{"id":11964,"date":"2019-05-24T09:31:45","date_gmt":"2019-05-24T16:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=11964"},"modified":"2019-05-24T09:31:47","modified_gmt":"2019-05-24T16:31:47","slug":"berkeley-faces-homeless-group-during-four-day-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2019\/05\/24\/berkeley-faces-homeless-group-during-four-day-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"Berkeley faces homeless group during four-day trial"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\u00a0Natalie Orenstein<\/a> May 23, 2019<\/a> (berkeleyside.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A trial for a homeless group\u2019s First Amendment Case against the city of Berkeley spanned four days. Courtroom illustration: Osha Neumann<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Did Berkeley go after one homeless group because its members publicly criticized the city?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After four days of trial in federal court, jurors are deliberating whether Berkeley violated homeless people\u2019s First Amendment rights by singling out the First They Came for the Homeless (FTCFTH) protest group for eight back-to-back encampment removals between October 2016 and January 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lawyers from the firm Siegel, Yee, Brunner & Mehta argued, in front of Judge William Alsup, that the city targeted the vocal group while leaving other encampments alone. The city\u2019s lawyer staunchly disputed that, arguing that serious health and safety issues around the camps necessitated the removals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First They Came for the Homeless considers itself both an intentional community of unsheltered people and a protest taking aim at unfair city policies and practices around homelessness. Its members regularly set up camp in highly public places and on city property, often reestablishing immediately after getting kicked out by police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three plaintiffs, Adam Bredenberg, Benjamin Royer and Clark Sullivan are also seeking damages for personal belongings they say the city seized and lost when employees rousted campers in the wee hours of the morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The city has maintained that the campers\u2019 protest activity had nothing to do with why they repeatedly removed their tents \u2014and Deputy City Attorney Lynne Bourgault said the three men in question were barely protesting in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A \u201cFirst They Came for the Homeless\u201d encampment in front of Old City Hall, before it was dismantled. Photo: Natalie Orenstein<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In order for the homeless group to win the First Amendment claim, the jury will have to find that Berkeley would have let the camps be if members had not been protesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lawyers for the plaintiffs tried to show that city officials and police were familiar with FTCFTH members and what they called their \u201cPoor Tour\u201d throughout Berkeley. Bredenberg testified that he spoke at a City Council meeting, wrote an op-ed and, during one encampment removal, read a bible verse through a megaphone. Sullivan said he live-streamed the encampment removals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a homeless-led movement that concentrates on homeless equal rights in our country,\u201d testified Mike Zint, founder of the group. \u201cWe\u2019re changing the narrative. Homelessness is not the stereotypes you see in the news.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The city argued that health and safety issues associated with the camp \u2014 including feces smeared on the door of a city building, red paint poured over the steps to city offices, and pro-suicide messages chalked on the sidewalk across from Berkeley High \u2014 prompted the removals, not the protests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had no idea what they were protesting or what their message was,\u201d said Berkeley Police Lt. Daniel Montgomery, who was involved in some of the encampment removals. \u201cWhat I saw was people lodging on city property. The conditions were messy, there was trash.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FTCFTH members begged to differ, sharing a list of strict rules the encampment lived by, which prohibited drug use and noise, and subjected all aspiring members to a probation period before they were welcomed in. Lawyers showed photos of tidy camps, and juxtaposed them with a photo of a huge trash pile at another encampment they said the city left alone while targeting FTCFTH.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Neighbors help campers move their belongings out of one of the First They Came for the Homeless sites. Photo: Natalie Orenstein<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The homeless group met with city leaders and presented a plan for a safe, sanctioned tent city, which officials never pursued, said lawyer Dan Siegel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He called Bourgault\u2019s \u2014 repeated \u2014 references to the human excrement smeared on city property \u201ca red herring.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no evidence that our clients did it, that First They Came for the Homeless did it,\u201d Siegel told the jury in his closing argument. \u201cIt is simply a device to disgust you and leave our clients out in the cold and rain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Members of the homeless group admitted the pro-suicide messages came from one of their own, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was inappropriate, across from the high school,\u201d Zint said. \u201cBut I\u2019m not going to kick a suicidal man out of his support network.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

City disputes claims that it lost wheelchair tools and tents<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The plaintiffs recalled police coming in the middle of the night to kick them out of their camps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey were vile. They were pushy,\u201d said Sullivan. \u201cThey started grabbing your stuff. If they showed up, you were lucky to get any of your stuff out of the way. I lost a purple suitcase, a couple of tents.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Royer, who slept under a tarp at many of the camp sites, said he got wheelchair repair tools taken, as well as a sleeping bag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have a therapy tool that helps me deal with my bipolar, which I lost,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bredenberg testified that when he went to the Berkeley Transfer Station, where the city keeps property recovered from these removals, the things he saw were piled on top of one another and \u201csoaking wet.\u201d Others said they didn\u2019t know where to go to pick up their property, couldn\u2019t get there on their own, or couldn\u2019t find all their items when they checked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mike Zint, co-founder of First They Came for the Homeless, talks at a vigil for Laura Jadwin, a homeless woman who died in early 2017. Photo: Frances Dinkelspiel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If the jury finds that the city violated the campers\u2019 14th Amendment rights (which prohibits deprivation of property without due process), failing to sufficiently notify them that their belongings had been collected and stored, they will determine the amount the city owes in damages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The city argued that FTCFTH members were well aware of the West Berkeley storage facility, and had multiple people testify that the camp\u2019s many supporters would make regular trips there to retrieve the group\u2019s belongings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Berkeley\u2019s longtime homeless outreach worker, Eve Ahmed, said that when homeless people call her to ask about their stuff, she offers them rides to the Transfer Station in her \u201ctherapeutic car\u201d if they don\u2019t have transportation. John Hurtado, from the Public Works Department, said he built a roof to protect the storage container from the elements when a thick tarp proved insufficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questioned by Bourgault, Zint acknowledged that the group received notice ahead of the removals, and usually decided to stick around anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy goal was to break their budget,\u201d Zint said. To show that the city \u201cwas playing homeless whack-a-mole.