Tag Archives: Anti-Homeless Hysteria

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Lost in Landers’ Library Labyrinth: Show Us the Records!
by Robert Norse ( rnorse3 [at] hotmail.com )
Saturday Dec 29th, 2012 3:14 PM

After the Library Board magnified the penalties on such “abuses” as having “unattended property” in the library on December 4th, I put in a Public Records Act request to determine what quantity of complaints provoked the change that increases a one month suspension of “library privileges” to six months. After a month, I’ve still received no answer. For those with extra time on their hands, here’s the progress of that journey:

NO SLEEPING BAN BUT INCREASED PENALTIES GENERALLY
While a strong voice from the community defeated one small part of the heightened penalties in the County’s public library system (the “Sleeping Ban” provision), everything else requested by Teresa Landers, Head Librarian, passed. And the Sleeping Ban is likely to be brought up again at a subsequent meeting now that its chief opponent Katherine Beiers is off the City Council (which appoints two members to the Library Board). David Terrazas, the other Council appointee, seems gung-ho to socially cleanse the library of the blight of visible homeless people there (or insist they store their property in non-existent lockers, have a good night’s sleep at a non-existent safe sleeping spot, and shower at hard-to-find shower services before entering the privileged portals).

At the bottom of every e-mail Teresa Landers’ sends is a boilerplate quote: “The libraries’ most powerful asset is the conversation they provide–between books and readers, between children and parents, between individuals and the collective world…Turns out that libraries have nothing at all to do with silence.” Bella Bathurst, “The Secret Life of Libraries,” The Guardian (U.K.), May 1, 2011.

But did this same Landers spearhead the campaign to increase penalties and tighten rules around service dogs, bad-smelling people, sleeping, and unattended backpacks in the library? We don’t know since she’s refused to reveal the history of her e-mails on the subject (as required by the Public Records Act).

The latest set of procedures, which she twice argued for at the November and December library board meetings expands broad disciplinary/exclusion powers of library staff. Apparently the focus is to exclude “troublesome” homeless people “using” the library with their backpacks, odors, and sleep-deprived (city-created) disability.

But what is the real magnitude of the problem. I could get no answers from her at the Library Board meeting in early December (“I don’t have my records with me”). When I tried to get access to records subsequently, well–read on…

Bruce Halloway, a member of the public in the audience at the December meeting, several times addressed the Board. On one occasion he remarked that Landers had refused to provide him with access to the previous meeting’s minutes, instead brushing him off and telling him to write out a Public Records Act request and wait 10 days.

I expressed concern that Landers had not provided an Agenda packet to the audience, so we could tell what the Board was talking about. Nor had the Agenda provide any clarity about which items were open for public comment and which were not—something apparently the Chair decided arbitrarily. See “Update: Small Victory, Larger Defeat” at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/11/30/18726836.php?show_comments=1#18727113

SEEKING WISDOM IN OLD RECORDS
To delve deeper into the reasons for the new anti-homeless policy, I sent the following Public Records Act Request on December 4th:

To whom It May Concern:

Please provide access to all  copies of complaints against patrons at all branches of the Public Library system from Jan 1, 2012 through the present as well as any records, e-mails, statements, written, audio, or visual regarding library policies impacting library rules that might result in a warning or suspension of library access.   This would include communications to and from the public, public officials, police, security agencies, and  any other group or person around this issue.

Please also provide access to copies of all agendas and minutes of the Board’s meetings through 2012.

I prefer e-mail access to these records.  In the event this is not possible, I would like to see the records prior to deciding which ones I need to copy.

Please advise  me whether a hard copy of the minutes of the prior meeting and agenda packet was available at each of these  meetings.

Further, please  advise me as to whether action items were listed as such on the agendas.

Finally, please advise me as to whether a public comment was provided for each agenda item (as it was not at the December 3rd meeting, except for the one “staff report” item on the rule changes).

I would suggest you publicly announce all these conditions will be corrected at the next meeting or face a Brown Act complaint.

If you have any questions regarding  this request, feel free to call me.

Thanks in advance for your assistance.
Robert Norse (831-423-4833)

Not having heard from her, on December 12th, I sent this follow-up:

Please acknowledge receipt of the Public Records Act request and advise me of its status. Thanks, R. Norse

RESPONDING TO A NON-RESPONSE
Still not having heard from her, four days beyond the legal deadline she is required to respond by, on December 18th, I sent the following:

Teresa:

You have not responded to my query of December 4th.  That feels rude and unhelpful.  It also throws into question your suggestion to a member of the public prior to the last Library Board meeting that making a Public Records Act request in writing is the proper public mode to secure records you are unwilling to provide informally.  You may recall you refused to provide a copy of the minutes from a previous meeting because of “staff problems” and required him to make a written Public Records Act request.

More important, however, you have also not responded to the Public Records Act request in that e-mail (repeated below for your convenience).  This contravenes state law, requiring a response within 10 days or some explanation of the delay.  For your convenience I have emphasized in bold the specifics requested in the Public Records Act communication of December 4th.

You have also not advised me of the status of the request as requested in the e-mail below of December 12th.  Please do so ASAP.

You also declined to make available the agenda packet of the Board at the last Library Board meeting, nor to assure us that this will be done for all future meetings as a matter of public right under the Brown Act.   Please reassure us on this straightaway.

Moreover the make-up of the agenda seemed to make it unclear which items were actually agenda-ized (and so required the Board to hear public comment) and which weren’t.  Again, I request you clarify that for future meetings this be made obvious to the public, so that the chair is not put in the position of differentially allowing comment on some items, and not on others.

If you decline to provide an answer to the other simple questions put forth in the December 4th e-mail, you require me to  seek further public records which I feel unnecessarily burdens you and your staff, so please avoid this by being direct and concise.

If you are not the appropriate person to address these concerns, please so advise me.  I am also cc-ing the chair of the meeting.  I believe that between the two of you, you share responsibility here.

Thanks, Robert Norse

I included a copy of the original Public Records Act request of December 4th with the first three paragraphs reprinted in bold for emphasis.

TERESA RESPONDS
To this, Teresa responded (on December 18th). She wrote “I provided the information requested that I have available to the City Clerk’s office which processes Public Records Act requests for the Library. That office will be responding to your request if they have not already done so.”

Note she did not answer any of the questions directly whatsoever, information she surely had about providing agendas to the public, etc.

I replied on the same day: Thanks, Teresa. Please send me a copy of your forwarding request–which would include the date forwarded. It’s not clear to me why you didn’t respond directly to me, since you clearly have the information and I’m the one who wants it. Could you clarify?

She declined to send me a copy of her forwarded e-mail to the City Clerk’s office but did right (again on the same day): “The City Clerk’s office has a way to track requests so they handle them for us. Also, some of the information you requested is not in the Library’s possession so the City Clerk;s office handles gathering the information.”

This, of course, ignored any information she might have and sloughed off any personal responsibility which she likely has for creating agendas, making them available, providing her own e-mails on the subject to the Board, etc.

ANGER FROM THE STREETS & THE SLAPDOWN THAT FOLLOWED
Ricardo Lopez, a street musician who can often be found in front of downtown New Leaf on Pacific Avenue, wrote Landers an angry letter about the situation which included some harsh criticism such as

“Come on T.L.. whatta ya thinking? …You’re above the law, because the law is for the people who have so much less wealth than you, right?…you’re… apparently nursing some kind of psychological misanthropy … Quit. Let someone else make the city run right….Just buckle down at Macdonald’s or Taco Bell, or where ever your new job is, and work hard to make Santa Cruz a better place in your own little way, which is much better than your doing now. Right? You can’t or won’t or don’t want to do your job. So it will be easier if you’ll just get out of the way, and let a decent, moral, psychologically stable, and more importantly competent person administer…”

Within a week, Lopez notes, he was accosted in the library by a burly First Alarm security guard under the new “unattended property” (he’d left his backpack at another table while using the library computer, he says). Lopez reports that though he was able to retrieve his backpack, which the guard threatened to “throw outside”, he is now apprehensive about returning to the library.

PERSISTING IN THE PUBLIC RECORDS ACT REQUEST BUT STILL NO CIGAR…
In response to Landers e-mail, I replied: Thanks again, Teresa. I  don’t see a copy of the e-mail forwarded to the City Clerk. Could you please  forward  that to me, please, as requested since this Public Records Act is now overdue. Also  while I  appreciate your forwarding requests about information you do not have to the City Clerk, it would save time (and frustration) for you to forward information you do have to members of the public directly.  Will you be doing this or will you continue to reroute requests through the City Clerk? Thanks, R

The next day city administrator/clerk Bren Lehr cc-ed me that he was directing Nydia Patino to provide some long-awaited answers. I thanked him.

On the same day one of Lehr’s workers sent me an e-mail advising me that Board packets from 1997-2005 were available for review and that more recent ones were on-line at http://www.santacruzpl.org/aboutscpl/govern/ljpb/. She also included the Manual for “Problem Situations” dated 2007 (without the latest harsher measures passed by the Board three weeks before) and some e-mails between Landers and different groups. However there was no specific record of the supposed complaints that prompted the tightened policies.

There were some interesting exchange between Councilmember and Library Board member Terrazas & Landers suggesting that a “Triple Fine Zone” be established at the library, similar to the one to rein in drunken revelers (and collect a bit of cash for the City bureaucrats) on Halloween, the 4th of July, and New Year’s. I’ve yet to parse those but hope to do so soon with an additional report.

STILL LOOKING FOR THE RECORDS–AND ANOTHER DELAY UNTIL AFTER THE HOLIDAYS
So I replied the next day:

Pursuant to California Gov’t Code 6253(a) I ask you to collect the Library’s completed “incident reports” for year 2012 for all branches, so that I may arrange to inspect them at the Santa Cruz Main Library, and choose to have some or all of them copied for me.

Note that although these incidents reports are declared to be confidential and to not be public records, your agency cannot declare records to be exempt from the California Public Records Act (CPRA) by fiat. They are not investigatory records of a security agency. They are not personnel records. I do not believe they are exempted by any California state law from being made available for my inspection. The privacy of third party individuals may be protected by redacting those portions of these records prior to my inspection.

If these records are available electronically, such as in PDF or DOC formats, then I ask that they be made available to me electronically, preferably by email.

Thank you for ensuring the operations of the Santa Cruz library are open and transparent to the public by fulfilling this request without obstruction or unnecessary delay.

And a day later, Landers replied: “The incident reports you have requested are not maintained by the Library. Once we have reviewed them they are filed with the risk management division of the City. That office is closed until January 7, as is the City Clerk’s office.  The City Clerk’s office will arrange for you to review those documents after January 7. They are not available in electronic form.”

That Landers made no mention or itemization of complaints received over the last year in pressing for a new policy or in formulating one in internal memos, seems to me unlikely. It was also her responsibility to have responded to this request by December 14th—which included forwarding it to the Risk Manager. The point being that unless one continues to apply persistent pressure, answers don’t come.

Those who wish to weigh in on this issue can find e-mails for the Library Board (minus Beiers) at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/11/30/18726836.php .

Comments  (Hide Comments)

by John E. Colby

Saturday Dec 29th, 2012 4:46 PM

It’s a sad day when even the libraries in our city lack openness and transparency. It’s a library FGS. If a library acts like a secret government agency it shows the entire city government has devolved into being completely anti-democratic.

Santa Cruz is a plutocracy, where most of the citizenry are sitting on the outside. Government functionaries feel no responsibility to the citizens. They believe their agencies exist to serve themselves, not the citizenry. They don’t see themselves as being employed by and responsible to the public but acting for themselves at their own whims.

We must take back our government (because they have stolen it away from us).

by Sylvia

Sunday Dec 30th, 2012 8:39 AM

I too am disturbed by seeing blue uniforms patrolling within and without the downtown library, and I appreciate the persistence in trying to get information and ensure transparency. I think Occupy Santa Cruz could make this a project, be available for comfort and a resource to those who don’t fit into the library patron image, have an ongoing presence during all open hours. There’s an opportunity to draw attention to a local problem – no place to shelter or sleep – in a positive way that might shame electeds into acting and reinvigorate Occupy.

by Bruce Holloway

Monday Dec 31st, 2012 8:42 AM

Robert, thanks for the chance to discuss some of this on your show yesterday, approximately between 4:00:00 and 4:30:00 here:

http://radiolibre.org/brb/brb121230.mp3

We never quite got around to the apparent violation of Brown Act subdivision 54957.5(c) in the form of a map which was not provided to the public at that meeting.

I’m going to miss Katherine Beiers. She has more brains and guts than almost anyone twice her size. Maybe she’ll apply to be the next citizen member of the library board.

I’m thinkin someone named Bren is a gal.

I wrote “Bruce Halloway, a member of the public in the audience at the December meeting, several times addressed the Board. On one occasion he remarked that Landers had refused to provide him with access to the previous meeting’s minutes, instead brushing him off and telling him to write out a Public Records Act request and wait 10 days.”

But I learned from Bruce in a later conversation (mentioned above by Bruce) on my radio show that he had actually been searching for earlier minutes–the minutes to recent meetings are on line. Apologies to Teresa and Bruce for this misunderstanding.

Also I was informed last week that a copy of all the complaints made by and to library staff last year in all branches of the library is now available for viewing at the City Council offices at City Hall at 809 Center St. Just tell them you’re looking for the Library Complaints Public Records Act information which Robert Norse requested.

As I understand it, these complaints will only be viewable for another few weeks before they’re returned to the storage archives and will then require another 10 days or more to secure. If anyone takes the time to go through them, please note your thoughts. I’ve only checked over a fraction of them so far.

Santa Cruz’s Hostility-pitality Squads Seem to Be Part of a Nation-wide Anti-Homeless Effort

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28 Dec 2012

NOTES FROM NORSE:  Berkeley is plagued with its “Ambassador” program–critiqued below by long time activist and singer Carol Denney.  Santa Cruz has its “Hosts”, “Hospitality”, or “Hostility-pitaility” Program.  Described as “the eyes and ears of the police”, the hosts, most particularly one named Denise Miller, has been accused repeatedly of aggressively hostile behavior towards homeless people, street performers, and other low-income folks trying to socialize on Pacific Avenue here.
Our own Downtown Association [DTA] seems to be similarly implicated in funding this para-police program–sort of a friendly fascism–which attempts to “gently” enforce “quality of life” amendments to the Constitution created by the DTA, the Santa Cruz Neighbors, Take Back Santa Cruz, and other nasty anti-homeless groups.
Recently D. Miller has been accused of repeated harassment of street performer and jewelry (and local Cabrillo student) Brianna Brewer.  Brewer recently won a case in court that overturned Miller & SCPD Sergeant Bush’s unlawful criminalization of emotional support animals on Pacific with police retaliating immeidately against Brewer with a higher level of harassment, ticketing, and charging (misdemeanor “disturbing the peace” for denouncing Miller’s continued harassment).
We need the kind of analysis locally that Denney has done for Berkeley.  We also need a Hostwatch, someone to follow and document the behavior of these yellow-and-black costumed folks and particularly zealous warriors like Miller seems to be.  Please contact HUFF at 831-423-4833 if you’d like to involve yourself in this project.

Ambassadors for Whom? Occupy Your Merchant Association, 12-11-12 (News Analysis)

By Carol Denney
December 18, 2012
A group of local activists (and occasional bystanders) joined in song to sing anti-Downtown Berkeley Association Christmas carols in the BART Plaza in an effort to bring awareness to the privatization of public space on Sunday, December 16th, 2012.

Ted Friedman
A group of local activists (and occasional bystanders) joined in song to sing anti-Downtown Berkeley Association Christmas carols in the BART Plaza in an effort to bring awareness to the privatization of public space on Sunday, December 16th, 2012.

