| |
Op-ed by
Center Staff Attorney Scott Cameron
Appeared in
The Albuquerque Journal
Thursday,
January 8, 2004
Making Homelessness a Crime
By Scott Cameron
N.M. Center on Law & Poverty
The Safety in Public Places Ordinance passed this
week by the City Council raises a fundamental question: Should being homeless in
Albuquerque be a crime?
Morally and legally, the answer is no. But if the new ordinance is
implemented unfairly or otherwise abused, the answer, for all intents and
purposes, will actually be yes.
Aggressive panhandling is definitely a problem that needs to be addressed.
But giving police more authority to target the homeless with a new law will do
little to ensure the public safety, will continue to make the mere act of being
homeless a crime, and will keep the homeless homeless.
This is due to problems with selective enforcement of existing law and the
negative effects of a new ordinance on the wider homeless community.
Another lawyer and I recently defended a homeless man in Metro Court who had
been cited for standing on a roadside with a sign that said "Homeless Vet.
Help?" According to the prosecuting officer, the sign was intimidating and
therefore violated the current aggressive begging ordinance, which requires an
intent to intimidate. The court disagreed and found the homeless man not guilty.
Less than two weeks after losing that court case, this same officer cited
the same homeless vet for the same behavior, this time using a different
ordinance, but still one that does not apply to the harmless behavior at issue.
Despite his assertion that he honestly felt that what this individual was doing
was intimidating and illegal, it is obvious that citing him (in both cases) was
designed to do no more than get him off the streets.
Fortunately, the recipient of the above citation was able to defend himself.
The more typical case is where the homeless person pleads guilty and then
returns to the streets with a record. This record, even though for a petty crime
like panhandling, will act as a barrier to the homeless person leaving the
streets, as a criminal record often becomes an obstacle to obtaining affordable
housing or jobs.
The mayor and council made the argument that these examples show that the
current ordinance is ineffective and needs to be changed.
But what these examples actually demonstrate is that some police officers
will not fairly and evenly apply a new law, much the same way they apply current
law. If they can't correctly and fairly enforce the current law, why would even
more authority cause them to do so?
A 2002 Albuquerque Police Department interoffice e-mail provides further
evidence of the dangers of the new law.
The writer, an area commander, wrote that officers have been dealing with
the homeless population as "aggressively" as they can, that the homeless have
complained about officers for "civil rights violations," and that APD arrests
them "as frequently as possible."
Whether this targeted enforcement policy comes directly from the Mayor's
Office, from the chief of police, or from individual officer bias, it is obvious
that what the police don't need is another law that can be abused to unfairly
target the homeless.
Certainly the mayor and the chief have the authority to control police
behavior. They should exercise that authority immediately, not waiting for the
new law's vague requirements for new police training and monitoring to take
effect.
Overly
aggressive enforcement plus the law's broad prohibitions lead many homeless
people to rightly fear that the new law will usher in an era of even more
selective law enforcement, designed to chase them out of Downtown and Nob Hill.
This may leave them unable to even talk to another citizen without fear of
police reprisals and further marginalize them in the community.
Lastly, will the new law be applied to all those charities that seek
donations on street corners and medians the same way it will be applied to a
homeless person? According to the ordinance, that type of panhandling will also
be illegal.
Constitutionally, laws need to be applied evenly to all citizens, and not
doing so is unfair and leaves the city open to spending taxpayer dollars
defending lawsuits.
The city should scrap the new law and use existing laws to stop "confidence
operators" from panhandling aggressively, make sweeping changes in APD training
and policies and procedures regarding homeless people, and look at the
underlying reasons for why people are homeless and/or need to panhandle, in
order to develop broad new policies and services that are targeted towards
getting homeless people off the streets.
Further criminalizing homelessness with yet another law is not the answer.
|