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou wanted the cops on the scene as long as possible,\u201d said Bourgault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes, it\u2019s very expensive,\u201d Zint replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the city could not produce most of the notices in question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is also no evidence that the city issued any such warnings to other camps during the same period when they constantly went after FTCFTH, Siegel said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During a jury break, Bourgault explained to the judge that the employee who kept records of the notices retired recently, and per the practice of the information technology department, his computer files were \u201cwiped out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alsup told Bourgault that \u201cit\u2019s your fault you threw away the notices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are a lot of things in this case where the city has the better argument,\u201d the judge said. \u201cIn this one, Mr. Siegel does. Nobody in their right mind would throw away those notices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judge: \u201cThis is very disjointed\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Early in the trial, lawyers for the plaintiffs had their clients talk about how they ended up homeless in Berkeley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Royer, 33, shared that he was placed in foster care at age 1. He spent his teenage years in psychiatric care for bipolar disorder, and now suffers from severe sciatica and uses a wheelchair. He came to Berkeley in 2016 following a bad experience with shared housing in Sacramento, and was told by the Hub, Berkeley\u2019s coordinated entry system, that the only immediate option was staying at a shelter, which scared him. The $1,000 SSI check he gets each month couldn\u2019t get him housing either. But he soon found community with FTCFTH.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Benjamin Royer, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, is a volunteer at Easy Does It, a wheelchair repair program. Photo: Natalie Orenstein<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bourgault, in turn, noted that none of the plaintiffs had been in Berkeley long at all before they allegedly waged a protest against the city\u2019s policies. Some had testified that they didn\u2019t even try to find housing through the Hub, a target of the protest. She had Bredenberg testify that he had high \u201cexecutive functioning skills,\u201d which he could have used to find housing, she said. She also noted that he had voluntarily left his mother\u2019s house in Pennsylvania, where he could have returned instead of living on the streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During a jury break, the judge chastised both sides for fixating on those \u201csideshows.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is very disjointed on both sides,\u201d Alsup admonished the lawyers. \u201cOK, he\u2019s got a mom in Philadelphia, good for him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her closing argument, Bourgault said she\u2019d like to \u201chear the story of every homeless person I see on the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But \u201cthe issue is not whether the city of Berkeley has done or hasn\u2019t done enough to solve the problem of homelessness,\u201d she said. Royer \u201cneeded a place to camp with other people where he felt safe. No one, no one can blame him. But now he\u2019s in court seeking damages from the city of Berkeley for his First Amendment activity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was the human waste and suicide messages, not the Bible verses read through megaphones that \u201cwere the straws that broke the back of [City Manager] Dee Williams-Ridley, frankly,\u201d Bourgault said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The city manager testified herself, saying her office received \u201cdaily complaints\u201d about several of the encampments. She often made the decision to remove the camps, based on a \u201ccombination of things,\u201d from the dangerous location to trash build-up, she said. When the camp set up on medians in North and South Berkeley, \u201cthat was an absolute safety hazard for our community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe we\u2019ve done a tremendous amount to address homelessness in Berkeley and will continue to do so,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve established basically a winter shelter in the summer. We have vouchers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Siegel, in his closing argument, said Williams-Ridley and her staff were probably \u201cgood people who do bad things.\u201d He referenced Hannah Arendt\u2019s \u201cBanality of Evil,\u201d and railway workers who nonchalantly laid the tracks that supported the trains that carried Jews to death camps during the Holocaust. His clients, on the other hand, he compared to Rosa Parks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside courtroom after the trial, Williams-Ridley said Siegel\u2019s analogy was \u201cunfair and offensive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Otherwise, she said, she felt the trial went well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clearly never the experience you want to have around a sensitive issue,\u201d she said of the litigation. \u201cIt\u2019s complex. We offer a lot of services to people. There is a large number of service-resistant people, and a large number have health issues. We\u2019ve just got to work really hard in that arena and find ways to support them best.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said the current manifestation of the FTCFTH encampment, near Adeline and Alcatraz, was among the many camps that were issued notices by the city recently for failure to comply with new sidewalk rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t removing people,\u201d she said. \u201cThe goal is about voluntary clean-up and condensing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rules prohibit pitching tents during the day or having large piles of items on the sidewalk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The jury is likely to reach a verdict in the FTCFTH case Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Natalie Orenstein May 23, 2019 (berkeleyside.com) Did Berkeley go after one homeless group because its members publicly criticized the city? After four days of trial in federal court, jurors are deliberating whether Berkeley violated homeless people\u2019s First Amendment rights by singling out the First They Came for the Homeless (FTCFTH)… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11964"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11965,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11964\/revisions\/11965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}