Most people think they’re ridiculous, but harmless. They walk around downtown Berkeley in bright lime green shirts identifying themselves as “ambassadors”, a new version of an older program which hit the wall years ago as a kind of homeless patrol doling out “services” to some and calling the police on others. The merchant association claims the “ambassadors” work on making the downtown more welcoming.

Their green shirts in Berkeley have the logo of the Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA), which, along with the Business Improvement District (BID), contracts with Kentucky-based Block by Block to execute the program. Block by Block’s slogan is “Safety, cleaning, hospitality and outreach solutions for downtown improvement districts.” Block by Block currently runs 46 programs in cities from Akron, Ohio, to Yakima, Washington.

What do the “ambassadors” do? They sweep and pick up trash. They clean up graffiti, the definition of which apparently includes anything not officially written by the city or the Downtown Berkeley Association itself, which has the keys to a glass-covered information kiosk by the BART Station for their members’ use alone. If you put up a poster about your missing dog, they’ll tear it down within seconds claiming it’s illegal. They steam wash sidewalks so repeatedly that anyone carrying everything they own is likely to have their few belongings soaked and ruined. But that’s not all they do.

Block by Block “ambassadors” are not unionized. They’re paid considerably less than city maintenance crews and have fewer if any benefits, so one could argue that they save the city money, albeit at the expense of city workers. But their assignment is wider than picking up the occasional fast food wrapper:



“The largest drivers of negative perceptions are frequent low level quality of life crimes. Our ambassadors are a significant part of a proactive safety and security strategy to challenge unwanted activities.”[1]

Years ago, when Berkeley’s Downtown Berkeley Association changed its name from the Downtown Business Association, it lamented that most merchants were unwilling to call the police and sign formal complaints against “problematic street behavior,” behavior which was not specifically criminal but which they felt might discourage shoppers. They even created signs for merchants with a circle with a line through it over an out-stretched hand in an effort to encourage both merchants and customers to call the police on a special phone number if they saw examples of “problematic street behavior” assumed to depress business.

The outrage over the public funding of this effort to target the homeless, who are obligated to exist in public and more often the victims of than the perpetrators of crime, eventually gave birth to Berkeley’s Business Improvement District (BID), a private entity which levies an assessment from the property owners within its geographical confines as well as an assessment from the city itself (and thus the public) from public spaces such as plazas. In this way, what was once a public common space becomes a revenue source for the privately run and utterly undemocratic entity, the BID, which then patrols public space and regulates public behavior.

Business improvement districts began in the 1960’s and are now a worldwide phenomenon. Enabling legislation at the state level sets the stage for the local business improvement districts, according to Paul Boden of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, one of the few groups which has made a specific study of BIDs. Only 51% of the property owners within the district’s confines are required to create a BID, and in some places the threshold is as low as 31%.
Block by Block’s particular genius was in crafting a program model that could then be plugged into any town’s BID.

“They have a plan, and the plan is to gentrify downtown and make it like a shopping mall,” states Boden. “They’re self-perpetuating in that they found a funding stream that is pretty fucking limitless.”

Berkeley’s DBA tried twenty years ago to criminalize panhandling with a law that was first overturned by an outraged public’s referendum, then put on the ballot by a council majority, then passed in the next election by a bare majority of voters, and finally tossed out by the courts as unconstitutional. They probably counted on that same bare majority of voters to pass an anti-sitting law, underestimating both Berkeley voters’ common sense and a small but dedicated group of civil rights defenders.

The “ambassador” program has had previous incarnations. At one time it was a locally based program that, according to at least one former DBA board member, did occasionally connect homeless people with appropriate services. The decision to outsource it to Block by Block was not, according to the former member, a DBA board decision. The current DBA board tends to be populated more by large property owners than local business owners, and decisions once the province of the board tend today to be made by a smaller, less representative group, according to former staff.

The current “ambassadors” in the Block by Block model treat the poor on public streets as a nuisance. One “ambassador” was recently seen sweeping repeatedly around the feet of a woman wrapped in a blanket on a bench who had all her belongings with her. He swept immediately to her right, then right under her under the bench itself, then immediately to her left, then under her under the bench again, continuously sweeping inches from her body. It’s safe to suggest that no well-dressed bench sitter would be similarly treated.

Some of the Block by Block staff was formerly on the street themselves, which the DBA suggests helps establish rapport with poor and homeless people. But the mission, according to former DBA staff, has moved away from connecting people in need with services and toward “moving homeless people out of town,” a mission at considerable odds with developing rapport. Boden says this is not unusual. The mission of a BID, he says, is to create the same atmosphere as a shopping mall.

“Take that environment and take that kind of control and plop it down in your downtown. That’s what a BID is for,” says Boden. There are seven or eight BIDs in San Francisco. There are 37 in Manhattan.

If you’re a downtown merchant obligated geographically to pay a fee to the Business Improvement District and you oppose the discriminatory policies aimed at the poor, you can object aloud, of course. You have to be brave enough to weather the potential backlash from the merchant association and participating businesses, some of which might be enthusiastic about relocating the homeless. Business is tough, after all, and the homeless are easier to target than something as nebulous as the economy. The popular narrative that groups of transient youth, panhandlers, and homeless people ruin business is not supported by fact, nationally or locally, but it is the primary narrative you’ll hear from both the DBA and, with the exception of Kriss Worthington, Max Anderson, and Jesse Arreguin, the Berkeley City Council.

“Ambassadors” are not shy about relocating unwanted groups. It’s their job to engage with people whose “unwanted activities” are not necessarily prohibited by law, but are presumed to depress the vitality of a commercial district, according to Block by Block’s guidelines. It may well be difficult to spend several hundred dollars on an evening of dinner and theater without feeling guilty when you have to pass people living as best they can on the street. But the most guilt-ridden downtown shopper should be revolted by the idea that public streets are being cleared for their personal comfort. Clearing the streets of people in need deprives them of their right to exist in public space, and also deprives the larger community, both wealthy shoppers and the rest of us, of the opportunity to see and respond to human need, to realize its scope and take action.

The DBA describes transient youth, panhandlers, and homeless people alike as addicted to drugs and threats to public safety, as the failed anti-sitting law (Measure S) campaign literature made clear. The Measure S language criminalized all sitting by everyone between certain hours, even a kid on a curb with an ice cream cone. Questions about the absurdity of this were met with the assurance that the law would not be used against “those” people, raising additional issues of discrimination. But the point remains that demonizing poor and homeless people helps smooth the way for discriminatory laws, discriminatory practices, and a population deaf to honest human need.

Dr. Davida Coady, director of Options Recovery in Berkeley, defended Measure S’s extreme language without embarrassment on KQED’s Forum show before the fall election, rejecting the idea that anyone sitting on Berkeley’s streets might be just resting for a minute and enjoying the weather.

The city council, even if motivated to do so, would have little control over a BID, which is a private and privately funded entity. But Berkeley’s ambassador program does get some public funding. The BID goes before the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission in January hoping for $195,000 from the general fund. If Block by Block’s strategic plan is working, there will be a rash of complimentary articles published just before the funding meetings which make the “ambassadors” look like compassionate saints and the Block by Block program seem essential to commercial districts’ success. Most newspapers, strapped for local copy, will print the press releases without question.

A May 2011 City of Berkeley report on the “Public Commons for Everyone Initiative” describes the “ambassadors” as having made “a marginal change, if any, in the overall quality of life in the Telegraph and Downtown areas.” This may mean a further reduction in funding for the controversial program, or it could mean an even more determined effort to criminalize some other aspect of homelessness now that Berkeley voters rejected the anti-sitting law.

Those who oppose local efforts to make public spaces the sole territory of well-heeled shoppers need to recognize that as revolting and undemocratic as the local politics of greed-based legislation can be, the local campaigns against the poor are just examples of a national program systematizing those efforts coast to coast. Block by Block may tailor Akron’s program slightly differently than Yakima’s, but the same model is being used nationwide to make sure property owners, often the largest donors to local political campaigns, govern downtown priorities. Berkeley’s Measure S, the most expensive campaign in Berkeley’s history, was funded almost entirely by large property holding companies which play an influential role on the DBA board and whose representatives were, according to a former staff member, inspired by San Francisco’s voters’ passage of Measure L, the San Francisco anti-sitting law.

Measure S may have been defeated in Berkeley, but the political pressures that created it are alive and well. Should business interests play the largest role in creating legislation? What can a community do after watching over $120,000 in Berkeley wasted trying to convince people that simply sitting down should be a crime, noting that around 40% of Berkeley’s voters supported doing just that?

Awakening the public and the media to Block by Block’s and BIDs’ tactics are part of what a concerned community needs to do to combat the juggernaut of systematic efforts to attack the human rights of the poor. The other component is leadership that simply refuses to scapegoat the poor, the real victims in both good times and bad. There is a very tangible human cost to allowing greed to play the largest role in our community and our legislative priorities.

Where Fresno leads, will Santa Cruz follow?

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Where Fresno leads, will Santa Cruz follow?
27 Dec 2012

Santa Cruz authorities now claim that they are “storing” seized homeless property.  However, many accounts from homeless people whose property has been seized in the “surge” of anti-homeless “camping” (i.e. survival sleeping) tickets over the last year.  Activists peacefully protesting these activities or trying to find alternatives have themselves been the subject of criminal prosecutions under PC 647e (“lodging”).  Others, like myself, face actual felony charges for reporting on or supporting the 3-day occupation of a vacant Wells Fargo bank building last year.  Local Santa Cruz attorneys and activists need to be aware of this successful Fresno lawsuit–and the earlier one in 2007.  Hard to believe that Fresno is more liberal than Santa Cruz.

From: Mike Rhodes
Subject: [FresnoHomelessAdvocates] Lawsuit by Fresno homeless survives challenge

John Ellis wrote an article about the homeless and the lawsuits that have been filed against the City of Fresno.  The article is on the front page and above the fold.  See below.  If you want to read comments to the article, go to: http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/12/26/3114092/fresno-homeless-suit-survives.html
If anyone has been wondering why I have not been around lately, it is because I’m spending most of my time these days working on this case.

Mike Rhodes
Editor
Community Alliance Newspaper
PO Box 5077
Fresno Ca 93755
(559) 978-4502 (cell)
(559) 226-3962 (fax)
editor@fresnoalliance.com
www.fresnoalliance.com

Lawsuit by Fresno homeless survives challenge

By John Ellis – The Fresno Bee

Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2012 | 11:19 PM

A lawsuit filed by several homeless Fresno residents claiming the city violated terms of a 2008 federal-court settlement over cleanup sweeps has withstood a significant legal challenge.
In a 53-page ruling issued Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence J. O’Neill struck down some of the lawsuit. He also dismissed other parts but gave the plaintiffs the right to refile those claims.
The heart of the lawsuit, however, survives.
The city had asked O’Neill to throw out the entire lawsuit.
Instead, the judge allowed some arguments to continue — including whether the city put homeless in danger when it destroyed some shelters just as the winter of 2011-12 was beginning.
“I think it was a very thoughtful decision,” said Paul Alexander, the Palo Alto-based attorney who is leading the effort on behalf of the homeless. “We view all of the claims that have been upheld as very important. Judge O’Neill’s decision has also added clarity to the case, which is also important and which we appreciate.”
Francine Kanne, Fresno’s interim city attorney, said Wednesday that she hasn’t had a chance to analyze the ruling. But she noted that the court did “pare down a portion of the complaint and simplified some of the claims.”
She said the city should have a better idea where it stands after seeing if the plaintiffs address issues O’Neill threw out, but where he allowed amended claims to be filed.
O’Neill didn’t rule on the merits of the claims — only which claims can proceed.
The legal arguments moving forward could be similar to those of a 2006 lawsuit filed against the city by several homeless residents. In that lawsuit, the two sides reached a $2.3 million settlement over allegations that the city’s cleanup sweeps violated homeless residents’ Fourth Amendment rights, which protect against unreasonable searches and seizures, and their 14th Amendment rights to due process.
That initial suit arose after the city immediately destroyed possessions of homeless who weren’t present during the sweeps.
In this latest ruling — in which the city sought a dismissal — O’Neill acknowledges the ties to the earlier suit, saying this new lawsuit “cannot be understood in a vacuum, as the city of Fresno and its homeless population have a history of conflict and litigation.”
As part of that earlier settlement, the city agreed that for five years, it would adhere to an order that laid out in detail how and when the city could clean up homeless encampments. Part of the order said the city could not destroy “materials of apparent value which appear to be the property of any individual.”
The latest lawsuit alleges that homeless residents suffered financial, physical and emotional damage from the destruction of their tents and personal items, and that the city didn’t properly store property of the homeless.
It also says city officials didn’t properly notify the homeless for some cleanups.
In its motion for summary judgment, the city sought to kill the lawsuit, or to at least chip away at its foundation. Besides the city, Mayor Ashley Swearengin, City Manager Mark Scott, police Chief Jerry Dyer and others are named.
But Alexander said the important parts are still in play. Those include not only claims that the city seized and unlawfully destroyed homeless residents’ property, but also a due process claim that the city’s actions threatened “the safety and ability to survive of the homeless people whose shelters were destroyed just as the winter of 2011-12 began.”
In permitting that due process claim to stand, O’Neill’s ruling cites “danger creation” liability.
The ruling cites a case in which a state trooper determined that the driver of an automobile was intoxicated. The trooper arrested the driver and impounded the car. A woman passenger was left stranded at the scene late at night in a known high-crime area. She accepted a ride from a passing car and was raped.
Since that case, the ruling notes, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has held state officials liable “in a variety of circumstances for their roles in creating or exposing individuals to danger they otherwise would not have faced.”
The case O’Neill ruled on is one of 33 similar cases filed by 38 homeless people in Fresno’s federal court. The cases have been consolidated as they make their way through the court system.
What is still unknown is whether any of the homeless plaintiffs have any evidence to back up their legal claims. Fresno sought to have the case dismissed on legal grounds before any evidence has been presented.

Venice Jury’s Message: “Clean Up Your Act or the Homeless Community Will Do It For You” Resist the Bigotry and the Bigots Scatter !

Posted on by

Sun, 23 Dec 2012

PEOPLE vs BUSCH: Home-Made Porta-Potty On Third Ave Not A Crime

Posted: December 20, 2012

———————
Twelve jurors, on Wednesday, Dec 19, after about 1 hour of deliberation –found David Busch’s home-made Porta-Potty for the homeless, which was torn down and destroyed by the LAPD last April –had been a lawful benefit to the Venice community.
PORTA-POTTY-2

Early this year, after pushing hundreds of homeless people and youth travelers off of Venice Beach’s Boardwalk from midnight until 5 am in the morning –and with no toilets available until nearly 8 am, Busch had been arrested by LAPD and charged with “creating and maintaining a public nuisance” (P.C. 372); for erecting a homemade Porta-Potty on Third Ave, near Rose; where up to 120 people, with no toilets, had begun attempting to find a safe shelter.


Starting with a tent for privacy, and after the City’s, own, unlawful, beach closure –Busch began collecting donations of soap, cleaning supplies and toiletries –and himself emptying and re-cleaning daily a bucket and a toilet seat lid for the Porta-Potty. The setup was in line with procedures outlined in Red Cross emergency manuals.


Maintaining the Porta-Potty necessitated hauling tightly sealed 5 gallons buckets –nearly four large city blocks to the nearest public toilets –and often two or three times a day.


In proving his innocence, Mr. Busch had to demonstrate that the utility of his conduct outweighed any offense to the larger community.


Additionally, Busch also was charged with violating LAMC 56.11: “Leaving property on a public sidewalk or street:”


For having, also, thereafter on Third Ave., a shopping-cart sized wheeled box –which he called his “Love Box.”
After an six additional hours of deliberation, and after three requests to the Judge, for the court to clarify the law and testimony –regarding the vague charge, which were all denied, the jury, in response, returned it’s verdict:


“Guilty.”
For violating LAMC 56.11.


