Building Towards Tent City: Week Four In Front of Coonerty's Bookshop

I'm actually very interested in how that will legally proceed. It seems like at some point, even if there is just a sit-in rather than an isolated test-case with a sleeping outdoors ticket, there will be some police involvement.
I don't know enough to say whether judges need to demonstrate that an illegal activity could be avoided by doing an alternative behavior, when it relates to involuntary human functions. Because with lots of other laws, they just need to demonstrate that the action happened and that there is a law against it. In some situations, a disabled person will be unable to avoid doing something that it illegal. Can a judge just say 'no sleeping', or would they have to be able to show 'you need to do this instead? Clearly, lots of fancy enclaves kick out any homeless as well.
Do you already have your lawyers lined up? This area really does have some excellent attorneys. I see that you're preparing, and that's good. A bad situation is if just an isolated homeless person with no resources tries to challenge the law with an attorney with no specialty in civil rights, and then they lose, and it establishes precedent.

Lawyer:

No, we have no defense lawyers lined up for any criminal prosecutions that may result. However, there seems to be a policy--once you've been harassed at midnight, cited, waited a month until the citation appears on the court's archaic computer, stood in line to make a court date, and then appeared before basement Referee Kim Baskett--of dismissing infraction citations for sleeping when a letter is presented from the Homeless Services Center that no space at the emergency walk-in shelter existed that night.

The Federal Court of Appeals ruled in the Jones case April 2006 that the very act of ticketing a homeless person for sleeping and then requiring her to go to court to document lack of shelter space and/or use the Necessity Defense violated the 8th Amendment. [http://peopleproject.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/jones-v-l-a-appeal-2005.pdf , p. 16., 26]

People are still deterred from asserting their rights to protest in solidarity with the homeless or to simply engage in survival sleeping publicly in groups in safer more well-lighted areas out of fear that they have to answer "yes" on employment forms as to whether they've been arrested.

Also the $95 fine for sleeping quickly morphs into a much more costly fine for Failure to Appear, with an additional $300 for Failure to Pay.

While Community Service is an option, you have to pay for that too. At least $25, and significantly more as your fine gets bigger.

So if city police arrest people for Sleeping or Covering Up with Blankets under MC 6.36.010a or MC 6.36.010b, they are directly violating the dictum laid down in the Jones decision and presumably opening up the City not merely to injunctive relief but to damages.

I will also suggest that sleepers move down to Pacific Avenue during the day if the City tries an unconstitutional attack on the protest such as closing the City Hall grounds at night by fiat from Parks and Recreation boss Dannettee Shoemaker, who was given that arbitrary power last year by City Council.

We lack legal help, so if you have any legal expertise, your input is welcome.

Please keep us advised of your thoughts and feel encouraged to alert others who might be sympathetic.

Those interested in discussing this can come to the protest on Sunday, reply on line here, or check out the HUFF meeting Wednesday mornings. There are also prior stories about this issue on indybay.org (search for "Coonerty" and "sleeping ban").

SCPD citations (Jan-June 2007) under the Camping Ordinance are up nearly 100% from a similar period (April-November 2006) last year (308 compared to 168).

This figure doesn't include increased citing from "Run 'Em Out" Ranger John Wallace's Parks and Recreation Department, which now has 3 new rangers, 3-4 new CSO's, and Sgt. Warren Barry to roam the Pogonip, targets tents for trashing, and hadn out $97 citations that can rapidly escalate to $900 with failures to appear and failures to pay.

Last year Wallace individually gave out more camping tickets during the April to November 2006 period than the entire SCPD combined. So the picture may be more horrific than merely a doubling of citations.

It all meshes nicely with the Coonerty-Mathews-Robinson Downtown Working Group's ramping up of harassment downtown.

I urge others to do what Bradley has done--use your cameras, your cellphones, your tape recorders, your voices, and your physical presence to show your disapproval of police harsssment of the poor.

Thanks to Bradley for the great photos and commentary.

Those two individuals may be plaintiffs ##28 and 29 in our proposed lawsuit enjoining the SCPD and other agencies from enforcing the Sleeping Ban (using the L.A. Jones decision as our precedent). They told me several days ago they were interested.

If anyone is interested in either joining the lawsuit, supporting continued weekly protest at Coonerty's Bookshop (next Sunday at 2 PM, we'll be back!), or building for the planned Tent City/Sleepout at City Hall.

Please post your own accounts and experiences!