NEWSVIOLENCE AGAINST THE HOMELESS

Despite its economic troubles, Detroit is not known for being kind to the homeless. That's too bad, since there are nearly 10,000 homeless people living there.

In October, police say that Steven James Diponio, 54, became so enraged at Charles Duncan, 42, who was homeless and sleeping behind a school near Diponio's house, that the older man beat Duncan with a baseball bat, tied him to his car bumper and dragged him down the street until neighbors stopped him. Duncan was left bleeding and battered on the sidewalk until someone called for help.

Is that what Duncan deserved for sleeping near Diponio's home? The fact is that he had little choice. There are fewer than 2,000 shelter beds for 9,500 homeless people in Detroit.

Detroit Chief Judge Pro Tem Kenneth J. King didn't consider Diponio a threat, however. He set bail at $80,000, allowing Diponio to post 10 percent of that and walk out of jail until his trial. If convicted, Diponio could get 10 years in prison, where he would probably experience being beaten senseless himself. But chances are that he won't serve that kind of time since apparently Detroit doesn't take violence against the homeless very seriously.

It's time to send the Detroit court the message that violence against the homeless calls for harsher punishment!

In 1976, the Ralph Civil Rights Act, named after civil rights activist Ralph David Abernathy, was passed in California. The bill tries to guarantee any state resident freedom from violence or intimidation based on personal characteristics including race, gender or political affiliation.

Decades earlier, Abernathy became the student body president of what is now Alabama State University while earning a degree in mathematics. In 1955, he organized with his close friend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. the Montgomery Bus Boycott and in doing so essentially co-founded the American civil rights movement.

Abernathy shared a motel room with King on April 3, 1968, the night before King was assassinated, and introduced him to a gathered crowd on the 4th, when King began his last speech by saying, "Ralph Abernathy is the best friend I have in the world."

After King's death, Abernathy expanded his struggle, fighting for poor blacks, Latinos, whites and Native Americans, leading the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C. He strove to raise our moral awareness of the needs of our "most oppressed and poverty-stricken citizens."

In February of this year California Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal introduced into the state legislature A.B. 2706. The bill sought to expand the Ralph Act to grant the homeless the right to be free from violence based on their inability to afford or maintain a home. Lowenthal, commenting on the bill, wrote, "The perpetrators may perceive the homeless as easy defenseless targets. They may see the homeless as second-class citizens, unworthy of respect or mercy. These criminals may prey on the homeless because they know the likelihood of suffering legal consequences from their actions is not as high as it would be if they assaulted another member of the community."

In 2008, a pattern of brutal sexual assaults on homeless women in South Seattle's Industrial area began emerging from police reports. Victims described their attacker as a fat bald man with rotting teeth. All of the victims were homeless and actively using drugs, which gave their attacker an avenue in which to approach them. He offered drugs to the women before leading them to secluded areas to beat and rape them.

There is an area known as "The Tubes" located south of Seattle at the intersection of South Spokane Street and 2nd Avenue South where many homeless people live. They often sleep on pallets. One victim had fallen asleep on hers after taking some heroin offered to her. She woke up later to find a man on top of her holding a knife to her throat saying that he would kill her if she didn't remove her clothes.

Another woman who had been living out of the abandoned concrete tubes turned herself into the police even though she had outstanding warrants for her arrest. She too had been brutally assaulted by the same individual but wanted the attacks against women to stop. Even though she admits to being a cocaine and heroin user, she and the other homeless women are no less deserving of justice.

The Seattle Police Department began its investigation into the crimes and eventually pinned the attacks on one man, Reginald Breaux. He was captured in January 2009 and sentenced just last week after pleading guilty to first-degree rape with a deadly weapon, second-degree rape and attempted first-degree rape.

When cities and towns enact laws that prohibit loitering, panhandling, camping, eating in public or otherwise make it a crime to be homeless, the justification is often that public safety benefits.

As it turns out, violent crimes against homeless people are more common in areas that criminalize homelessness. A study (pdf) conducted by the National Coalition for the Homeless found that not only is violence against the homeless on the rise, but that there is a well-documented connection between increased police action and hate crimes against the homeless.

Consider the fate of 53-year-old Gerald Wudarski of Eugene, Oregon. On June 28, 2009, Wudarski, who was homeless, wandered onto private property in search of returnable aluminum cans. The property owner, Corey Freeman, confronted Wudarski, chased him, and then punched Wudarski in the head.

