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Indybay Feature

Camp-Out Against the Coonerty Crackdown: 5th Sunday on the Sidewalk

by Robert Norse
With new stats revealing SCPD tickets for "illegal sleeping" have doubled from a year ago, homeless activists and their housed supporters will be back in front of Vice-Mayor Ryan Coonerty's Bookshop Santa Cruz Sunday at 2 PM to build support for a Tent City at City Hall on August 12th. Come on down to 1520 Pacific to sign up and sing out!
Vice-Mayor Coonerty is a particular target of this protest because of his attorney status, his outspoken opinions at Santa Cruz justifying criminalizing the homeless (he proposed the Parking Garage Paranoia Law--which criminalizes walking into city parking garages without a vehicle or bicycle), his bizarre claim to being a civil liberties advocate (teaching civil liberties classes at UCSC and Cabrillo), his position on the Public Safety Committee (overseeing the SCPD), and his backroom decision via the meets-in-secret Downtown Working Group to orchestrate an anti-homeless crackdown downtown this spring.

At the last Council meeting of the summer on July 24th, Mayor Reilly and Vice-Mayor Coonerty ignored an appeal to respect the federal court's JONES decision [http://www.aclu.org/rightsofthepoor/housing/25070prs20060414.html] halting police from citing homeless people in Los Angeles in the large inner city area known as Skid Row. Some quotes from that decision:

"(This) case stands for “the proposition that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the state from punishing an involuntary act or condition if it is the unavoidable consequence of one’s status or being.”
“The City…apparently believes that [the plaintiffs] can avoid sitting, lying and sleeping for days, weeks, or months at a time to comply with the City’s ordinance, as if human beings could remain in perpetual motion. That being an impossibility, by criminalizing, sitting lying, and sleeping, the City is in fact criminalizing [the plaintiffs] status as homeless individuals.”

Activists will offer homeless folks some possible retorts to midnight police wake-ups (see rough draft of flyer in comment section following).

Vice-Mayor Coonerty has again been invited to show up to discuss the issue, either on the sidewalk or on the radio on Bathrobespierre's Broadsides, a Free Radio Santa Cruz show airing Sunday 9:30 AM to 1 PM at 101.1 FM (http://www.freakradio.org). He has thus far refused all such offers and declined to reread the Jones decision, which he said he read a year ago but "forgot" the details of.

An activist from L.A. Community Action Network is scheduled to call in during the Sunday radio show to discuss the latest updates from Los Angeles.

Archived discussion of the Sleeping Ban struggle can be found in past shows archived at http://www.huffsantacruz.org.

More info at http://indybay.org/newsitems/2007/07/19/18436479.php ("Building Towards Tent City: Week Four In Front of Coonerty's Bookshop")
Add Your Comments

Comments (Hide Comments)
by Robert Norse

1. Are you requiring me to move? Where? Is it legal to sleep where you are asking me to move to? Or are you telling me that I simply have no legal right to sleep at night in Santa Cruz?

2. Did anyone specifically complain about my sleeping or camping here? Did they claim there were any other problems (such as noise, litter, etc.) ?

3. Can you offer me an alternative to sleeping here? Is there any place in Santa Cruz where it’s legal to sleep now? Can you direct me there so I can obey the law?

4. [If it’s a shelter,] will there be someone there this time of night to admit me?

5. Are you aware that the shelters are full ? Are you aware that the Homeless Services Center regularly will issue letters declaring that? Do you know what the drop-in emergency shelter capacity is in Santa Cruz [less than 40 until Nov. 15th & then only 160 at most] ?

6. Are you are that tickets are being regularly dismissed because the shelters are full ?

7. Why are you ticketing me if you know that the ticket will be dismissed in court?

8. Are you aware of the Los Angeles “Jones Decision?” [No. 04-55324; D.C. No. CV-03-01142-ER] of April 2006 from the 9th Federal Circuit Court of Appeals] ? It declares it is cruel and unusual punishment to arrest homeless people at night when there is no legal place for them to sleep? [ “...so long as there is a greater number of homeless individuals in Los Angeles than the number of available beds, the City may not enforce section 41.18(d) at all times and places throughout the City against homeless individuals for involuntarily sitting, lying, and sleeping in public.”]

