Informative Needle Exchange Interview

NOTE BY NORSE:  Uncharacteristically powerful and informative interview with Emily Ager of Street Outreach Supporters needle exchange.  Though it doesn’t name local names and point the finger at the culprits who shut down the Barsen St. Needle Exchange, it even educated the interviewer and radicallly shifted his viewpoint.

I disagree somewhat on Ager’s advice on how to deal with SCPD (“be honest” rather than “be  silent” or “ask questions, don’t volunteer answers”), but I think letting cops know if you have an exposed needle in your pocket and they’re going to search you anyway is sound advice.

The whole probation/parole/search/can’t carry needles scam is a receipe for escalating improper needle disposal (as protection against prosecution) as well as a make-work program for prisons, jails, courts, lawyers, etc.  We also need some radically different approaches to addiction problems such as Vancouver or Europe’s approaches (injection rooms, inhalation centers where people can legally and safely shoot up or sniff).

If Emily is accurate in her info, this interview gives significant resources, to those seeking to dissolve the misinformation and fear spread by groups like Take Back Santa Cruz and The Clean Team.

http://santacruz.patch.com/blog_posts/stuck-between-a-rock-and-a-sharp-place-interview-with-emily-ager-of-the-street-outreach-supporters

Thoughts on Escalating Police Violence in Santa Cruz

VIEW THE VIDEO AT http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tyj3yxwy-o.

> Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 06:02:51 -0700
> Subject: The Artificial Creation of Crime and For What?
> From: dbruceloisel@gmail.com
> To:
>
> The Artificial Creation of Crime and For What?
>
> April 25, 2013
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tyj3yxwy-o
>
> The Artificial Creation of Crime and For What?
>
>
>
> Yesterday I watched the Youtube video of a drunk homeless man being
> accosted by law enforcement I couldn’t help wonder what other options
> could have been employed by the persons responsible for public safety
> (homeless persons are included under the definition of the “public”).
> Let’s explore the options: the police could have walked by, smiled and
> kept moving. This would be my favorite. They could have questioned the
> duo, and then moved on, realizing they were drunk and minding their
> own business and harmless – number two on my list. They could have
> arrested them and when they got belligerent, “tasered” them, saving
> the one guy from a potential brain damaging blow to the head from a
> cement collision and resolving the situation – not the best option
> but better than a hospital stay. Apparently this dangerous situation
> called for backup and a physical confrontation.
>
>
>
> According the Santa Cruz police department there were 3 homicides, 33
> rapes, 83 robberies, 313 aggravated assaults, 527 burglaries, 2792
> acts of larceny, 264 auto thefts and 21 acts of arson. That makes 11
> of these types of crime per day. So I am just wondering if police time
> could be better spent on these types of crimes. Sitting on a bench
> drunk didn’t make the list for 2012 but there will be at least one
> offence for 2013. The good news is the Santa Cruz police department
> has launched Twitter and Facebook Pages and has a Mobile App for
> iPhone and Droid!
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Back to the dynamic duo. So let me get this straight, there are two
> guys on a bench, drunk, but doing a whole lot of nothing, and not
> really in any condition to walk, let alone able to creating mayhem. So
> pretty much the sum total of their transgression is akin to speeding
> or jay walking – it appears to me these two guys were totally
> harmless…so, here’s the result, the police initiate a confrontation,
> then the situation escalates, the two become belligerent (they weren’t
> belligerent before the cops arrived, begging the question what’s the
> catalyst?). This results in a booking, hospital visit, jail time for
> one, costing the tax payers tens of thousands of dollars, issuing
> nuisance citations that will never be paid, generating arrest warrants
> (again costing more money), the officers will get paid 1.5 their pay
> for overtime and retire at 45 with a healthcare benefits and a
> generous pension…and the City of Santa Cruz gets sued into oblivion
> (again) by a smart young attorney …not to mention the guy got his
> face bashed in and potential brain damage and pain…and for what? Who
> wins here? The man was belligerent. Who gives a shit? My kids are
> belligerent and so are my employees. So what? Adults handle these
> situations with common sense. The new buzz issue these days is
> bullying, but this is worse than bullying, it’s brutality. The
> standard justification for acts like this is how hard the job of the
> police is – as if this justifies assault? Being a doctor is a hard
> job. Working in the fields is a hard job. Having a hard job doesn’t
> justify being an ass hole. This is crime creation, not law
> enforcement. And they could have just walked by.
>
> Posted by D. B. Loisel.NORSE’S NOTES:

Nicely put, Doug.

I wouldn’t suggest tasering,  which can also be lethal and tends to be misused as curbside punishment for less-than-swift-compliance.   But rather calling for a few more cops to help  move the guy into the squad car.

The new strategy seems to be to use fear and punishment if people don’t fully cooperate,  seems like.

I’m normally not a fan of megacopping on Pacific Avenue–I’ve seen half a dozen instances of it in two weeks around things like “leaning against the railing of the fence near the New Leaf Market”  (an incident involving Brent Adams and Officer Ahlers), 4 squad cars blocking traffic on the street while a fifth parks across the street (near community TV) to handle one drunk on the sidewalk who’s already handcuffed (and may have also been slammed down–I got their late and his face was bleeding).   Actually both these and a third happened on the same day–I witnessed the first, got a first hand account of the second, and a more distant account of the third–I think it was Friday April 5th.

Maybe there’s a “message” police are trying to send out to drunks similar to the message their vigilante cousins are sending out to homeless people:  “get out of town or get hurt”.   Just wonderin’.

