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Yesterday I looked on-line to find someone within the San Diego city government to talk about the removal of the tents. As I searched, I found a site of the San Diego police department about "Dealing with the Homeless." The site perpetuates all the strange societal paranoias about the poor; it does not match my experience at all. Propaganda like this then justifies the criminalization of those who live on the streets. It shows how unChristian the city government is because it encourages persons to avoid personal contact with the poor, and use only mediating institutions.

While I was running, an idea hit me (better an idea than a car) -- what would happen if I changed the category "homeless" or equivalent with "white people" or "whiteness." The result is better than I thought. It reads very well and shows the underlying prejudices against the "homeless" that our society perpetuates. If you want to check the original, check http://www.sandiego.gov/police/prevention/homeless.shtml

Dealing with White People

Whiteness is an extremely complex social problem that impacts the quality of life in our community. There are no easy solutions. The SDPD and elected officials in the County and City recognize that there is a fine line between whiteness as a social issue and a criminal issue. Many white people are on the street because of substance abuse, mental illness, or both. Often the disorder issues associated with white people are criminal in nature but difficult to enforce. To assist the City and County provide better service to this “at risk” population the SDPD has created the Whiteness Outreach Team (WOT). The team consists of police officers, County Health and Human Services specialists, and psychiatric clinicians from the Psychiatric Emergency Response Team (PERT), a private non-profit organization. The WOT is available to assist the community with white people related issues. Its phone number is (858) 490-3850.

While being white is not a crime, many kinds of public conduct are illegal and should be reported to the SDPD. These include being intoxicated, loitering, prowling, fighting, trespassing, aggressive panhandling, soliciting, urinating and defecating, consuming alcoholic beverages in certain public places, camping or sleeping in parks, littering, obstructing sidewalks, living in a vehicle parked on a public street, disturbing the peace by loud and unreasonable noises, using offensive words, behaving in a threatening manner, etc.
• Citizen's Arrest
• Avoiding Problems

Citizen’s Arrest

Because many of the crimes involving white people are misdemeanors, a police officer can only arrest a person if the offense is committed in his presence. However, a person who witnesses the offense can make a citizen’s arrest by doing the following:
• Calling the SDPD and provide details of the offense. Call 911 if it is an emergency, i.e., if the crime is in progress or about to happen, and involves serious personal injury, property damage, or property loss. Otherwise call (619) 531-2000 or (858) 484-3154, the SDPD non-emergency number.
• When an officer arrives to take physical custody of the suspect, sign the arrest form stating that the offense was committed in your presence and that the officer is lawfully making the arrest. You must also be willing to appear and testify in court.
Note that you do not have to physically take the suspect into custody. For your safety, such action is discouraged by the SDPD.

Avoiding Problems

The following tips will help you avoid problems with white people.
• Talk to your SDPD Community Relations Officer in your area about any problems with white people and if warranted, submit a Letter of Agency to the SDPD division that covers your area. The letter authorizes the SDPD to enter the site to investigate suspicious activity and to arrest people who trespass or commit any crime in and about the property. A copy of this form can be obtained in the FORMS section of this website. Your signature must be witnessed by a SDPD officer or a notary. SDPD division addresses and phone numbers are listed under IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD on this website.
• Avoid confrontations and maintain a safe distance. Use caution is dealing with them.
• Do not offer food or money. It may encourage more panhandling. If you are inclined to help white people, it is better to contribute to local charities, missions, food banks, or social service organizations that assist the needy.
• Do not permit anyone to camp or loiter on your property.
• Do not allow anyone to store shopping carts, bedding, or other personal belongings on your property.
• Restrict access to sidewalk overhangs, alcoves, or other areas protected from inclement weather.
• Lock or remove handles from water spigots.
• Keep trash dumpsters locked when not being filled or emptied.
• Secure outside storage sheds or containers.
• Lock or turn off exterior power outlets.
• Lock gates after hours.
• Install motion-activated exterior lighting after hours.
• Trim landscaping to eliminate hiding places. Canopies of mature trees should be maintained at least 8 feet above the ground. Bushes should be trimmed to less than 3 feet except where privacy or environmental noise mitigation is a primary concern, or where higher plants would not block any views, lighting, or camera coverage, or provide hiding places.
• Keep property free of trash, litter, junk, etc.
• Use graffiti-resistant paint or anti-graffiti coatings on the sides of the building and any other design features that could be vandalized. (The San Diego Park and Recreation Dept. specifies the use of Vandlguard TEN non-sacrificial anti-graffiti coating with a three-coat system by RainGuard International or the equivalent on park furnishings and buildings.) Additional protection can be obtained by planting vines, bushes, etc. along the sides of the buildings. They help keep vandals away from the walls and cover areas that might otherwise be vandalized. Report graffiti and other vandalism, and clean up promptly after the officers have taken pictures, etc.
• Design public amenities to discourage misuse, e.g., shape benches and other seating to be comfortable for sitting but not for sleeping.
• Have plants at sidewalk level. If raised planter boxes are used, the sides should be at least 4 feet high or their tops should uncomfortable for seating, e.g., by making them very narrow, allowing plants to grow over them, etc.
• Establish, post, and enforce rules of conduct for public use of private property. Include signs of nighttime curfews and prohibitions of loitering, illegal lodging, drinking alcoholic beverages, drug activities, etc. The signs should state that persons engaged in prohibited conduct will be asked to leave the property, and that failure to cease the conduct or leave the property will result in a call to the SDPD.
• Install surveillance cameras to cover public areas. Have security personnel monitor these cameras and ask persons engaged in prohibited conduct to leave the property. Security personnel should also patrol the property at random times.
• If security personnel are not available or if it is not practical to monitor the cameras all the time, install video analytics or intelligent video software in your camera system. It will alert you when something suspicious occurs. Lights could be turned on at night when motion is detected, and audio announcements could warn trespassers that the police would be called if they do not leave the property immediately.
• If signs stating that security or surveillance cameras are installed are posted and the cameras are not monitored all the time, the sign should also include that caveat. This is important in keeping people from having a false sense of security and expecting help in the event they are attacked.