[“...the Eighth Amendment prohibits the City from punishing involuntary sitting, lying, or sleeping on public sidewalks that is an unavoidable consequence of being human and homeless without shelter in the City of Los Angeles.”]

[“The City...apparently believe[s] that Appellants can avoid sitting, lying, and sleeping for days, weeks, or months at a time to comply with the City’s ordinance, as if human beings could remain in perpetual motion. That being an impossibility, by criminalizing sitting, lying, and sleeping, the City is in fact criminalizing Appellants’ status as homeless individuals.” p. 32]

[“...[E]nforcement of section 41.18(d) [the Los Angeles sleeping ban] at all times and in all places against homeless individuals who are sitting, lying, or sleeping in Los Angeles Skid Row because they cannot obtain shelter violates the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause. As homeless individuals, Appellants are in a chronic state that may have been acquired ‘innocently or involuntarily.’ Whether sitting, lying, and sleeping are defined as acts or conditions, they are universal and unavoidable consequences of being human. It is undisputed that, for homeless individuals in Skid Row who have no access to private spaces, these acts can only be done in public.” p. 31]

[“The City could not expressly criminalize the status of homelessness by making it a crime to be homeless without violating the Eight Amendment, nor can it criminalize acts that are an integral aspect of that status. Because there is substantial and undisputed evidence that the number of homeless persons in Los Angeles far exceeds the number of available shelter beds at times, including on the nights of their arrest or citation, Los Angeles has encroached upon the Appellants’ Eighth Amendment protections by criminalizing the unavoidable act of sitting, lying or sleeping at night while being involuntarily homeless.” p. 4443]

[“It is undisputed...that Appellants have been and in the future will probably be fined, arrested, imprisoned, and/or prosecuted as well as suffer the loss of their personal property, for involuntarily violating section 41.18(d). These preconviction harms, some of which occur immediately upon citation or arrest, suffice to establish standing and are not salved by the potential availability of a necessity defense. The loss of Appellants’ possessions when they are arrested and held in custody is particularly injurious because they have so few resources and may find that everything they own has disappeared by the time they return to the street.”
“Moreover, the practical realities of homelessness make the necessity defense a false promise for those charged with violating section 41.18(d). Homeless individuals, who may suffer from mental illness, substance abuse problems, unemployment, and poverty, are unlikely to have the knowledge or resources to assert a necessity defense to a section 41.18(d) charge, much less to have access to counsel when they are arrested and arraigned. Furthermore, even counseled homeless individuals are unlikely to subject themselves to further jail time and a trial when they can plead guilty in return for a sentence of time served and immediate release. Finally one must question the policy of arresting, jailing, and prosecuting individuals whom the City Attorney concedes cannot be convicted due to a necessity defense. If there is no offense for which the homeless can be convicted, is the City admitting that all that comes before is merely police harassment of a vulnerable population?” p. 4441]

9. Knowing that there is no legal place to sleep and that the citation will be dismissed, are you still going to issue me a citation and demand I move?

10. Could I speak to your sergeant? What is his name? Have you been advised it’s all right to issue citations even where there’s no shelter? Who so advised you?

11. [If applicable], I also have the following psychological and physical disabilities: [itemize them] As a vulnerable disabled person, I wish to be either left alone or transported to a safer place to sleep. Will you do this?

12. Are you familiar with the 8th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States? “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” I would ask you to protect and respect my Constitutional rights or take responsibility for violating them.

13. Are you familiar with the 17th Amendment to the California Constitution: “Cruel or unusual punishment may not be inflicted or excessive fines imposed.”

14. I do not believe you have probable cause to issue this citation given the fact that you know shelters are full and you are aware of the Jones decision. Will you take me to a magistrate to show that probably cause before issuing this citation and before I sign it ? I am not refusing to sign, but simply want to exercise my right to see a magistrate. [If it is nighttime, the police may take you to jail.]
by Irma
Bring camera phones or small video cameras. Those are essential for demonstrating that a police report saying someone is belligerent is inaccurate. Never try to conceal either - just have them as a neutral item that everyone knows is turned on, like customer service phone numbers record your conversation.
by homie
maybe we should sticker his building with "I Like Dogs and I Vote" bumperstickers, only cross off Dogs and write in "Homeless" instead.......
yours in insurrectionary advertising
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