Boulder police keep citing homeless people for charging their phones, but District Attorney Michael Dougherty refuses to prosecute the cases.
"Emory Ellis, who lived on the streets in Boston, ventured into a Burger King in November 2015 to buy breakfast.
"He left the restaurant under arrest, wrongfully accused of trying to pay for his meal with a fake $10 bill. He spent more than three months in jail."
- 20% of renter households in Richmond were threatened with eviction in 2016
- Of those actually evicted, the median amount owed was $686
- Judgments issued in majority white neighborhoods were far less common
- Mr. Desmond’s eviction calculations are probably conservative: They include only households that touched the legal process, not those in which people moved with an informal warning
A short illustrated essay on the criminalization of homelessness.
"The park rangers took Jackson’s sleeping bag, blankets, and his tent, yet left all of his other property on the ground. Jackson and his comrades believe the park rangers only took the survival gear to force them into shelters or force them to move farther out of sight and out of mind."
I just discovered this 2015 Westword article about the criminalization of homelessness by artist Lauri Lynnxe Murphy which includes a link to one of my weblog entries.
"the criminalization of public sleeping, as brought to Denver by Albus Brooks with the anti-camping ordinance, is spreading throughout municipalities like a cruel poison."
Keith McHenry was the first volunteer arrested for sharing free food on August 15, 1988. Eight more volunteers were arrested that same day for sharing lunch at the Haight and Stanyan near the entrance to Golden Gate Park. The San Francisco Police made nearly 1,000 arrests of people volunteering to share vegan meals with Food Not Bombs from 1988 to 1997.
I was happy to discover that the "Urban Camping Ban" is a significant portion of the Wikipedia article on downtown Denver.
(I read this revision: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Downtown_Denver&oldid=743430248)
On Wednesday, April 5, 2017, after a day and a half of testimony, the jury for Denver’s first camping ban trial found the three co-defendants guilty. Jerry Burton and Randy Russell were each given a 6-month probation and ordered to complete 30 hours of community service, while Terese Howard has a 1-year probation and has to complete 60 hours of community service.
In one clip, Boyle criticizes an officer who had been telling homeless individuals that they have to take down their tents because it would be better for them to be in a shelter.
“Are you an expert in social change, or are you an expert in following orders?” asks Boyle, pointing his camera toward the officer in the cruiser.
The police officer bites his lip, then chuckles. “That’s not my job to change society,” the officer says.
“So then why are you giving advice [to the homeless].... Isn’t your job to be here and follow orders?” Boyle retorts.
Denver's camping ban is finally being challenged in a court. The trial is currently set to begin April 4th at the Lindsay Flanigan Courthouse (520 w Colfax Ave Denver CO 80204).
"The Denver government is spending massive resources to prosecute Burton, Howard, and Russell, including calling 33 Police Officers as witnesses in the trial. According to the law, the co-defendants are facing up to $999 and a year in jail for the crime of using blankets to try to stay warm on a cold winter night. Buron and Russell both had their blankets, sleeping bags and tents taken “as evidence” of the crime of camping – leaving them with no gear to survive the freezing winter night and driving Burton to the hospital. Shortly after this, Mayor Hancock publicly directed the Police Department to cease confiscating survival gear for the safety of homeless people sleeping on winter nights. Yet the government is still prosecuting these individuals."
Update: All three defendants were found guilty and sentenced to community service: http://www.unicornriot.ninja/?p=14793
Here's an illustrative case from this weeks' news. According to the article there are around 1,200 homeless people living in Fairfax County. When one of them was caught constructing a shelter and educating himself he was charged with destruction of property and held without bond. That says almost everything that needs saying about capitalist property and justice.
"More power to him. He did something that most people don't do. He actually took a step to change his life and made his own little home where he could study."
Denver Homeless Out Loud's attempt at a tiny home village was (temporarily?) ended on Saturday when the Denver Police Department, including a SWAT team, raided the park, arrested ten activists, and dismantled the structures. Here is Google's aggregation of news coverage of the raid.
Just a reminder that the liberal's confused notion of property is actually the dispossession of most people, and the market of capitalism (which prides itself on the price system as an elegant way to match supply to demand) cannot seem to provide the most necessary supplies to the most desperate needs.
"You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society." -- M&E, 1848
This cop probably thought he was cleaning up the creek by cracking down on rock stacking... but that was his mistake, because rock stacking is an art form performed and enjoyed by everybody in Boulder, rich and homeless alike. Hence the quick reaction from city council in this case. Now if that cop had harassed a homeless person for using a blanket at night[1] , then there would have been no outrage and city council would have backed up the cop.
This is exceptional news! Despite the very clear video evidence it took eight months to file charges, and I don't think it would have happened at all if it weren't for the Ferguson riots and "Black Lives Matter" protesters (in addition to all of the Albuquerque protests and the Department of Justice investigation).
I have my doubts that the charges will stick, though. A District Court justice has to decide that there is enough evidence for murder at a preliminary hearing (where the charges may be downgraded or dropped). But still a better chance of going to trial for something than the ol' grand jury shenanigans.
Even if either officer goes to trial on any charge, I don't expect a conviction. When Kelly Thomas (an unarmed homeless man in Fullerton, CA) was beaten to death by police (captured on both video and audio recording devices) two cops were charged with involuntary manslaughter and one with murder. But after the first trial found two of the cops not guilty, the DA dropped the charges for the third cop.
"Uniformed police shut down an effort to provide lunch to scores of homeless in Stranahan Park on Sunday, enforcing a law passed recently that puts new limits on outdoor feeding sites.
"At least three people were cited for violating the new ordinance, including two members of the clergy and a 90-year-old advocate who has handed out food to the homeless for more than 20 years."
The City of Chicago spent $43,000 as part of its effort to take away the safest and most comfortable places propertyless people have to sleep.