LAMC 56.11 has been for several years constrained by a Federal Injunction –to prevent seizure of homeless people’s property that is merely left on the sidewalk, and not abandoned. In this case, the Judge did not allow a proposed jury instruction, that would have stated the charge must be balanced by all people’s 4th Amendment Right to Property.


During sentencing, for his un-abandoned Love Box on the sidewalk, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office demanded that Busch be entirely banished from Venice –for three years.


The Judge, instead, sentenced Busch to no probation, one day in jail, and time served.


Stated Busch at the end of the trial. “Today, after three days, and hours and hours of absurd testimony, presented by LAPD officers and City Hazardous Waste employees: absurd testimony from Officers that they never saw urination or defecation in Venice’s streets, or gutters, or alley’s; testimony that feces –contained in a bucket and later dumped down the toilet, was a greater threat to the watershed than the more than 60 lbs of feces and urine deposited in the streets, sidewalks and alleys –And all of which, supposedly, was meant to pick apart my own effort to keep the area clean –Venice’s Police Officers were given new, common-sense orders by their highest authority, the people:


12 jurors have instructed LAPD to open up their eyes –and recognize that even a homemade porta-potty by a homeless person is better than urination and defecation everywhere in Venice’s streets.

David Busch was represented by Defense Attorney John Raphling; who provided his services Pro-Bono, and is a member of the National Lawyers’ Guild.

December 21, 2012
City Responds to Busch Verdict

Sandy Cooney, communications director for Los Angeles City Attorney’s office, gave the following statement regarding the verdict in the People vs. David Busch trial:
“That Mr. Busch was not found guilty of the public nuisance charge does not give him the right to violate the law. The result on this count is no guarantee of a similar outcome should there be a second offense, which we certainly hope will not occur.”


NOTE FROM NORSE:  And in the meantime, the message from the housed bureaucrats in Santa Cruz and Venice seems to be “hold your water and learn bowel control”.



Santa Cruz has no 24-hour bathrooms this side of hiway 1.  And only one on the distant side–in the Homeless (Lack of) Services Center.  The Clean Team activist Danilo T.J. Magallanes has called for public bathrooms, as it engaged in its dramatic and community-supported clean-up’s earlier this month.  They brought needles to City Council but also had available lots of fecal and waste material collected because of inadequate city clean-up and facilities.



12 years ago the City’s own Homeless Issues Task Force called for 24-hour bathrooms.  The city has done nothing–not even replaced the five portapotties that were in place for a few years around 2000 in response to activist demands.


Sign our petition – “Access To Toilets Is a Human Right” –  make toilets available to homeless people – http://www.change.org/petitions/access-to-toilets-is-a-human-right

Venice’s Own ‘Skid Rose’ Homeless Camp at 3rd Slowly Being Flushed by City Officials

By Simone Wilson Thu., May 3 2012 at 1:30 PM
noname-3.jpeg
Triangle Update
The LAPD busted well-known Venice homeless guy David Busch for setting up a toilet in his tent.

Ever since the LAPD started enforcing a strict curfew along the Venice boardwalk, the homeless hangout on 3rd street (located a few blocks inland) has blossomed into a bona fied bum party. The stretch of 3rd where they sleep, between Sunset and Rose, is mostly populated by businesses and warehouses. But as the camp has grown, the sleeping bags and shopping carts have begun creeping out onto residential sidewalks…
… and freaking out the gentry who live in the expensive, highly coveted homes along iconic Rose Avenue.
Thus earning this transplant boardwalk the name “Skid Rose.”
And for the moment, there’s nothing anybody can do about it, announced L.A. City Councilman Bill Rosendahl on his blog yesterday (after the LA Weekly repeatedly asked for an interview on the subject for about a week).
“Due to two court cases … the City’s ability to enforce its laws has been significantly restricted,” writes Rosendahl. The gist: Until 1,250 housing units are built for homeless folks in L.A., they’re allowed to sleep on the sidewalk. The L.A. Housing Department informs Rosendahl that the city is still “several hundred” units short.
But cops and politicians are apparently circumventing those legal ramifications by nabbing the homeless at 3rd and Rose for other crimes.
Namely, resting or storing their possessions on the sidewalk between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9 p.m., which is still illegal, says LAPD Lieutenant Paola Kreeft. Other drifters have been busted for drugs, violence, breaking into cars, etc.
Rosendahl begs residents to have a little compassion:

“The question should not be: should we allow people to sleep on the streets? The question must be: how do we provide people housing, services, and shelter so no one has cause to sleep on the street?”

But a big problem with the Venice “homeless” population is that many are free spirits by choice, and would never choose a shelter over the sea breeze. Homeless man and activist David Busch, pictured above with his in-tent toilet, told us recently that he felt the city was unfairly “lumping street vendors, hippies and beach travelers” into the same category as Venice’s long-standing homeless population. Perhaps, he speculated, so that cops can uniformly kick them all out — and the neighborhood can complete its transition to gentrified tourist trap.
Mark Ryavec, the fierce anti-homeless advocate who runs the Venice Stakeholders Association (and who recently posted his adversaries’ home addresses online, causing a community flamewar), says that a brigade of city officials descended upon the encampment last Friday.
The team included LAPD cops on horses, bio-hazard guys from the Department of Public Works and representatives from L.A. City Hall — including Public Works commissioner Andrea Alarcon, royal offspring of City Councilman Richard Alarcon. Also present was the mayor’s Westside deputy, Joseph Hari.
And Venice resident Reta Moser has the photos to prove it:

noname.jpeg
Triangle Update
“Howard Wong of Bureau of Sanitation (center) and his helper test and remove buckets as Andrea Alarcon films and watches.”
noname-2.jpeg
Triangle Update
“Officer Gil discusses situation with [homeless advocate] Peggy Lee Kennedy as officer and Joseph Hari look on.”

Ryavec of the Stakeholder’s Association says the mayor’s apparent new interest in clearing Skid Rose may have to do with a little run-in they had recently at a swanky restaurant on Melrose. A few highlights from the ensuing conversation, via Ryavec’s blog:

“When I told him that I wanted to talk with him about the problems we are having with transient encampments in Venice, he interrupted me and said the real problem was that the council district ‘has no leadership.’ Then he made another derogatory remark about Bill Rosendahl.”

“Then he said, ‘But if you want me involved, I will get involved. You may not like my solution, but you will get a solution. Did you hear me today [referring to his successes with transportation improvements]? I get things done.'”

“I’ll leave you with the Mayor’s parting comments at Mozza: ‘You know, when I leave office, I’m going to move to either Venice or the Pacific Palisades, so I have a personal interest in helping you with this.'”

Ryavec tells the Weekly that since last Friday, when the encampment at 3rd was scrubbed of its dirt and its drifters, “a few of them have come back.” However, he says city officials have promised to “come back this Friday and the week after that, until [homeless people] get the message that this is not a campground.”
Rosendahl confirms: “Further clean-ups will happen, and on a regular basis.”
Meanwhile, the real Skid Row, where the mayor certainly never intends to live out his golden years, is clogging up with more transients and trash bags than ever before, the LAPD tells Blogdowntown. Looks like one grimy stretch of downtown L.A. might be the official dumping ground for riff-raff scraped off the city’s finer sidewalks.

about that Venice Beach encampment, or “Skid Row West”…

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Katherine
City workers cleaning around the Venice encampments—where are these guys in Skid Row—the ORIGINAL Skid Row that is?

 

Venice Beach has been getting a lot of cross-press with Skid Row recently with a homeless encampment that has sprung up along 3rd and Rose Streets. I have been following this story in the press, click here for some info in this. In recent weeks, dozens of homeless people have been sleeping in this area after the city began enforcing an overnight curfew on the Venice Boardwalk.

This area is now being called, “Skid Row West”, or “Skid Rose”, (because of the Rose Street location). Unfortunately, the City of Los Angeles has yet to find real solutions or build enough housing for the homeless population of this fine City, so people continue to be just pushed around from one place to the next. Some say the people on the streets are merely “housing resistant”, others acknowledge that the majority on the streets now are either mentally ill or serious substance abusers or both (which is my opinion). Whichever the case may be- Los Angeles has no real solutions for the thousands of people on her streets nightly- unlike other large metropolises across America which have made great strides in getting vulnerable people off the streets. Click here to read a  great article by Steve Clare who is executive director of the Venice Community Housing Corporation, a nonprofit housing and community development organization serving the Westside of Los Angeles about real workable solutions for the homeless of LA.

In reading about this situation in Venice here, I couldn’t help but notice a glaring disparity in the way the City is cleaning up around the encampments over there on the Westside- as opposed to over here in the real Skid Row. According to the LA Weekly article linked to above called, Venice’s Own ‘Skid Rose’ Homeless Camp at 3rd Slowly Being Flushed by City Officials, by Simone Wilson Thus., May 3 2012, 


…The team included LAPD cops on horses, bio-hazard guys from the Department of Public Works and representatives from L.A. City Hall — including Public Works commissioner Andrea Alarcon, royal offspring of City Councilman Richard Alarcon. Also present was the mayor’s Westside deputy, Joseph Hari.


…Rosendahl confirms: “Further clean-ups will happen, and on a regular basis.”
…

Where are the bio-hazard guys for the REAL Skid Row? We have a serious, entrenched and consistent need for out streets to be power-washed of human waste in the form of urine, feces and vomit that NEVER get cleaned. I will be looking into getting over here whatever they get over there- we are ALL City of LA. I have never heard of the LA Department of Public Works doing any clean-up for Skid Row.

Great strides have been made recently with Operation Face-Lift/Skid Row 2012, which began in 2008 by actual community residents of Skid Row (watch video here), click here for more information about the 2012 re-energized movement. We have gotten the attention of the City, so that now Street Services- click here for the update- and the Bureau of Sanitation, click here for the 411 on this- have gotten on board with help for our garbage laden streets. But the need is still great, as is our lack of trash receptacles. I’m not sure what is going on over in Venice- but to be clear- Operation Face-Lift is interested primarily in connecting with the people on the streets and getting their involvement and participation in the community-at-large- NOT pushing them away to some other place out of sight, out of mind.

Curious about what all the fuss is over on the Westside- I took a drive over to “Skid Rose” on Friday at about 6pm. What I saw was…not much at all. A few, maybe 3 or 4 bags of what looked like people’s personal belongings, one loveseat, one tent and a couple of gentlemen with shopping carts. I saw no garbage on the streets, no piles of trash anywhere. Frankly, I am confused and slightly angry at all the attention given to this so-called encampment when the needs in our downtown streets far outweigh anything over in Venice- at least from what I personally witnessed on this day. Maybe someone can explain the difference in services that  the Westside gets as compared to my neighborhood, the REAL Skid Row.

Venice Homeless File Damage Claims Against L.A.

A March street cleanup in Venice in which homeless people had their belongings trashed prompted a Santa Monica civil rights attorney to file damage claims against the city of Los Angeles.

A civil rights attorney has filed damage claims against Los Angeles for the March 7 cleanup on 3rd Avenue in which city trash collectors hauled off personal belongings.

Santa Monica-based civil rights attorney Carol Sobel said Friday that she filed the damage claims, which is often a precursor to a lawsuit.

The trash haul March 7 took place on 3rd Avenue between Rose and Sunset avenues and was done by the Los Angeles City Bureau of Sanitation, which is part of the city’s Department of Public Works. Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl at the time said the cleanup occurred following many complaints about public urination, defecation, blocked sideways and trash in the street.

A handful of homeless people were allowed to rummage through heaps of garbage the day after the cleanup to search for their personal belongings in a city sanitation yard. David Busch, a homeless activist, pulled his laptop from the trash heap as well as several art pieces. A homeless couple found food, money and clothes among the mounds of trash.
Many of the homeless who lost belongings couldn’t make it to the sanitation yard and had lost money, medication and legal papers, Busch said.

Rosendahl said afterward that he would make it a policy going forward to give the homeless a courtesy notice before cleanups. He later told the Venice Chamber of Commerce during a luncheon that 3rd Avenue would be cleaned up on a weekly basis.

Busch, who sleeps on 3rd Avenue, said a cleanup Thursday morning was met by homeless people who stayed next to their property to prevent it from being thrown away. They were joined by Occupy Venice, Sobel and members of the National Lawyers Guild, who helped tag and guard belongings.
The garbage trucks left after Rosendahl intervened, Busch said.

The homeless in Venice recently have been impacted by a series of developments, including: the recent ban on overnight camping along the Venice Beach boardwalk, limitations on overnight parking for large vehicles and a program to transition vehicle dwellers into housing.

COMMENTS FROM VENICE:

Solecurious

12:07 pm on Thursday, April 5, 2012

This is the dilemma the city struggles with as the homeless population grows unabated. We are not the 1% but we own a home. We, the middle-income, are in a lose-lose-lose situation. While we continue to pay property tax in an eroding housing market, our garage at the back of our home became a public toilet and garbage dump to the homeless.
Guess who has to clean up? We installed a sensor light and the frequency reduced, especially treating our place like a toilet. Every now and then, I still have to remove empty food cartons, old clothing (yes, even underwear) and belonging. Who wants their home to smell like a toilet or look like a dump?
I understand the activists came from a compassionate ground. But they are too close to the forest to see the trees. The money that went into legal suits would be better served for the entire community if it went to solutions to solve the homeless situation and assist homeowners with the cleaning costs. Enough fighting. Start looking for solutions instead!

Deborah Lashever (in response)

8:34 pm on Friday, June 15, 2012

Yes! Solutions are easy! Public restrooms, trash cans would be a good start! The residents complain about trash but the city will supply no trash cans. Residents complain about pooping and peeing but yet the city supplies no porta potties. Who is at fault here? The people who, must pee and put their trash away but have no where to do so or the city for not providing facilities for the entire public?
Please do not blame people who have no resources for oversights the city makes! Complain to the city that it needs to serve all of it’s community members better rather than disrespect the unHoused for having no options. Thank you.

jockiemc

4:05 pm on Friday, April 6, 2012

I agree, we own a business at the end of 3rd street and clients employees are afraid to come and go from the office late at night because of how tricky things look out on 3rd. Overall the problem has to be solved in some way but people living on the street taking drugs and drinking themselves into oblivion is not great for us or more importantly for them! There is no real answer we the people who are running businesses or owning homes have to make as much noise as possible otherwise this issue will become bigger and bigger. i encourage everyone with an interest to call your local councilor and make some noise!

Deborah Lashever
(in response)

8:42 pm on Friday, June 15, 2012

Rather than “making noise” why don’t you demand services that will keep your community cleaner? Demand more porta potties! Demand more trash cans! Demand the Check=in Center for all their belongings! Demand services in Venice! Don’t just hate and bitch….help we who have solutions that are trying to implement them by telling your reps they need to listen to people with real solutions (not strong arm tactics) and implement them! We are all in this together, like it or not. We ALL make up our community!
If you just “make noise” people get abused and the situation stays the same….
Peace.

Another WorldView

1:11 pm on Saturday, June 16, 2012

Can I ask which business you own?
And while some people may have a fear of the UnHoused, some people also fear “blacks” and “mexicans”. Should we as a society, indulge their irrational fears, too? Which Constitutional rights are we ALL willing to sacrifice to assuage the unfounded fears of small number of people.
I have walked and biked down on 3rd street at all hours of the day and night – and have never had any problems, for the most part these folks seem like they just want to be left alone (as we Housed folks have the freedom to be, whenever we like).
And it should be noted, that while there MAY be some increase in the numbers on 3rd, since the police declared the OFW to be a “park” – all of a sudden, there have always been people down there sleeping at night.
Now there are two new (gigantic) HID lamps (I suppose we’re lucky on the “drug” front that no one is exercising their state right to grow ‘medicine’ under those, BTW) new LED street lights, and a 24/7 camera. If anything, that may be the safest street in “the ‘hood”, where you’ve decided to place your business.

