C E L E B R A T IN G A D E C A D E
3
treet roots
Education ♦ Dialogue ♦ Independence
Sit-lie law faces torrent of critics at City Council hearing
BY M A R A GRUNBAUM
STAFF W R IT E R
espite a wave of public testimony
against the downtown sit-lie
ordinance, City Council is
considering extending its term until at least
October 23,2009.
The 2-year-old Sidwalk Obstruction
Ordinance was scheduled to expire June 8.
A Street Access For Everyone committee
report finding that the ordinance was
predominantly enforced against homeless
people was presented to council in
November.
Rather than having the council decide
whether or not to renew the controversial
ordinance permanently, Commissioner
Amanda Fritz proposed prolonging its term
to give her and Commissioner Nick Fish —
both relatively new to council - time to
study the ordinance and discuss it with the
P H O TO BY M A R A G R U N B A U M
wider community.
Tobiah
Tillman
protests
the sit-lie ordinance
At the April 29 council meeting, Fritz said
during the City Council debate on the issue
many city processes have been in flux,
Wednesday, April 29
between budget cuts and bureau
reorganizations. She and Commissioner Fish
realized they wanted more time to look at
be happy, and one side would be mad, and
the ordinance.
there would be much less incentive to come
Fritz said she’s heard from people in
to the table” and discuss it
outlying neighborhoods that they care about
Testimony on the ordinance extension
the law, and she wants time to include them
stretched
over an hour and a half, with 23
in the process. She’s heard from businesses
people
signed
up to speak. Many protesters
who think the ordinance has been helpful,
sat in the audience with signs reading “No
and from advocates who think it violates the
Sit/Lie!”
civil rights of those on the streets.
“We could just vote it up or down today,
“Looking at this ordinance, I see
but then what?” Fritz said. “One side would
inhumane treatment for my fellow humans,
D
and it breaks my h eart” said Tobiah
Tillman, the first to speak. “When you have
human beings that are out on the streets
right now that have all the odds against
them... for them to be picked out of their
sleeping spots after all of th at it just makes
it harder for them to regain their
composure, regain their jobs, and get them
in a position of stable living."
April Burris noted the SAFE committee’s
findings that of 170 people cited between
August 2007 and September 2008,133 were
homeless. “I believe that (homeless) people
are really being targeted unfairly," she said.
“Obviously this is not about sidewalks."
“What would be wrong with just not
having this in place while we think about
it?” she concluded, to applause in the
chamber.
Sandra McDonough, president of the
Portland Business Alliance, was the only
speaker in favor of the ordinance. She said
the law and the SAFE committee have been
able to address problems in the community
that were never dealt with before, and she
suggested that the system could be
expanded to “a number of neighborhoods
beyond downtown Portland and the Lloyd
Center.
Leo Rhodes, who has been homeless of f-
and-on for 20 years, suggested the
commissioners set their alarm clocks for
every 20 minutes at night, get up, carry a
full bag in circles around their house, and go
to sleep in a different room. Then maybe
they would understand the experience of
living outside and being constantly moved
along, he said.
Commissioner Randy Leonard, a longtime
critic of the sit-Ue ordinance, said he was
struggling to understand Fish and Fritz’s
argument that they want to extend the
ordinance because they heard citizens
express concern about it.
“Why not let the ordinance expire and
have those conversations?” he said.
“If you tell somebody to move along that
is sitting downtown, and they have no place
to go, what happens? Do they just
evaporate?” Leonard continued. “You have
to give safe places for people to go when
you tell them to move along. You have to
give them toilets. You have to address the
issues that make them homeless, and for us
not to do that is short-sighted.”
“I’m very disappointed that we’re going to
vote next week” on extending the ordinance,
Leonard said. "I’ve heard what these folks
had to say, and I agree with them: This is
the wrong thing to do."
“I agonized over this issue,” Fritz said.
Extending the ordinance would be
“changing my mind from what I thought I
would do when I was campaigning, (but) I
won’t make this decision feeling like I’m
rushed and don’t have all the information I
need.”
There was audible unrest in the chamber
as the council agenda moved on. The
commissioners will vote May 6 on the
temporary extension, which requires three
of five votes to pass.
Group seeks Justice Department probe LA. police
.. S T A FF R E PO RTS
-
.
pr more than two years, the Los
Angeles Community Action Network
(LA CAN) has been documenting what
hey call the systemic police misconduct of a
:ontroversial program called the Safer City
initiative, a program meant to increase law
jnforcement resources in order to target
serious crime in L.A.
LA CAN, which is a member of the
Western Regional Advocacy Project, of
which Street Roots is also a member, is now
requesting a Department of Justice
investigation “to seek civil remedies due to
policies and practices that foster a pattern
of misconduct by employees of the LAPD’s
Central Division."
LA CAN is asking organizations opposed
to Safer City Initiative to sign on to a letter
to Chairman of the Domestic Policy
Subcommittee Rep. Dennis Kucinich to
launch an independent investigation of the
widespread abuse of poor and homeless
individuals taking place in the Skid Row
neighborhood.
According to the report put out by LA
CAN, the area known as Skid Row in
downtown L.A. has 13,000 to 15,000
residents, 75 percent of whom are African
Americans. After passage of the Safer City
Initiative in Skid Row in 2006, 50 additional
uniformed police and dozens of undercover
narcotics officers were deployed to the
50-square block area. LA CAN says this has
led to an “unprecedented concentration of
police resources in a neighborhood with
relatively low rates of serious and violent
crime.”
During the first year of the initiative:
9,000 arrests were made, 64 for every 100
residents; 10,342 citations were issued in its
first 10 months, between 48 and 69 percent
greater than the rest of the city; and African
Americans were stopped 4.5 times more
often than African Americans citywide.
“For decades, Skid Row has seen the
most extreme and concentrated poverty and
racial segregation in Los Angeles,” the
complaint by LA CAN states. “Yet, instead of
instituting policies and programs to address
racism, poverty and homelessness, a law
enforcement strategy to attack the
symptoms of extreme poverty was
developed and implemented. This expensive
and ineffective response to homelessness
and poverty has resulted in massive civil and
human rights violations against poor and
mostly Black people.”
According to LA CAN, under the city* s
enforcement practices, a crosswalk violation
is deemed sufficient reason to handcuff
someone, place them against the wall,
search their person, and run a warrant
check. LA CAN also reports that officers
often respond to a single non-violent
incident with 10 to 15 uniformed officers,
particularly threatening to the 50 percent of
the Skid Row population that suffers from
mental illness. Other parts of the city use
SMART teams, which are non-uniformed
and trained to respond to situations
involving people with mental illness. These
are not used in Skid Row.
On June 3, 2007, Faith Hernandez - a
black female Skid Row resident - was
beaten by four officers in front of dozens of
witnesses and then arrested for resisting
arrest and battery of an officer,” accordng to
LA CANs report. Hernandez weighs 90
pounds and is mentally ill. The alleged
assault happened with an ink pen. Witnesses
filed misconduct complaints. Only one
witness was initially contacted with no
follow up, according to the organization’s
report.
In the first year of the city’s initiative, $6
million was spent on the 50 additional police
officers in the Skid Row community while
only $5.7 million was spent on homeless
services citywide.
In October 2008, the ACLU of southern
California released a detailed report on
racial profiling in LA. The report finds
“evidence that African-Americans are over
stopped, over-frisked, over-searched, and
over-arrested.”
More than 35 organizations oppose the
L A ’s Safer City Initiative and hundreds of
residents have filed complaints in various
public settings. The only concrete response
was a public hearing held by the LA Police
Commission to evaluate the initiative and its
impacts.
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