When a neighbor called police, Wudarski was charged with criminal trespassing while Freeman's aggressive act resulted in no charge. It was not until later, when Wudarski died as a result of his head injuries, that Freeman was indicted on second-degree manslaughter and second-degree assault charges.

Perhaps Wudarski erred in entering private property, but there is certainly something very wrong when someone finds it acceptable to chase and assault a man who was merely attempting to make an honest buck by collecting cans. Even more troubling is the response by law enforcement, that it is not OK to be homeless, but it is OK to hit people who are homeless.

It is hard to expect the general public to consider homeless people to be worthy of the same rights, privileges and protections when there are laws that make life-sustaining activities, like eating and sleeping in public, a crime.

I guess the cops in Riverside, California haven't heard about the cops in Grand Junction, Colorado. The ones who trashed a tent city and got fired for it. Because Riverside's finest allegedly just tore up an encampment in a particularly vicious way.

The department is currently investigating the claims from homeless residents that police were too aggressive in shutting down a camp in the Santa Ana River riverbed last week. Residents and their advocates charge that officers crushed canned food, poked holes in water bottles, threw clothing in the water and slashed tents and bike tires.

Since police officers in other communities have done this before, nothing is out of the realm of possibility. Quick and decisive action on the part of the police department is important for two reasons: 1) homeless people should be reassured that their rights are as important as those of cops and 2) Riverside has lots of riverbed camps. Less than 10 percent of the area's 600+ homeless people stay in shelters; most sleep in riverbeds, according to city officials.

It seems like a given that good relationships between the homeless and the police would benefit both groups. But right now tensions are high. It doesn't help matters when Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz, right after stating that police officers can't destory personal property, says things like, "These folks are sometimes referred to as 'shelter resistant,' and one of the reasons you would resist going to a shelter is because in a shelter you can't sell dope, you can't consume dope and you can't assault people." Stereotyping won't do anything (besides make it obvious he hasn't heard about self-governing and drug-free tent cities like Nickelsville in Seattle).

Today a Senate judiciary subcommittee held a hearing on widespread violence against the homeless. The hallowed halls of Congress couldn't be further from the alleys and bridges where many of these vicious attacks occur, but compassion is welcome everywhere.

Last year the subcommittee's chairman, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), introduced the "Hate Crimes Against the Homeless Statistics Act." If passed, it would allow the government to collect data on crimes committed against the homeless (as it does on crimes based on race, religion and sexuality).

Right now that data is collected by the National Coalition for the Homeless. A report issued by the organization in August showed that violence against the homeless in 2009 was the highest it's been in 10 years. Last year 43 homeless people were killed. In 2008, that number was 27. Cardin said he was "shocked and horrified" by reports of the killings. Urge your Senators to join Cardin to pass the bill and protect homeless constituents!

In the last 10 years, 288 homeless people have been fatally attacked. Who can argue that all of them were targeted for any reason other than the fact that there were outdoors and vulnerable? In the same time period, the FBI recorded 103 official fatal hate crimes. So adding homelessness to the official designation would triple the number of hate crimes resulting in death in the United States.

One of the men featured in the infamous "Bumfights" videos of the early 2000s is clean and sober and filled with regret. Rufus Hannah, a 50-something homeless man, published a memoir this month and was given the profile treatment in the New York Post. He says he can't forget the day in 2001 that a 17-year-old cameraman paid him in alcohol to beat his friend until the man had a broken ankle and was carried off in an ambulance. How could he? He has "Bum Fight" tattooed across his knuckles. He admits that he was manipulated, calling himself "a human pinata." But unlike so many similar victims, Hannah has been redeemed. Sober for eight years now, he works full-time as a property manager and, apparently, part-time as an author.

Before he became the stumbling, mumbling alcoholic seen in the videos (I refuse to post them here), Hannah was a regular kid growing up in Georgia. By 19 he was a dropout, married with two kids, working construction. From there he joined the Army, where he was bullied by bigger soldiers. After a broken elbow and a medical discharge, Hannah started drinking heavily and can't remember much of what he did in the 1980s. He made it to California, where the "Bumfights" videos were filmed, in 1991.

