Final Decision Expands 'Go to Sleep, Go to Jail' Persecution of Two Homeless Musicians

Norse and Johnson have been trying to portray this duo as sweet innocents done wrong by the cruel community that is Santa Cruz.

...I wasn't buying it, but they were selling it hard. Now, I see that Miguel got busted with a quarter oz. of meth in his possession. So at the least, he's a heavy user, and more likely, he's dealin. (For how else did this poor indigent acquire that kind of money? It sure isn't via his singing.)


Same old tired song of lies by Huff.

The Preliminary Injunction against De Leon and Richardson were all about sleeping and camping.

The Permanent Injunction expanded it to such things as "trespass".

Drugs were not the issue. As usual, they're used to smear and cloud the issue. When police pursue you relentlessly for a year, perhaps you'll turn to drugs.

Or if you're poor in Santa Cruz, perhaps you'll start to sell them to survive.

The Drug War is stupid in and of itself. Using it as an excuse to cover up official repression of homeless people ffor innocent behavior like sleeping and being present in public spaces is bullshit. More bigotryon behalf of imagined merchant interests and cultural war paranoia.

We're going to see more of this crap in the coming year.

Known personally.

That doesn't mean they deserved sentencing for sleeping, but they're hardly poster children for social change. They're just too stoned-stupid to get off the tracks when the train comes leaving them open to opportunistic legal voyeurism by jackasses like Robert Norse.

They need medical and psychological care... NOT Kudos.

I appreciate your exposing yourself as the idiot I've always thought you were, by trying to explain away Miguel's meth addiction as the fault of the state.

Even more helpful when you dig your hole deeper by trying the failed smokescreen of "Drugs were not the issue. As usual, they're used to smear and cloud the issue."

A joke of a lie to which I reply: THE METH ADDICTION HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE ISSUE. Because Miguel has been one since day 1, as I've maintained since day 1, but you've denied. You tried to ignore it, Becky flat out refuted it..and you were both either lying or had your heads buried in the sand.

The guys been an aggressive, irrational, dangerous TOOL since day 1. To hear you say that drugs aren't the issue makes me laugh. They are SPECIFICALLY the issue.

-The drugs are the reason he refused safe shelter and available bedding in a city shelter. (You claimed it was because he couldn't pursue his musical proclivity there. I said it was because he couldn't do his tweak there. Hmmmm..who was right?

-You and Becky claimed he was unjustly persecuted for trying to sleep in the Bunny's walkway, a public space. Evidence showed he jimmied the lock. Video showed he never tried to sleep. Instead, he jittered about dancing with a samuri sword all night. Tweaker much? Ya think?

Robert, you've let your passion blind you. The reality is that Miguel is and has long been a meth abusing tweak and drug dealer. You tried to co-op him as one of your poster children, and tried to paint him as a poor innocent victim of society. And now, it's come back to bite you on the a** and paint you the fool.

I called you on your crap then, and I call you on it again today. Miguel is a meth addicted dealer, you're a liar, and I have no sympathy or desire nor feel any societal compulsion to help either of you.

Miguel was a meth user and dealer LONG before the city went after these two. Don't blame their "persecution" of him on why he turned to meth. Complete reversal of facts, Robert, and you know it.

I'm someone generally on the side of the homeless, there are many people ACTUALLY facing persecution, who are far more deserving of help than these two.

The Injunction(s) and prior police records on de Leon show zero meth arrests (and none for any hard drugs).

The Preliminary Injunction banned sleeping downtown at night.

The Permanent Injunction does the same and expands it to other largely innocent behaviors that homeless people do.

If believe that using the criminal code to go after drug abuse is a good thing, then I think you're foolish or bigoted.

If you claim drug abuse is what these Injunctions address (at quite a cost in both money and civil rights in the City Attorney's costly Injunction Merry-go-Round), you may have trouble reading English.

Can't a meth head claim they need to use meth to stay awake and avoid the greater evil of sleeping in public at night in Santa Cruz?

People have been saying for a long time that Anna and Miguel were using hard drugs. The ONLY people saying this was not true have been Robert, Becky, and the HUFF people. Becky droned on and on for months that the two didn't use hard drugs. You can't say that people weren't trying to tell the truth. HUFF people just didn't want to listen. Now the truth is coming out. They ARE hard drug users, and have been for a long time. Just because they never got a ticket for it doesn't mean they didn't do it. That's a stupid argument. I've never been cited for smoking pot, but I do. And I've done it for a long time. I've never been cited for having a beer at the beach, but I've done it quite a few times since being a teenager. Stop arguing for the sake of arguing. Admit what these guys are, help them get help, and get them off the street.

I know them both, and they ARE SPUN.

Anna seems to currently be 'in remission' from her meth use, but is still quite spun and is most likely brain damaged.

Miguel? You can find him where the speedfreaks run free in Santa Cruz, any day of the week, and ANYONE who knows him in more that passing know that.

My own personal opinion, and I speak for nobody but me:

I think Robert and his cohorts used this guy for their own political purposes. I think they knew he was a speed freak all along, but ignored and in fact actively tried to ignore that fact, because all of his other characteristics and factors set him up as a perfect tool for their us.

Starving artist, deprived of children, an innocent victim of cruel society, etc. etc.

But there were plenty of signs that he's a tweaker, and plenty of people cautioning and claiming so since Day 1 when Huff adopted him as their poster-child-de-jour. Well, now the truth is out to a point where it can't be denied. I think Huff made a tactical error and essentially tried to bury the truth for political gain on their own agenda. Not to help the guy, and not to hide his doings; but rather simply because he was such a delectable a poster child all but for that one meth-flaw that they worked hard to pretend that meth-flaw didn't exist.

A rereading of the court order (the Permanent Injunction) might be helpful. It doesn't mention drugs at all.

What it bans is sleeping at night downtown and other behaviors (none of which they've been convicted of in the last year).

The Drug Prohibition War is another issue--one which also menaces the homeless by putting them on the front lines.

But drug possession is not the subject of this Injunction. So it has nothing to do with the Injunction--and nothing to do with this article.

But then, again, if you can't defend the Injunction, why not raise a little Drug War hysteria?

Yeah. So Robert feels that we shouldn't let a little methamphetamine use on their part get in the way of enabling these two prizewinners. Heaven forbid that we should lose sight of the forest for the trees, eh, Robert?