Police Kill Man Panhandling, No Crimes Charged
It all happened so fast that I couldn’t really react. I didn’t move an inch. I was spread-eagle on my bed and looking down the barrel of a gun—12 guns, actually. I was in a situation where I was so shocked that my mind was frozen. I felt shock waves after that for a long time. In some ways I still do. If another police officer came up to me, I’d let them know that I see them as someone who violates human rights and breaks the law, not someone who supports them.
In October of 2005, 12 armed San Francisco police officers broke through the door of my small SRO (single-room occupancy) apartment and held me at gunpoint on my own bed. In this so-called “mistaken identity,” the police could “mistake” my six-foot three-inch slender frame for that of a stout man just clearing five and a half feet. They could find my trimmed goatee a mirror image of a bushy grey beard. They could see my long, black trench coat as a short, brown sports coat.
On Sunday, January 27, San Francisco Police killed 55-year-old Leonard Michael Cole for panhandling. The San Francisco Chronicle reports, “…the death of the panhandler was as predictable as the sunrise.”
“Get down on the ground! Hands in the air! I said get down!” 12 officers blasted through my door like bullet spray, and painted the white walls of my room a deep blue-black. They pointed their gun barrels directly at me and cuffed my hands behind my back. I couldn’t move. All the motion my body could produce was stolen by my heart as it tried to beat its way free from my chest, from the cuffs, from the guns, from this nightmare. I couldn’t understand why this was happening.
According to local news reports, Heather Fong was driving through Russian Hill (an “upscale” area, like most others where people with money like to pretend they can get away from people without money), when she saw Mr. Cole panhandling near Van Ness and Greenwich. She put in a call to field operations and made sure that one of San Francisco’s finest was available to “clean up” the problem, so folks going home to their overpriced condos wouldn’t have to deal with the realities of the poverty their city and country have created. San Francisco is very sympathetic to people in condos. People without homes or those with inadequate shelter, though, are targets for the police, and are only allowed to be visible in certain areas under certain conditions.
You know, everyone that lives in the SROs knows that the police are always coming into our rooms and going through our things. I remember I was getting ready to go to Foods Co to activate my EBT card. I heard the door click open, and then they just barged in. They said it was because a black man in a coat committed a robbery three blocks away. Even though the man was nine inches shorter than me, was wearing a different color and length jacket, and had a full grey beard to my short, black goatee, this was officially not an act of racial profiling. Apparently, many of the officers in the SFPD still think there’s a grey area when it comes to their rights to barge into people’s homes. The officers that barged into my room just needed a black man in a jacket in the Mission.
Leonard Cole was just a panhandler. A panhandler that had it coming, according C.W. Nevius, that writer for the Chronicle that likes to hate on poor and homeless folks: “…the death of the panhandler was as predictable as the sunrise.” That’s right folks. Instead of giving out citations, we should predict police will shoot and kill people for crimes. It’s even more predictable if they are crimes of poverty.
Nevius asserts, “Like many homeless people with mental health issues, the panhandler was an explosion waiting to happen.” I guess this country is just full of nut-bags whose little heads are about to burst. (Yeah, I know: Big surprise.) According to a recent Harvard study, more than half of all Americans will experience mental illness at some point in their lives. Over the past year, over one in four people experienced mental illness. Further, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, you’re probably about to get capped by your local PD. Don’t worry though: The media will slaughter your name in eulogy and the Office of Citizen Complaints will conduct an investigation.
In my case, the OCC found the officers in violation of various departmental policies within the SFPD General Order. This wasn’t enough for me though. The police have been going too far for too long now, and as a young black man living in an SRO and tired of fearing for my safety, I think the City should be held responsible. Without a GED and without a lawyer, I took my case all the way to United States District Court.
No one was there to defend Leonard, either. The police approached Cole and tried to give him a citation—a citation that he probably wouldn’t have been able to pay… A citation that would probably have turned into a warrant and landed him in jail… A citation that would have interfered with resources he needed to access to survive… A citation for being poor in a city and a country that is content to pretend that people choose to lose their homes and communities and live on the streets. A citation written by black-booted giants with guns and handcuffs and badges and lawyers and politicians, carried by people that have a history of violently and aggressively harassing those struggling in poverty. Leonard Michael Cole, a man struggling through the traumatizing affects of poverty and criminalization, ran for his life.
The man tried to escape. The officers from the San Francisco Police Department ran him down. Leonard allegedly pulled out a knife in defense, and these supposedly trained professionals gunned him down. He died at 6:25pm.
The Office of Citizen Complaints is conducting an investigation.
My case was dismissed on the Federal level due to technicalities. No lawyer has offered to help me, but I plan to file an appeal. Leonard’s case will likely never see a courtroom. It’s crazy that that’s accepted in this city and that the Chronicle thinks we should feel sorry for police officers that go killing folks for whom this city shirked responsibility. It’s crazy that the police can get away with anything just because they have a difficult job. It’s crazy that so few in this city blink twice when a poor man is shot to death for an infraction necessary to his survival. No wonder we’ve all got mental health issues.
Marlon and Lola
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:55 pm
I am just wondering … if the homeless population of the City have so many rights, why are not the law-abiding, taxpaying citizens of the same City afforded the same rights. I did not realize it had become a crime to go to work on a daily basis, pay bills and taxes, and live in anything other than an SRO.
I also did not realize that the citizens of San Francisco should sit idilly by as someone defecates or urinates in front of them (or their child), or that they should have to trip over someone sleeping in the doorway … wait, better yet, not only do they trip over the person in their doorway, but they then get berated by the inebriated homeless person for doing so.
Maybe I am suffering from the mental health issue that Harvard expects me to have, but I feel that I work hard everyday, I struggle to pay my bills and get by, I should not have to be harrassed by homeless people on every block, smell urine first thing in the morning (or step in human feces, which is always a pleasure). In what City is such behavior not only ok, but according to this article and other articles from the Coalition on Homelessness, should be sanctioned?
And who said homeless people are made to pay a monetary fine for their citations? I’ve been to traffic court on my tickets and I didn’t see the judge ordering them to pay. I wonder if this article could be ever so slightly one-sided???
Just curious … how many of the Coalition on Homelessness staff actual live in the City and have to deal with these issues on a daily basis?
May 2nd, 2008 at 7:31 pm
The above article about a man getting shot after being chased down for panhandling. Panhandling is not a crime. It does not mention the urination or defecation which you seem to think it sanctions, and does not deal with “quality of life citations.” (If you are interested on leaving comments on such an article, you can find a number that deal with that topic by selecting the “Civil Rights” category in the righthand column of our main page and choosing an article more appropriate than this one.) We’re unable to assess your potential mental health problems, but clearly reading comprehension may be an issue. It is exceedingly poor form to leave sarcastic, off-topic comments on an article about a person’s death.
In response to your last question: Of the Coalition on Homelessness’ five staff people, four live in San Francisco. The fifth moved to Hayward after working for the Coalition in San Francisco for more than a decade. We have dozens of volunteers. One of them comes up from the South Bay. The rest are San Franciscans.