Hard Times in Santa Cruz
Repressive new city ordinances;
selective enforcment and harassment
impact homeless people
by Becky Johnson
10-21-02
Santa Cruz, Ca. -- Back in January when the National Law Center on
Homelessness and Poverty in their publication "Illegal to be
Homeless" issued a report comparing 57 American cities for their treatment
of their homeless populations, Santa Cruz was chosen as one of the
"Meanest" cities. In California, it shared this dubious prize with
San Francisco and Sacramento as one of the meanest cities in the country in
which to be homeless. In Santa Cruz, things have gone from bad to worse.In
February, as a project of the Redevelopment Agency[RDA], "Hippie Planter" the unofficial name
for the gathering spot frequented by young, mostly homeless and counter-culture
people was privatized by erecting a green, metal fence enclosure and making the
seating area available to only customers of two nearby kiosks. An earlier
attempt to blast classical music at the group gathered there had embarrassed
public officials when it was printed in the New York Times.
HUFF (Homeless United for
Friendship & Freedom) activists turned the tables on police by
making a citizens arrest of the RDA
official overseeing the music and had police issue him a citation for
unreasonable noise. Police then used an
unusual process to dismiss the citation the same day and the RDA tried
(unsuccessfully) to bar complainant and
Street Spirit writer, Robert Norse from their (public) office in retaliation.
Some days later (on January 30th), police and a nearby merchant arrested Robert
Norse for blocking the sidewalk
as he circulated a petition against the RDA's and the Downtown
Association's attempt to drive
away the youth and poor people. Eight months later, after spending
thousands of dollars and repeatedly taking
Norse to court, the city quietly dropped the prosecution. Successful
civil liberties attorney James Fosbinder has agreed to take the matter to federal court for
injunctive relief and damages.
At a City Council meeting in March of 2002, Norse was arrested and jailed for briefly making a Nazi salute gesture from the side of the city council chambers. Charges were then dropped.
During his first month in office in 1998, Mayor Christopher Krohn introduced a successful resolution that "Sleep is a human right." However, sleeping out of doors or in a vehicle remains illegal from 11PM to 8:30AM every night. In September 2002, Krohn stood in solidarity with Valerie Corral on the steps of City Hall after the DEA raided her medical marijuana farm and as her organization dispensed marijuana publically to sick and dying people. Yet homeless people with medical conditions for which they use medical marijuana are arrested regularly. Krohn leaves office at the end of November.
Veterans from the former Camp Paradise were driven out of their legal encampment behind Cavalary Lutheran Church when the county redtagged the property and warned the church that if the camp did not move they would face high fines. They regrouped briefly on a site briefly suggested and then removed from discussion last November by Councilmember Ed Porter. All members of the group got signed statements from the Homeless Services Center which stated that they had been denied shelter and would not be likely to get shelter in the near future. Police insisted on ticketing the campers.
Two, gang-related shootings, a fatal drug overdose of a homeless man, and a stabbing in a short period of time provided the excuse merchants needed to lobby for harsher anti-homeless laws downtown. At a downtown meeting June 28th with city councilmembers Ed Porter and Vice-Mayor Emily Reilly, members of the community listed their top three concerns in the downtown area. Merchants collectively expressed their concerns to be vandalism, shop-lifting, drug dealing, sexual harassment of women, and not enough bathrooms downtown. When Reilly and Porter took a poll , by far, the number one complaint was selective enforcement by the police. The number two concern was enforcement of petty ordinances. While Porter and Reilly, along with Assistant City Manager Martine Bernal, attempted to explain away the results of their own straw poll, the Citizens Police Review Board under pressure from Downtown For All and HUFF took those concerns more seriously.
"We received a petition signed by over 600 members of the community
alleging selective enforcement and police harassment of certain segments of the
community utilizing Pacific Ave.," noted CPRB chair, Mark
Halfmoon leading the board to vote to hold a special
hearing on October 14th.
HUFF reports dozens of incidents of police harassment of homelees people. In one case, a man of color, Ishmael, was jailed for possession of marijuana. During his arrest, Sgt. Butchie Baker discovered his insulin needles (he is diabetic) and took them out of his clothing and held them high above his head showing them for all passersby to see. According to Ishmael, his needles and insulin were confiscated so that by the time he was released from jail, he slipped into a diabetic coma resulting in a trip to the hospital emergency room. Ishmael is homeless.
Another homeless man was painting on an easel on a city sidewalk. When he took
a break from painting to smoke a cigarette, the police issues a $162 citation
for "display of merchandise."All of these incidents occurred under
the pre-existing ordinances, passed under merchant pressure in 1994. The new
ordinances are much more punitive.
