posted December 20, 2004 11:12 AM            

No one can be jailed for their debts in America. There are no debtors prisons but it appears there are some elected and appointed officials attempting to circumvent the clear and long held opinions of the law that one cannot be jailed for refusal or inability to pay a debt.

In this case, they are attempting an end-run around long established legal precedents by ticketing the homeless and hauling them into court where they can be fined. Fines they cannot possibly pay. The failure to pay a court ordered fine can lead to a warrant being issued for arrest and jail time.

USA > Justice
from the December 20, 2004 edition

Can a city ticket its homeless?

By Marty Graham | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

SAN DIEGO – Nine homeless people who have been cited for illegal sleeping - one while she waited in vain for a shelter bed - have filed a class-action lawsuit in San Diego federal court.

They say the San Diego Police Department has violated their constitutional rights by ticketing them for sleeping in public. The real problem, they insist, is that there is not enough room for them at local shelters.

NOWHERE TO GO?: A homeless man reads a newspaper in downtown San Diego. Homeless advocates say the city does not offer enough beds in public shelters.
ROBERT HARBISON - STAFF/FILE

"People wouldn't be sleeping outside if there were any shelter beds," says Larry Milligan, an activist for the homeless. "They are being persecuted for their status, for being homeless, not for committing a crime, and that violates their civil rights.

"For years, we've been asking the city: where is it safe and legal for them to sleep and the city has no answer," he adds. "You have to sleep to stay alive, whether there's a bed for you or not."

San Diego has issued more tickets for homelessness in the past two years than in the previous five combined.

And it's not the only city that has been ticketing the homeless for sleeping in public. Other cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Milwaukee, several in Florida, and even Halifax, Nova Scotia, have issued such citations in the past few years.

The tickets are a gesture that some have criticized as meaningless, pointing out that the homeless are often impoverished, and that as they have no permanent address, any effort to collect fines would most likely prove either difficult or impossible.

But this suit is the first constitutional challenge of such ticketing, and were the court to rule in favor of the homeless, such a decision could have national importance, says Tulian Ozdeger, staff attorney for the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.

"Throughout the country there aren't enough shelter beds," she says. "But California cities are targeting the homeless more."

A ruling in favor of the homeless in San Diego would not only apply to the whole appellate district, but would also be persuasive in courts all over the nation, she says.

The city of San Diego isn't commenting on the new lawsuit. City policy forbids official remarks on any type of pending litigation.

But the police department says its officers are just doing their jobs, including issuing more than 2,000 illegal lodging citations, which call for at least a $100 fine and can result in jail time.

Downtown San Diego has a homeless population of about 4,500 homeless and about 2,000 shelter beds.

As the once run-down downtown blooms with thousands of new condominiums and a new ballpark, the homeless have become more visible and less welcome.

"They're really saying 'leave,' but where can we go when all our services and resources are there?" asks plaintiff Greg Spencer. "Our shelters, food lines, medical clinic are all downtown."

The nine plaintiffs - six men and three women - could make very sympathetic defendants in any court case. They include two men honorably discharged from the US Navy, one from the US Marine Corps, and a woman who fled from an abusive home.

Since 1992, Mr. Milligan says, he has been asking the city to tell him where it would be legal for the homeless to sleep.

Frustrated by the escalating number of tickets, Milligan staged a 20-day hunger strike in front of city hall, starting in October, to demand an answer.

There is no law that cities must provide shelters, according to plaintiffs' attorney Robert Dreher. The lawsuit asks that the tickets be dismissed and the practice of fining the homeless be ended.

It also demands that the city identify a place where it would be legal for the homeless to sleep.

"That would be a great start at settling this," says Dreher.

posted December 20, 2004 12:51 PM            

My guess is that most residents of San Diego, California don't know about the city ordinance permitting ticketing of the homeless. I think they're about to find out though when the filing of a federal lawsuit hits the news.

posted December 20, 2004 12:54 PM              

quote:

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As the once run-down downtown blooms with thousands of new condominiums and a new ballpark, the homeless have become more visible and less welcome.

