Perhaps you have walked by Golden Gate Park noticing groups of young people running or lounging on the soft green lawn. Watch the gathering more closely: Soon you will see a colorfully dressed community of individuals talking, laughing, and playing with dogs. Stand and listen and you may hear music. Many play instruments. Some are very good.

Wait patiently, and a cop on a bike or a black and white vehicle will inevitably wind up the path through the crowd. Uniforms will emerge, and a darker atmosphere will blot out the afternoon like a creeping fog.

Persuaded by media that these people are violent, dangerous malingerers, perhaps you avoid the Park entrance.

Nothing could be further from the truth. They will tell you that they are committed firmly to peace, love, and family. Their family is each other, and it extends from coast to coast. Dark-eyed Matt spoke of visiting his “family” in many states.

During Matt’s first day on the street, he heard words, “that changed my life forever.” He walked by his first “road dog” who asked him for money. Noticing Matt’s backpack, he said, “‘Oh, I’m sorry. You’re family. Whoever lugs a 50-pound pack all day and does what I do is family to me.’”

“[I] realized most people who live in houses don’t look out for each other. Here, all my road dogs and friends look out for me as I look out for them. Yeah, we get drunk and into fights, and stupid stuff, but we are all together. We help each other because we know where each other is at. If I have food, I’m going to give half of it away. If I have a beer, everyone’s going to drink. You give away what you have because you know what it’s like not to get. The main thing on the street is sharing. Sharing is caring a hundred percent.”

A new string of police beatings and false arrests began in mid-October 2008 with 57-year-old Robert Bearden (“Keys”). It was followed October 24 by a savage police attack on homeless youth Ashtray and was replicated November 12 with an officer’s body-slamming Bryan in front of American Apparel on Haight. There have been others including the unlawful detention of “Julie” and her partner.

In a meeting of a civil rights group at the Coalition on Homelessness, one member noted that such violence occurs when bullies/cowards act out their aggression on those they perceive to be weaker. However, the homeless youth in Golden Gate Park are not taking this sitting down. They are not the victimized people the police apparently perceive them to be. Some Haight residents and business people have begun supporting the “street kids” by witnessing for them, videotaping attacks, and publicly denouncing police violence.

On or around Friday, October 24, the homeless youth staged a protest march and a display of solidarity and support for Ashtray. “Grateful,” “Very Unimportant,” and others proudly described their activism. They drew a line around Ashtray’s blood splatters on the concrete at the entrance to Golden Gate Park where the beating occurred. They made signs they carried during the march. They chanted forcefully about stopping SFPD violence.

On Tuesday, November 18, Mary Howe, Director, and volunteers Christine Jones and Nina Hiller of the Homeless Youth Alliance hosted a “Know Your Rights” workshop led by Sarah Barnes of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and activist attorney John Viola. It was heavily attended by a group of 25-30 youth.

Viola emphasized some corollaries to constitutional civil rights of free speech and assembly:

You are not required to speak to a police officer if one approaches you.

The officer must have an articulable reason to detain or search you.

It is best to say little or nothing to an officer who can use what you say against you and be fishing for information.

You may ask, “Am I being detained?” and “Am I free to go?”

In the two beatings, the SFPD, not the street kids, repeatedly violated the law.

THE BEATING OF ASHTRAY

Dusky-voiced blonde Altaira stated, “I was inside the park facing [Stanyan and Haight]. This kid is sitting [against the low cement slab wall just inside the entrance to Golden Gate Park] playing his guitar.

“I saw the cop talking to him. Next thing I know, [Officer Terrence] Kelly just whack! Right across the face. Whack! Again. He hit him in the back of the head. Kid fell down. Hit him in the shin. They got him cuffed.”

They smashed his guitar. It lay on the ground next to him. This was the guitar his friend Grateful found and gave to Ashtray after they met in the Redwood Forest in Humboldt. There, Grateful decided this small, kind-faced kid with the amazing voice would be the first member of his Band of Traveling Light. They would commit “random acts of music” together with a highly skilled group of musicians.

“Ashtray wasn’t doing anything.” Otis, Jackson, and Altaira angrily described police beating Ashtray as he lay. “The first time the guy hit him in the face, he was on his back with his hands to the side up over his head.

“Then they started beating the crap out of him,” said Otis. The “older guy” restrained him while, “Kelly beat him.”

“He was bleeding bad,” Altaira continued. “He was all gored up.

“It was ridiculous. He didn’t do anything. He wasn’t resisting the entire time. He was on the ground screaming, ‘Somebody help me!’”

Kelly beat him a few more times in the face. While he was putting him in the back seat, Kelly had Ashtray by the hair. Instead of easing his head in through the door, the officer grabbed Ashtray by his dreadlocks and slammed his face into the side of the car.

“If one of us did that to anybody else, we’d be in jail. Why isn’t [Kelly] in jail?” Altaira was adamant. “I am pissed!”