Effective August 23rd, 2002, it is illegal to solicit donations within 14
feet of a building, a crosswalk, a
window, or the fence of an outdoor cafe. Also illegal, using a sign
seeking anything of value from a seated position, from a bench, in groups of two or more, or after dark.
Areas where sitting on the sidewalk is also illegal have been expanded. Forbidden "Conduct on public property" prohibit frisbees, hacky-sacks, or any solid or liquid which can be launched. Most readers believe that bubble-blowing has been banned by the ordinance, a charge heatedly denied by Ed Porter despite an exemption written into the ordinance which exempts "Bubble Street Performers."
Food Not Bombs, which has been feeding every Monday in front of
O'Neill's Surf Shop at Cooper and Pacific Ave. received a visit
by the health department as authorities press new laws in Santa Monica and Los
Angeles to ban large outdoor meals for
the poor. Nearby the Santa Cruz Peace Coalition staffed an
information table weekly at the site.
HUFF activists, and the newly formed group, Downtown For All began
to stage a weekly event called
"Merry Monday's" which included video presentations, speeches by City
Council Candidates Steve Argue and Thomas Leavitt,
bubble-blowing, and chalkwriting drew a large police presence.
Sgt. Loran Baker and his officers took numerous photos of the gathering and of specific individuals at the gathering. When the various speakers talked about the new downtown ordinances and their anti-homeless origins, police were overheard making numerous contrary remarks.
Under Baker, SCPD ticketed homeless, disabled man, Richard Parsons, a $162 citation for briefly lying down on the sidewalk. Though the sitban laws have now banned sitting on 95% of the sidewalks in business districts, Parsons was legally seated. Lying down is illegal, althought there is a medical exception. Despite Parsons statements that he laid down due to pain in his back and the visible scars from his back surgery, the police issued the ticket.
I was arrested for misdemeanor vandalism on August 19th, for chalking in the
gutter. I wrote "Are we so mean-spirited we would deny a homeless
person the right to sleep, to beg for food with a sign after dark, to sit, or
to cover up with a blanket?" For this I was handcuffed, booked
into county jail, fingerprinted, mug shots taken, thrown into the drunk tank
for 6 hours before being released on $1000 bail. When I went to court, I found
that the charges had been reduced to an infraction "defacing the
sidewalk" denying me my right to a jury trial and a public defender.
I go to trial in late November.
On October 14th, over 30 people attended the public meeting of the Citizens Police Review Board [CPRB]. Mark Halfmoon, Chair of the Board, apparently took the testimony very seriously and will be resuming discussion of the issue in December. Other activists, however, believe the delay will sidetrack the public pressure against selective enforcement downtown. The CPRB, widely regarded as both ineffectual in construction and practice, has recently been intensifying its outreach efforts to youth and poor people. It may be eliminated completely in massive budget cuts if a utility tax repeal passes, have its membership diluted by a new more conservative City Council, or simply be ignored as an irrelevant sideshow designed to buffer City Council from real protest against Police Department abuses.
However high-profile protest against police surveillance and harassment at
DFA's "Merry Mondays" prompted a strong resolution by the local Green
Party under the leadership of Council Candidate Thomas
Leavitt, a scathing editorial in the local alternative Green
Press, a personal visit by CPRB Chair Mark Halfmoon
to observe the "crime scene", and--probably as a
consequence--a complete disappearance of all police from an area regularly the
grazing ground of half a dozen of Baker's police force on October 21st.
Downtown youth are ID-checked, questioned, harassed, and sometimes
assaulted. Police reportedly violently threw a skateboarder into the
street in front of the local Starbucks, according to Copwatcher
Grampa Jim. On January 13th, the second round of
Downtown Ordinances affecting street
performers and political activists is due to kick in, reducing where
they can sit to the same tiny ghettoes
now allowed homeless people and sparechangers In the meantime, and to
separate "legitimate"
performers and PC activists, City Council has asked the appointed Downtown
Commission to do a cosmetic fix-up. They have declined, recommending more discussion and
delay, and had nothing on their October agenda.
New moves to make the City unfriendly to poor people are afoot. Removing
public benches from where young and street people concongregate has provoked
protest both from activist and city insiders like Robert Poen,
head of the Parks and Recreation Commission, who introduced a
special inquiry to get benches returned to Pacific Avenue (the main Santa Cruz
downtown street). A recent report from Loose-lips Lee reveals
city officials are planning making the few waist-high planter areas that allow
seating area unusable by fencing them off.
For more information about Santa Cruz's Downtown for All,
call Grampa Jim at 831-476-6112 (downtownforall@yahoogroups.com).
They often meet Wednesdays 7 p.m. at Wired Wash Cafe 146 Laurel
Streets. HUFF meets 8:30 AM at Baker's Square Restaurant 1107 Ocean St. 831-423-4833, huff@yahoogroups.com. or visit www.huffsantacruz.org