(Very Interesting Follow-Up Discussion at http://venice.patch.com/articles/venice-homeless-file-damage-claims-against-los-angeles )

NOTE FROM NORSE:  If Venice can expose the bigotry and bullshit, with some energetic media response (even on the comment sections) and some street theater (long live David Busch and Peggy Lee Kennedy!) and some attorney muscle (lawsuits for destruction of homeless property are an obvious need), why can’t we do that here?

Library Board to Consider Restrictive New Policies that Impact Homeless People (& You)

Posted on by
by Robert Norse ( rnorse3 [at] hotmail.com )
Friday Nov 30th, 2012 10:12 AM

On Monday December 3rd, the Library Joint Powers Authorities Board meets at the new Scotts Valley Library (251 Kings Village Rd.) to consider imposing new harsher policies regarding sleeping in the library, “smelling bad”, service animals, & unattended property. The matter was raised at a November meeting, but postponed according to Sentinel writer J.M. Brown (See http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_21936587/santa-cruz-library-board-delays-suspension-policy-changes).
Libraries are a last refuge for homeless people and folks should demand expansion not contraction of access there.

According to Board member (and outgoing City Council member) Katherine Beiers (pronounced Buy-ers), the meeting is at the new library at 6:30 PM. Beiers office phone is 420-5024. Her home phone is 426-6108. Her e-mail is kbeiers [at] cityofsantacruz.com. In a phone interview over the radio yesterday, she said she’d not yet read her packet, but that John Barisone, City Attorney-for-Life will be there.

EXPANSION OF EARLIER CRACKDOWN
In the last several years, a First Alarm goon has taken to patrolling the library and library grounds, provoking complaints from one homeless patron that the burly wannabe cop followed him into the restroom to monitor his weewee. Benches have been removed. The area around the library has been made a “no trespass” zone after 9:30 PM or so. it seems to bel part of the “make Santa Cruz less welcoming” pogrom. Plus the police and their pals in the private “security” racket are empowered to interrogate, hassle,cite, and or arrest if homeless don’t show proper respect and deference and jump through the right hoops.

LACK OF SPECIFICS IN STAFF REPORT
There are no stats in the staff report itemizing the number of complaints received in the last year about the offending behaviors, how many people have been suspended or appealed, and why the current policy isn’t workable.

It’s similar to what happened when the law banning people from assembling in parking garages and lots was passed at the behest of outgoing Councilmember Ryan “Constitution for Dinner” Coonerty. No indication of a greater crime problem, but more police power to harass being granted–which is now being selectively used to target “suspicious” people (i.e. poor and homeless people).

PART OF A BROADER CRACKDOWN
With the four-fold increase in ticketing and concurrent survival gear destruction against homeless people on the levee, in the parks, and in the Pogonip to satisfy the Take-Back-Santa-Cruz bigots, the anti-protest curfews at City Hall, the County Building, and the Courts, the new forbidden zones adjacent to the levee, as well as the creation of 14′ “no go” zones around the big red Imagine anti-panhandling meters downtown–this library crackdown is another attack on poor and homeless people. Which is not clearly a response to real problems–at least, those problems are not articulated.

FIGHT BACK
Demand there be a delay until homeless people and advocates can be contacted and consulted. And until real information is available about the real need for them.

APPEAL FROM HUFF (Homeless United for Friendship & Freedom)
Becky Johnson sent out the following letter:

Dear HUFF members and friends,
At our Nov 21st meeting, HUFF passed a resolution urging HUFF members to attend the next two meetings of the Library Joint Powers Board re: new policies being considered which fundamentally change the haven-nature our libraries have come to function as in a world of ever diminishing social services where need is increasing, not diminishing.
Rules against backpacks, smells, sleeping, use of public space after hours etc. need to be carefully assessed.
The next meeting is at the Scotts Valley Branch of the Library on Monday, Dec 3 from 6:30PM – 8:30PM.
The next meeting is Jan 14th 2013 @ the SC Main Branch Library fro 6:30PM to 8:30PM.
Also: Please send a letter in advance to the members of the Board:

Dick English rpenglish [at] sbcglobal.net
Leigh Poitinger Vice Chair lpoitinger [at] comcast.net
Nancy Gerdt ngerdt45 [at] gmail.com
David Terrazas dterrazas [at] cityofsantacruz.com
Jim Reed jimreedsv [at] gmail.com
Katherine Beiers kbeiers [at] sbcglobal.net
Sam Storey Chair samforcapitola [at] att.net
Ellen Pirie ellen.pirie [at] co.santa-cruz.ca.us
Mark Stone mark.stone [at] co.santa-cruz.ca.us

Please post any responses you get or letters you write on line or send a copy to me at rnorse3 [at] hotmail.com . The reading area you save may be your own!

§Staff Report Continued

by Robert Norse Friday Nov 30th, 2012 10:12 AM

 

Comments  (Hide Comments)

by Observer

Friday Nov 30th, 2012 12:59 PM

Why on earth should the library grounds not be closed after 9:30PM? It’s a library, not a park or homeless shelter.

by G

Friday Nov 30th, 2012 3:39 PM

Instead of yet more selective persecution and overpriced security theater; how about outing some real criminals that break real laws for real dollar amounts?

Oh, right, those gangsters run things, never mind.

by sane person

Saturday Dec 1st, 2012 12:01 PM

A library is NOT a homeless shelter. It is no longer a safe environment for kids. Also, the smell IS becoming unbearable in there. Look what happened in Berkeley. Santa Cruz Library is going the same way.

by sane person

Saturday Dec 1st, 2012 5:34 PM

Also, it is Norse’s own projection that “smelling bad” is some kind of monopoly held by homeless people. I know housed people who smell awful and homeless people who do their best to find access to regular showers.

It is typical of how he ACTUALLY views homeless folks that he ASSUMES that “smelling bad”= homeless. I don’t care who is stinking up the place: take a shower, stinkies!

Either way, I support the Homeless Services Center to help out the homeless. I support County Health to fund health for the poor. I support the EDD to find jobs for the unemployed. I support the LIBRARY TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO FREE BOOKS AND MEDIA TO THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY, THAT’S THEIR JOB AND THEIR ONLY JOB! That’s it, that’s all they have to do. And Norse, you want to make their job harder.

In SLO, they have figured out a humane and friendly way to deal with this issue…

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/mar/05/local/me-smell5

In Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, patrons who smell are not simply shown the door, McGee and Macias said. They are provided with a means of correcting the problem.

“We seldom have to ask someone to leave,” McGee said. “It rarely happens. If it does we’re very careful to give coupons about where they can wash their clothes or take a shower. We do it in as humane a way as possible.”

by John E. Colby

Saturday Dec 1st, 2012 6:31 PM

If the library grounds are arbitrarily closed at 9:30 P.M., then I will no longer be able to return books after business hours, after 9:30 P.M. That doesn’t seem right. Another abridgment of a right of access in order to harass the homeless.

by sane person

Saturday Dec 1st, 2012 7:59 PM

Where is it stated in library rules that you may not drop books through a drop slot after 9:30, Mr. Cohen? I have not heard that before. I only see it in Norse’s statement, and he is clearly not a credible, reliable source.

by Robert Norse

Saturday Dec 1st, 2012 9:58 PM

The posted hours forbid being on library property after 9:30 PM or thereabouts. So, yes, it’s technically illegal to return books late at night through the outdoor slot. Just as its illegal to try to go read the City Council agenda after 10:30 PM at its posted spot outside City Council chambers.

You’re only likely to be hassled, however, if you linger to rest on one of the few remaining benches, or perhaps try to use the lone payphone there and look raggedy. Or sit with your laptop nearby using the library wi-fi “after hours”. The last actually happened to Craig Canada even before the new “no trespassing at night” hours were posted in the late summer of 2010.

Public areas are places where everyone should have the right to “hang out”–bums, bigots, blowhards–you name it.

The exclusionary policy at night isn’t a matter of setting hours for “doing business” at all, but for the bad business of running off homeless people who socialize, rest, and seek mutual companionship there away from the hassles of Pacific Avenue. Naturally bigots (those who term homeless people “bums”) don’t have any problem excluding the poor. Hopefully the rest of us do.

Also the “no trespassing at night” policy was not subject to any kind of public input or debate. No showing of a need for it was made. It was cooked up in secret between the police chief Kevin Vogel, the head of parks and rec Dannettee Shoemaker(who controls these spaces outdoors), the mayor (Coonerty at the time), and City Manager Bernal. Or so I was told by Shoemaker in August of 2010.

I spoke with Council members and Library Board members Beiers and Terrazas at the Homelessness Summit earlier today. Beiers had no idea how she was going to vote; Terrazas neither. Neither seemed to know what the rules were currently and to what extent the rules were being changed as well as what specific evidence had been provided to show that such a change was necessary or beneficial. I suggest people e-mail them at their above addresses.

Beiers promised to “try” to forward me a set of the current rules and how they’d be changed. Terrazas evaded repeated attempts to get a meeting time, saying he had no time until late Monday afternoon (when it probably wouldn’t make any difference, since that’s right before the meeting). He did reluctantly indicate a willingness to be accessible after 3 PM on Monday.

E-mail them and other board members. Demand to know the specific complaints that have led to both the current proposed changes, and whether the earlier “forbidden zones at night” homeless-begone proposals went through their board formally or informally. Also urge that the library property be declared open at night. It’s already a crime to sleep there, cover up with blankets, or set up camping equipment with the intention of remaining overnight.

And when will the benches be restored to the sides of the building?

Ask the questions. Demand the answers.

I’ve never had smell problems with anyone in the library (again, where are the reports?). But the stench of bigotry hangs heavy over some of the comments.

by Robert Norse

Saturday Dec 1st, 2012 10:06 PM

If you agree with these concerns, e-mail library board members…

Library Board to Consider Restrictive New Policies
that Impact Homeless People (& You)

Monday December 3rd 6:30 PM , the Library Joint Powers Authorities Board meets at the new Scotts Valley Library (251 Kings Village Rd.) to consider imposing new harsher policies regarding sleeping in the library, “smelling bad”, service animals, & unattended property. Libraries are a last refuge for homeless people and folks should demand expansion not contraction of access there.

LACK OF SPECIFICS IN STAFF REPORT (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/11/30/18726836.php)
There are no stats in the staff report itemizing the number of complaints received in the last year about the offending behaviors, how many people have been suspended or appealed, and why the current policy isn’t workable.
It’s similar to what happened when the law banning people from assembling in parking garages and lots was passed at the behest of outgoing Council member Ryan “Constitution for Dinner” Coonerty. No indication of a greater crime problem, but more police power to harass—now being selectively used to target “suspicious” people (i.e. poor and homeless people).

EXPANSION OF EARLIER CRACKDOWN $80,000 funds a First Alarm goon patrolling the library and grounds, provoking complaints from one homeless patron that the burly wannabe cop followed him into the restroom to monitor his weewee. Benches have been removed. The area around the library has been made a “no trespass” zone after 9:30 PM–part of the “make Santa Cruz less welcoming to people experiencing homeless” agenda. Police and security thugs can now interrogate, hassle,cite, and or arrest if homeless don’t show proper respect and deference and jump through the right hoops for being there.

PART OF A BROADER CRACKDOWN There is a four-fold increase in ticketing and concurrent survival gear destruction against homeless people on the levee, in the parks, and in the Pogonip (to respond to bogus security concerns). Also new: the anti-Occupy curfews at City Hall, the County Building, and the Courts, the new forbidden zones adjacent to the levee, as well as the creation of 14′ “no go” zones around the big red Imagine anti-panhandling meters downtown, This library crackdown adding new library rules is another fashionable attack on poor and homeless people.

FIGHT BACK Demand restoration of the library as a welcoming space! Document and make public the real complaints and delay until homeless people and advocates can be contacted and consulted. And until real information is available about the real need for them.

HUFF resolution: Attend the next two meetings of the Board, The new policies fundamentally change the haven-nature our libraries have come to function as in a world of ever diminishing social services where need is increasing, not diminishing. Rules against backpacks, smells, sleeping, use of public space after hours etc. need to be carefully assessed.

Send a letter this weekend to the members of the Board:

Sam Storey Chair samforcapitola [at] att.net Leigh Poitinger Vice Chair lpoitinger [at] comcast.net
Nancy Gerdt ngerdt45 [at] gmail.com David Terrazas dterrazas [at] cityofsantacruz.com
Jim Reed jimreedsv [at] gmail.com Katherine Beiers kbeiers [at] sbcglobal.net
Ellen Pirie ellen.pirie [at] co.santa-cruz.ca.us Dick English rpenglish [at] sbcglobal.net
Mark Stone mark.stone [at] co.santa-cruz.ca.us

by .h

Sunday Dec 2nd, 2012 9:45 AM

since I left California… the inequality between upper-middle class, working class, and destitute classes in California is even more prominent. (there is such a small middle class). It would be easy to have an attitude that the people with money to afford housing in Santa Cruz should be confronted as often as possible about the situations of other people. However, the problem is that this can’t even be addressed at the individual level. Individual homeowners who are bothered by not being able to use the library or go downtown can’t go home and do anything about it. And I find that many computer programmers/doctors and so forth are fairly aware of social problems, (except for a few who embrace Ayn Rand type principles), even if they aren’t quite motivated to a radical solution yet. Even if the city of Santa Cruz decided to spend more on ‘charity’ like food banks and shelters, there is an endless tide of more destitute people. The high price of even a room in a slum apartment ($700 or more) results from the fact that this region has a lot of jobs where people are paid six figure salaries for their labor (plus people with investment income) and this drives up prices for everyone else, down to the immigrants working under minimum wage.
There is no easy solution, but I’m personally terrified by the fact that we’re technically still in the recession, and we can only expect the economy in San Francisco and Silicon valley to rev up more in the next year, and what happens when prices get even more expensive??

by John E. Colby

Sunday Dec 2nd, 2012 9:05 PM

Santa Cruz’s campaign against the homeless, stoked by the Sentinel/Patch and driven by a hate filled group of angry bigots, bears some similarities to the Nazi’s cleansing of German society of what they called degenerates and undesirables. One should be mindful before one joins this campaign how far it might go and where it might end.

by Observer

Sunday Dec 2nd, 2012 10:42 PM

“… it’s technically illegal to return books late at night through the outdoor slot…
You’re only likely to be hassled, however, if you linger to rest on one of the few remaining benches…”

Because ‘lingering on the benches’ has nothing to do with returning a library book. It’s a library, not a shelter.

by Observant

Monday Dec 3rd, 2012 12:59 AM

LOL. Couldn’t have said it better. I’m fairly certain that if one were to go return a book through a slot at 10 pm, no one would look askance, regardless of the comportment of the returner. It’s when this turns into a multitasking exercise (as in, “Honey, I’m going to step out to return “Voyage of The Beagle” and then I’m going to sleep on the benches outside the Library till 6 am, after which I’ll take a crap in the bush by the north entrance. See you in the morning!”) that one invites scrutiny.

I know, I know. It’s selective enforcement. Go ahead and shoot me.

by Gross exaggeration

Monday Dec 3rd, 2012 8:24 AM

“Nazi cleansing”..because the community grows tired of having a small band of transients monopolize the library? Oh please. You’re going to compare telling a couple of bums, who often smell odious and use the building for a sleeping lounge and bathing area as opposed to its intended purpose….and compare that to Nazi cleansing?