“We are all pissed!” said Otis. “They thought they were going to have a riot for a minute. While he was beating him down, there were 30 of us yelling and screaming at them to stop. When he saw 30 of us here, the one guy that wasn’t beating got on his radio. Then blam! Every cop in Park Station showed up.” By the time the backup police arrived, the beating was over, and the bloodied Ashtray was in the car.

“’That’s what you call a loose cannon,’” said a voice from the crowd. “It reminded me of Rodney King.”

“I can’t believe he is still on the street,” Altaira cried. “That is assault! A badge does not give you the right to beat somebody for no reason.”

“No rights! No rights!” she continued, “That kid did nothing. [The cop] hid behind his badge to take a bad day or his personal life—whatever his problem was—out on a homeless kid that he thought he could get away with it. And, he just didn’t look and see how many people saw it.”

THE BEATING OF BRYAN MARTIN

On Wednesday, November 12, ten friends were hanging out with Shawn Vineyard on the street in front of American Apparel at 1615 Haight, “playing music and having a good time.” Though drinking most of the day, he felt only mildly intoxicated and was coherent. Two officers on bikes and one in a car rolled up, pointed him out, and said they were going to take him to jail for “drunk in public.”

Bryan asked Shawn if, while they took Shawn to jail, he wanted Bryan to hold his backpack and sleeping bag, which, “on the street can mean life or death.” When police confiscate precious bags, they can only be replaced by begging for money.

As Bryan picked up Shawn’s belongings and walked away, the police blind-sided and tackled Bryan. His face hit the side of a car. In jail, the police discouraged Bryan from going to the hospital, but Bryan insisted on visiting St. Mary’s for X-rays and medical documentation. The Sheriff’s Department at 850 Bryant also photographed his black eye and facial wounds.

Jack Raynard, age 20, stylish in his black urchin haircut, grew up on Haight Street. He remembers a time when the Haight was dangerous for everyone, “not just for street kids.” He reported that on the afternoon of that Wednesday, after he arrived at American Apparel for work at 1:00 p.m., the cops had several times asked a group of five street kids to depart from the front of the store. They had done nothing notable or illegal and seemed simply to be sitting and talking peaceably. He had seen all of them before, but didn’t know their names. It looked to Jack as if they were part of a group of homeless kids who live in the Park who “are super-nice and never cause problems” to his knowledge.

Around 8:00 p.m., yelling brought Jack to the front. A street kid got up and walked off from the gaggle of kids and cops. He stood there. The cops said something to him, and he said something back, but the kid continued to stand. A distance of seven or eight feet stretched between the street kid and a bike cop Jack knows as “Ocean.”

“I was standing 15 feet away in the doorway of American Apparel.” The cop stood mid-sidewalk, the kid at the coin meter. The cop suddenly closed the distance, grabbed the street kid’s shirt and pushed him so hard into a parked car that the force dented the metal and made Jack “afraid for his health.” Ocean then hauled the kid up from the car, turned around, and body-slammed him to the ground in the street next to the sidewalk in the gutter.

From this beating, Bryan Martin sustained a sprained ankle, bruised ribs, a swollen eye, forehead lacerations and deep wounds in his back. He couldn’t walk on his ankle for two days.

The street kids began yelling. The second cop stood aside sheepishly, observing wrongdoing. Ocean handcuffed the kid. Four squad cars arrived, an SUV, an undercover car, and 15 cops.

Jack was in and out of the store, serving customers. When this crowd of cops arrived, Jack walked into the store and in 30 seconds returned to a growing mass of bystanders. Police asked the street kids to leave. The body-slamming victim, Bryan Martin, was whisked away in a squad car.

Jack told one SFPD he was a witness and offered a statement. “There was a lot of brutality involved.” The cop seemed unconcerned. He left with no statement. Jack wanted the truth told, but now “they’ve all disappeared behind the blue line drawn when cops cover for other cops who do wrong.”

“It happens around street kids a lot. They get treated as second class citizens.” Jack works on Haight and “really dislikes getting asked for change and cigarettes.” The street kids are as much as an annoyance to Jack as to anybody else. But he considers them people whose civil rights were violated. Said Jack emphatically. “The kid didn’t do anything. The cop crossed a distance of seven or eight feet to do violence to him with no provocation, no threat, and hands opened out.”

Though none of the kids has come forward as a witness statement, Jack would willingly “go to court.”

“I grew up here. This is my City before it’s any cops’. They probably moved here or commute.”

Jack observed that if one citizen did that to another, there would be charges. There are no consequences for an officer. “I saw Ocean biking today with a smile on his face. I wonder about all the times he has done it before. If a cop can body-slam a street kid with no provocation, why can’t he do it to me? Why am I living in a military dictatorship that can put people in jail for no reason?”

Carol

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