Racist Cops crack down on Section 8 tenants

Press Release
Investigation Reveals Antioch Police Team Interferes with Housing Rights
of African-Americans

December 18, 2007— In the midst of a foreclosure crisis that has hit Antioch harder than virtually any other city in the country, the local Police Department has engaged in a pattern of interfering with the housing rights of low-income African-American families who are renting homes that might otherwise sit vacant. That is the conclusion of a report issued today by Public Advocates Inc. and Bay Area Legal Aid detailing the outcome of their five month investigation.

Click below for Press Release, and ull report...

http://www.publicadvocates.org/

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Rights groups accuse police of prejudice
ANTIOCH: City rebuts allegations of racism in enforcement of Section 8 housing codes
By Simon Read

STAFF WRITER
Article Launched: 12/18/2007 02:59:43 AM PST

http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_7750212?nclick_check=1

Two civil rights organizations are accusing the Antioch Police Department of racism and harassment in its enforcement of municipal housing codes.

Public Advocates, a legal advocacy group, and Bay Area Legal Aid, a provider of free civil legal services, announced earlier this year that they were investigating whether the police department's Community Action Team discriminates against black families in the federally subsidized Section 8 housing program.

Formed in July 2006, the team investigates problem properties and assists the Contra Costa Housing Authority in monitoring Antioch's subsidized housing. On Monday, city officials dismissed the advocacy groups' 41-page report, to be released today, as wholly inaccurate.

"The report wrongly portrays the Antioch community in a negative light that is unfair, unjust and untrue as anyone who lives, works, visits or does business in this proud community knows," Antioch City Attorney Lynn Tracy Nerland said in a statement released Monday night.

The report reaches three conclusions. First, black families are four times more likely to be scrutinized by the Community Action Team than are white families. Next, the team is not "race-neutral" in its enforcement of housing laws. Third, the team is interfering with the housing rights of law-abiding black families.

The organizations said they reviewed 775 pages of information turned over by the Antioch Police Department from July to December, in addition to documents provided by county housing officials. The report's authors said the information was categorized to draw statistical conclusions.

The report, however, concedes that police records "did not include racial demographic information that would allow us to determine whether the CAT is selectively targeting households or residents by race." It goes on to say that some of the findings were based on statistical data from the housing authority.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has criticized the housing authority in recent years for shoddy record-keeping and other shortcomings. The ongoing troubles led the executive director of the housing authority, Rudy Tamayo, to step down earlier this year.

Public Advocates attorney Elisabeth Voigt said Monday night that she found the police department's actions "troubling."

"We believe the data will require the city to take a look at the CAT practices and re-examine and reform this team," she said. "We plan to assist the city in this reforming. There's an opportunity for the city to take a close look at these findings and find a more constructive approach to integrate these residents into the city and build a better city."

Antioch police Chief Jim Hyde said Public Advocates and Bay Area Legal Aid had reached their conclusions before reviewing the hundreds of pages of documentation turned over by the department.

"We're just doing the work the community is asking us to investigate," Hyde said. "We share our information with the housing authority, and the housing authority makes its decisions with or without our information. The information is what it is and points to our city's concerns with the housing authority and the housing authority's management of the Section 8 program."

Hyde said the city and police department have made every attempt to be transparent in their dealings with Section 8 housing.

In September, the Times reviewed police logs showing the team responding to issues reported by neighbors, landlords and the Contra Costa Housing Authority. Many complaints read the same, dealing with loud parties, unruly juveniles, fights -- some involving weapons -- and piles of trash. In one instance, police were summoned to a house after a man had fired several rounds from a semiautomatic rifle in his backyard.

There are about 1,500 Section 8 homes in Antioch, officials said. Since its inception, the Community Action Team has investigated 158 residential properties -- 104 of which turned out to be Section 8 homes.

Police were summoned to one Antioch house 52 times from April 2000 to August 2006, according to city documents, to deal with rowdy teens and fighting. Loud parties and fights in the street resulted in police visiting another house 20 times from January 2005 to August 2006.

Simon Read covers Antioch. Reach him at 925-779-7166 or sread [at] bayareanewsgroup.com.

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Antioch police accused of unfairly cracking down on black tenants

James Temple, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, December 18, 2007


An analysis of public records to be released today suggests that the Antioch Police Department disproportionately investigates and recommends terminating rental vouchers for African American tenants of government-subsidized housing.