*lol* You’ve lost your perspective.

by Sylvia

Monday Dec 3rd, 2012 11:01 AM

Some people use the library as a daytime shelter, warmth, bathrooms, … Some of those people have trouble with rules and regulation and the library has hired a security person to patrol and be available. And tonight the board is considering more limitations on behavior and appearance. I see an opportunity for Occupy Santa Cruz to organize itself, be available in shifts, reach out, provide individual personal support, find out what’s lacking in the available supports.

by John E. Colby

Monday Dec 3rd, 2012 4:38 PM

If you read my post as it was meant to be, you would realize that I am referring to the Santa Cruz campaign against the homeless in total, not just at the library. Santa Cruz is trying to vilify and erase the homeless from the community and public spaces. If you read about what the Nazis did just after they came to power the campaigns bear striking similarities.

by Observant

Monday Dec 3rd, 2012 7:36 PM

Unlike you guys, I don’t have a fascination with the Nazis, nor do I draw any specific parallels between them and contemporary social policy. Could you please elaborate on why you feel that what the Nazis did to gypsys, homosexuals, Jews and so on – things such as forced labor and extermination in concentration camps – sees a modern day equivalent in the Santa Cruz City Council telling people to take a shower, leave the library at 9:30 pm and to stop crapping in the bushes? It really seems like an astounding leap of logic to jump from the former to the latter.

Really, what, besides dramatic emphasis, supports your position?

by John E. Colby

Monday Dec 3rd, 2012 9:47 PM

Here’s a history lesson for you. Homeless people were targeted by the Nazis to die in concentration camps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_triangle_(badge)

by Robert Norse

Monday Dec 3rd, 2012 10:26 PM

Nazis didn’t begin with forced labor camps, but rather by proscribing classes of people. That, I think, is the point of the comparison. When you deny people the right to sleep at night, the right to assemble in public, the right to show their wares, the right to use public services, etc., you start down that long road. Which is what Santa Cruz (and other cities) are doing (and have done for a number of years).

It’s maliciously deceptive to misdescribe the rule changes as “telling people to take a shower, leave the library at 9:30 pm and to stop crapping in the bushes”. It’s a matter of driving the homeless out of town–the library closes much earlier, but the grounds are now forbidden after 9:30 PM–specifically to deny homeless people a traditional place of refuge. Ditto with the removal of the benches. Crap in the bushes? Haven’t heard specific complaints, but I wouldn’t be surprised since public bathrooms close at night. Surprised why people fall asleep in libraries when it’s illegal to sleep at night? I’m not.

UNEXPECTED VICTORY
More upbeat, however, was the 5-4 decision of the Library Board to defeat a proposal to add a Sleeping Ban to its lilbrary policy. This was unexpected until the very last moment. Katherine Beiers, who dissented from the broader motion supporting harsher policies against “rule breakers” (rules being things like having unattended property, smelling bad, and having a dog in the library), moved to divide the question, and finally got a substitute motion passed over the confusion of David Terazzas, which passed everything but the Sleeping Ban.

The Sleeping Ban was then proposed as a separate motion (with pretexts like sleepers were “in the way”, “misusing the library for a purpose for which it was not intended”, “discomforting others”, “blocking access” and other pretexts that ignored the basic “they make us uncomfortable and we want a simple rule to exclude them”). Based on the general silence seeming to give consent to the Ban, this seemed like it would be Beiers alone, but Samuel Story gave an eloquent statement, and others apparently jumped on board. For once, the staff didn’t get their way.

BROADER DEFEAT
But the victory was only on that one issue–and perhaps because the issue was what each speaker focused on–how libraries were sanctuaries, how there’d been a host of anti-homeless rules around the library, how the city-wide sleeping ban added insult to injury, how winter and Xmas time was the wrong time to bring the hammer down, etc. Apparently it all had an impact.

Of course, the staff got a new policy that allows for much longer suspensions for a variety of rules that weren’t available for the public to read (there was no agenda packet available for the public). There was also a peculiar process that didn’t allow public comment on any staff items, except, suddenly, the new policies issue, which was packaged as a “staff report” and not as an action item. I tried to raise this, but was silenced by Story, the chair of the meeting.

I did speak with Teresa, the chief librarian who was pushing these restrictive rules, saying that the existing policy just allowed for a 30-day suspension followed by a restraining order (that’s now changed, and there can be much longer suspensions after the 4th warning). When I asked her how many people came back to repeat the policy after being suspended for thirty days, she had no stats or figures. she did say that they’d only issued one restraining order this year but that was because her staff was “heavily burdened”.

Another member of the public objected on a different issue that the library had failed to provide a copy of the prior agenda on request, insisting that he fill out a written public records act request and wait 10 days because of “staff problems”.

All very arrogant and unlikely–showing again that rules (as when the Homeless Lack of Services Center was closed–and remains closed) to “non-business” assembly during the day it was for the convenience of the staff. Upside down logic since the staff are supposed to be serving the public. But chillingly similar to why the Parking Lot Paranoia law (banning people from reading books in their cars in city parking lots, or gathering in a parking lot)—as Ryan Coonerty explained it–to accommodate city staff complaints (as well as the anxieties of his employees at the Bookshop Santa Cruz).

Still, it showed that liberals like to keep the pretty make-up on, particularly if enough people show up to challenge the latest civil rights seizure. I admit that I even applauded and thanked John Leopold (who actually proposed the motion to ban sleeping, but voting not to do so).

Nice work, Occupy Santa Cruz activists (all the critics were from Occupy Santa Cruz, and all over 50). Now we have to plan for the next library sleep-in when we receive reports of people being suspended from the library for objecting when they’re told to leave their backpacks outside to be stolen.

by Observant

Tuesday Dec 4th, 2012 1:34 AM

It seems to me that what is maliciously deceptive is to characterize the application of common sense and traditional societal mores to this situation as somehow akin to, or a precursor of, the act of executing homeless people in a concentration camp. And I’m using the term “traditional” in an unadulterated sense, invoking as I am millennia-old societal boundaries in society. Using the term to describe an out-of-control drum circle at the Farmers Market (thank you, Nesh and Lulu’s for decisively stomping that out) or a runaway problem with people sleeping and showering in the library, things that developed over the past 10 or 20 years, is delusional at best, and deceptive at worst.

That hyperlink is bad, but I get the point. It’s not that I don’t know the history. What I don’t follow are these massive leaps of logic. You are simply not making a convincing case that a concentration camp is in store for us in the future, near or distant.

You guys don’t like rules and boundaries, except for your sworn enemies. This is a sociopathic mindset that I’d venture traces its roots back to your failed and continuing adolescence. Your parents should have corrected this with a strong regimen of discipline. It’s too late for that at this point, unfortunately, so we now have to all deal with it, I suppose.

I’d still really like to hear a convincing argument from you guys about how closing the library grounds at 9:30 pm today is going to result in the future establishment of a modern-day Dachau in the Santa Cruz city limits. Not a metaphorical concentration camp, but an actual one, where Ryan Coonerty dons a Wehrmacht uniform and charges about gassing people like Linda Lemaster, Shane Maxfield, Donna Deiss and White Dove.

I’m not holding my breath, though.

In response to Norse critics: Here is a version of a respected saying by Pastor Martin Niemoeller, 1892-1984 (googol “First they came”, then see the Wikipedia entry):

“When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

“When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

“When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

“When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.

“When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.”

–Lydia Blanchard

by Sylvia

Tuesday Dec 4th, 2012 9:03 AM

I think the Brown Act governs boards and commissions. I think it’s a violation of good process to take an action on a staff report recommendation that isn’t explicitly listed on the public agenda. It’s a good thing Robert and others are tracking this. It takes a lot of diligence to follow our electeds and their appointees.

The Mental Health Advisory Board used the same kind of strategy to hide the plans for spending $13 million on a local Psychiatric Health Facility.

Naming and shaming draws public attention and protest. Providing listening and support one on one could detour around any regulations, arguably make enough impact to quell the librarians.

by grounded in reality

Tuesday Dec 4th, 2012 9:20 AM

You’re evading and still not answering a very direct question, Robert. Can you answer Observant and articulate an intellectual, non-evasive equivalence between the given rules of operation for the library and executing 8 million people? Do you think continually avoiding civil discourse in lieu of extreme soap-box hyperbole helps or hinders your credibility and, ultimately, your cause?

by Robert Norse

Tuesday Dec 4th, 2012 10:25 AM

TROLL TITTLE-TATTLE
As usual,critics with questions or denunciations are invited to call in to my radio show where this matter will be discussed at greater length. They rarely do, but the opportunity is there. See times and numbers above.

It’s clear however that criminalizing poor people outside engaged in survival behavior and repeatedly restricting the space that they’re allowed to use is at the very least a way of making folks unwelcome. Given the high death rate for homeless folks each year, it also impacts their health and safety since the ability to gather in groups and shelter oneself, or even to rest, impacts those conditions. This seems to me so obvious as to be beyond dispute, but those who defend the evil laws and procedures that perpetuate and aggravate these conditions needs some rationale, so they find it where they can.

MORE ON THE BOARD MEETING
These issues were a key factor in the dissent on the Library Board last night around approving a Sleeping Ban in the library (aside from it’s being a break not just with traditional Santa Cruz library policy, but a break with library policy historically nationwide (as articulated by several former librarians who spoke).

The Board made no objection to the public-excluding procedures used around missing information, missing agendas, strange itemizing as action items under “staff reports”, and an unequal treatment of public comment (only allowed for one “staff report” item).

David Terazzas seemed particularly clueless and unhelpful–a Ryan Coonerty in training–at this meeting. Neither he nor Beiers provided any information prior to the meeting. Beiers redeemed herself in a small way by expressing a dissent on the Sleeping Ban issue, which led to a general retreat on that issue. However, more broadly she empowered the library to impose much harsher penalties on “rules violations”.

For those familiar with the Downtown Ordinances, we know how this kind of authority has been beern abused.

RULES WORSHIP
The only legitimate basis for being asked to leave the library (much less suspension) is actual disruption that interferes with other patrons. This should be and probably is decided on a case-by-case basis. However the new powers granted staff provide much more room for mischief. Patrons uncomfortable with the sight or scent of homeless people may now feel empowered to create a gated zone, regardless of the wishes of the staff–given the modified suspension procedures and new “unattended property”and “bad smell” rules. “It’s the rule!” after all.

I don’t necessarily think that’s what the library staff were trying to do or want to do in the future, but the rules passed may allow for that. A “rules violation” is much different than a patron complaining about being interfered with in a real and tangible way that can’t be resolved peacefully at the time. “Rules violations” are used by control freaks to impose a repressive kind of order and exact punishments when there are no real problems other than someone squeaking “you’re not obeying the rules”.

Draconian authority to enforce rules is an evil thing. It also creates a darker kind of climate which improperly and unwisely empowers people in positions of power or makes them subject to malicious manipulation.

Since no record of the actual complaints, suspensions, repeat problems, was made available to the Board last night, I’m following up with a Public Records Act request. PHONE At last night’s meeting, the public was told to “go on line” to read the agenda packet (which didn’t contain the actual complaint history in any detail nor how effective suspensions were).

CONTACTING THE FUHRER
Another member of the public complained about getting stonewalled when he previously asked for a copy of the prior agenda and minutes–on an issue entirely unrelated to the Spank-the-Homeless issue–told by Teresa Landers, Library Boss, that he’d have to wait 10 days and make a written public records act request because of “staff problems”.

Teresa is the head cheese at the library (Director of the Libraries) apparently responsible only to the Library Joint Powers Board (the group that met last night). Not sure who hires and fires her or what her salary is–might be worth looking into. She told me she’s been around for 3 1/2 years.

She seemed to be the driving force behind these changes–but that was only my impression and I only spoke with her briefly. Still she seemed quite adamant. Full disclosure: working library staff members that I’ve seen at the front desk of the main library were supportive of her changes when she called for their opinions. As with City Council’s staff “experts”, she seemed good at leading the Board around.

As a special treat, city attorney John Barisone was there, helping to smooth over the wrinkles in the “eliminate the unworthy” from library use.

Teresa’s e-mail is landerst [at] santacruzpl.org Her phone number is 831-427-7706 X7612 (hours 8 AM to 5 PM).

by Robert Norse

Tuesday Dec 4th, 2012 10:28 AM

I e-mailed this off about an hour ago. Teresa has 10 days to reply (unless she seeks an extension).

From: rnorse3 [at] hotmail.com
To: landerst [at] santacruzpl.org
…
Subject: Public Records Act Request
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2012 09:46:10 -0800

To whom It May Concern:

Please provide access to all copies of complaints against patrons at all branches of the Public Library system from Jan 1, 2012 through the present as well as any records, e-mails, statements, written, audio, or visual regarding library policies impacting library rules that might result in a warning or suspension of library access. This would include communications to and from the public, public officials, police, security agencies, and any other group or person around this issue.

Please also provide access to copies of all agendas and minutes of the Board’s meetings through 2012.

I prefer e-mail access to these records. In the event this is not possible, I would like to see the records prior to deciding which ones I need to copy.

Please advise me whether a hard copy of the minutes of the prior meeting and agenda packet was available at each of these meetings.

Further, please advise me as to whether action items were listed as such on the agendas.

Finally, please advise me as to whether a public comment was provided for each agenda item (as it was not at the December 3rd meeting, except for the one “staff report” item on the rule changes).

I would suggest you publicly announce all these conditions will be corrected at the next meeting or face a Brown Act complaint.

If you have any questions regarding this request, feel free to call me.

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Robert Norse
(831-423-4833)

by No

Tuesday Dec 4th, 2012 2:34 PM

…it’s time to stop demanding rights and start TAKING them. Demands have gotten us nowhere, and the TBSC yuppies won’t have any of it. They (and other anti- homeless/freedom/civil-rights groups) are TAKING from others, now it’s time to TAKE from them.

by G

Tuesday Dec 4th, 2012 3:43 PM

Re takings; sounds like The Prince v Discourses On Livy…

by As expected

Tuesday Dec 4th, 2012 5:50 PM

Mr. Norse’s comparison of the Santa Cruz situation is both odious and laughable. Not unexpected though, as those characteristics personify him to me and many others.

Here’s why I think the comparison is unequal and a joke Mr. Norse:

1) The nazis also killed drug addicts. If that were the case in Santa Cruz?..there’d be nobody left to be passing ordinances against.

2) Last I checked, the Jews weren’t a population that was 100% dependent upon community support for their existance.

3) Last I heard, the Nazi’s weren’t funding food programs and shelters and counseling and other services to sustain Jewish existence.

Nuff said. You go right along with your odious comparisons. I think they do more damage to Santa Cruz-Homeless relationship than darn near any other single thing I can think of in Santa Cruz. But hey, you think you’re doing some good, and I think you’re sinking your own ship for me? I call that a win-win, so keep up the good work sir.

…but the “Santa Cruz enforcement is similar to Nazism” metaphor you and Colby have introduced is a joke to any right minded person.

by RazerRay

Tuesday Dec 4th, 2012 7:30 PM

bo.jpg
bo.jpg

This is currently under discussion at the Library Board where I live. One commenter on an IndyMedia post has mentioned that San Diego and another city take a principled proactive approach and give the person with the offending odor a coupon for a shower at a local facility. Also note that foul odor can be a medical condition, and in light of many city facilities requesting a fragrance-free environment from their patrons, it may make it impossible for someone with an affliction such as “Stinkfoot” (Bromhidrosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_odor#Medical_conditions) to use public facilities.

http://www.quora.com/Should-public-libraries-have-showers-for-homeless-people

by RazerRay

Tuesday Dec 4th, 2012 7:46 PM

Copy the following to embed the movie into another web page:

 download video: frank_zappa___stinkfoot_1.mp4 (9.6MB)

The last word on stinkfoot from someone who wore his Python Boots too tight. But seriously. I had a friend who was refused enlistment in the US Navy during the Vietnam war due to this condition.

by human

Tuesday Dec 4th, 2012 9:25 PM

Its not right to make me feel bad for being legitly disabled. I get treated like a sub human because of it. Just cuz ure not happy with the economy doesnt mean you can treat me like a war criminal. Stop this practice. Move on with your life. You shouldn’t own pets.

by John E. Colby

Tuesday Dec 4th, 2012 11:36 PM

The Nazis targeted the homeless (“work-shy”) as degenerates and undesirables. The camps were not the beginning point of the Nazi’s campaign against their victims. They began with harassment, violence and civil rights violations. They ramped it up a bit before they reached the concentration camp stage.