Finally, the cops also often use this “drunk in public” charge to haul people in, seize their property, and sequester it for days–notably homeless people and their backpacks and blankets, when folks simply have an open container or are mildly buzzed and “have the wrong attitude”.  They are then held in a cell for a few hours and released in the cold wee hours without charges.

It looked like Richard Hardy–the name of the man assaulted by Officer Vasquez–was perhaps too drunk to take care of himself–the actual definition of drunk in public, rather than the police misusage above.  So perhaps he had justification, but what really tells is the subsequent behavior of the cops (“Are you all right, Richard?”) where they attempt to whitewash their brutality for the watching videocamera and the cover-up of the matter by the SCPD (not aware that Vasquez has been relieved of duty pending investigation).  Also with the Copley decision of a decade ago, there’s no public revelation of any disciplinary consequences unless someone leaks it.

Hardy, by the way, was reportedly released from Dominican yesterday, but I’m not sure if that’s because they’re cheap, or because he’s truly recovered.

The aggravated anti-homeless climate in Santa Cruz (I got another report yesterday of 4 guys jumping a man named Gabriel as he headed for Cabrillo College–which you  may have heard on the radio–report to be posted soon) is ramping up and solidifying this long-time police corruption.

I’m hoping to begin creating a video on-line library of such local incidents and turn them into a well-edited video that demonstrates both police brutality locally and the abusive anti-homeless laws to pass on the public in another of my (often seemingly ineffectual) Calls to Conscience.

Thanks for your analysis.

R


From: rnorse3@hotmail.com
To: compassionman@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: [huffsantacruz] Thoughts on Escalating Police Violence & in Santa Cruz
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 21:05:28 -0700

Unless we’re talking some new laws, jaywalking doesn’t mean not crossing at a crosswalk, but crossing in a block between two stop lights or obstructing traffic.  Were you doing either?   What’s the ordinance they cited?


From: compassionman@hotmail.com
To: rnorse3@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: [huffsantacruz] Thoughts on Escalating Police Violence & in Santa Cruz
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:33:21 -0700

11pm officers winston and “coffy”?.. in front of new leaf as they were scaring off drunken street performers.

I crossed a vacant well lit street to pass by them.  He recognized me from afar and said, “SIR!!  COME HERE NOW!!”
….. and asked me to produce my ID.   it was because i had crossed the street outside of the cross walk.

they both indicated that they knew about the police violence video.


From: rnorse3@hotmail.com
To: compassionman@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: [huffsantacruz] Thoughts on Escalating Police Violence & in Santa Cruz
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:23:35 -0700

Thanks, Brent.  When and were did this happen–if you remember?  Any video or further commentary?  Number of officers involved, for instance.  Time of day, etc.  As well as the ultimate consequences (did the ticket show up in court?).


From: compassionman@hotmail.com
To: rnorse3@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: [huffsantacruz] Thoughts on Escalating Police Violence & in Santa Cruz
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:21:05 -0700

i was given a ticket for Jay walking and officer Coffy tried to give me a ticket for an unregistered bike untilWinston told him that they don’t do that anymore because its illegal.

Video: Officer Vasquez slams drunk mans face to concrete

Here is some video i took the other night.

At about 1am on april 22, 2013 I rode my bike past two guys sitting passively on a bench at night downtown. Then a cop stopped and one-thing-led-to-another and the officer hand cuffed one of them and “spun him” … slamming the mans face with great force into the sidewalk.

Weakened Homeless Bill of Rights Passes Assembly Committee

NOTE BY NORSE:   Not having seen the revised bill, I can’t tell how badly the bill has been weakened.  It seems there are still some useful provisions left in it.  Contact the Santa Cruz City Council at citycouncil@cityofsantacruz.com to demand they support and strengthen it.  Not to mention dumping the raft of anti-homeless laws they already have on the books (See “Deadly Downtown Ordinances–Updated” at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/08/29/18657087.php ).

Capitol Alert

The latest on California politics and government

homeless.JPG

An amended version of a bill that would extend new protections to California’s homeless population cleared the Assembly Judiciary Committee on Tuesday morning.

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, framed Assembly Bill 5 as an attempt to create a statewide baseline of homeless civil rights, citing a proliferation of municipal ordinances cracking down on behavior like lying or sleeping on the sidewalk as examples of the “criminalization of poor people.”

“Today numerous laws infringe on poor peoples’ ability to exist in public space, to acquire housing, employment and basic services and to equal protection under the laws,” Ammiano said at a Tuesday morning hearing.

Ammiano’s legislation faced a backlash from critics who said the bill would sanction behavior like urinating in public while exposing businesses to new litigation, undercutting the will of voters who had passed local ordinances and handcuffing city-level efforts to deal with homelessness. The California Chamber of Commerce included AB 5 on its annual list of “job killers” because it imposes “costly and unreasonable mandates on employers.”

The amendments addressed those concerns, Ammiano and supporters of the bill argued. A widely derided provision establishing “the right to engage in life sustaining activities” including “urinating” was deleted. Another amendment jettisoned language prohibiting discrimination by business establishments.

But those changes were not enough to allay the concerns of critics like the League of California Cities, which argued that the bill still imposes onerous new requirements. Lobbyist Kirstin Kolpitcke pointed to a provision requiring governments to compile statistics on arrests and citations for offenses like loitering or obstructing sidewalks.