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posted December 20, 2004 01:49 PM            

The writer of the article expressed an opinion as to the homeless being unwelcome in those areas and may be right or wrong but I would suggest the city deal with what is a disgrace and spend some money in correcting the underlying problem with the goal being to help those people regain their lives.

posted December 20, 2004 02:06 PM              

of course homeless people do need free and legal places to sleep, close to their resources. they can't just be swept under the carpet because others don't deem their lifestyles acceptable.

posted December 20, 2004 08:16 PM              

By Mark Benjamin
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

posted December 20, 2004 11:57 PM              

do you mean in the sense that the taxpayers are paying the police force and courts for this effort at ticketing the homeless? and that this effort, of ticketing and prosecuting, is what is a complete waste of time and effort?

posted December 22, 2004 09:36 AM              

many of the homeless veterans suffer from post traumatic stress disorder:

quote:

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"We had a few situations where, I guess, people were trying to get out of the country. They would come right at us and they would not stop," Brown said. "We had to open fire on them. It was really tough. A lot of soldiers, like me, had trouble with that."

"That was the hardest part," Brown said. "Not only were there men, but there were women and children -- really little children. There would be babies with arms blown off. It was something hard to live with."

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quote:

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Advocates said seeing homeless veterans from Iraq should cause alarm. Around one-fourth of all homeless Americans are veterans, and more than 75 percent of them have some sort of mental or substance abuse problem, often PTSD, according to the Homeless Veterans coalition...

Boone's group says that nearly 500,000 veterans are homeless at some point in any given year, so the VA is only serving 20 percent of them.

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but the country for which they had to shoot the limbs off of babies so that they can protect this standard of living -- new condos and malls and development -- doesn't want them disgracing their lifestyles.

sad.

******************************************************************************************

(edited to include petron's washington times link from his above post, the article in which the quotes in this post appear:

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041207-121848-6449r.htm

posted December 22, 2004 09:49 AM            

quote:

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but the country for which they had to shoot the limbs off of babies so that they can protect this standard of living -- new condos and malls and development -- doesn't want them disgracing their lifestyles.

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posted December 22, 2004 10:53 AM              

i wasn't expounding on their reasons for doing so...but to be accurate, the soldier who made the statements about shooting at babies who lost their limbs said that the soldiers had to shoot at them because they wanted to leave the country. he didn't mention anything about suicide bombers, although we can conjecture all we please.

regardless....my point was, and still is, that the soldiers were required to do this, for whatever reason, and i would think that anyone who had to do something this heinous in his or her country's name would suffer post traumatic stress disorder, and possibly worse. these soldiers become homeless, and there are no resources, or very few and not nearly enough, to help them.

but of course they are the eyesore and the disgrace to the new developments.....

posted December 22, 2004 11:06 AM              

can you back that up with a factual source?

posted December 22, 2004 11:46 AM            

"We had a few situations where, I guess, people were trying to get out of the country. They would come right at us and they would not stop," Brown said. "We had to open fire on them. It was really tough. A lot of soldiers, like me, had trouble with that." http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041207-121848-6449r.htm

posted December 22, 2004 11:51 AM              

where does he say anything about shooting at vehicles because they do not stop because of the threat of suicide bombings? and if indeed our soldiers have shot at vehicles and blown the limbs off babies in the past because of their fear of suicide bombings, where is this documentation?

posted December 22, 2004 12:01 PM              

then they say that means i "hate America" *squaaawk* how original....

posted December 22, 2004 12:16 PM            

WAR NEWS ROUNDUP
March 29, 2003

A suicide bombing killed four American soldiers at a checkpoint near the central Iraqi city of Najaf on Saturday. Ray Suarez reports on that story and other action in Iraq.

RAY SUAREZ: A suicide bomber killed four U.S. Soldiers in the first such attack of the war. It happened near the city of Najaf, where elements of the U.S. Army's Third Infantry Division are deployed. The attack came when an Iraqi posing as a taxi driver pulled up to a civilian checkpoint manned by U.S. soldiers. Army Col. Will Grimsley.

posted December 22, 2004 12:19 PM            

I'll take truth over originality anytime Petron.