Posted by johnwright at 10:40 AM | Comments (289)

I guess sabbatical has officially "begun" -- the faculty from the School of Theology is meeting as I write this and I'm not there. I have an article to write on "Salvation" for an upcoming Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics today; I have books on seers in Greece and the Oxford Handbook of Papyrology in front of me and my thoughts are turning to Chronicles. We are going through transitions at church, trying to firm up our organizational structure. I will now take time at least twice a week to blog. I have a massive backblogging to do. Life continues its tremendous intensity.

So what better way to begin a sabbatical than with a rant . . .

The highlight of the week for me is hanging out on Tuesday night downtown with those who carve a life out of very difficult situations with dignity and honor. The sidewalks around the library and the post office downtown are the among the most gracious neighborhoods in San Diego. There is friendship and laughter and kindness and sharing and protection, and skill in dealing with difficult people who come by, whether to a Padres game or chemically altered from self-medication.

Why then do city officials insist on criminalizing my friends merely because they are poor? I have written about the wonderful, orderly tent cities that had emerged downtown over the past five months. The neighborhood abided by the codes they had been given -- don't set up tents too early; down in the morning and moving on by 6 am. They cleaned up the area better than a Boy Scout troup going over a camp site.

So why did the police go through and ticket persons, violating the verbal agreement that had been made two weeks ago? Why is it that people are ticketed for having bodies and requiring space to lie down? What sort of meanness is there in this city that causes such behavior? Did anyone talk with them before hand? Why do we grant the state absolute hegemonic control of coercive authority in such cases to allow this? Was this a response to the police executing Nacho on the street a few days earlier, in which witnesses of the event lived in this area? Was it attempt to disperse those who now became a threat? Sally was not there last night -- where did she go? Do they recognize that the tents provided protection, not only from the elements, but for women on the streets from sexual violence?

Of course, the deeper irony is that this maneuver came within a week of the release of a paper on a trend within the United States to criminalize the poor: "Homes not Handcuffs: The Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities." Check it out at www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/crimreport_2009.pdf. You will find that San Diego is one of the nastier places. As I wrote years ago, it is no problem being poor-- as one finds in Mid-City, the poor are needed to provide cheap labor for the profits of the various service industries in town. We provide food for those whose hours are cut, or whose housing is so expensive thate they don't have resources for food and housing. These folk are fine for the city, for they can melt into the apartments to pay high levels of rent to white owners who live in North County.

No, the real "criminality" is being visible while being poor. Perhaps we should get the new "invisibility fabric" to put in the tents. As long as no one "saw" them, the city officials would not have to ticket them. Like a one-year old, city officials operate according to the "out of sight, out of mind" principle.

