Homeless coalition cites rights violations

Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2002 | 10:49 a.m.

The civil rights of the homeless are being violated in Las Vegas and cities around the nation, according to a report issued today by the nation's largest and oldest homeless advocacy group.

The report alleges that Las Vegas law enforcement officials use certain laws to target the homeless -- including laws on spitting, curfews for minors, sleeping in cars, sleeping in particular public places and obstructing sidewalks or public places.

"This pattern is similar to racial profiling, where you have a group singled out due to their outward appearance," said Michael Stoops, director of community organizing for the Washington, D.C.-based National Coalition for the Homeless, which helped prepared the report.

Las Vegas is now on the "radar screen" of homeless activists because of Mayor Oscar Goodman's recent comments about the homeless, Stoops said. Goodman in recent months has put an emphasis on the homeless issue in downtown, and has said those homeless people who resist help such as suggesting sending them to a former prison in Jean.

"We've been getting wind of press reports about the mayor such as last week's State of the City address, where he spoke of the homeless in the downtown area murdering, raping, and robbing their own," Stoops said. "We've seen this sort of pattern over the years, where a city official like Goodman loses patience with the homeless, a group that doesn't bring any votes, just complaints from different sectors of the public.

"These sorts of public statements then create a political climate where it's more likely for there to be both crimes against the homeless and selective law enforcement targeting the homeless."

The report, titled "Illegal to be Homeless: the Criminalization of Homelessness in the United States," was prepared by the National Coalition for the Homeless, a Washington-based nonprofit organization founded in 1984, working together with the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.

It is based on data gathered from 80 cities in 37 states, and alleges that jurisdictions nationwide are effectively making homelessness illegal by selectively enforcing laws against activities such as loitering or urinating in public.

The report put New York, Atlanta, and San Francisco at the top of a list of "12 Meanest Cities" nationwide, due to civil rights violations reported by homeless advocates in each of the cities.

In an interview Monday, Stoops said Las Vegas "didn't make the list, but it came close."

Gary Peck, executive director of the Nevada chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that the coalition's findings were not surprising.

"I have observed homeless people being questioned and harassed for what appears to be no good reason and have also been told by many of them that this practice is commonplace," he said.

But Metro police officer Kendall Wiley, part of a team formed by Metro Police to help the homeless, said the report's findings paint an incomplete picture of law enforcement and the homeless in the Las Vegas valley.

"First of all, the laws the report mentions are also enforced with other populations," Wiley said.

"Second, we often make arrests where we cite someone for violations of these laws, and they don't give us an address, even though they're not necessarily homeless. So this could affect the report's data."

Wiley also said that her team has distributed information about the rights of the homeless to Metro's five community policing substations in the county of Clark and city of Las Vegas -- but said there may be individual officers who don't follow these guidelines.

The officer added that she knows of no similar police programs that work with the homeless in the cities of North Las Vegas and Henderson.

Stoops said these reports have led the coalition to plan a visit to Las Vegas this spring.

"We hope we find evidence of the city looking at the full range of solutions to the problem of homelessness, not just letting people live and die on the streets or incarcerating them," he said. "We'd like to think Las Vegas could be a shining spot in the desert for all,not just the wealthy."