Assistant District Attorney Paul Henderson is trying to lower the burden of proof necessary to convict people of “quality of life” infractions such as panhandling, sleeping in doorways, or drinking in public.
In an outlandish and brazenly dishonest article by Chuck Nevius, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Coalition on Homelessness citation defense program is blamed for the overdose of James Hill, a man who passed away recently in the San Francisco Library’s Main Branch.
Nevius claims that if Mr. Hill had been convicted of possession of an open container, he would have been given treatment. In fact, there is no treatment attached to traffic court, nor any treatment being offered by the District Attorney. The most the District Attorney has provided is a list of services that includes phone numbers for treatment programs that are full, with waiting lists.
This is the latest in a long line of lies printed in Nevius’s column.
On October 11, 2007, Nevius ran a story stating that a study Gary Blasi of UCLA found that criminalizing homeless people decreased homelessness, when in fact the study found the exact opposite. Before press time, Nevius was informed of what the study really said, but he ignored that information and lied anyway. Then, on March 2, 2008, Nevius argued that panhandling was out of control because the Coalition on Homelessness defended panhandlers in court. Once again, before he ran the article, we informed him that we had only defended a handful of panhandlers (less than 2% of the number he suggests) over the course of the year. He ran the story with his false claim, anyway.
The Coalition is all of us. We need to hold this newspaper accountable.
Please write a letter to the editor with the following points:
Please send letter to the editor of Chronicle at letters@sfchronicle.com and CC it to 1) COH director Jennifer Friedenbach, 2) Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein and 3) Deputy Managing Editor Steve Proctor.
We want to have a cadre of agency and individual statements in response to the Nevius attacks on homeless people.
Please Act Now!
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.”
One day after the created a story in Golden Gate Park, pulling up stock photos of needles and unabashedly blaming youth and poor people for what is essentially a park maintenance issue, the Mayor ordered the displacement of campers in Golden Gate Park at 4:00 a.m. each morning. Many folks were cited, and in fact camping and sleeping citations given to houseless folks across the city has tripled since the summer. Many were arrested on warrants. An effort to ensure youth in the Haight had access to showers failed in the context of intense hatred magnified by our largest local daily paper. The Mayor also introduced legislation to expand the definition of camping and the hours during which sleeping would be illegal. These dual efforts continue today: Both the sweeps and the hatred spewing from the same columnist who “discovered” people were living in the Park.
Of course, this was not the first such effort ordered by a big-city mayor. It wasn’t even the first this year in San Francisco. (more…)
“We should just gas all of the poor people sleeping in the parks!” The words slashed through the Board of Supervisors’ hearing and through the thick and stuffy rhetoric of politicians and advocates alike.
“Well, at least we’re being honest now,” I thought.
On July 31, Mayor Gavin Newsom introduced changes to the park codes, 3.12 and 3.13 specifically, that would change the definition of camping and outlaw sleeping in the park for an additional four hours. Right now, sleeping is not allowed in the park from 10 p.m.—6 a.m. Newsom’s amendment expands the no-sleeping hours from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.
It’s no secret that San Francisco is one of the most expensive places to live here in Amerikkka. It’s even less of a secret that it’s illegal to be poor here.
Only weeks after Religious Witness with Homeless People denounced the wastefulness and cruelty of the City’s policy of issuing “quality of life” citations to homeless and poor folks, the District Attorney’s Office is being more aggressive than ever in prosecuting those cases.
According to the SF Chronicle, the District Attorney’s office is now assigning prosecutors to go into court to defend any challenge to the issuance of those citations by volunteer lawyers from the Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights representing homeless individuals.
With regard to the past year’s increased police presence in Los Angeles’ Skid Row, a recent report out of UCLA informed us that: “…the policing effort has… had consequences that, while perhaps unintended, have actually served to make it harder for many homeless people to find and maintain shelter off the streets of Skid Row. The 1,000 monthly citations, most of which will result in arrest warrants, do not seem to be having the desired affect on pedestrian violations, but will lead some people who are housed to lose their housing, and homeless people who have some protection from the elements to lose that protection.” (Blasi, Gary. Policing Our Way Out of Homelessness?: The First Year of the Safer Cities Initiative on Skid Row. 2007. p. 51)
Hi, Chuck.
Don’t you find it just a little ironic that we’re talking about “sit - lie” type ordinances in city after city across the country yet no one seems to be talking about any possible connection to or responsibilities of our Federal government?
Nor have any of your columns mentioned the very recent 54 million dollars our Governor cut from mental health treatment specifically for homeless people. I heard recently that the Sheriff has more mental health clients then the Department of Public Health does; I haven’t yet been able to confirm it but the staff person who said it would know, and unfortunately it is no longer surprising considering the trends we seen in the last 10 years.
If the past 25 years has thought me anything, it is that local communities will continue to try different Matrix-type programs only to see the frustration of all segments of our society build until we finally look at cause and effect.
What existed prior to the winter of 1982 when we opened our current shelter system, and what do we need to do to recreate those systems?
We had State-funded residential lodges and group homes and we had 52 billion dollars that we don’t have today in Federal funding for affordable housing. We also had our parks open 24/7, and one could walk down a sidewalk without having to bear witness to so much despair and misery.
Matrix was very popular for the first couple of years; it only lost a lot of its popularity when people (especially in the neighborhoods) realized all the cops can do is lock people up for a little while and move them around. The criminal justice system is not going to end homelessness, as it isn’t a lack of laws and jail cells that created homelessness. Like it or not,it is going to take housing and healthcare. Think New Deal: It worked the last time and it can work again. Lord knows demonizing people (like the Okies before) doesn’t help get us where we need to go.
A word of warning: It is much easier to fan the flames of hate then it is to put out the fire. A homeless man was lit on fire while he slept in East Harlem last Friday and that has happened here in the past. Please remember the people your writing about are human beings.
Thanks.
The Newsom Administration memo leaked by Supervisor Daly indicates that the Administration is planning to illegally arrest people who are too poor to afford a place to live. In a memo dated September 28, 2007, Julian Potter wrote “If the arrest is related to a misdemeanor, warrant, intoxication or a 2nd citation for the same time period, the individual will be taken into custody for processing.” (Original here).
It is against local and state law to arrest an individual for an infraction. Almost all the offenses listed in the above memo are infractions.
According to Elisa Della-Piana of the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights, “No Mayor can arbitrarily decide to bring an individual into custody for an infraction. There are obvious legal problems with this proposal.” Already, over $6,000,000 in public funds has been spent to issue 34,000 so-called “quality of life” citations under the Newsom administration.
According to Jennifer Friedenbach, Executive Director of the Coalition on Homelessness, “It is outrageous that while violent crime is on the rise, the Newsom administration is prioritizing the use of the police and the criminal justice system to further persecute homeless people. This is Matrix Reloaded—an identical program that has been tried and failed. Instead of repackaging failed policies that criminalize poor people, the Mayor needs to work on permanent solutions such as affordable housing, treatment, and living wage jobs.”
While the Newsom Administration is claiming services will be offered, no new services have been forthcoming for this program, and existing services have either long wait lists or high turn-away rates. The City’s recent homeless count, released March 28, showed a 2% increase in homelessness. The Coalition on Homelessness tracked an average of 49 turnaways from shelters a day in February, 2007. There is a wait list of over 54,000 households for public housing and subsidized housing at the San Francisco Housing Authority, and lengthy wait lists for residential substance abuse treatment.