The bill would also bar local law enforcement from applying laws governing things like eating, sitting or panhandling in public places unless the county has satisfied a set of requirements that include a relatively low unemployment rate, a short wait for public housing and readily available public assistance.

“The city does not control the county’s numbers or what they do or do not provide,” Kolpitcke said.
Concerns also remain about the cost of the bill, which requires the State Department of Public Health to fund health and hygiene centers. At the committee hearing on Tuesday, even lawmakers who voted to move the bill underscored those qualms — committee chair Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, predicted a “lively discussion” when the bill goes before the Appropriations Committee.

“While I can certainly appreciate the goal and the aspiration, we all know we simply don’t have the money to be able to provide that,” Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, said of the proposed hygiene centers.

Even should that provision be stripped from the bill, it would leave the core of the legislation intact — what Jennifer Friedenbach of the San Francisco-based Coalition on Homelessness described as “making sure homeless people have a fundamental right to rest” without facing harassment.
“That does not overturn local laws,” Friedenbach told the Bee.

PHOTO CREDIT: Advocates for the homeless rally outside the State Capitol building on Tuesday The Sacramento Bee/Jeremy B. White

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/04/updated-homeless-bill-of-rights-passes-committee.html#storylink=cpy

Showers? What a Concept

NOTE  FROM NORSE:   Public bathhouses, 24-hour bathrooms, 21st Century health standards–all something Santa Cruz has yet to pick up on.

Tech entrepreneur is converting retired city buses into showers for the San Francisco homeless

San Francisco is teeming with tech entrepreneurs who want to save the world but who’ll pass by the homeless person on the street without a second glance.

Doniece Sandoval, a Bay Area tech entrepreneur, is not one of them. Her latest trick? Turning retired city buses into mobile showers for the homeless. The initiative, known as Lava Mae, is a response to a desperate need in the city. According to the most recent count, more than 6,500 homeless people sleep on the street or in shelters in San Francisco, and there are only eight shower facilities specifically available to the homeless, and most of these have just one or two stalls and aren’t open every day.
lavamae_1339430086_600 Doniece Sandoval is working part-time to convert MUNI buses into shower facilities

It all started two years ago when Sandoval hopped in a cab after a meeting in the south of market (SoMa) district of San Francisco, which is primarily inhabited by startups and the homeless.
“My driver turned around and said, ‘welcome to the land of broken dreams.’” Sandoval  snapped out of her reverie and started to really look at the people around her.

“The woman I passed was crying and saying that she would never be clean,” Sandoval recalled, her voice cracking. While this sentiment might have multiple layers of meaning, she took it as a sign that she should focus on the issue of hygiene, one of the most pressing needs in the homeless community.

After mulling it over and doing some research, Sandoval hit on the idea of a mobile unit that could be outfitted with shower facilities. Access to water and sanitation is a basic human right, so as a short-term solution, why not put a shower on wheels?

The project has been several years in the making — and still won’t be operational for several more months — as it has not been easy to get the city’s regulators on board. “There have been a lot of uphill battles,” Sandoval admits. But she has reached an agreement with the transit authorities, which will donate the buses being retired in the next four years. The buses will tap into fire hydrants wherever they go, an ideal water source.


Project Homeless Connect, the Bay Area group that is on a mission to improve communication among service providers, has agreed to support Lava Mae. Once the basic need for sanitation is met, the hope is that San Francisco’s homeless will be better-equipped to find long-term jobs and other opportunities.
A broader goal is to shine a light on the real face of homelessness in San Francisco.

“You would be shocked at how many well-dressed people there are sitting next to you in San Francisco coffee shops who don’t have a place to live,” said Marc Roth, an entrepreneur who lived in shelters, in his car, and on the streets until the day he walked into TechShop, spent on his last cent on manufacturing classes, and picked up a soldering iron. Roth is now thriving; with a newly funded business (a laser company), he’s a living testament that the right program can make all the difference.

Likewise, Sandoval is no stranger to entrepreneurship. She’s the founder of Idea Mensch, an online community where entrepreneurs can share their stories, and currently works for Zero1, an art and technology network. She believes San Francisco’s residents have a real opportunity to use their unique talents for good.

Her plan is to provide 100 to 200 showers each day, as well as a private changing room and bathroom facilities. To ensure the process works seamlessly, she is working with a design firm on the prototype for the first bus.

“We will start with one bus, but will share this idea with communities across the country to make a difference on a national-level,” she said.

2 held after shooting downtown Fresno homeless with paintballs

NOTE BY NORSE:  The “call in a criminal sleeper” campaign encouraged by the SCPD and, I suspect, by Take Back Santa Cruz, could easily escalate to this kind of Trollbuster Violence, as it did in the past.   When homeless people are casually associated with theft, discarded needles, feces-and-urine, trash, and burglaries, open season on poor people becomes not just okay but valued.  The recent Arm the Homeless campaign (see http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/04/15/18735243.php ) was a response.

2 held after shooting downtown Fresno homeless with paintballs

By Diana Aguilera – The Fresno Bee
Monday, Apr. 22, 2013 | 11:19 PM Modified Mon, Apr 22, 2013 09:54 PM

Two teenagers were arrested in downtown Fresno Monday after shooting several homeless people with a paintball gun, costing one man the sight in one eye, police said.

Officers went to the area of Fresno and F streets, where two suspects inside a vehicle shot a homeless man with a paintball gun. The two suspects drove in an alley, shot the man and then fled the area, police said.

