Harrassed Homeless
A complaint
against the City and NOPD alleges violations of the civil rights
of local homeless.
By Katy
Reckdahl
Last Wednesday, the New Orleans Legal Assistance
and attorney Bill Quigley filed a complaint in federal court
on behalf of five local homeless people -- Tyrone Henry, Jeff
Jones, Joann Monroe, Carnell Satcher and Vergie Wells. The filing
alleges that, at 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 4, 2002, the City of New
Orleans and members of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD)
violated the civil rights of the two women and three men by
arresting them while they were waiting for their paychecks outside
a temp agency in the Central Business District ("Walking While
Homeless," Sept. 24, 2002). Defendants named in the filing are
the city, NOPD superintendent Eddie Compass, Eighth District
commander Louis Dabdoub and the arresting officer, Corey Porter.
The court is asked to award compensatory and punitive damages
and a judgment to prevent these types of "illegal and wanton
violations" in the future.
The arrest came on a Wednesday
-- payday at Mari-Clean, a 24-hour temporary-employment agency
that specializes in cleaning ships docked in the Port of New
Orleans. Police initially put all five plaintiffs up against
the wall and frisked them. The two women were issued citations
to appear in municipal court and the three men were taken to
Orleans Parish Prison, where they stayed for three months until
the city attorney dropped the charges. This is no coincidence,
according to the lawsuit, but is rather part of the plan, "a
policy, practice, and custom ... of arresting homeless persons
for obstruction of a public passage without probable cause and
with the knowledge that they will remain jailed while awaiting
trial due to their inability to post bond."
NOPD spokesperson Capt. Marlon
Defillo declined comment because the NOPD has not yet had an
opportunity to review the lawsuit.
The arrest in question took
place not long after the much-publicized "French Quarter cleanup."
The police department said that homeless people had been openly
violating quality-of-life ordinances by urinating, drinking
heavily and acting disorderly. Agencies and people who work
with the homeless charged the NOPD with making needless arrests
of homeless people on relatively unproveable charges such as
obstructing public passage and public drunkenness.
The debate has subsided in
recent months, but the situation for local homeless people has
not improved, says Martha Kegel, executive director of Unity
for the Homeless, the lead agency of 70 homeless providers that
combat homelessness in New Orleans by providing emergency shelter,
transitional and permanent housing, and case-management services.
Arrest should be used as a
last resort, Kegel says. "Homeless people lose jobs because
they're in jail; they miss appointments with doctors and psychiatrists;
they frequently aren't given their medication while they're
in jail; and they're released without their ID so they then
can't get another job or even enter a homeless shelter," she
says. Recently, the NOPD was awarded a grant from Baptist Community
Ministries that addresses interactions between police officers
and the homeless. Both Kegel and Defillo are hopeful that this
grant will lead a more harmonious relationship.
Kegel says that the grant
comes at a particularly stressful time. During the past month,
she says, she's heard an increase in complaints from homeless
providers -- one of which came from Stacy Horn Koch, executive
director of Covenant House, which works with homeless youth.
On Aug. 18, Horn Koch alleges, Covenant House outreach team
workers wearing identification badges were working in the C.J.
Peete housing development when two Sixth District NOPD officers
ordered them to hit the "f--ing ground," then handcuffed them
and searched their pockets and outreach bag, while telling them
to "shut the f--k up." They were eventually released, says Horn
Koch, but only after being told that they should "stay out of
the f--king projects."
Defillo says that the two
outreach workers had walked into a courtyard where narcotics
officers were "conducting major surveillance." They saw, he
says, "an African American and a Caucasian American with brown
paper bags walking into a courtyard which is notorious not only
for drug activity but for gunfire and murders." Officers first
had "reasonable suspicion" that the two were involved in drug
activity, and then -- once that suspicion was eliminated --
were concerned about the safety of the outreach team, he says.
"If these individuals want
to provide health information, we support that. However, given
the locale, given the history, we ask that they please let us
know so that we can provide security for them," Defillo says.
But Horn Koch is not convinced.
"That's the first I'd heard about that," she says. "Maybe there
was major surveillance but they have no right to treat my outreach
workers like that. More importantly, our police officers should
not be talking to anyone like that."
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