Black households accounted for 70 percent of Police Department complaints to the county agency that manages the Section 8 Rental Voucher Program and were four times more likely to have the department send a letter of complaint to their landlord, the report by Public Advocates Inc. and Bay Area Legal Aid concludes.

The Housing Authority of the County of Contra Costa can cancel Section 8 subsidies if recipients don't comply with the rules of the program, which is designed to increase affordable housing choices for very low-income households by paying a portion of the rent for privately owned property. Letters to landlords suggested they could be prosecuted by the city attorney for "failure to abate" the behavior of their tenants.

"They're going after their rent, and they're going after their lease," said Richard Marcantonio, managing attorney with San Francisco civil rights group Public Advocates. "Those are fundamental to the ability of people to enjoy their housing rights in Antioch, their rights under the fair housing laws."

The city has grown 30 percent in the past decade, and its African American population nearly doubled from 2000 to 2006, the report said. Complaints about a purported increase in crime and quality of life concerns led city officials and the Police Department to create a special unit within the force called the Community Action Team in July 2006. African American Section 8 renters say they've been unfairly targeted ever since.

The city issued a press release that said the Community Action Team doesn't focus on any geographic area or race: "The report wrongly portrays the Antioch community in a negative light that is unfair, unjust and untrue as anyone who lives, works, visits or does business in this proud community knows."

The statement added that the city and Police Department recognize that the "vast majority" of Section 8 residents do not generate complaints but that some "engage in drug-related and unlawful behavior, and create problems for neighbors."

Calls to Antioch Police Chief James Hyde and Mayor Donald Freitas weren't returned before deadline. Police Capt. Steve McConnell said he wouldn't comment until he has reviewed a copy of the report.

Antioch City Councilman Arne Simonsen also hadn't reviewed the report but had received the documents upon which the study was based.

The Community Action Team is "not a proactive, it's a reactive program," he said. "It's based on citizen complaints. From everything I've seen so far, they've acted properly."

He added that the data could be skewed by the fact that black households constitute a larger percentage of Section 8 participants. Indeed, the report notes that 56 percent of all Section 8 households in Antioch are African American.

Still, the proportion of complaints that resulted in no action by the Housing Authority was 40 percent higher for black households than for white households in Antioch, suggesting to the report's authors that the Police Department is referring cases that lack merit.

Bay Area Legal Aid, a nonprofit law firm, and Public Advocates began investigating harassment allegations in the summer. Today's report is based on 750 pages of Antioch Police Department records and 400 pages of Housing Authority documents, requested under the California Public Records Act. The groups plan to present the report at meetings today of the Housing Authority and the City Council.

"Our preferred route is to work with the cities to fix this broken program," Marcantonio said. "We'll be looking to the city essentially to see if that's the direction they want to go. But as you know, we do bring lawsuits, and that's something we will be considering if it's necessary."

Find out more

-- The full report was to be available today at http://www.publicadvocates.org.

-- For more information, contact Elisabeth Voigt, staff attorney for Public Advocates Inc., at (415) 431-7430.

-- Public Advocates Inc. and Bay Area Legal Aid will present their findings at 1 p.m. today before the Housing Authority of the County of Contra Costa, Board Chambers, Room 107, Administration Building, 651 Pine St., Martinez, and at the Antioch City Council meeting, which begins at 7 p.m. in council chambers at City Hall, Third and H streets, Antioch.

E-mail James Temple at jtemple [at] sfchronicle.com.

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NAACP seeks harassment inquiry
ANTIOCH: Officials asked to investigate claims by Section 8 tenants against Community Action Team
By Simon Read

STAFF WRITER
Article Launched: 11/10/2007 03:03:42 AM PST

http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_7426949?nclick_check=1

The East County chapter of the NAACP has sent a letter to county officials requesting they investigate cases of alleged police harassment against Section 8 tenants in Antioch.

"Our organization has been recently made aware of several alleged instances of police harassment and civil rights violations by the Antioch Police Department Community Action Team," the letter said. "While we have not taken a formal position on this issue, we feel obligated to request the County Housing Authority conduct is own investigation into these allegations."

The letter, signed by NAACP East County President Roger Henry, said several African-American women have appeared before the association's executive committee on two occasions and asked for assistance.