Shortly after that, the two teenagers shot another homeless man with the paintball gun near Ventura and H streets.

Police located the vehicle at Broadway and San Benito avenues and later arrested a 17-year-old juvenile from Fresno and an 18-year-old man from Bakersfield.

Police learned the pair had shot paintballs two days earlier at a homeless man and woman at Ventura and H streets. According to police, the man was struck in the eye by a paintball, resulting in loss of sight in one eye. The woman reported being struck in the chest.

The two teens were arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and conspiracy. Police said they could face mayhem charges, as well.

Check fresnobee.com for breaking news

From a Decade Ago…

Down And Out In Europe

By BOBBY GHOSH Sunday, Feb. 02, 2003BAITEL-RIBEIRO/GAMMA

EXPOSED: Around 10% of Europe’s homeless are rough sleepers
Follow @TIME


Big Sid tells lies. During the course of a single three-hour conversation on a London street corner, he relates

his life story four times, each version more fantastical than the last. In one, he swims to the middle of the Thames in midwinter to rescue a drowning dog. In another, he vanquishes a phalanx of machete-wielding skinheads with his bare hands. Sid is a black man who says his parents came to Britain from the Caribbean, but the specific biographical details he serves up vary so dramatically he might easily be talking about three or four completely different people; the narrative inconsistencies mount as he works his way through a two-liter bottle of hard cider. By the halfway point, he’s contradicting himself almost every other sentence, and lapsing into incoherent repetitions of his two favorite phrases: “short-term” and “long-term.”

Depending on which version of the saga you believe, Big Sid was born in South London, or in Yorkshire; he’s a high school dropout, or played football at university; he was married (and divorced) twice, or never. He may be 35, or 40. He claims to be utterly alone in the world, an orphan with no relatives at all, but asked if he will allow himself to be photographed for this article, he balks. “I have family, man,” he says, his high voice abruptly dropping to an embarrassed whisper. “I don’t want them to pick up your magazine and see me in this condition.”

His condition is the one certain, cruel, truth about Big Sid: he is homeless. On this bitterly cold winter night, he will make a bed of flattened cardboard boxes in the recessed doorway of a music store, squeeze into a fluorescent green sleeping bag that’s too small for his angular 2-m frame, and rest his bald head on an old postman’s sack that contains his every possession. He’s been a rough sleeper for much of his adult life, wandering from city to city in a near-constant alcoholic haze. Once or twice a year, he will go to a shelter for homeless people, to get out of inclement weather or to have a doctor look at the sores on his feet. But these interludes rarely last more than a few days: Sid finds sustained human company stressful, and is deeply suspicious of anything that smacks of officialdom. “The shelters are okay for short-term, for a bath and medical treatment,” he says, “but they aren’t for long-term, man, not for me.”

Finding long-term solutions for people like Big Sid is an enormous — and growing — challenge for Western Europe, where homelessness has quietly been climbing to levels not seen since the end of World War II. Hard numbers are scarce, but according to the European Federation of National Organizations Working with the Homeless (FEANTSA), a Brussels-based umbrella body of homeless organizations, at least 3 million Western Europeans are homeless this winter — and between one-fifth and one-third of them are members of homeless families. Only a small proportion, less than 10%, sleep rough like Big Sid; most huddle into shelters or temporary housing, live in shanties, or bed down in the houses of friends and family. Think homelessness is an American problem? Think again. As a percentage of population, it’s as bad in Europe as it is in the U. S., where there are an estimated 2 million homeless, according to Dennis Culhane, a social-policy expert at the University of Pennsylvania, who extrapolates his figure from attendance at homeless facilities in nine U.S. jurisdictions.

That Europe’s homelessness problem is roughly the same as America’s — and that one of the fastest-growing segments of Europe’s homeless population is families — is a shock. After all, Europe sees itself as kinder, gentler and more socially responsible than the U.S., with an extensive, expensive social safety net that’s designed to nurture and protect the most vulnerable sections of the populace — the kind of people who are thrown to the wolves in winner-take-all America. But that might just be the point: it’s easier to be homeless in Europe, where even the down-and-out get social-welfare checks.

Activists and experts, however, hesitate to make a direct cause-and-effect correlation between the dole and homelessness. They point, instead, to inadequate and incoherent social-welfare policies that throw money at the problem but don’t do enough to move the homeless from the streets and shelters into jobs and permanent housing. “The safety net is failing some of the most vulnerable sections of European society,” says Freek Spinnewijn, FEANTSA’s director. “A lot of people are falling through — people with mental-health problems, drug and alcohol problems, and people who have suffered physical and sexual abuse.”

What’s even more scary is that 3 million is almost certainly an underestimate: most European countries simply don’t know where to look or how to count the homeless. Government data are as confusing, and about as reliable, as Big Sid’s stories. Austria and Spain have no official statistics at all. Germany, France, Italy and the U.K. have what are best described as estimates, many of them regarded with skepticism by voluntary organizations that work with the homeless. INSEE, France’s national statistics agency, admits that its official count of 86,500 is only based on the number of adults that went at least once to a soup kitchen or an accommodation service. FEANTSA estimates that the real number of French homeless is closer to 200,000, but many aid organizations claim that even this figure is too low. The British government claims there are just 596 rough sleepers across the country, but those who work in London’s shelters say there are more than 1,000 in the capital alone.

