The Sacramento Bee – by Cynthia Hubert
Cities across California are becoming more aggressive in citing and arresting homeless people for simple activities like standing, sitting or resting in public places, according to a report released Thursday by a legal clinic at the University of California, Berkeley.
The report, unveiled by the Berkeley law school’s Policy Advocacy Clinic, finds that local laws against vagrancy are increasingly “criminalizing” the homeless in an effort to drive them from communities and “make them someone else’s problem.”
Clinic students from the law school and the school of public policy analyzed municipal codes in 58 California cities, including Sacramento, which is facing a constitutional challenge to its camping ordinance. The researchers found that more cities are enforcing laws that prohibit resting, sleeping or lodging in public places.
About one in five homeless people in the United States reside in California, according to the report. The state has 12 percent of the nation’s population but more than 22 percent of the country’s homeless people, it says.
The authors conducted case studies in San Francisco, Sacramento and San Diego, and found that authorities are increasingly citing and arresting people “based on people’s status, being homeless, and not on behaviors like drunkenness and disorderly conduct.”
The report found that illegal camping citations have surged in recent years in Sacramento County. Park rangers there issued nearly 1,200 such citations in 2012, compared to about 50 two years earlier, according to the research. They issued nearly 800 citations last year, the report says.
Authorities relied on Sacramento’s illegal camping code for 69 percent of total municipal code enforcement and half of all enforcement under state and local codes when issuing homeless-related citations, the report says.
The authors assert that the actions are costly to communities that would be better served focusing on establishing affordable housing and jobs for homeless people. The laws also raise troubling constitutional issues, the researchers say.
Sacramento civil rights lawyer Mark Merin made a similar argument on behalf of local homeless people in court last month. The plaintiffs are challenging the constitutionality of the city’s camping ordinance, which states that it is unlawful for anyone to camp on any public or private property, with some exceptions.
Senior deputy city attorney Chance Trimm, who represents Sacramento in the case, said Merin’s lawsuit and the Berkeley report incorrectly assert that the city’s camping ordinance “targets” homeless people.
“It doesn’t target homeless people. It’s neutral on its face,” Trimm said. “It targets a particular type of activity, camping.” The ordinance addresses public health and safety, “all things that the city has an interest in protecting,” he added.
The 3rd District Court of Appeal upheld the city’s ban on camping, but left open the possibility that the ordinance is not evenly enforced, to the detriment of the homeless. That would be a violation of equal protection provisions of the U.S. and California constitutions.
Further proceedings are expected on that point in the lower courts.
The Berkeley report calls for state action that would ensure more consistent enforcement of laws that affect the homeless, better tracking of data about citations given to homeless people, directing resources toward longer-term solutions to homelessness.
The full report, titled “California’s New Vagrancy Laws: The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State,” is available online.
Call The Bee’s Cynthia Hubert, (916) 321-1082. Follow her on Twitter @Cynthia_Hubert.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article10646747.html#storylink=cpy
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”
Thomas Jefferson, (Attributed)
3rd president of US (1743 – 1826)
This is EXACTLY what has happened.
And all the while, politicians, elite banksters and their khazar ‘jew’ owners caused the bulk of the homelessness…and yet, they’re alive and free as birds.
Not for long!
-flek
“It doesn’t target homeless people. It’s neutral on its face,” Trimm said. “It targets a particular type of activity, camping.”
That’s because white people with a decent sense of morality will reduce their standard of living to camping outdoors rather than rob people for cash.
These California cities don’t do a goddamn thing about gang bangers robbing whomever they want to, or cruising around and shooting each other, but instead the stinking pig bastards find easy targets to harass.
When are they going to criminalize crime?
“Oh…. we don’t do that. The stinking little faggot pig bastards are afraid of the wetbacks, so they only harass decent white people who’ve been forced into the streets by kike bankers.”
It’s going to be a glorious day when we start to straighten things out in this country. First the cops, then the wetbacks, and then the kikes who started it all.
How long before the homeless are rounded up to be placed in FEMA work camps? Its only a matter of time.
Burn the town down and forsake the assholes making the “laws”. If they wont let you be, than DON’T LET THEM BE either.
“They Live We Sleep”
“About one in five homeless people in the United States reside in California, according to the report. The state has 12 percent of the nation’s population but more than 22 percent of the country’s homeless people, it says.”
Naturally. The ONLY thing worthwhile in that POS state is the weather.