He spent most of the next decade living behind a grocery store with another alcoholic, Vietnam vet Donnie Brennan, the man whose ankle he would one day break for a bottle. One day a high school student named Ryan McPherson showed up and offered the men alcohol to do stunts. Hannah says he was nearing withdrawal symptoms at the time. Just like that, "Bumfights" was born.

Despite the fight with Brennan, and the many dangerous stunts he performed,

My feet tingled a bit while I stood in the foyer of Seattle City Hall, and not just because they had gotten wet in the falling rain. But I had to be here, along with hundreds of others, to protest the shooting of a well-known First Nations homeless man by Seattle police on Aug. 30. He was shot to death a few blocks from this place, this place that houses city officials.

John Williams, 50, was carrying his wood-carving knife when he was stopped by 27-year-old officer Ian Birk. Birk told Williams to drop the knife but he didn't, possibly because he was deaf in one ear and wearing headphones and suffered cognitive damage from long-term alcoholism. Birk then fired four rounds from a distance of nine feet, killing Williams.

At city hall, pounding from the drums echoed through the crowd and those with rattles kept in time with the beat. They asked questions like, "Why didn't officer Birk use a Taser?" and "Why was an officer approaching John anyway?" When a councilman spoke, many were murmuring amongst themselves. "Murder!" shouted a woman standing behind me. At first, the councilman looked uncomfortable standing in the center of the drumming circle. A young native woman standing behind him whispered in his ear, "Are you afraid?"

I didn't realize how emotionally drained I was until after I watched the little video I made using my friend's camera and posted on YouTube.

I scanned the faces in the crowd, many of them Native American or First Nations tribal members, many of them familiar — especially those of people I know to be living in motels with small children. Red and black blankets draped the shoulders of elders and quite a few young men and women were here out of respect. Their common denominator is homelessness. I stared at the younger faces because I wonder if we'll be mourning them someday. Already they abhor the police.

Any chronically homeless woman with street smarts and a need to survive will tell you to "find you a  man," as I was so often admonished to do. Male or female, those on the streets for a few days without a car or other shelter quickly realize that having a partner — male or female — can mean the difference between surviving and not.

A man, even a homeless one, is often believed to be able to offer the single woman, or single mother, some protection. There's safety in numbers of course, and that might be true in some cases, but couples are targeted as easily as singles when gangs are on the prowl. Still, many women and girls seek out male protection and find that the best way to get that is to hook up with someone — although it can be the deadliest decision you'll ever make if you end up with the wrong partner. (It's worth noting that many people don't get this far; they stay in bad relationships because the alternative — becoming homeless — is worse, and sometimes more dangerous.)

The comedian Garry Shandling has joked, "I'm dating a homeless woman. It was easier talking her into staying over."  His attitude, sexist as it is, shows how many men really do see homeless women as someone willing to sleep with them so they'll have a place to sleep. And many women see that as their best option, or sometimes their only option. Finding a relationship often means finding a way off of the street and a chance to get cleaned up, find a job, save some money or be rescued in some small way. When agencies can't do it, love, or some semblance of it, often does. The flip side is the survival sex nightmare; the saying "no such thing as a free lunch" is so much truer on the streets.

The movies would have us believe that an inmate's release from jail is a triumphant departure: sun shining, deep breath of fresh air and a waiting ride home. In reality the scene is usually much bleaker, especially for those individuals released late at night without anywhere safe to go. Those circumstances proved deadly for a young man in Florida who was killed in a hit-and-run accident less than an hour after being released from St. Johns County jail last week.

After waiting nine hours for his release and having missed the last bus, 22-year-old Dominic P. Amodeo was left with no choice but to walk in darkness along the side of the highway, where he was stuck by a pizza delivery car, which promptly sped away. Amodeo was a first-time offender who had spent several weeks in jail and whose vehicle theft charge was set to be dropped.

Norma Wendt, Amodeo's public defender, was shocked to learn how long it had taken to release the young man. But a spokesman for the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office defended the jail's late release of Amodeo, explaining that the standard county booking procedures takes time and is easily interrupted. I'm sure the jail was following typical procedures (which could use some streamlining), but there clearly needs to be a protocol for ensuring that those released have access to safe transportation, especially after hours. The spokesman admitted that Amodeo and others aren't even given bus fare. Considering that Amodeo wasn't the first released inmate to be run-down and killed in Florida, I'd say the procedure merits a serious reevaluation.

That's not all. Amodeo's story takes an even more disturbing turn.