It doesn’t help that different European governments (and indeed different voluntary organizations) have varying definitions of homelessness. In Italy, only rough sleepers qualify — there are around 17,000 of them, according to the official count. At the other end of the spectrum, Finland includes as homeless people staying temporarily with relatives and friends, and even prisoners about to be released who have no homes to go to. FEANTSA, the closest thing to a pan-European authority on the subject, uses a combination of official statistics, data from voluntary groups and its own research to make educated guesses.

Inconsistent definitions also explain why some homelessness groups express surprise at the comparison between homeless numbers in Europe and the U.S. “This is such a difficult phenomenon to quantify, and it’s hard to know whether the Americans use the same yardsticks as we do,” says Jeremy Swain, chief executive of the London homeless charity Thames Reach Bondway. But even if the calculations are imprecise, experts say, they’ve seen enough anecdotal evidence in recent years to know that Europe’s homeless population is enormous, and growing all the time.

And it is compounded by Europe’s other chronic predicament, immigration. The proportion varies sharply: in France, anywhere between 50% and 80% of those using homeless services are immigrants; in Germany, it’s just over 10%. These calculations only include migrants who are legally entitled to state assistance, but social researchers say illegal immigrants tend not to remain homeless very long. With no access to social welfare, they have to find jobs and accommodation to get off the streets, where they risk being caught and sent back home. It doesn’t follow that immigrants who use homeless services are welfare slobs, lacking the incentive or will to break out of their dependence on the state. Many are homeless because they are discriminated against, in jobs and housing — or simply can’t afford Europe’s high cost of living.

But economics is only a small part of the problem. Unlike Eastern Europe and Russia, where homelessness is mostly a result of massive unemployment, the profile of Western Europe’s homeless is much more complicated. A large proportion owe their condition to nonfinancial difficulties — alcoholism or drug addiction, mental disabilities, or trauma brought on by physical or psychological abuse. “We’re talking about people who have been raped or severely beaten up as children, who’ve had bad marriages, lost loved ones, been thrown out of jobs or suffered other kinds of indignities,” says Dublin social-research consultant Brian Harvey. “Homelessness is the end of the line in a series of personal disasters.”

Christelle won’t say what her personal disaster has been, or why she recently left her Algerian-born husband. At the Cité Saint Martin in Paris, an aid center and shelter near the Bastille run by the Association of Catholic Relief Shelters, Christelle (not her real name), 23, tries to keep her three-year-old daughter Julie entertained. Sitting in the playroom, there are different toys everywhere, and after sampling building blocks and crayons, Julie (also not the child’s real name), wearing a red dress with a matching red bow in her curly brown hair, finally settles down with a small plastic truck, driving herself around the room to her own engine sounds. Christelle smiles, but sees beyond the happiness that a well-stocked playroom can provide. “The hard part is living communally,” she says, relaxing in a sweatshirt and jeans — a comfy outfit thrown on after a day out looking for work. “For my daughter, it’s difficult. I don’t want her to become too accustomed to this situation.”

Most homeless people in Europe are single or separated men, like Big Sid. But voluntary agencies say the fastest-growing segments among the homeless are like Christelle: young, female and part of a family. The explanations range from the predictable (the general economic downturn) to the counterintuitive (women’s independence may be a contributor: more assertive women are more likely to dump abusive husbands and move into homeless shelters). When the numbers were small, Europe did well by homeless families and women, giving them priority in temporary and permanent government housing. But as their numbers swell, the infrastructure is being stretched thin. Spinnewijn says that single women with children make up the majority of homeless families in Europe. “One of the main reasons for the increasing number of homeless families is divorce,” says Spinnewijn. “There has been a rise in the number of divorces, and often divorced women with children find it very difficult to have an economically sustainable life.”

Christelle, originally from northwestern France, moved into the shelter last September. According to the government’s rules, she can only stay six months, which means she has until early March to find a new place to stay. Christelle is worried about the deadline, but is optimistic that she will have a job and an apartment by the spring. She hopes to get a divorce soon. With no friends in Paris and what appears to be a distant relationship with her family, who live several hours away, she contacted a social-aid worker who placed her at the Cité Saint Martin.

Résumé in hand, she goes out each day looking for work. “I’d like a job in the hospitality industry, maybe as a receptionist,” she says. But the job market is tight, and so she tries to hide her circumstances from potential employers, to duck prejudice against homeless people. “Nobody knows I don’t have my own home, and I don’t tell them,” she says. That includes her estranged husband and her family; when she calls her parents, she lets them believe she has a place.

The music of Jennifer Lopez plays on the radio in the background, and Christelle says what she’d really like to do is live in the U.S. “I dream of Los Angeles,” she says. “Things just seem better there.” But for the moment, it’s enough to care for her daughter and keep going out everyday looking for a job. “When I was young I would see people from shelters and thought it must not be easy to live like that, without a place of your own,” she says with an awkward smile. “Now I know.”

It’s hard to know what traumas torment the short, stocky man slouched on a bench in Berlin’s Hallesches Tor metro station at 11 p.m. one freezing winter night. He is plainly drunk, the smell of alcohol on his breath mingling with the stench from his urine-stained trousers. His blue eyes are bloodshot, his brown beard mottled. Asked for his name by a worker from the Berlin City Mission, he comes up with “O’Brien,” although he’s plainly German. He agrees to be taken to a shelter run by the Mission, which is sponsored by the Lutheran Church. When he gets there, he is searched for weapons, drugs and alcohol, and is required to surrender the black table lamp that he jealously guards at all times. He’s then handed a bowl of hot soup, but screams out that he wants spaghetti. After some soothing words from the kitchen volunteers, he begrudgingly takes his bowl of soup to the almost-empty dining room, where several other guests have passed out under the tables.

