![]() ![]() As a result, officers are required to offer a shelter bed to each person they encounter before writing a ticket. and generally avoid illegal lodging tickets. That case was settled in a 2011 agreement that allows people to bed down on the sidewalks from 9 p.m. It started in 2004 when he filed a lawsuit on behalf of homeless San Diegans to challenge the city’s enforcement of illegal lodging, which accused the city of criminalizing people for sleeping on the street when they had nowhere else to go. San Diego has faced legal challenges over its treatment of homeless people at least four times in two decades, and Dreher was involved in all of them. Lawsuits have set the rules for San Diego Inewsource A San Diego police officer arrests a person during an enforcement sweep of sidewalks on Commercial Street in San Diego, June 9, 2022. “It’s not to help people,” she said, “it’s so that police can arrest more people.” ![]() ![]() Shelter capacity is an important factor for enforcement, because a federal court ruled in 2018 that governments cannot cite and arrest homeless people for “sitting, lying and sleeping in public” when there isn’t anywhere else for them to go.Ĭusack, a criminal defense attorney who represents homeless people for free and is working with Dreher to bring a case against the city, said the city’s efforts to expand shelters while also stepping up enforcement should be called out for what it is. … If we're going to redefine what's acceptable in terms of our society to include sheltering on the streets, I won't be that guy. “If they don’t want to use them,” Gloria continued, “it’s a free country, I understand that. When pressed on this issue just two weeks ago, Gloria said the city has made major investments in shelter beds and “that has to come with some ability to ask them to use them.” The vast majority of arrests are for outstanding warrants, officials said, but they would not provide specifics about those warrants or any records to back up that assertion.Īt any rate, officials said it’s unfair to compare arrests of homeless people this year against last year, because shelters are now “back open to nearly pre-pandemic capacities.” At the same time, they insist stepped-up enforcement for blocking a sidewalk has nothing to do with shelter capacity - it’s about protecting public access, health and safety.īut that’s not entirely true. The mayor’s office also said inewsource’s reporting doesn’t tell the full story. Gloria’s office told inewsource the city consistently follows the rules outlined in legal settlements and, when presented with evidence to the contrary, said it was simply an error that was quickly corrected, or a misunderstanding of the facts by those who witnessed the cleanups. Mayor Todd Gloria has declined multiple requests for comment, but his staff disputes those findings. The number of arrests for these crimes so far has exceeded the total for all of last year, records show. A recent inewsource analysis found San Diego police have made eight times as many arrests for encroachment and illegal lodging through June 3 compared to the same time last year. ![]()
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