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Posted May 24, 2017, 5:21 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: San Francisco
Posts: 24,177
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pdxtex
miami huh? there was probably some residual guilt from the tent city all those cuban folks were living in back the 80s. unless that's the case you are talking about. I think the county work farm is great solution. bring that back. offer people a job with a wage and place to stay. that's a start. were $%^& spoiled in this country, even poor people feel entitled. we help out at a xmas charity every year that sponsors families. immigrant families always want soap, socks, maybe a basketball for their kids. american families will request ipods, jordans, laptops, flat sceen tvs.....this country could learn a few lessons in humility too.
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Here's more about what I'm talking about :
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Miami moves to overturn court-ordered homeless rights
SEPTEMBER 11, 2013 7:29 PM
By CHARLES RABIN
. . . city leaders and members of Miami’s Downtown Development Authority made true on a promise to ask a federal court to modify a decades-old ruling that gave the city’s homeless the right to conduct “life-sustaining” acts — such as lighting cooking fires in public parks, sleeping on sidewalks and urinating in public — without getting arrested . . . .
Wednesday’s court filing was the newest chapter in a DDA plan that began in April to remove the 500 homeless people that continue to congregate around downtown Miami.
At the time, city commissioners voted unanimously to petition the courts to alter the landmark settlement in the 1988 Pottinger v. Miami case. In that case, 5,000 homeless people and the American Civil Liberties Union sued the city, arguing that the police practice of sweeping them off the streets and dumping their belongings for loitering, sleeping on sidewalks and other minor offenses was unconstitutional.
The case reached a negotiated settlement, or consent decree, in 1998 in which police could no longer arrest homeless people for “involuntary, harmless acts” without first offering them a bed in a shelter. It also led to the creation of the county’s Homeless Trust, which six times has been recognized on a national level as a model for dealing with homelessness. The trust, which in the past decade has been responsible for lowering the homeless population countywide to 800 from about 8,000, spends $55 million a year in housing and services for the homeless.
But the DDA, led by Chairman Marc Sarnoff, who also chairs the city commission, says that current number of 800 chronically homeless is actually double what it was four years ago. The DDA wants the remaining homeless removed from the doorways and sidewalks of downtown, where they say businesses are being hurt, and locals and tourists are being harassed. They say the aggressive panhandling by the homeless is scaring people who live and work downtown and families attending Miami Heat games. The DDA, composed mainly of local business leaders and business owners, fosters economic growth of the downtown business area . . . .
If the Pottinger settlement is modified as the DDA is asking, it would, for the first time in 15 years, give police authority to arrest the homeless if they refuse a shelter bed. The beds aren’t available now, which is why the city and the DDA are trying to force the trust’s hand into spending the money to purchase 350 new ones. The trust voted in early July to buy 85 additional beds after the city awarded it $260,000.
“What they want to do is sweep people off the street,” Book said. And the only way to arrest them is to have beds available at night. I call it the Sarnoff arrest-and-release plan. All you do is sweep them in and out.”
On Wednesday, the city petitioned the federal court to undo several parts of Pottinger, including those covering public nudity, fires in parks, obstructing sidewalks, littering, and the ability to build a temporary structure in the park.
As it did in 1988, the ACLU of Florida intends to counter any arguments the DDA and its supporters present to try to change the settlement, said Maria Kayanan, associate legal director of the ACLU of Florida.
“There are multiple issues with the changes they seek,” she said. “Nothing has changed that would soften the ACLU’s position.”
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/loca...#storylink=cpy
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http://www.miamiherald.com/news/loca...le1954891.html
Here's what the ACLU says about it today:
Quote:
2. What did the Court hold in Pottinger?
After hearing evidence of the City’s conduct, federal district court Judge C. Clyde Atkins ruled in 1992 that “the City has used the arrest process for the ulterior purpose of driving the homeless from public areas.” Earlier, in 1990, he had enjoined the City from deliberately destroying homeless people’s property; in 1991 had held the City in contempt for violating that order. He further found that homeless people were not choosing to be homeless, but had no choice.
Judge Atkins found that criminalizing homelessness violates these constitutional rights:
The City’s arrests of Plaintiffs for harmless acts in public that fell within misdemeanor ordinances violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban against punishment based on status;
The City’s overbroad enforcement of misdemeanor ordinances that homeless persons necessarily violate while living in public violated the Plaintiffs’ right to procedural due process;
The City’s arrests of homeless persons denied Plaintiffs equal protection because those arrests unjustifiably impinged on their fundamental right to travel; and
The City’s unjustifiable seizure and destruction of the Plaintiffs’ property violated the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.
As a temporary matter, Judge Atkins ordered the establishment of two downtown “safe zones” where homeless people could be without fear of arrest for their harmless, life-sustaining conduct. He further enjoined the City from destroying their property and ordered it to abide by its own written procedure for handling personal property found in public.
3. Is the Pottinger decision still valid today?
Yes. The City appealed Judge Atkins’ ruling to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The Eleventh Circuit sent the case back to Judge Atkins in 1994 for further findings of fact; in the interim between Judge Atkins’ order and the Eleventh Circuit’s consideration of the case, more shelter beds had been provided though the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust. After hearing further evidence Judge Atkins reaffirmed his earlier ruling, finding that while services had expanded there was still a large number of homeless people who had no place to go – and that the City was continuing to arrest them for harmless activity. Upon the City’s second appeal to the Eleventh Circuit, the Court ordered the parties to mediate in 1996. After 20 months of intensive negotiations, the plaintiffs and the City reached a settlement that left the Pottinger decision in place, but created a different remedy from what Judge Atkins had ordered. The settlement also provided for monetary compensation for those who had been wrongly arrested or had property destroyed before or during the litigation. The settlement was approved by Judge (now Chief Judge) Federico Moreno in 1998.
4. What does the Pottinger settlement provide?
The Pottinger settlement put in a place a protocol to prevent these violations from happening again.
Limitation on Arrests. It defines a limited set of misdemeanors, known as life-sustaining conduct misdemeanors, that are nearly impossible to avoid committing if you are homeless. These include such things as being in a park after hours, or sitting or sleeping on public sidewalks. The police can arrest a homeless person for these misdemeanors only after first warning the individual and offering available shelter. If there is no available shelter, then the individual truly has no place to go, and cannot be arrested for those misdemeanors. Nothing in Pottinger precludes an arrest for any felony or any misdemeanor that is not life-sustaining conduct, regardless of whether there is shelter.
Protection of Property. It establishes protections of homeless people’s property. If a homeless person is arrested, police must secure their property as they would anyone else’s. It also prohibits the kind of routine destruction of homeless people’s property that triggered the lawsuit.
Training. The settlement requires the City to implement training to ensure that police officers and other city officials who deal with homeless individuals are sensitive to the “unique struggle and circumstances of homeless persons,” and that homeless people’s legal rights are fully respected.
Monitoring. The Pottinger settlement requires police to keep records of their arrests of and interactions with homeless people, so that compliance can be monitored.
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https://aclufl.org/resources/pottinger-agreement-faq/
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Rusiya delenda est
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