A drunken tantrum is nothing more than a small nuisance for those who work with the homeless. Volunteers routinely encounter hostility, even violence, particularly from rough sleepers. “Those who’ve been on the streets for years get very uncomfortable when they are suddenly in a confined space, surrounded by lots of people,” says Susan Fallis, project manager at a West London hostel, one of several run by the charity Broadway. “They are suspicious and angry, and get put off by even the simplest things.”

Fallis’ hostel is a relatively rare “wet” house: it allows booze (but not drugs) on the premises, on the principle that alcoholics would otherwise remain in the streets and beyond help’s reach. Residents are provided hot meals, clean bedrooms, even well-being services like foot massages and aromatherapy. They are also encouraged to sign up for government detox programs. The hostel receives around €450 a week from the British government for each of its 30-odd residents. It also charges them a small fee, about €12.50 a week, for things like electricity, water and gas. It’s a pittance they can afford to pay from their welfare checks. The small fee has another function: it is meant to help residents deal with simple real-world chores like paying bills. “They need to take small steps toward a normal life,” Fallis says.

But many find even the smallest steps too daunting, and their fear turns easily into resentment. Michael Ion, a 10-year rough sleeper and alcoholic who stayed at the hostel for a few weeks this winter, was enraged when one worker reminded him his monthly fee was overdue. “Why should they remind me about a payment?” he fumes. “I’m not in debt, or anything. And they’re getting money from the government anyway.” Although he concedes that the hostel is less hidebound than most, Ion complains that there are too many rules. “I’m used to being by myself in the open air, with nobody to tell me what to do,” he says. “These places are like prisons for me.”

Both O’Brien and Ion are back on the streets now. Few rough sleepers ever last more than a couple of months in a shelter: their addictions and psychological problems won’t be solved by hot meals and a roof over their heads. And their welfare checks, more often than not, only feed their addictions.

And yet europe’s traditional response to homelessness has been to throw money at the problem, in the form of benefits. Unemployed single French citizens over the age of 25 and with no dependents are entitled to an allowance of around €400 a month. In Britain, people can claim €50-80 per week in unemployment benefits, and in Germany, the homeless are entitled to a subsistence allowance of €9 a day, which they can pick up at the social-welfare office. Social researchers know that “it’s not a matter of giving someone several hundred euros a month and expecting them to find a place to live and make a life,” says Martin Hirsch, president of Emmaüs France, a voluntary organization that runs shelters and provides housing across the country. “Money isn’t enough for people with problems — physical, psychological — who can’t take care of themselves.”

Can Europe fix its homelessness problem? Not before it acknowledges that the problem is graver than officials currently admit. Social researchers say an accurate count of the homeless is as crucial as an accurate national census. Central governments would be smart to pass that job on to provincial and local authorities; they’re closer to the problem and better able to quantify it. “There’s plenty of evidence that local authorities are more responsive to the homeless than central governments,” says Dublin consultant Harvey. This is borne out by the experience of Germany’s l�nder, or states, which under German law are responsible for dealing with homelessness. As a result, they provide the most accurate representation of the problem among the major European countries: after peaking at 590,000 in 1997, the number of homeless Germans fell to 390,000 in 2000. The decline also suggests that local authorities do a better job, not just of counting the homeless but of getting them off the streets.

Other countries are coming around to the idea that workable solutions for homelessness must come from local authorities. England’s Homelessness Act came into force last summer, requiring each of its 354 local-government housing authorities to produce a homelessness strategy by mid-2003. Then the real work can begin.

So far, the response from voluntary groups has been mixed. Alastair Jackson, director of policy for the housing organization Shelter, says the law has already “improved the quality of help” available to homeless people. But he and others worry that the central government hasn’t yet explained how the local authorities will cooperate and coordinate their work with national bodies, voluntary groups and policymakers. And yes, European governments will still need to throw more money at the problem — to pay for more affordable housing, more shelters, and for the detox, rehab and therapies many homeless people need to overcome their personal demons.

Big Sid doesn’t think that’s possible. It’s two weeks since that bender with the hard cider, and he’s back on the streets of London after a trip to the beach resort of Brighton. The begging there was good, and he shows off a bottle of cheap whiskey tucked into his sack. But that’s for a special occasion; for now he’s still drinking cider. And he’s still telling tall tales, but they’ve taken on a much darker tone, with him playing the victim instead of the hero. The villains, inevitably, are representatives of the state, from doctors in public hospitals who don’t give him the medicines he wants to policemen who beat him up for no reason. “Governments hurt people,” he says, recounting years of abuse he endured — or did he? — in a state-run correctional school 20 years ago. “Government programs are all short-term, and nothing good comes of short-term.” Finding long-term solutions for the Big Sids of Europe may be the hardest part of dealing with homelessness.

Two From Monterey County

NOTES BY NORSE:  [See below]

Monterey City Council to look at homeless problem

440 homeless people are in Monterey, says a 2011 census
By LARRY PARSONS   Herald Staff Writer
Updated:   04/22/2013 11:31:16 PM PDT

Amid increased public outcry about the city’s homeless population, the Monterey City Council will hold an evening study session Wednesday on the subject.