A certain bigoted group of Santa Cruz residents, especially in public forums like the Sentinel comments sections, call for cleansing the homeless from our community. They say, “kick the bums out”. This kind of cleansing is not qualitatively different from the ethnic cleansing pursued in the former Yugoslavia and by the Nazis and their satellite nations in WW 2. Ethnic cleansing is the last step before genocide.

What happens when those who wish to purge Santa Cruz of the homeless are met with resistance from a homeless population that just won’t budge? I imagine increased harassment, violence and finally a mob. When organized by a neoliberal state with fascist leanings like our local government this is cleansing akin to ethnic cleansing just short of genocide. Thus I suggest that people be careful when slinging hate speech around, because it may lead to serious consequences.

at http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_22125587/library-board-votes-down-sleeping-ban and check out the well-reasoned dispassionate comments that follow the main story. Clearly regular patrols of each individual aisle in this threatened building [expecially the Downtown Library, long a terrorist haven) are long overdue…

by Robert Norse

Thursday Dec 6th, 2012 3:07 AM

It’s not clear to me whether Rhode Island’s Homeless Bill of Rights is being effectively used to combat the Bigots’ Brigade there, but here’s activist Paul Boden’s call for supporting Ammiano’s California Homeless Bill of Rights:

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/California-needs-rights-for-homeless-4091545.php

by Diane

Thursday Dec 6th, 2012 4:14 AM

A homeless woman, living in her car, who had lived and worked in Santa Clara County all her liife (worked in electronics where they toss you out like so much garbage, years before retirement age in the Bay Area) was sitting quietly on a bench outside of the library (HER FRICKING LIBRARY, AS MUCH, IF NOT MORE, THAN THE PREDATOR CLASS WHO RUN SILICON VALLEY) with a homeless sign in her lap, She was not vocally soliciting money, and quite pleasant to speak with, but was inhumanely booted from the premises by an inhuman witch who worked at the library, may that woman rot in hell.

by Robert Norse

Thursday Dec 6th, 2012 10:51 AM

A sobering and saddening story from Salinas: http://www.thecalifornian.com/article/20121129/news01/311290009/salinas-man-s-friends-stunned-by-beating .

This kind of violence is reportedly happening via police officers according to reports I’m getting at the Red Church on Monday nights:

Please keep your eyes open, your cameras handy, and take the time to post what you see.

Or call in to my radio show.

by RazerRay

Thursday Dec 6th, 2012 5:57 PM

write_drunk_-_hemmingway.jpg
write_drunk_-_hemmingway….

Robert Norse:
This kind of violence is reportedly happening via police officers according to reports I’m getting at the Red Church on Monday nights.

The only people who actually speak to you are winos too drunk at the time to even know what happened, but like ADDICTS, it couldn’t have been their fault they turned and tried to walk away or acted combative according to the police. Seriously hostile words are certainly germane to being drunk and stoopid on the street to the best of my recollection of why I’ve punched drinkers out before myself.

“The police beat me up for no reason” is almost always a crock of shit story if one just asks simple questions.

But Robert “KNOWS” the answers, and puts them in the mouths of people which is why NO ONE should speak into his recorder at all. He’s simply a propagandist who has NO INTEREST in the veracity or safety of his sources (Ask about his dry snitching me as a potential building squatter) and he makes “Collages” of conversations which he puts on the air, with his un-verified commentary, as if it’s the truth.

Just like MSM news… and just as false.

Robert fails the “Edit Sober” test. His victims were drunk, and so is he… With disinformation.

by Observant

Friday Dec 7th, 2012 11:12 AM

From the article Robert cites:

“Anderson’s injuries were so severe that he had to be flown by air ambulance to a San Jose hospital. On Wednesday, Salinas police Officer Miguel Cabrera said Anderson is no longer in a coma. He’s still recovering at the hospital, Cabrera said”.

The article further states that Anderson was beaten “nearly to death”.

Now, here’s Robert Norse:

“This kind of violence is reportedly happening via police officers according to reports I’m getting at the Red Church on Monday nights”.

Really, Robert? So you say that Santa Cruz police officers are beating people nearly to death at the Red Church, and that these people are being airlifted to San Jose in comas? This is a major scoop, Robert. You realize that, don’t you?

by Robert Norse

Friday Dec 7th, 2012 6:08 PM

Several reports of police slamming down homeless people to the sidewalk and against their car are what I’m referring to. There have been three deaths in the County Jail this year, incidentally. But no–no beatings of that intensity reported to me. Sorry for any confusion. Police violence of any kind is a matter of grave concern, particularly when coupled with cover charges of “resisting arrest”.

We know that police departments don’t do that sort of thing, right? Oh, wait, Oakland just had an oversight guy with the power to spend and fire appointed because the OPD can’t control its violent force. And I think I heard something about the LAPD Ramparts scandal too.

Please post specifics of anything you observe or experience here.

by Alex Darocy

( alex [at] alexdarocy.com ) Friday Dec 7th, 2012 6:22 PM

Right after the raids on the homeless in Santa Cruz began in late July/early August, I interviewed two homeless people who said they were roughed up by the police when they were sleeping near the San Lorenzo River area. Many others in San Lorenzo Park and near the river levee at that time also reported to me that they had been yelled at and/or treated poorly in some way by the police. They all felt their experiences were directly related to the orchestrated raids and the resulting escalated attitude on the part of the SCPD.

by Alex Darocy

( alex [at] alexdarocy.com ) Saturday Dec 8th, 2012 12:23 PM

There is of course, a history of organized violence against local homeless people by the Santa Cruz Police Department, and that history could still be fresh in the minds of those who may be homeless today.

In this video I shot of Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark in February, Brent Adams briefly questions Clark about the “Code Blue” program of organized police violence against the homeless, which Clark states in the video, resulted in charges being leveled against the police, which then created an opportunity for him to join the force when he was first starting here.

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/02/17/18707600.php#18707603

(The discussion begins at minute 4:00 of the video)

by RazerRay

Saturday Dec 8th, 2012 6:48 PM

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Code Blue… Cattanni Reyes Chevalier… a couple of others working off-duty as thugs in consort with on-duty officers was real and the whole PD got roughed up by the State. That was in the early 1980s right? I remember. I SAW THEM IN ACTION.

NOTHING like this is happening, and you know I know. There’s a WHOLE BUNCH OF OTHER STUFF like kids growing up in a town where they KNOW (rightly or wrong) that they’re never gonna raise a next generation of family here so they become alkies and junkies and crackheads and, just as programmed by AmeriKKKan society, blame and attack anyone they see as responsible for those circumstances.

Guess who gets attacked? Or Junkie action as seen on Depot Hill a few weeks ago. Most of those people have lived here for years if not all their lives.

As far as the SCPD goes.. The thuggery is institutionalized now. The targeting people for tickets… A security guard standing nearby while one tries to have a private conversation on Pacific or on a bench by the library with a friend. They changed the “invisible lines” by the newsstand at Walnut in regard to where one may smoke last night and gave someone a ticket.

Harassment… Dissuasion… As I mentioned above DON’T EVER turn your back on them or they’ll tackle you down for fleeing (and if you have ANY alcohol in you TSOL 4 U).

But NOTHING EVEN REMOTELY RESEMBLING “Code Blue”. A moniker unknown to me until recently.

Did Robert Norse think that nifty degrading phrase up?

Those guys were OUT-OF-UNIFORM BLACKSHIRTS, and a local merchant blew them up… Because they, AS INDIVIDUALS, were way out of line.

The SCPD as a police agency is Out of Line now. They’ve been politicized to the point where they no longer function correctly as protectors of the community, but are driven to select who is defined as “community”, and if anything, the officers on the SCPD, by their very involvement in that sort of law enforcement “normality”, are individually ethic-less and corrupt.

by Alex Darocy

( alex [at] alexdarocy.com ) Saturday Dec 8th, 2012 7:44 PM

Thanks for adding some info, Ray. I wasn’t suggesting that the current violence practiced by some in the SCPD against homeless people is on par with that of the “Code Blue” days (that was Brent’s recollection of the name. I remember it had the word “blue” in it, but I don’t recall exactly what it was called, though I was also living in the area at the time).

I was merely providing some background info that pertains to why people now might want to compare the reign of the SCPD to that of the Nazis. Considering the fact that the “Code Blue” days were 30 years or so ago, and that current Deputy Chief Steve Clark was hired as a result, I see the events as still relevant.

by John E. Colby

Saturday Dec 8th, 2012 9:43 PM

The Sentinel is starting to reap what they have sowed. The anti-homeless sentiment they have been stoking has resulted in the Sentinel comment forums overflowing with anti-homeless hate speech. Regrettable that our local newspaper is so irresponsible. This marks more than a hundred year tradition of the Sentinel inciting hatred towards minorities.

by A Soldier and a Jew

Sunday Dec 9th, 2012 3:41 PM

Drawing a parallel between any modern day government and the Nazis is callous and disrespectful to those of us who lived through that time. There are very few of us left, but please be sensitive to those of us who are.

I don’t know much about your city council because I live in Freedom, but I can’t imagine they’re anything like Nazis.

So please refrain from disrespecting a whole generation, my brethren, who sacrificed so you could say what you say here.

by John E. Colby

Sunday Dec 9th, 2012 5:49 PM

It’s not disrespectful to the victims of the Nazi regime to point out analogies with present day regimes. In fact, the saying “Never again!”, requires that we point these similarities out.

by Observant

Sunday Dec 9th, 2012 6:04 PM

I think the commenter’s point is that there isn’t a meaningful analogy between the Santa Cruz PD ticketing you for smoking in a no-smoking zone, and the horrific excesses of the Nazis. None whatsoever.

This exercise in the Theatre of the Absurd, flashing Sieg Heil salutes at City Council, and calling people bigots, Nazis, Fascists if they disagree with you, has real emotional impact on people who have lived through actual bigotry, actual Nazis and actual Fascists.

Bandying these powerfully symbolic words around is incredibly insensitive and selfish. There are other more appropriate ways to express your dismay with the PD and City Council. Try using them. It would advance the dialogue immeasurably.

by John E. Colby

Sunday Dec 9th, 2012 6:32 PM

You keep misrepresenting the analogy to Nazism.

It’s not about an SCPD officer ticketing a homeless person for smoking. It’s about a culture of hate given authority by a city government which has whittled away relentlessly at civil rights. The city’s anti-homeless campaign, whipped up with anti-homeless hatred by the Sentinel, is happening within the context of our federal government taking off the gloves with its own citizens with terrible brutality reminiscent of fascist states like the Nazi regime while it pursues endless imperial wars abroad.

by Helper

Sunday Dec 9th, 2012 10:22 PM

I’m going to throw you guys a bone, since you can’t seem to argue your way out of a paper bag.

I’m guessing that your use of the terms “Nazi” and “fascist” are epithetical, and one is expected to interpret them not literally, but in that sense, slurs directed at people and governmental bodies for whom you have a great deal of contempt.

Sound about right? Why not say so? I mean, I’ve heard Robert described as a “fucking asshole” before, and, not knowing much about his sex life, and being certain that he isn’t the anus of another living being, I assume that this is a coarse slur, and nothing more.

Doesn’t change the fact that your choice of words is very insensitive, and I think, ultimately fails to help accomplish your goals.

I suppose one could argue that all the fucking assholes around could be offended by the casual use of the term to describe Robert, but they’re fucking assholes. So who cares what they think?

by RazerRay

Monday Dec 10th, 2012 10:06 AM

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beitar_youth_with_jabotin…

Image: Beitar Jewish Fascist Youth With Nazi collaborator and prominent Zionist Ze’ev Jabotinsky

I’m a Jew, and your “soldier” schtick doesn’t impress me as relevant, and I DO understand the semantics of Colby and Norse’ usage of the term.

Scale notwithstanding within American society (and it only took how many years for the Nazis to rise to power?), your version of Nazis (a term I object to mostly because it’s fixed in time with images frozen to match) and your Holocaust stopped at WWII. Because you’re the typical American Jewish narcissistic sociopath with an agenda of remembering the past but NOT looking at the presence of Fascism and authoritarian totalitarianism in modern society.

Why just last night I saw a flock of 5 or 6 cops, including Brass… The same ones I saw Robert badgering earlier in front of Forever21 (a sweatshop operation with factories in the US employing US citizens) stand for over an hour in front of PacificWave doing nothing and watching all the cars NOT STOP at the stop sign at Cooper & Pacific without hailing a single one down and THEN they swarmed a car that DID stop, that had music playing not loudly at all and a window open. They were swarmed like wanted criminals because they had music playing in their car that could be heard outside the car. Again, not loudly… . OF COURSE there were CHICANOS in the car.

Bet you didn’t know Chicanos are one ‘tribe’ of the New Jews being singled out for scapegoating in Rich White Santa Cruz’ SHOPPING MALL along with the houseless, and anyone deemed by APPEARANCE to be “Not Shopping”.

by RazerRay

Monday Dec 10th, 2012 12:51 PM

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Image: What Good is a Pig: Cuts of Pork, Nose-to-Tail
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2012/05/03/what-good-is-a-pig-cuts-of-pork-nose-to-tail/

Nazi… I mean it literally as in “American Nazi”.

Here’s what happens when they get a grip on your society:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/9330223/Rise-of-neo-Nazi-Golden-Dawn-party-leads-to-spate-of-immigrant-attacks-in-Greece.html

Did you know that it’s said 50% of the Greek Police voted for the Fascist Party in this last election?

Here’s a Straight Press attempt to debunk the story that fails to prove it’s point that, in large numbers, Police DON’T Luv Fascists: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/are-greek-policemen-really-voting-in-droves-for-greeces-neo-nazi-party/258767/

The American ‘Bastion of Democracy” is quite the same

But I don’t call them Fascists. Like “Pig” it just reinforces their machismo self-image.

I prefer to call them Fascia… as in something with Fascist symbolism made from FAGGOTS of wood.

It’s interesting to note that the underpaid and certainly under-trained False Alarm people the city has patrolling and observing the xmas shoppers in the evening are having to bear the brunt of the blowback from a VERY HOSTILE COMMUNITY. Many of the people I know are beginning to resist the illegitimate citations being handed out like so many Fascist Xmas cards to non-shoppers on Pacific.

..and the next time that over-age overweight Fascist patrolling the library on Weekdays glares at me while I’m working at my computer at the library there WILL BE a disturbance when I ask the librarian to get him to stop staring or leave. Besides he smells bad… Like “Bacon” crisping.

by Observant

Monday Dec 10th, 2012 3:58 PM

You’re doing exactly the same thing as the others, Ray. Golden Dawn and fascist sympathizers in the Greek Police force do not implicate anyone in Santa Cruz of anything.

And that Worst Alarm guy can stand there and stare at you all day if he likes. For all I know, he can videotape you too. That’s how this works. The problem is that you like these freedoms until someone exercises them in a way you don’t like.

