The truth of the matter is the exact opposite.
Letting the crazies, substance abusers and predators who predominate amongst the homeless population aren't helped by making it easier to be homeless.
Letting people fall to this state isn't compassionate.
Handcuffing authorities when they seek solutions won't solve the problems.
Some folks need coercion to resist the allure of the street.
Sometimes an arrest, or at the very least the threat of an arrest, is the only kind of kick in the butt that will get those on the borderline to realize how messed up their lives have become and avail themselves of the myriad of services and help that are available.
The headline should have read, 'Injustice Handed to L.A. Homeless by 9th Circuit'.
Would anyone be surprised that the dissenting Justice was a former Pres. Bush appointee, and the two majority opinions came from a Clinton and a Carter appointee?
I'm no expert in conlaw (or any kind of law) but I can't imagine that the 'unique' interpretation of the 8th Amendment put forward by Clinton appointee will pass the smell test when the Supreme Court hears this case (which they likely will do), and just listening to the language she uses sounds a lot more like the way you'd expect a legislator to be speaking and not a jurist
The suit was brought on behalf of six homeless people, including Robert Lee Purrie, who has lived in the skid row area for four decades and "sleeps on the streets because he cannot afford a room in an SRO hotel and is often unable to find an open bed in a shelter," Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote in the 2-1 majority opinion.
She said Purrie was cited for sleeping on the street on Dec. 5, 2002, and then again in the same location — 6th and Towne — on Jan. 14, 2003, when he was searched, handcuffed and arrested on a warrant for failing to pay the fine from his earlier citation.
"The police removed his property from his tent, broke it down, and threw all of his property, including the tent, into the street," Wardlaw wrote. When he went back to the corner where he had been sleeping, all of his things, "including blankets, clothes, cooking utensils, a hygiene kit and other personal effects, were gone," she added.
Purrie spent a night in jail, was given a 12-month suspended sentence and was ordered to pay $195 in restitution and attorney's fees.
Wardlaw emphasized numerous studies documenting a large gap between the number of homeless in Los Angeles and the number of shelter beds.
Los Angeles' skid row has the nation's highest concentration of homeless individuals, with 11,000 to 12,000 living in the area bounded by 3rd, 7th, Main and Alameda streets, Wardlaw said in the opinion. She also noted that the National Coalition for the Homeless in 2004 named Los Angeles as one of the 20 "meanest" cities in the U.S. for the homeless.
Wardlaw said the disparity between shelter space and the number of homeless guaranteed that sitting, lying or sleeping on public sidewalks was "an unavoidable consequence of being human and homeless without shelter in the city of Los Angeles."
Thus the city's enforcement violated the 8th Amendment to the Constitution, which bars cruel and unusual punishment, she said, adding that prior Supreme Court rulings made it clear that the government "may not punish a person for who he is, independent of anything he has done."
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