A 13-page council report prepared for the session says a 2011 census counted 440 homeless people in Monterey. It cautions that homelessness, unlawful behavior and activities affecting health and safety “are not one in the same and cannot be addressed with the same tools and strategies.”

The council session comes in advance of a first-time, Peninsula-wide “Hungry and Homeless in Paradise” conference to be held May 18 at Monterey Peninsula College.

The council report breaks down different groups of homeless people, looks at different ways of addressing the complex issue, notes what the city already is doing, and says public complaints about transients are on the rise.

“Most causes of homelessness are outside the the control of government agencies,” the report says. “There are no easy answers or solutions, only good intentions, inadequate resources and growing frustrations.”

The homeless population comprises the “truly homeless” who have suffered severe economic setbacks, persons with substance-abuse, mental-health or other traumatic problems, and growing numbers of young “travelers” living nomadic lifestyles, the report says.

The city itself — with its moderate climate, seasonal visitors with disposable income and beaches, parks and greenbelts — are “reasons for the area’s attractiveness



for people experiencing homelessness.”

City officials receive complaints “on a daily basis” from residents, tourists and the business community about the growing numbers of homeless, the report says.

“They report seeing homeless persons sprawled on the sidewalks, urinating in public and acting intimidating,” the report says. Areas particularly impacted are downtown, Roberts Lake and the Garden Road, the report says.

In response, the city has created a temporary three-member police team to maintain a presence in the areas most affected. But city officials also have received complaints from the public about “criminalizing poverty” and targeting the homeless, the report says.

The city has ordinances against aggressive panhandling, loitering, littering, consuming alcohol in public, trespassing and other “health and safety” issues, the report says.

But other measures — overnight parking prohibitions in certain areas, expanded no-smoking laws and making it a crime to sit or lie on sidewalks or other public spaces — likely will be brought to the council, the report says.

This year, the city allocated $123,060 in community development grant money to 13 agencies serving the homeless. That’s 50percent below last year’s funding level because of the elimination of local redevelopment agencies, the report says.

The report lists about two dozen suggestions received by city officials to respond to homelessness. They range from increasing city contributions to business groups for security to licensing panhandlers.

NOTES BY NORSE:

“Most causes of homelessness are outside the the control of government agencies,” the report says. “There are no easy answers or solutions, only good intentions, inadequate resources and growing frustrations.”
Actually, the government has lots of control. Consider the police and judicial amputation of basic legal and human rights that homeless people suffer as a class, such as sleeping bans, bogus “public safety” curfews in public spaces, twenty-first century vagrancy laws (which were actually declared unconstitutional 30 years ago in the Lawson case). These are directly a result of local government action– responding to the agenda of their police department, developers, right-wing bigots, or a reactionary merchant association.
Instead of low-income campgrounds, bathroom facilities, and the obvious amenities of civilization which should be publicly available, there’s the “scare ’em out of town or lock ’em up mentality”. Today in Sacramento Assemblyman Tom Ammiano’s AB 5—the California Homeless Bill of Rights—comes up for an initial Judiary Committee vote. See http://wraphome.org/?p=2953&option=com_wordpress&Itemid=119 .
“In response, the city has created a temporary three-member police team to maintain a presence in the areas most affected.” A brilliant response to the “urination problem”. I guess public bathrooms are out. Exactly how many 24-hour bathrooms are there in Monterey, and where are they located?

Salinas restaurateur admits beating homeless man, will get nine years

Will get 9 years in prison for attack with bat

By JULIA REYNOLDS   Herald Staff Writer
Posted:   04/22/2013 09:02:19 PM PDT
Updated:   04/22/2013 11:11:11 PM PDT
Click photo to enlarge

Robert DeLeon Entered no contest plea after new witness to attack came forward

In a stunning mid-trial turnabout, a Salinas restaurant owner accused of beating a homeless man with a metal bat admitted to assault charges early Monday that will mean nine years in prison.

Halfway through a jury trial that included costly expert witnesses rendering opposing opinions, Robert DeLeon, 43, entered a no-contest plea to charges of assault with a deadly weapon and causing great bodily injury leading to a coma in an attack on Ramon Anderson in October.

DeLeon is co-owner of XL Grindhouse on Main Street near the National Steinbeck Center. Prosecutors said he admitted he inflicted injury that caused Ramon Anderson, 55, to “suffer brain injury resulting in a coma.”

An additional charge of attempted murder was dropped as part of the plea agreement.

The sudden change in the trial’s course came about in a matter of hours on Friday.

Prosecutor Steve Somers said Salinas police Det. Arlene Currier received a message Friday from someone suggesting she speak with a possible new witness in the case.

It was the same day DeLeon testified that he never beat Anderson with a bat, something his attorney has contended since the trial began one week ago.

DeLeon admitted a fight took place, but said he only used fists in self-defense.

Currier had no phone number for the new witness, Somers said Monday, but was told where she could find him. She did so, and obtained a recorded interview that told a very different story, one that matched versions given



by another witness and Anderson.

Anderson testified early in the trial that he suffers from schizophrenia and was sleeping behind the restaurant when a customer called police and he was asked to leave the premises. He said he did, but was later walking on the sidewalk in front of the establishment when DeLeon came outside and attacked him.

The new witness, a regular customer of the XL Grindhouse, told Currier that he was “sitting in the restaurant,” Somers said. “He saw the defendant hit (Anderson) with a bat three times in the head.”
During the fight, Somers said, “DeLeon lost control of the bat but continued to attack Mr. Anderson, punching him and stomping on his head as Anderson lay on the sidewalk in a fetal position.”

