Homeless sweep spawns outrage

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Friday, Sept. 26, 2003 | 11:05 a.m.

As many as 20 homeless people lost their personal property in a downtown sweep carried out by Metro Police and Las Vegas Neighborhood Services Wednesday morning, provoking outrage by the local ACLU chapter and advocates for the homeless.

The sweep occurred about 8 a.m. Wednesday outside the Salvation Army on West Owens Avenue, apparently in response to a growing number of shopping carts being left around a ramp providing handicapped access to the agency, said Duane Sonnenberg, who coordinates homeless services for the nonprofit. Many homeless people use shopping carts to carry their possessions.

"Over the past month or so, (the number of carts blocking the ramp) kept getting worse," Sonnenberg said.

Sonnenberg also said that anyone with a shopping cart is using stolen goods, referring to North Las Vegas and Las Vegas ordinances against removing the carts from commercial property.

But Gary Peck, executive director for the local chapter of the ACLU, said the situation was handled poorly and shows a pattern of violating the constitutional rights of the homeless by Metro and Las Vegas that could be grounds for a future lawsuit.

Elaine Sanchez, spokeswoman for the city, said Neighborhood Services personnel allowed anyone who was at the scene to take their possessions out of the carts before the carts were taken away. But she also said the city employees had no contact with the homeless during the sweep.

According to accounts of the incident from several of the homeless, Metro made access to the belongings more difficult by having Salvation Army personnel lock a gate that led to the street and also didn't allow any of the homeless who reached the scene to retrieve their possessions.

Metro spokesman, Officer Jose Montoya, said this morning that the department had no one available who could discuss the sweep.

Peck said the ACLU keeps "hoping the city and the police will stop violating the rights of those whose only crime is a lack of shelter, so we can avoid litigation that would cost the taxpayers money and further tarnish the reputation of Las Vegas."

Linda Lera-Randle El, director for a nonprofit called Straight from the Streets, said, "This is the sort of thing that results in Las Vegas being called the 'meanest city to the homeless,"' referring to a national report that named the city as the worst in the nation when it comes to its treatment of the homeless.

A homeless man who gave only his first name -- Tony -- for fear of reprisal from the Salvation Army, said Thursday he lost his Social Security card and more than a year's worth of paperwork for disability benefits in the sweep. He also lost a foam pad that he uses to sleep on, blankets and clothes. His wife, Dee Garcia, lost similar possessions.

"That's my whole life in there," he said. "How would they feel if it happened to them?"

Peck said the Greater Pittsburgh ACLU brought a federal civil rights class action lawsuit against that city earlier this year, charging that the homeless were deprived of their due process rights when the city seized and destroyed their property in similar sweeps.

A settlement in that case was reached in less than two weeks ordering the city to provide advance notice of sweeps in public areas and to store possessions of the homeless for up to a year.

Peck said he has enlisted the help of lawyers in the ACLU's national office and is gathering evidence of ongoing constitutional violations.

"Dumping people's belongings is just the latest in a long line of abuses we have been documenting," he said. Ten people he had interviewed said objects they lost Wednesday included medications for emphysema and asthma, photos of parents and uniforms for a job as a security guard that one man had started days earlier.

Leroy Pelton, professor of social work at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said he saw the sweep as an example of "ongoing harrassment of the homeless ... to try and make them disappear." Pelton is writing a book on justice and social policy that refers to local policy on the homeless. He said a homeless man whose possessions were lost Wednesday called him after the sweep.

"It's not the greatest crime in the Las Vegas Valley ... (and) they could have dumped the possessions (on the ground) first," he said.

Lera-Randle El has been hired as a consultant by the Salvation Army in recent months. She said that she has seen the agency become overwhelmed by the growing numbers of homeless who use it for services as other agencies such as the MASH Village and the God in Me Ministry have closed down in recent months.

Still, she said, depriving the homeless of their possessions "doesn't just inconvenience the homeless people, but all the agencies that help the homeless, who then have to duplicate all the work they've done.

"A lot of times, what is in these carts is everything the homeless need to build their future," she said.

But Mark St. Croix, who handles day shelter for the Salvation Army, had a different take on the carts and their contents.

"If you look at the things they carry around in those carts, those aren't basic needs or anything -- they have bottle collections and stuff like that," he said.

John Williams, who with his partner, Tammi Hardy, lost a cart Wednesday, begged to differ. Williams had just been given two new quilts the night before at a church whose name he didn't know located on St. Louis Avenue at Maryland Parkway. (There are several churches in that area.) He had also bought some shoes and pants several days earlier at Deseret Thrift Store downtown.

Thursday, it was all gone.

Williams said he was inside the Salvation Army taking a shower when the sweep began.

"Somebody was jumping up and down outside when I came out of the shower, so I looked outside to see what was happening."

Williams said he had tried to comply with Salvation Army personnel's requests to not block access to the handicapped with his cart. He had moved it from the ramp to the dirt by the sidewalk on Owens Avenue.

When Williams looked out the window, he saw police by that same spot. He tried to run out through the same gate he normally uses to enter the agency, but the gate had been locked.

Charlie Desiderio, spokesman for the Salvation Army, said Metro asked employees of his agency to lock the gate "so they could finish their job."

By the time Williams got down to the street via a longer route, his possessions were loaded onto a truck.

"I asked the police, 'Is it OK if I take some of my stuff back?' They said, 'Move on or you're going to jail.' So I moved on."

Tony said he hoped he could be compensated somehow for the loss of his possessions.

"They got their stuff at home -- they can put their key in the door," he said.

"What are we supposed to do?"