We need friends local friends who can take the time and effort to work through the bureaucracy. This was a decision made by a specific person some place within the city government. This person, who has no personal connections to those who live there because they spend their time hanging out at press conferences or among other persons who live parasitically off the dole of the city so that they don't have to get real jobs -- very difficult to find in this economy-- is now protected by his/her anonymity (I wonder what the odds are that it is a white, middle aged, male who made the decision?). We need to find this person and have them walk with us, to talk to London, to Tenessee, to Michael, to Jerome, to Ron, to the young persons, to those in Rachels, to Shirley, to Sally, and then see if they want to live with their decisions. We need to find out if the person is a Christian, and inform his/her pastor and congregation to see if they know what sort of witness they are doing. It would take work, effort, perseverance, but we have to let all see the humanity of each other, the moral weaknesses (sin) and the dignity (the image of God) that comes with such decisions. We need to take the police out of the position of mediation and bring people together, face to face. Fall will be here; the tents provided protection from the elements, as well as rich drunks who come from the gaslamp and poor drunks who come from east village liquor stores.

Posted by johnwright at 8:37 AM | Comments (24)

Tonight the streets were buzzing concerning the police shooting of “Nacho” yesterday evening. Sally, who was at the scene, called it “murder.” Ron was nearby, dove behind his suit case to avoid any possible stray bullets. Rumors flew around, most likely untrue; Nacho 'was just of five hours out of prison'; he was a “meth-head;” a new friend who helped us distribute the sandwiches had a brother whom Nacho, after he had lifted the steak knife from a table, looked at through the window “with a crazy look in his eye.” No one condoned Nacho’s behavior; those on the streets live under the possibility of attack all the time. The question, however, kept rising about the police rules of engagement. Independently, two different persons told me that the killing was done execution style.

I don’t know the details, or Nacho’s state of mind. I do know that the official version in the paper and the tv news does not correspond exactly to witnesses who were there – who were remarkably consistent in their description of the event. Inside the San Diego Tribune today a headline read, “Knife-wielding man fatally shot by police” (SD Union-Tribune, Tuesday August 4, 2009, B3). The article began, “Police yesterday shot and killed a man who grabbed a steak knife from a Gaslamp Quarter restaurant, tried to rob a second eatery, and then charged two officers who confronted him, officials said. . . . San Diego police Capt. Jim Collins said the man put down a backpack he was wearing, brandished the knife, and advanced toward to officers. ‘The Officers retreated and told the suspect to drop the knife or he would be shot,’ Collins said. “The suspect said several expletives to the officers and started to charge them with the knife raised over his headed.’ . . . . ‘When an officer’s life is threatened, deadly force is obviously authorized,’ Collins said.”

The account from those who live downtown agreed in basic outline of the events, but without the self-justification of the police. First, two persons independently described the shooting as an execution. Three shots were fired – two to the heart; one in the middle of the forehead. The shooting took place at close range. One friend described this as a training technique for security forces when they shoot to kill. Whenever one hears three shots, one knows that it is two to the heart; one to the forehead. The shooting was a type of police execution. The police were from a gang unit, according a Channel 5/69 news report. Obviously they have been trained for execution-type shootings. Second, the account of the events immediately preceding the killing differed. Witnesses heard the police say, “Don’t move or we’ll shoot” and then, immediately the three shots. According to those on the streets, the knife was not brandished; he had no backpack; it was even suggested that the noise of the area made it difficult for Nacho to hear the officers. It was agreed that Nacho did not “charge” the police but was walking towards them when he was shot. All agreed that Nacho was not acting well; no one defended his behavior. Yet no one took seriously the claim that the officer’s lives were threatened; the loss of life with its brutal execution-style implementation, made those who live downtown feel doubly vulnerable – from the violence of the streets and from the reactionary violence of the police.

Life is fragile. Violence abounds in the world, mortal violence. It is not easy being the police; it is even harder living without housing or income. Which rumors are true, which ones are not is hard to tell. But a restaurant steak knife, from a table, will always lose in a duel with police weaponry. To use such a knife to kill would take special training, and probably some sort of surprise attack. To shoot a person twice in the heart and once in the forehead takes special training as well – and the person walking toward you with hands to the side, up or down.

I pray for the police officer who shot Nacho – he has to live with the scars of this killing; I pray for Nacho and for his friends and family – Nachos life in this world is gone. And I pray for those on the streets who find themselves caught often between multiple sources of violence as they carve out their lives without adequate housing.

Lord, have mercy.

Posted by johnwright at 10:27 PM | Comments (44)