"Our concern," wrote Henry, "continues to be that the focus to date has been punitive with very little regard given to the Section 8 tenant."

Henry did not return repeated calls for comment.

Dated Oct. 31 and addressed to the Contra Costa Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, the letter has so far been received by county Supervisors Mary Piepho and Federal Glover.

Glover said he will hold a discussion on the NAACP's concerns at a meeting of the board of supervisors. Piepho's chief of staff, Lea Castleberry, said Piepho plans to meet with Glover to discuss the letter.

The letter asks county housing officials to investigate alleged cases of police harassment against Section 8 tenants in Antioch and review all Section 8 vouchers revoked as a result of investigations by the Antioch Police Department. It also includes a number of guidelines the NAACP said it believes will help Section 8 tenants defend themselves against allegations of impropriety and program abuse.

"In essence, the letter is asking for the county housing authority to share information regarding fair representation for the recipients of housing vouchers," Antioch police Chief Jim Hyde said. "This is something we agree with. We've attended educational workshops that are voluntary, but have been asking that they be made mandatory for both Section 8 tenants and landlords. It's only beneficial to educate tenants and landlords on how the system works."

Section 8, a federally subsidized housing program that helps low-income families rent private homes, has become an issue of growing concern in Antioch during the past year. Residents and city officials have complained of program abuse and mismanagement.

Section 8 residents told the Antioch City Council in September they were being harassed by the police department's Community Action Team. Formed in July 2006, the team investigates problem properties and assists the Contra Costa Housing Authority in monitoring Antioch's subsidized housing.

"We will continue to work with the NAACP and housing authority to ensure Section 8 recipients are treated fairly," Hyde said. "In the same course, recipients have an obligation to ensure they are not involved in criminal behavior."

There are approximately 1,500 Section 8 homes in Antioch, police said. Since its inception, the Community Action Team has investigated 158 residential properties -- 104 of which were Section 8 homes. Officials said 7.6 percent of the Section 8 properties in the city are causing problems.

Public Advocates -- a civil rights group and a legal advocacy organization -- and Bay Area Legal Aid announced earlier this year that they are investigating whether the police department is discriminating against African-American families in the Section 8 program. Police turned over several hundred pages of documents after both groups filed a public records request.

Four months on, the results of the investigation remain unknown. An attorney for Public Advocates could not be reached for comment. Police invited NAACP leaders to review the documents more than a month ago, but they have yet to do so.

"Our desire is they get in and look at the records we shared with Public Advocates about complaints of criminal behavior at Section 8 properties," Hyde said.

The police documents were reviewed by the Times and showed the Community Action Team responding to issues reported by neighbors, landlords and the Contra Costa Housing Authority.

Police were summoned to one Antioch house 52 times between April 2000 and August 2006, according to city documents, to deal with rowdy teens and fighting. Loud parties and fights in the street resulted in police visiting another house 20 times between January 2005 and August 2006.

Many complaints read the same, dealing with loud parties, unruly juveniles, fights -- some involving weapons -- and piled-up trash. In one instance, police were summoned to a house after a man fired several rounds in his backyard from a semiautomatic rifle.

Simon Read covers Antioch. Reach him at 925-779-7166 or sread [at] bayareanewsgroup.com

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Section 8 ‘terrorism’ charged

Dave Roberts
Published 08/10/2007 - 12:07 p.m. PDT


http://antiochpress.com/article.cfm?articleID=17134

At the last City Council meeting, a Pittsburg resident expanded on the charge by two Bay Area advocacy groups that the Antioch Police Department Community Action Team is unfairly targeting Section 8 recipients, particularly African-Americans.

“This Community Action Team that you have created here, you created a monster because this team has intimidated and threatened Section 8 tenants,” Willie Mims, representing the Black Political Association, told the council on July 24. “My organization has continued to receive complaints upon complaints against this team.

“In fact, it is so bad that it should be relabeled the Community Action Terror Team, because they are terrorizing these Section 8 tenants. I have spoken to numerous Section 8 recipients who are afraid, literally afraid, to even open their blinds up and look out because they are afraid that the police may be out there.”

Mims charged that police are knocking on doors at 11 p.m., entering homes without a search warrant, telling the tenants that they are responding to someone’s complaint and asking who lives in the house.

“Well, what does it matter who lives there?” said Mims. “The issue is: if there is a crime, investigate the crime. But they should not violate the rights of these people. They are outright trampling on the rights of the people.

