It took lower than 10 minutes earlier this month for a San Diego court docket to dismiss tickets given to 2 unhoused folks for blocking a sidewalk.
The dismissals got here all the way down to procedural errors, they usually mark one other growth in Mayor Todd Gloria’s effort to carry unhoused folks accountable for refusing to go to a shelter.
Why this issues
Estimates present San Diego has at the very least 4,800 homeless folks. Mayor Todd Gloria mentioned fixing homelessness is town’s prime precedence.
Each unhoused San Diegans have been represented at no cost by native legal professional Coleen Cusack. She mentioned these two instances are the primary to go to trial in infraction court docket since San Diego police stepped up enforcement of encroachment — a metropolis regulation that was supposed to ban trash cans from blocking a sidewalk however has since been co-opted to focus on unhoused folks.
Commissioner Rosy Meyerowitz, an unelected legal professional given the ability to resolve infraction court docket instances, on Jan. 5 dismissed a ticket for encroachment in opposition to a 49-year-old man due to a clerical error. The person’s case wasn’t presupposed to be scheduled for trial, Meyerowitz mentioned, so she dismissed the ticket “within the curiosity of justice.”
Later, she dismissed one other encroachment ticket in opposition to a 38-year-old man after the issuing police officer made a primary error in his testimony — the officer failed to say how he recognized the 38-year-old to jot down the ticket within the first place.
“The court docket needs to be satisfied that this person who the officer is speaking about is the (defendant) that has been cited,” mentioned Cusack, including that it was a easy mistake any legal professional would have recognized to keep away from.
Not like misdemeanors in prison court docket, the place metropolis attorneys prosecute instances in entrance of elected judges, law enforcement officials are chargeable for presenting instances to attorneys in infraction court docket. It’s a special setting that has produced the identical consequence — police work that targets unhoused folks on the taxpayers’ expense and quantities to nothing.
Officers for town and the police division didn’t reply any questions on these instances. As a substitute, they despatched a written assertion that mentioned officers will proceed responding to neighborhood complaints and addressing illegal habits.
Final yr, Gloria informed reporters that so long as shelter beds can be found, police will implement legal guidelines that prohibit homeless folks from blocking a sidewalk or sleeping the place they shouldn’t.
“In the event that they don’t wish to use them, it’s a free nation, I perceive that,” he mentioned final June, referring to shelter beds. “But it surely’s not with out penalties.”
A sequence of inewsource investigations later discovered attainable violations of court docket orders that demand higher therapy of unhoused San Diegans, a dramatic spike in arrests with no prison convictions to indicate for it, and a deep disconnect in how finest to deal with folks residing on the sidewalk.
On one hand, metropolis officers and Gloria’s workers have mentioned residents complain day by day about folks in homeless encampments breaking the regulation or blocking paths of journey, making it harmful touring to highschool and work. The town has an obligation to implement its legal guidelines, a spokesperson mentioned.
Alternatively, town legal professional’s workplace has taken a hands-off method. A spokesperson mentioned homelessness is finest addressed exterior the authorized system. An inewsource evaluation of eight misdemeanor instances final yr discovered that in all however one, metropolis attorneys both agreed with public defenders and judges {that a} case needs to be dismissed or requested for the dismissal themselves. However metropolis attorneys don’t prosecute instances in infraction court docket.
When somebody challenges an infraction, the police officer concerned is meant to seem in court docket to prosecute the case. San Diego County courts noticed about 23,500 non-traffic infractions filed in 2021, in response to final yr’s statistics report. Final yr, San Diego police issued at the very least 815 tickets for encroachment, barely greater than the yr earlier than, in response to an inewsource evaluation.
Police concern an infraction after two encounters with somebody for blocking a sidewalk they usually refuse to go to a shelter each instances — it’s a part of town’s court-ordered progressive enforcement mannequin, which ends in an arrest after the fourth refusal.
Homelessness is a nationwide disaster fueled by skyrocketing rents, stagnant wages and low emptiness charges, and cities from Florida to California have been criticized for criminalizing folks present in public.
Based on a report from the Nationwide Homelessness Regulation Middle, police across the nation have continued to step up enforcement of legal guidelines that focus on unhoused folks — akin to sitting, mendacity down or sleeping in public — yearly for the reason that group began monitoring in 2006.
There isn’t a proper to a court-appointed legal professional in infraction court docket, so it’s uncommon for somebody to take an infraction to trial, and much more uncommon for a defendant to have an legal professional.
However Cusack, the native legal professional who donates her time for these instances, sees herself as a “social justice transformer” and mentioned she feels compelled to battle for people who find themselves being punished for present in public.
Jake Harper contributed to this report.
Sort of Content material
Information: Based mostly on info, both noticed and verified immediately by the reporter, or reported and verified from educated sources.
