance) Were they saying you were trespassing?
Just in case some relatively inexperienced people are reading I’d like to clarify
Wayspots do not need to be accessible to everyone all the time. In your example there will be people who are entitled to be at the church and that’s fine.
It’s a pity if they were interpretating your presence as being a nuisance as it sounds innocuous.
Could local players interact with the gym in a more discret manner?
Obviously if all those avenues are not suitable then the owner requesting removal is the way the church should go,
I’m sorry I put this in the wrong spot. It’s literally my first post and I didn’t understand all the forums. I tried to click around and figure things out But I failed to figure it out correctly. Thank you for helping get it to the correct part of the forum.
Both churches that I’ve had problems with have giant parking lots and the only place you can reach the spot is if you were actually on the property. Neither of the churches even have a sidewalk or something that makes them encouraging for pedestrian traffic walking by. If the stop is only available when churches in session by church goers and the lot is supposed to be private property and empty other than two hours on Sunday, It seems like a really poor spot for a PokéStop. I fully want to respect the laws and private property rules. I’ve never thought much of giant parking lots with no signs up that say private property and a church to be something that people wouldn’t be allowed to enter outside of Sunday morning.
This has happened to me my partner and my roommate. So the three of us have each encountered somebody at both of these properties. We don’t go there anymore because none of us want to get in trouble.
All of our time on property has been spent pulling into a space, Putting the car in park, Spinning the stop, Then leaving a minute or two later after catching whatever Spawn Around us.
I focused on giving you a solution to getting the church Wayspots removed or altered to put a stop to the escalating situation asap
I did not focus on why the reports were rejected. What Niantic considers “Private Property” is SFPRP (single family private residential property).
We have had many issues come up where people were insisting something be removed when it does not meet Niantic’s definition of private property. I am sure the ambassador wanted to be clear on that. Here is a post with good responses about that issue if you want to understand why Niantic didn’t remove it: Private property
The form I linked goes to the same place as the other one, just is easier to get to since it is at the top here.
I appreciate your insight. I hope I’m not sounding combative. I’m answering multiple questions from multiple posters on this thread now. I will be reaching out to both churches and asking them to contact Niantic If they are concerned people are on their property spinning.
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Oh you absolutely don’t sound combative! I am so glad you posted here and hopefully we can help you get this potentially volatile situation resolved.
You are definitely not being a nuisance or causing trouble. I cannot understand why the church has a problem. In most jurisdictions places that attract crowds are required to provide parking so as to get approval to build. You are not taking up parking spaces when services are in progress. It is meant to be a public place of worship and old ones are often tourist attractions. Perhaps they have had a problem with vandalism. Approaching or emailing the pastor and explaining your innocent reason for sometimes visiting — may be be the way to go. They would then have the option on whether they wanted to request removal.
Many is the time games were played in church yards. I am praying not playing the child said …
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We’ve had a similar issue with one church in our local area, where we pulled into their car park during a raid day and they didn’t like it. They said the car park was for churchgoers only. They also said they didn’t have any issues with having a Gym there (once we’d explained what was going on) so long as we weren’t using their car park, so we told the rest of the community what happened and not to use their car park, and there’s been no issues since. The Gym still exists and the church still has no issues with us using it so long as we’re not parking in their car park to do so.
I wonder if maybe a similar thing could’ve been done here by @KittenAmyH . A church is well within their rights to complain about what they perceive to be misuse of their car park, but at the same time they’d likely not have objections to having an in game location if people were not parking on their property or were accessing the location on foot.
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