🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 18 Aug 2007 15:12:44 -0700, dhm_at_best_dot_com@yahoo.com
wrote:

>-----Begin Forward-----
>
>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.
>
>
Sad as it is, Santa Cruz seems to have attracted a new type of
invasion. Is there an answer?

DCI