“You are supposed to represent the total  community, not just a certain segment of this community. I’ve been in contact with at least 30 members of this Section 8 community who are personal victims of this CAT team.

“You say the CAT Team is doing their job. Well, why don’t you ask those people who are being victimized by this CAT Team if they are in fact doing their job? Ask these people who are literally victims of terror from this team.”

None of the council members responded to Mims’ accusations, but Mayor Don Freitas asked Police Chief Jim Hyde to come to the podium, saying, “Mr. Willie Mims makes some serious accusation against the Police Department, particularly the Community Action Team. Do you have a preliminary response at this time?”

Hyde said, “We are working in partnership with the Contra Costa County Housing Authority to report the community’s complaints about problem properties. Some of those end up being Section 8 properties. We work within the law. We work with the Housing Authority on issues around their voucher properties.

“And I just have to comment at this time: I think the allegations are groundless. It’s disappointing. But we will continue to work with our community on these issues. We respect the comments; we take them for feedback.

“But we are very concerned about meeting our community’s concerns and responding to their neighborhood problems around problem properties, whether they are Section 8 or owner-occupied or straight landlord-tenant relationship.”

With that statement, Hyde was responding to the discrimination charges publicly for the first time. He chose not to address the allegations at the July 14 Quality of Life Forum, in which the discussion focused on Councilman Reggie Moore’s desire to await the outcome of an investigation by Public Advocates and Bay Area Legal Aid into whether the CAT Team has been harassing African-American families receiving Section 8 housing subsidies.

Hyde’s presentation at the forum provided updates on a variety of other police programs and developments.

In the past year, the Police Department has hired 24 officers – 12 white, six Hispanic, three African-American and three Asian. “Up until this last year, it’s been pretty much white males,” said Hyde.

Only one of the new officers is female, however. This is due, Hyde said, to police work being a tough career choice for a woman, especially if she wants to have a family.

The CAT Team has dealt with 171 cases of problem properties across the city, two-thirds of which concerned Section 8 voucher properties. But those properties comprise only 7.6 percent of the Section 8 homes and apartments in the city.

Hyde said that the PACT Team, which stands for Police And Community Together, had made a total of 140 arrests from February through June, focusing on areas such as Deer Valley Plaza, city parks and bars.

He said that problems in Deer Valley Plaza have been reduced since Regal Cinemas agreed to pay for two police officers to patrol the area on Friday and Saturday nights. Signage in the plaza and announcements before movies about the teen curfew are in the works.

The curfew, which bans minors under the age of 18 from loitering on the street, in a park or other public place between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., is “working very well,” said Hyde, resulting in more parents being out with their kids at night rather than the kids hanging out on their own and possibly getting into trouble.

Hyde said he and school officials are looking into staggering the release times for high school students after school so that 3,400 students aren’t suddenly out on the streets at one time, leading to traffic congestion and possibly other problems.

Gas City, which had been the scene of teen loitering, drug dealing and other problems, has hired armed security officers. “Calls for (police) service have gone straight down,” said Hyde. “We do have to compliment Gas City.”

Homelessness is still a problem in the city, but police are partnering with homeless providers like the Salvation Army, Bay Area Mission and county social services to provide information and services for them.

The Police Athletic League (PAL) program held a fishing derby for the kids and has started a baseball league in which 165 kids are participating at no cost.

Hyde is looking into forming a criminal justice magnet school that would be “like an ROTC for kids interested in law enforcement or criminal justice system,” he said, adding that “at-risk kids” may be attracted to it because it provides structure in their lives that may be lacking otherwise.

He discussed the police awards ceremony for valor and life-saving in which one officer was acknowledged for saving two young lives in the space of a month: a 6-year-old at the bottom of a pool and a disabled child drowning in a bathtub. Ironically, that same officer was mugged for his MP3 player while he was out jogging in Brentwood.

Hyde thanked United Citizens for Better Neighborhoods for sponsoring a picnic to thank the police for their hard work for the community.

Hyde concluded his presentation by showing photos of his family, which includes not only his wife and son but also two African-American men he has tried to help – one of whom spent most of his life in prison, and a younger man from a family of criminals.

“This is a chance to pull one kid out,” said Hyde. “He’s learning there’s a world outside of his troubled neighborhood.”