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Sleep Ban Fighters Regroup after Saturday Morning Police Raid
by Robert Norse
Saturday Aug 18th, 2007 7:40 AM

A 3 AM raid by 8-10 police officers, with a follow-up by half a dozen
an hour and a half later dispersed many of the homeless people
sleeping at City Hall. At least four received citations for "illegal
sleeping" even though the officers had no legal place for their
victims to go--in the teeth of the Los Angeles Jones decision banning
nighttime ticketing of sleepers and campers there. Some of those
ticketed and some of the activists announced a meeting today 2 PM at
the Firefly Cafe at 131 Front St.

Campers trooped off to find individual sleep spots after SCPD officers
staged two raids on the City Hall grounds, threatening and then
ticketing folks sleeping there early this morning.

In response to requests "where can I go to sleep legally?" there were
told alternately "there's nowhere in the city you can camp" (a true
statement), and "move away from the protest and you'll be able to
sleep without us bothering you." They were also handed a
professionally printed "Homeless Resource Card" which listed services
which were either closed, full, or irrelevant.

The officers did not disagree when long-time homeless people told them
the information they were giving was false and/or unhelpful. They also
did not look terribly happy doing what they did.

I was contacted by phone around 3 AM and got down there by 3:30 when
the first "wave" of police had come through, ID-checking, warning, and
dispersing the less-committed homeless sleepers or those with jobs
later that day. Several waited defiantly for the police to return to
get tickets, but grew tired, and packed up and left to find hidden
sleeping spots

Police also threatened to confiscate and destroy property instead of
holding it either as evidence or unclaimed--as required by law (as
well as the recent federal Kinkaid decision in Fresno). Amanda Barnett
reported they threatened to cite her for puppy off a leash.

The protesters maintained a safe place for several dozen campers to
sleep for nearly a week and raised the issue strongly enough to
produce the first-in-this-century description of the city's homeless
nighttime sleeping ban in the Santa Cruz Sentinel on Friday--a story
which prompted a long debate online on the Sentinel website. [http://
www.santacruzsentinel.com/ archive/2007/August/17/local/stories/
05local.htm and http://www.indybay.org/newsitems /
2007/08/06/18439219.php]

Protesters announced they were regrouping in a series of meetings over
the next few days. One will be later today at the weekly Human Rights
Organization at 131 Front St at the Firefly Cafe [425-4467
http://humanrightsorg.org]. A second will be held after the Potters
Hand meal at the Town Clock noon Sunday. A third will happen two hours
later in front of the Bookshop Santa Cruz at 2 PM where tablers will
take up the "Boycott Bigotry" protest against Vice-Mayor Coonerty's
anti-homeless statements [see Sentinel article above as well as
http://www.indybay.org/ newsitems/2007/08/06/18439222.php and
http://www.indybay.org /newsitems/2007/08/06/18439219.php]

A major purpose of the protest was to train homeless people in how to
respond to and document police bullying under the unconstitutional
Sleeping Ban and to sign them up as plaintiffs in the forthcoming
lawsuit masterminded locally by attorney Kate Wells. The six-night
protest signed up 10-20 more plaintiffs, for a total of 45 or more.

I will be playing tape of the police bust this morning on Free Radio
Santa Cruz tomorrow at 9:30 AM and possibly have a few guests in
giving first-hand testimony.

The show will be archived at http://www.radiolibre.org/brb/brb070819.mp3
.

More details in my next report. I'm real tired.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/huffsantacruz for more original local
and state Homeless related news articles.

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