That, I believe, is at the heart of authoritarianism. No?

by RazerRay

Monday Dec 10th, 2012 9:46 PM

“And that Worst Alarm guy can stand there and stare at you all day if he likes.”

No he can’t. Do it to a woman and you’d be charged with stalking anywhere in Santa Cruz and the same applies to males staring at males. The fuckwad already called the police twice on me for no reason whatsoever and two times the police and I came to the conclusion I wasn’t doing anything at all and left.

Third time’s a charm. I figure a faceful of oven cleaner might keep him there until the police and ambulance arrive. Stalking is a SERIOUS crime where the right to self defense is known to be perfectly rationale and appropriate.

We can let the courts figure it out considering I have good record of the first two contacts and a recording of my conversation with them about his abuse of authority, and False alarm’s going to have to find another Fascist wannabe to patrol for them. Because THAT guy is going to need a seeing eye dog.

“You’re doing exactly the same thing as the others, Ray. Golden Dawn and fascist sympathizers in the Greek Police force do not implicate anyone in Santa Cruz of anything.”

You just… aren’t… living… up to you nick bud.

Pay attention. The people who are experiencing it say it is, and in MY case with stories from pre-war Europe my grandparents and relatives told me still like yesterday in my ears, to me, you have no credibility whatsoever to say it doesn’t implicate out local fascia (faggots of wood turned to fascist symbols).

You say “Nada” and I say “Nazi” with great misgivings (albeit the owner of Morris Abrams who outed the “Code Blue” goons would perhaps not be so kind) preferring the word FASCIST.

Historically, as far as the end results to the victimized, there’s really precious little difference.

My grandparents… chased across Central Asia to the Baltic and then to Europe by the pogroms never used the word ‘holocaust’ either. It was just another mass pogrom, much like the pogrom against the state of California’s displaced workers, and Santa Cruz’ city government and it’s armed faggots (pieces of wood turned to fascist symbols) are certainly in the cohort of agencies statewide involved in harassment and selective enforcement in a major way.

If you die in the cold because you can’t find shelter from the wind and rain due to police ticketing of you every time you sit somewhere out of the weather but ‘private’… or thugged by some overamped on anti-homeless propaganda kid (The Santa Cruz Sentinel needs to be burned to the ground ASAP) with no future blaming it on YOU because they see you as a threat to their survival as I was a month or so ago, that’s BLACKSHIRTING, and the people responsible for CREATING THAT CIRCUMSTANCE locally NEED TO BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE.

FWIW, after being jumped by three kids while I slept last month, the police officer DID NOT WANT TO let me file a complaint. When I INSISTED. He wrote up an attack by three people on a sleeping victim as “Misdemeanor Battery” instead of a felony.

That way not only don’t they have to investigate, but it doesn’t show on their statistics that the Houseless are subject to extreme violence else the STATE might investigate…

I call “Coverup”.

You aren’t only un-observant bud… You’re out of the loop.

Oh… and I’m NOT “You guys”. I have nothing whatsoever to do with any of the other posters here. And I stick by that “American Jewish narcissistic sociopath” statement whether or not your insignificant self approves

by RazerRay

Tuesday Dec 11th, 2012 6:21 PM

Copy the following to embed the movie into another web page:

 download video: your_fascist_superhero_-_nuisance_laws.mp4 (27.3MB)

“Your Fascist Superhero”. A ten minute presentation by Superman and Batman in the left dialectic about how “nuisance laws”, and Santa Cruz LIVES FOR nuisance laws, only serve to further two interests.

Namely the police-industrial complex of the city and, of course, the Commercial Property Interests.

Good viewing and the dialectic is kept simple enough for even a Fascist to understand.

by Watcher

Wednesday Dec 12th, 2012 7:58 AM

“FWIW, after being jumped by three kids while I slept last month, the police officer DID NOT WANT TO let me file a complaint. When I INSISTED. He wrote up an attack by three people on a sleeping victim as “Misdemeanor Battery” instead of a felony.”

Wait a minute. You’re telling me that after all your railing against the Police State and against the SCPD for being fascists, Nazis and who knows what else, that you are now upset that they didn’t respond forcefully enough when you needed them for law enforcement on your behalf?

Are you serious? Really?

by Observing

Wednesday Dec 12th, 2012 10:44 AM

So, because Ray is a critic of the local police, he should not be able to call them for service?

He should not expect the police to treat his complaint the same as others who have called them?

Should the SCPD check Indybay first to see who they should respond to for service calls?

Should we all, who don’t pass their ‘smell test’, shut up and never call the police?

We should let the SCPD do all the thinking and all the decision making?

Thank you for making the case that we are living under Nazism here in downtown Santa Cruz.

by RazerRay

Wednesday Dec 12th, 2012 12:13 PM

…Against Nazi police. You read me call them, in so many words, “tools of Fascists”, and I suggest IF the police ACTUALLY DID THEIR JOB protecting EVERY citizen of the community with equal vigor they’d be doing something VERY DIFFERENT than what they’re doing now.

What? Did yo think I was some sort of Nihilist Anarchist or somesuch Troll-like delusion?

Sorry to disappoint you.

BTW, had a discussion with someone wearing “Brass” yesterday. Told me indirectly to demand more services. I refused a trip to the hospital for the bloody nose and blacked eye. THAT made the misdemeanor/felony difference.

by RazerRay

Wednesday Dec 12th, 2012 12:29 PM

The reason I didn’t take the ambulance trip.. In order of Importance.

10> I’m tougher than the backstop at a shooting gallery. ie. I wasn’t dying.

1> If I took that trip, my possessions… My sleeping bag, my clothing, my bike etc, would have been left at the scene and most likely be stolen, or confiscated by the city with a recovery time…. unknown.

…and we’re back to some thorny issues regarding certain problems unique to displaced workers and the homeless in general aren’t we?

It’s incredibly hard to get ‘justice’ EVEN IF the PD is compliant… when you’re a law abiding citizen but have no domicile.

by Watcher

Wednesday Dec 12th, 2012 12:55 PM

To call Ray a critic of the Santa Cruz PD is like calling Adolf Hitler a critic of the Jews. The only thing keeping the police alive in Ray’s presence is the fact that they’re armed with guns and Ray only has oven cleaner in his backpack.

It’s just very hypocritical to spew that much invective against a governmental body and then cry Uncle when miscreants wake you up sleeping outdoors..

Mind you, the cops didn’t even ticket Ray for sleeping outdoors. Which is a big part of the Santa-Cruz-is-a-police-state argument, right?

by FD

Wednesday Dec 12th, 2012 1:19 PM

…in Fresno, Ray would be an endangered species. After that threat he posted, to blind someone with that oven cleaner, the first time he approached anyone who was armed, with can in hand, the last sound he’d hear would be a gun going off. Making threats, even on line, can have dire consequences.

by Watching

Wednesday Dec 12th, 2012 1:42 PM

“Mind you, the cops didn’t even ticket Ray for sleeping outdoors. Which is a big part of the Santa-Cruz-is-a-police-state argument, right?”

So the SCPD, after not taking his complaint of abuse seriously, should have ticketed Ray for telling them that he was sleeping, even though they did not themselves find him asleep?

I wonder what you think should happen to a homeless woman who calls the SCPD after being raped while sleeping “illegally” ? I guess if that ever happens, she should feel lucky if she doesn’t get a ticket? Would this encourage or discourage those who are vulnerable and at risk to call the police after a violent attack? Which should be the SCPD’s priority, addressing violence, or addressing people who are sleeping?

You, sir or madame, are the voice of fascism that fuels the SCPD and the local police state, one that discriminates against the homeless.

“To call Ray a critic of the Santa Cruz PD is like calling Adolf Hitler a critic of the Jews.”

Ever heard of poetics? Ray uses a lot of it.

I’d also like to remind everyone that Ray has self-identified as having a personal link to Judaism, which further adds context to Watcher’s comments, and the Hitler reference.

by John E. Colby

Wednesday Dec 12th, 2012 4:22 PM

Ray’s arguments prevailed. The video he presented was excellent. I wish this obsessive poster would just accept it and stop posting personal diatribes.

by Robert Norse

Wednesday Dec 12th, 2012 10:44 PM

For those interested in the selective and arbitrary use of the Downtown Ordinances, the Sleeping Ban, and other anti-homeless laws, hear first hand-accounts tomorrow night on my show 6-8 PM 101.3 FM, streaming at http://tunein.com/radio/FRSC-s47254/. The proposed California Homeless Bill of Rights proposes to combat these abuses or discourage them: see http://wraphome.org/?p=2831&option=com_wordpress&Itemid=119.

Arguing with folks who wish to dismiss or minimize the escalating abuses and violence against homeless people–institutionalized in the curfews, police sweeps, modified library rules, and “quality of life” laws–is really a waste of time.

The real issue is how do we mobilize to expose, resist, and discourage this kind of hate crime.

I encourage people to keep a close eye on the library and report on how librarians (and their security guard pals) are treating homeless-looking folks there. Please be accurate and specific in your reports. Time, place, specific names, details, etc.

by RazerRay

Thursday Dec 13th, 2012 8:34 AM

I don’t have oven cleaner in my backpack. I don”t need it. I’m more than physically and technically capable of disarming and manually restraining any False Alarm guard I’ve met if necessary when I’m not sleeping, and I don’t own a backpack.

by Observer

Thursday Dec 13th, 2012 9:07 AM

“Arguing with folks who wish to dismiss or minimize the escalating abuses and violence against homeless people–institutionalized in the curfews, police sweeps, modified library rules, and “quality of life” laws–is really a waste of time. ”

Yes, and preaching to the choir is far more productive…

Sorry, but not letting people use the library as a dorm doesn’t quite rise to the level of ‘hate crime’, even in a hyperbolic world.

by RazerRay

Thursday Dec 13th, 2012 9:30 AM

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dgr_-_which_side_are_you_…

NOT whether someone is committing some institutional administrative infraction but Where’s the INSTITUTIONAL RECOURSE if one IS accused of using the library as a “Dorm” or someone says they “Smell”.

As I stated earlier, the over-aged security guard who saunters around the library grounds on weekdays like he owns the place and DIRECTLY INTERFERES BY HIS OVERBEARING AND UP-CLOSE PRESENCE with MY PRIVATE CONVERSATIONAL RIGHT TO PRIVACY while sucking the taxpayer’s teat for a paycheck and calls the police for illegitimate reasons (as the police verified for me in a recorded conversation) smells like cooking Pig, and that odor is offensive to vegetarians… housed or allegedly “Dorming” at the library.

by G

Thursday Dec 13th, 2012 5:12 PM

Interesting statistic…

Number of comments about napping = a pile
Number of comments about desal spending = a few

Does anyone know the desal:library cost ratio, offhand? Just curious.

by RazerRay

Thursday Dec 13th, 2012 9:10 PM

I was going to point to this post: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/11/27/18726550.php Where I had commented that the Desal project is a taxpayers giveaway to a specific very powerful business group in Santa Cruz county, the Agriculture industry, by subsidizing their water to grow two of the most water-intensive crops in the world… Strawberries and Lettuce, in a region that just doesn’t have a lot of water to start with, but the comment has been, as is usual on indybay, mysteriously removed within the last month or so.

That may be your ratio issue. Someone removed comments.. Funny. Yours (G) is still there

by Memory

Friday Dec 14th, 2012 10:39 AM

Are you sure your comment was deleted, Ray?

This is a comment you made on a different article, and it sounds like the one you are talking about:

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/11/24/18726362.php?show_comments=1#18726391

by RazerRay

Friday Dec 14th, 2012 11:53 AM

After a while where I posted what becomes a blur.

by G

Friday Dec 14th, 2012 3:38 PM

I was wondering what the ratio is because observant people seemed to be posting a lot about napping and nothing at all about desal. It felt kind of inverse, dollar-wise, but I wasn’t sure, hence the question.

Then again, maybe there were observant posts about desal, that were removed by the mysterious powers that indy (I’ve always asserted moderation corrupts, any moderation).

by Robert Norse

Tuesday Dec 18th, 2012 3:58 AM

The Public Records Act sent to head librarian T. Landers is now 14 days old and unanswered. State law requires a response within 10 days. I’ll be seeking legal advice on how to encourage Landers, a big fan of rules for the poor in the library, to follow state law herself.

For a copy of the request see http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/11/30/18726836.php?show_comments=1#18727166 above.

If anyone has gotten a complete copy of the library rules, please post them here, so we can all be good law-abiding folks. And perhaps serve as a shining example to the privileged rulesmaker T. Landers.

by John E. Colby

Tuesday Dec 18th, 2012 5:47 AM

From my memory of your public records request to Ms. Landers, you would have a slam dunk case if you choose to spend $500-$1000 to take her agency to court and your lawyer’s fees would be paid by her agency in case you prevail. I see no way she can argue the records you seek are exempt. Consult a FOI attorney.

What better agency to force transparency on than a library!

by RazerRay

Wednesday Dec 19th, 2012 6:53 PM

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[Image: Seen @ Santa Cruz City Hall]

Let’s get to the roots toots… Ms Landers IS NOT the person driving the policy changes. She’s just the manager-in-the-middle and albeit the appropriate person to go to for information and documentation, those changes are driven by political demands responding to sociological issues essentially set in motion by the city of Santa Cruz’ failure to develop a viable community for EVERYONE who lives here. To the best of their ability.

The library gets the ‘fallout’ from the city’s “Nuclear” policies about their displaced workers and other low income Santa Cruz residents. Poor people go to libraries when there’s nothing else to do or anywhere else to go.

I call “Nuclear Option” too. Fuck FOIA & Library… RICO Act & City of Santa Cruz… drag their influence over an allegedly independent library board into court and subpoena the dox.

Just sayin’

by G

Thursday Dec 20th, 2012 4:29 AM

#MoreForensicAccountingPlease

by RazerRay

Thursday Dec 20th, 2012 7:37 AM

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…and I DO NOT mean that in jest, and you, as “Taxpayer” SHOULD be concerned.

Read the last post I put up troll. The answer to WHY it’s RICO Act is right in there.

The city of Santa Cruz HAS SOCIOECONOMICALLY OVER THE LAST DECADE and a half INTENTIONALLY created the socioeconomic circumstances that, BY THEIR OWN FOOLISH GREEDY PLANNING, caused the “Mess” at the library.

Then they VILIFY THE VICTIMS OF THEIR POLICIES.

Got that fool? I’m calling you “Fool” because that’s obviously the median intelligence level for a ‘taxpayer’ in Santa Cruz who would have allowed them to do that to the disadvantage of ALL citizens here except the wealthy… Or maybe you’re just greedy, and vicious, and an unwitting tool of American Fascists who call themselves Santa Cruz “progressive liberal” ‘government.

There’s a RICO Act indictment or a dozen somewhere within that decade and a half… Gaa…run…teed. To bad the ACLU here is nothing more than a fan club.

The state or federal government could EASILY tear this city’s government apart just as surely as they tore the SCPD apart three decades ago, and Santa Cruz citizens would ALL benefit from that.

by RazerRay

Thursday Dec 20th, 2012 7:48 AM

Sigh… “Taxpayer”‘s post went away. Maybe just as well to leave the response as an addendum to what I had posted last

by John E. Colby

Friday Dec 21st, 2012 5:35 PM

“The state or federal government could EASILY tear this city’s government apart just as surely as they tore the SCPD apart three decades ago, and Santa Cruz citizens would ALL benefit from that.”

Only the Feds can clean up this dirty little city now. All the local checks and balances have failed.