He said the witness told Currier that DeLeon came back inside the restaurant carrying the bat, then looked at the witness and angrily told him to be quiet.

Two days later, Anderson was flown to a trauma center and underwent surgery to relieve swelling in his brain, followed by weeks in hospitals and convalescent homes.

With another week of trial looming on Friday, Somers said he quickly sent the recording to DeLeon’s attorney Brian Worthington.

Before the night was over, a plea deal was forged, Somers said.

Somers said this was only the second time he has struck a deal halfway through a jury trial.

He said the witness told Currier he never came forward because he thought investigators already had enough evidence.

Worthington on Monday said he didn’t want to discuss witness allegations that are not in evidence, and said he stands by DeLeon’s testimony about not using a bat.

“He’s been consistent with that,” Worthington said. He said corroborating testimony by forensic pathologist Dr. Joseph Cohen about Anderson’s injuries “more than showed that wasn’t the case.”

He said DeLeon did admit in the plea deal to using a bat because the sentence would have been the same whatever weapon was used, and it was more important to get the attempted murder charge off the plate.
“It was a reasonable compromise,” Worthington said. “What really made us move forward with a plea was the (acknowledgement) that Mr. DeLeon had absolutely no intent to kill.”

Somers had another take. Somers felt it met the legal definition of attempted murder, “But it was a tough charge to prove.”

Overall, he said, the plea deal was “an appropriate result.”

DeLeon was facing 15 years in prison, Worthington said, but the deal now stipulates the nine-year sentence. State law requires that DeLeon serve at least 85 percent of the term, and the conviction will count as a strike under California’s three-strikes law.

He is scheduled to be sentenced June 21.

His brother James DeLeon was also originally charged in the assault. He was later sentenced to felony

probation after he admitted to being an accessory after the fact when he lied to police officers about the beating.

It is unclear what will happen to the XL Grindhouse’s beer and wine license, which state records show is held by a company run by both brothers.

California law says convicted felons cannot own liquor licenses unless they are deemed “rehabilitated” through a lengthy court procedure.

Julia Reynolds can be reached at 648-1187 or jreynolds@montereyherald.com

NOTES BY NORSE:
Perhaps De Leon can start a chapter of Take Back Monterey in jail and link up with the militant Take Back Santa Cruz [TBSC] organization up North.

Anti-homeless hysteria generated by TBSC has resulted in the closing down of the only Needle Exchange program located in the city. They’ve amped up “Reefer Madness” and stopped a 2nd medical marijuana facility from opening [See http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_23059432/santa-cruz-planners-consider-medical-marijuana-grow].

TBSC is pushing for more punitive police response, and recently sent a mob to pressure a local judge (successfully) into keeping an innocent man in jail (Ken Maffei) with the false charge that he stole flowers from a police memorial. See http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_22843345/charges-dismissed-against-man-accused-stealing-flowers-from .

Today the Santa Cruz City Council is considering an anti-homeless curfew on Cowell’s Beach–the first beach “forbidden zone at night” ever–after a Drug Warrior gang of hysterical residents mobbed City Council and prompted it to vote behind closed doors to shut down the only Needle Exchange in town.

California Homeless Bill of Rights Faces Committee Vote 4-23

NOTE BY NORSE:   AB 5 comes up for a vote in the Judiciary Committee tomorrow.   A phone call (or an e-mail) to any of the below politico’s might help sway the tide.  I’m not terribly optimistic about the final shape this bill will emerge in, nor in its predecessor in Rhode Island (i.e. whether it’s actually helping homeless people on the grounds), but the continuing debate is important and the issue crucial.

PLEASE CALL OR E-MAIL STONE OR ANY OF THE OTHER REPS !

California Homeless Bill of Rights (AB 5) is set with our first hearing and we all need to ACT NOW!!!

♦ Bob Wieckowski, Chair (D, Alameda, Santa Clara) phone: 916-319-2025. fax: 916 319-2125. kevin.baker@asm.ca.gov
♦ Donald P. Wagner – Vice Chair (R, Orange) phone: 916-319-2068. fax: 916-319-2168. matt.hedges@asm.ca.gov
♦ Luis A. Alejo (D, Monterey, Santa Clara) phone: 916-319-2030. fax: 916-319-2130. tyler.blackney@asm.ca.gov
♦ Ed Chau(D, LA) phone: 916-319-2049. fax: 916-319-2149. edmond.cheung@asm.ca.gov
♦ Roger Dickinson (D, Sacramento, Yolo) phone: 916-319-2007.fax: 916-319-2109. elliot.cavnaugh@asm.ca.gov
♦ Cristina Garcia(D, LA) phone: 916-319-2058. fax: 916-319-2158. tim.reardon@asm.ca.gov
♦ Jeff Gorell, (R, Ventura County, LA County) phone: 916-319-2044 .fax: 916-319-2144. samuel.chung@asm.ca.gov
♦ Brian Maienschein (R, San Diego) phone: 916-319-2077. fax: 916-319-2177. matthew.easley@asm.ca.gov
♦ Al Muratsuchi (D, LA) phone: 916-319-2066. fax: 916-319-2166. brett.williams@asm.ca.gov
Mark Stone (D, Santa Cruz, Monterey) phone: 916-319-2029. fax: 916-319-2129. rebecca.marcus@asm.ca.gov