Sleepouts at Santa Cruz City Hall Advance to 2016
Friday Jan 8th, 2016 6:00 PM
Homeless individuals returned to sleep at Santa Cruz City Hall on January 5 for the twenty-sixth community sleepout. Facing intermittent downpours of rain, some slept in a large tent on the sidewalk in front of the city hall courtyard. Signs attached to the tent read, “No Sleep Til Justice.” Some individuals successfully slept under the eaves of the city offices building itself, which is a no-trespassing zone at night. One person slept directly on city hall’s brick walkway with out a blanket. Regardless of the sleep location, it is illegal to sleep in Santa Cruz anywhere in public between the hours of 11 pm and 8:30 am.
Initially they attempted to sleep on the lawn in the courtyard area of city hall, which is also a no trespassing zone at night. In response, police conducted raids at nearly every one of their sleepouts. After many were cited and or arrested in the courtyard, the sleepers moved the location of their sleep-protest to the sidewalk in front of city hall. Eventually the police raids subsided.
To keep the courtyard free of sleepers, the city has instead chosen to hire all night security patrols, who often stand watch over the sleepers for hours at a time. Staying up all night has weighed heavy on some of the guards, who are employed by First Alarm Security Services. Several guards have been caught sleeping in their cars (see: http://www.indybay.org/
According to reports from the Freedom Sleepers, there were transgressions from the guards at the last sleepout as well.
Toby Nixon, of the Homeless Advocacy & Action Coalition, said that at about 4 am on January 6, a First Alarm security guard began to shine a bright light on the activists’ tent and attempted to initiate a “conversation” with the individuals inside it. After exiting the tent, Nixon says he insisted the security guard stop harassing them as they attempted to sleep. He claims the guard responded that he was working there and that it was his right to do whatever he wished.
According to Nixon the First Alarm guard left after some coaxing, and the sleepers inside made it through another night at Santa Cruz City Hall.
For more information about the Homeless Advocacy & Action Coalition, see:
http://www.facebook.com/
For more information about the Freedom Sleepers, see:
Freedom Sleepers
http://freedomsleepers.org/
http://www.facebook.com/
Alex Darocy
http://alexdarocy.blogspot.
Comments (Hide Comments)
Sleeping on the sidewalk, as Alex points out, is itself illegal after 11 PM under the City’s Sleeping Ban (MC 6.36.010a) with a $158 fine (when court fees are tacked on). Virtually no tickets have been given out for late-night sleeping–even when folks were sleeping on what was once the grassy City Hall lawn (now torn up and taped off by vigilant city authorities).
Instead, the vast majority of the tickets were for “being in a closed area’, which was, conveniently enough, the City Hall grounds. The City Hall grounds were declared “closed” 10 PM – 6 AM in response to a peaceful but persistent (nightly) protest against the very same Sleeping Ban back in 2010 (“Challenging the Darkness: Peacecamp2010 goes on as the Repression Deepens” at http://www.indybay.org/
The decree closing City Hall grounds at night by Parks and Recreation Director Dannettee Shoemaker will come under court scrutiny in demurrers filed by activists ticketed under MC 13.04.011c (being in a closed area) in court. One such argument was already rejected by BasementLevel Baskett, the balefully biased bailiff of Courtroom 10 in the case of Monterey Max. Other cases will be appearing Departments 1 and 2 (Call HUFF–Homeless United for Friendship & Freedom–for more info at 831-423-4833).
In my recent cases, junior City Attorney Reed Gallogly has refused to dismiss two such charges, even though I’ve pointed out that the City implicitly acknowledged the accuracy of the “agenda” defense. That defense affects any and all Freedom Sleepers and their supporters who were ticketed for “being on the city hall grounds after 10 PM: whether sleeping or not. The defense involves the fact that the City’s “closed” City Council area up to two weeks ago included the only spot in the City where its 24-hour agendas were posted, making the closing a violation of the Brown (Open and Accessible Public Meetings) Act. This is true since there’s nowhere else in the City that the agendas can be viewed physically for a 72-hour period before the agendaized meetings 24 hours a day as required by law.
Gallogly’s refusal to dismiss the charges seems to be part of a hard-liner strategy designed to punish the protesters’ use of their First Amendment rights to embarrass a City which makes sleeping and survival camping a crime after 11 PM, while providing no shelter to its 1500-2000 homeless folks. The 100-cot Winter Armory shelter hardly fills the bill. Gallogly has also declined to agree to a delay in trial for one activist undergoing heart surgery, insisting he “tell it to the judge”.
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