Looking At All Sides

Posted on by
by Mike Roberts, Santa Cruz
Good Times Letters to the Editor 6/21-27/12

I moved here three years ago and continue to find this the most wonderful place in many ways. I came here from Charleston, S.C., where I grew up. I worked 20-plus years for the woman that raised Jesse Jackson. I know something about ‘black’ people, I think. And I know it is increasingly inappropriate to consider race when chasing riddles, but I think the biggest misperception common to Shannon Collins’ murder was that which linked him to the homeless community here, a community which I have been a part of since I got here because I recognize these people as family regardless of their hygeine and sanity, for I am myself homeless. What I think should enter public thinking is the observation that the man was a big misfit, unable to reconcile himself to any idea of how to find a comfortable existence among all of these dirty, scary white people (and he had made basically just such complaint for the record at some point as I read it). Someone in his place is as lost as someone in a nuthouse who considers that the only way out is through the window, no matter how high, and he felt like he was on the roof of the nuthouse. Carrying a Bible, come on. Who did not see this as an outcry for some sort of personal, spiritual attention.

Court, medical records detailed history of violence, mental illness of suspected murderer Charles Edwards

Posted on by
Jessica M. Pasko and J.M. Brown
SC Sentinel:   05/25/2012

SANTA CRUZ — The man accused of fatally stabbing Santa Cruz business owner Shannon Collins has a history of violence against his family that frightened his mother so much she told friends not to tell him where she lived.

Court and medical files from San Francisco Superior Court paint a disturbing picture of Charles Anthony Edwards III, the man accused of stabbing to death Collins as she walked to a hair appointment from home on May 7 on Broadway. Edwards, 43, was arrested on suspicion of murder moments after Collins was stabbed. The two did not know each other, police said. He is being held in County Jail in a unit reserved for those with mental health problems, according to his attorney, Anthony Robinson. Edwards pleaded not guilty to all charges Tuesday. He’s due back in court on June 4 to set a date for his preliminary hearing.

Edwards, who was released from state parole in December, is believed to have been in the Santa Cruz area for about a week before Collins was killed. He’d spent four nights at the city’s Homeless Services Center, according to the center’s executive director, Monica Martinez. She said he was cooperative and docile during his stay there.

Edwards has a history of mental illness that includes multiple terms of commitment in prison mental institutions that began in 1991, according to court records. Prison medical staff found him to be schizophrenic and bipolar, according to records. He also has a long history of substance abuse, including use of cocaine, crack, marijuana and alcohol.

YOUTHFUL OFFENDER

His lengthy criminal rap sheet began when he was just 13, when he was arrested for a robbery. A year later he was arrested for grand theft and committed to California Youth Authority, to which he would return in 1986 after being arrested for burglary and receiving stolen property. He was paroled from California Youth Authority in 1989.

A decade after that first offense, Edwards was charged with his first assault. He received probation after pleading guilty, but violated the terms of his probation and was sentenced to two years in state prison.

Between 1993 and 1996, he was in and out of prison for crimes that included battering an 89-year-old man in 1995 and violating parole. According to court records, Atascadero officials said his parole violations mostly involved violent behavior or substance abuse.

Notably, much of Edwards’ violent behavior has targeted his mother, Ethel Flores. His parents split when he was 10 years old, and his father, a retired bus driver, was described as an alcoholic. His mother owned a business and raised Edwards along with his two half-siblings.

In 1996, Edwards pleaded guilty to assaulting his mother in San Francisco and was released on parole 16 months later. He threatened Flores and his two young nieces in two telephone messages in January 1998, threatening to kill all three if he found out where Flores was living. Records show Flores had told authorities she believed her son would act on his threats and she told friends not to tell him where she lived.

“Ms. Flores was so scared that she was afraid to go anywhere,” according to reports from the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office. “Ms. Flores had been beaten and threatened by the defendant in the past and took his threats seriously.”

Flores kept a tape recording of the message and played it for a San Francisco police officer. In a rambling string of expletives and often nonsensical commentary, he threatens to kill her.

Flores also told police her son previously had assaulted her five times and she’d filed police reports.

“He had drawn hammers back at me,” she told police when she reporting the threats. “He has kicked me all in my head. That last time the ambulance had to come.”

She added, “I want him charged, I want him locked up.”

“I have did (sic) nothing but try to help that guy. I’ve given him the best advice. I’ve even made him go to school one time but he just couldn’t finish. And I am tired,” she said at the time. “I’ll be 55 years old in August. And the kids’ lives are in danger. I’m going back to work at the end of the month. I can’t watch them every minute.”

DOWNWARD SPIRAL

Edwards’ mental health deteriorated and the case was put off while he was treated at state medical facilities for several years, according to records. Medical staff found he had chronic and paranoid schizophrenia and at one point admitted him to San Quentin’s infirmary for increased delusions and paranoia.

In 2002, an Atascadero official sent a letter to the district attorney in San Francisco that said the “defendant is a person who, because of a severe mental disorder which is not in remission or cannot be kept in remission unless the person’s treatment is continued” poses a threat to the public. “Without said treatment, such a person represents a substantial danger of physical harm to others.”

The official reported that Edwards had been physically violent and did not follow his treatment plan, and seemed to believe the Caucasian staff was out to get him. In one incident, Edwards picked up a chair and “repeatedly hit a window until it shattered,” the official wrote. Edwards was placed in full bed restraints and calmed with drugs.

He was released in 2003 and a jury found that he was “not a mentally disordered offender.”

The records in San Francisco drop off after 2003, but Edwards later spent time in jail in Los Angeles and San Diego counties for crimes including resisting an officer using force. The Sentinel has filed public information requests for those records.

GOLDEN GATE PARK SWEEP – CAN CITY MAKE IT STICK? / HOMELESS ROUSTED: 4:30 a.m. wakeup for the park campers

Posted on by
Heather Knight
SF Chronicle, August 2, 2007

For 19-year-old Brandon Krigbaum, who goes by the name Repo Violence, the wake-up call came at 4:30 a.m.

Police officers and homeless outreach workers rousted him and his friends from their sleeping bags Wednesday morning in an encampment on Chicken Hill, near Golden Gate Park’s popular tennis courts.

Similar awakenings happened throughout the park, as well as Buena Vista Park, Corona Heights and other outdoor expanses as Mayor Gavin Newsom‘s pledge to clear the city’s parks of homeless encampments once and for all continued to take shape.

Teams of police officers and city outreach workers took Krigbaum and 58 other bleary-eyed homeless people in vans to a huge, off-white canvas tent set up for one morning in Sharon Meadows. An additional 25 homeless people came to the tent on their own – perhaps drawn by the coffee, bagels, orange wedges and blueberries provided by the city.

The tent was erected eight days after The Chronicle reported that the park was riddled with homeless encampments and hypodermic needles – despite Newsom’s well-publicized efforts to clear the parks of encampments last fall.

Inside the tent, workers sat at rows of desks with signs reading “Housing Information,” “Shelter Reservations” and “County Benefits” and met one-on-one with homeless people. After eight hours’ work, 44 people accepted the offer of a roof over their heads, and 40 turned it down.

“That’s actually very good on the first swing,” said Dr. Rajesh Parekh, who runs the city’s Homeless Outreach Team.

But the question on the minds of families who use the park and the homeless people themselves was whether the outreach efforts would be permanent or whether, as in past efforts, city officials would eventually move on to something else.

“The mayor, because it’s an election year, they’re calling him out on his claim of fixing Golden Gate Park,” said Krigbaum, one of those who rejected the offer of a shelter bed. “They think they’re moving everybody out of the park, but they’re just moving them downtown for a while, and then they’ll be back.”

Parents of children playing at the newly redesigned playground just yards away also were doubtful the park would ever be cleared of homeless encampments. Over the sounds of organ music coming from the carousel, Chris Pratt, a 33-year-old father of two daughters, said he was skeptical Newsom would make a permanent change.

“I know he’s tried before, but I think it’s a long battle,” said the Sunset District resident. He added that the one-day tent probably wouldn’t do much. “To me, this is just a Band-Aid. They’re just looking for some good press.”

Ruth Ekhaus, a mother from the Outer Sunset, said it’s still worth trying again.

“It’s San Francisco – people have been talking about this for so many years,” she said. “These people need services, and they shouldn’t be living in the park – for their own safety and health and for the safety and health of people who live near the park and use it.”

Trent Rhorer, director of the San Francisco Human Services Agency, said that unlike last fall’s 90-day push, the new effort will last for at least the duration of the fiscal budget.

The new budget contains $2.8 million for the park, including seven outreach workers, who will work full-time trying to get homeless people living in the park and surrounding neighborhoods into housing. The Department of Recreation and Parks also has more gardeners and custodians, many of whom will concentrate on the park.

“I don’t know that there’s every going to be a time when we say, ‘We’re done with our work,’ ” Rhorer said. “The park has long been a destination for homeless individuals, as has the Haight, so it requires an ongoing presence in perpetuity.”

Rhorer said the city – which schedules Project Homeless Connect in the Civic Center every other month – might start bringing the tent and its services to the park on a quarterly basis.

There’s a rule on the books that nobody but joggers and drivers can use Golden Gate Park between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., but it hasn’t been enforced. Newsom is considering closing all city parks from midnight to 6 a.m.

“A mother told me that nothing good ever happens after midnight, and I think she was on to something. And it’s suggestive. Why do you keep the park open after midnight?” Newsom said Wednesday.

Newsom said he has turned to staffers for feedback on the issue of closing the park but has not yet made up his mind on whether he wants to go through with it.

“We’re going to do it the right way,” he said. “I’m not going to go in with a bulldozer. I’m not going to go in and knock people out.”

Newsom also is considering raising all park violations to misdemeanors; now, some of them are infractions and are usually thrown out in traffic court. On Wednesday, some homeless people were issued citations for camping before being taken to the tent.

Twenty-three people were placed in shelters Wednesday, and 17 were placed in transitional housing, which is rent-free and is intended to last for a few months until permanent housing can be arranged.

Four people were driven to the Transbay Terminal and given free bus tickets home through the city’s Homeward Bound program – to mothers in San Luis Obispo and Athens, Ga., a daughter in Santa Fe and an uncle in Phoenix.

Brian Austin, 29, said he’d been living in the park for 11 years and was finally ready to move on.

“I’m just physically drained – it’s time to get my life back together,” he said.

Malcom Pearman, a 55-year-old military veteran with a yellow jacket reading “Honk to Stop the War,” also got a spot at a shelter.

“I think it’s wonderful,” he said of the effort to clear the park. “It’s the best thing I’ve heard yet.”

A 25-year-old named Josh, who wouldn’t disclose his last name, also found success at the tent. He and his dog, Rosco, were moved into transitional housing. The Homeless Outreach Team last year started working with building managers to get dogs accepted into some SRO hotels.

Krigbaum sat for hours outside the tent, chatting with friends and eating breakfast. The Sacramento native has been camping on the park off and on since first arriving in the city a year ago.

“I really enjoy myself – hanging out, being free, saying in the morning, ‘I can do whatever I want,’ ” he said.

He panhandles in the Haight and plays the guitar and harmonica at Pier 39. His dyed orange mohawk and multiple piercings make him a popular photograph subject for tourists, who often give him a few dollars in return.

He refused to stay in a shelter because he thinks they’re too dangerous. He said he’d consider moving into transitional housing at some point. But as for his accommodations in the short term?

“I’ll probably sleep in the park,” he said.

GOLDEN GATE PARK SWEEP – CAN CITY MAKE IT STICK? / ‘MARCH OF JUNKIES’: Haight’s residents fume over needles

Posted on by
C.W. Nevius
SF Chronicle, August 2, 2007

Finding the needle exchange in the Haight isn’t easy. Walk west on Haight Street, take a right at Cole, and turn in the first doorway. There’s no identification, just a blue sign that says, “entrance.”

Walk up the hall, which smells of urine, and then knock on the scratched and battered wooden door. After two or three tries, someone might open the door a crack to see what you want.

Welcome to a city drug needle exchange and HIV prevention facility.

When then-Mayor Frank Jordan signed legislation endorsing needle exchanges in 1992, it was a high-minded, civically progressive program to slow the spread of HIV and hepatitis C. Drug users would get a needle, use it, then return it for a clean one. That’s still the idea – and it is a good one – but somewhere along the line the concept went low-rent.

Today the Haight facility looks more like a hole in the wall. The neighbors, many of whom say they have never been told what’s going on up the street, find syringes in their gardens. And the original idea – a one-for-one exchange – is largely ignored.

The exchange is run by the Homeless Youth Alliance, which gets a yearly budget of $275,000 from the city Department of Public Health. As the alliance’s program director, Mary Howe, admits, they make no more than a rough count of the incoming needles. If someone says he returned 40, they hand over 40 new ones. And, if he doesn’t have any, they give him 20 as a startup stash.

“The point for a needle exchange is not to get every needle back,” says Howe. “The majority of users dispose of needles in a respectful manner.”

And those who don’t?

“That’s not my responsibility,” Howe said. “I can’t hold everyone’s hand and make everyone put them in a bio bucket. If someone has a liquor store, and they sell liquor to someone who gets into an accident, is it the store’s fault?”

But this is a little different. Even Tracey Packer, interim director of the Health Department‘s HIV Prevention Program, thinks that’s too strong.

“It is our responsibility,” she says. “We all have to participate to make sure everyone is safe.”

The public health danger posed by used syringes got my attention during a visit to nearby Golden Gate Park last month to check out homeless campsites. I found so many discarded and new needles it raised the question of where they all came from. To the neighbors on Cole, it is obvious – they are being given out by the double-handful at the needle exchange.

Howe, a true believer who is a recovering addict herself, feels the debris is an unfortunate byproduct of a necessary initiative. To her, the single, most-important issue is stopping the spread of infectious disease. If that means giving out a double-handful of needles to someone who might leave them scattered in Golden Gate Park, so be it.

But Les Silverman, who has lived on Cole Street since 1973, feels the fact that there are plenty of needles available increases his chances of finding used needles in his garden. He doesn’t think that’s a coincidence.

“Why, especially, would our block have needles in our gardens?” he says. “Like my neighbors, we believe in the concept of needle exchange. What we take issue with is location, transparency and oversight.”

Silverman and other Cole Street residents have become familiar with “The March of the Junkies.” In the early afternoon they trudge up the street to the corner, then turn and hike back down to the Panhandle portion of Golden Gate Park. Somewhere along the line, needles and condoms can be tossed in the bushes, and the homeless people turn their gardens into rest rooms.

“To me,” says Grace Hersh, who lives across the street from Silverman, “it is just this stream of (a) dreadful element. It’s disturbing.”

Howe admits that there hasn’t been much outreach to the neighbors. Newcomers like Jeff Goldsmith, who has two children – Ariane, 6, and Simon, 9 – says he just recently learned about the needle exchange up the street. He’s found only a few needles in the last few months, and when your kids are involved, that’s too many.

“I’m actually in favor of needle exchange,” he says. “But if you are finding needles, they are not being exchanged.”

Packer, at the city Health Department, strongly disagrees that the availability of needles is what is contributing to dirty discards in nearby Golden Gate Park. But doesn’t that seem logical? If needles can be acquired by the handful, why bother to keep track of the one you just used?

A lot of people say this is a homelessness problem or an addiction problem. But for those who are trying to make a life for their families in San Francisco homes, it is simpler than that.

Consider the case of Ken Stevens, a lifelong resident of the city. Three years ago he took his 5-year-old son, Michael, to the playground at Corona Heights – a park we visited earlier this week.

Michael climbed up on the play structure, then turned to his dad and said, “Ouch.” He’d been poked by a needle left on the slide.

“You talk about a parent’s worst nightmare,” Stevens says today. “I think I went out of my mind for a couple of hours.”

Michael turned out to be fine, but it took three months of blood panels to establish that. By then, Stevens had reached a decision.

“As soon as that happened, it was pretty much an instant disconnect,” he says.

In a matter of months, Stevens had moved his family to Los Altos.