Enemies on the streets

By April Silvaggio  

OCTOBER 9, 2009 5:05 a.m. (1)

At least four Greenville police officers have been accused of abusing homeless people, and federal and state law enforcement agencies, including the civil rights unit of the U.S. Justice Department, have been called in to investigate.

Officials with the Greenville Police Department, State Law Enforcement Division, the FBI and the Justice Department would not identify the officers or elaborate on specific allegations of abuse.

Greenville Mayor Knox White said he is aware the investigation is centered on abuse of the homeless.

“It is something the chief is taking very seriously,” the mayor said.

Robin Thrasher, manager of Place of Hope, a homeless day shelter operated by United Ministries, said police brutality against homeless people, including using Tasers on them for no reason and verbal abuse, appears to have escalated in the past six months.

“Let me say this,” she said, “some of the police officers I know are really great human beings. I really think this is a situation where a few rogue cops are out of control.”

Greenville Police Chief Terri Wilfong was in Denver this week attending the International Association of Chiefs of Police annual convention and couldn’t be reached. White said the chief called SLED to investigate.

Greenville County’s homeless population fluctuates and sometimes reaches as high as 1,200. The 2009 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Homeless Count conducted in January documented 670 homeless men, women and children living both in and out of emergency shelters.

That number ranks Greenville County third among counties with the state’s highest documented homeless populations behind Horry County with 893 and Richland County with 853.

While The Journal could not confirm the specific allegations of mistreatment that led to investigation, it has learned through interviews with former city police officers, civic leaders and clergy who work with the city’s homeless and the homeless themselves it isn’t uncommon for the homeless to be singled out by police.

Homeless men said police have blasted them with disparaging language, rousted them from underneath bridges in the middle of the night and charged them with being public nuisances for sitting on downtown benches with backpacks in the middle of the day. They also have been hauled to jail for being unable to produce a state I.D. card.

“I’ve heard of a lot worse, like police waking people up with mace and stuff,” said a 42-year-old homeless man named Johnny, before being hushed with a stern look from another homeless man seated next to him on the steps of Triune Mercy Center, a non-denominational mission church to the homeless at the corner of Rutherford Street and West Stone Avenue.

Fear is common among the homeless, said Deb Richardson-Moore, the pastor of Triune Mercy Center.

They worry about retaliation if they report mistreatment by police. They worry they won’t be taken seriously. They worry no one will care.

Two years ago, when gangs of teens were attacking transients in acts known as “rehabbing,” Richardson-Moore said she invited city police to the church to speak with the homeless about how they should protect themselves.

“The biggest thing they told them was they had to report it,” the pastor said. “They said there was nothing they could do if the beatings weren’t reported. And they told them to travel in groups of two or more.”

Triune is one point in what is known as Greenville’s Homeless Triangle, an area just west of downtown.

The other two points are the Salvation Army homeless shelters further up Rutherford Street and the Greenville Rescue Mission on West Washington Street.

That’s outside the area some officers call the “No Fly Zone,” which encompasses the central business district and the West End where the homeless are not welcome on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, a retired Greenville police officer said.

“I’ve seen cases where a city judge put homeless people on trespass notice for all of Main Street. I don’t even think that’s legal,” he said.

He also said the Greenville Police Department’s Warrants Division was known to conduct “HoBo Rodeos” at least once a quarter on Thursday mornings in the predawn hours, clearing out the homeless from inside abandoned buildings and beneath bridges and jailing them for the weekend.

“They’d lock up 15 to 20 to 25 at one time,” he said. “They would get them for trespassing or vagrancy or whatever charges they could trump up. If you asked about it, they’d tell you it was because they were checking warrants, or wanted to make sure they weren’t creating a safety hazard by starting a fire in an abandoned building.”

Sgt. Jason Rampey, police department spokesman, said vagrancy, loitering and pedestrians not having an I.D. are not illegal in Greenville. Police can make an arrest for public drunkenness, a pedestrian in the street or trespassing after notice, he said. He also said he had never heard of gangs beating the homeless and calling it rehabbing.

Tulin Ozdeger, civil rights director for the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, said cities must find an evenhanded approach that doesn’t discriminate.

“The investigation in Greenville sounds like it might be an extreme situation, which isn’t completely uncommon,” Ozdeger said. “But historically, what we see most are efforts to drive the homeless out of an area by harassment, selective enforcement of laws or clearing out places where they live and destroying their belongings.”

Other cities have passed laws that criminalize the homeless to force them to relocate. Ozdeger said Washington, D.C., officials took a proactive stance by convincing merchants in a downtown improvement district to fund a day center for the homeless to get them off the street.

“These individuals all have constitutional rights that can’t be violated,” she said. “Once that happens, not only does it become a civil rights violation, but a potential criminal matter.”

Courts have begun to establish a history of ruling against cities in such cases.

Last year, homeless residents of Fresno, Calif., won a $2.35 million class-action settlement against the City of Fresno and the California Department of Transportation after finding that raids on the homeless where their belongings were seized and destroyed violated the constitutional right against unreasonable search and seizure.

In 2006, a federal court in Los Angeles ruled unconstitutional a law that made it a crime to sit, lie or sleep on a public street or sidewalk anywhere in the city under threat of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine because it punished people for involuntary acts created by their homelessness and violated their constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment.

The court found on any given night 80,000 people were homeless in Los Angeles, while there were 30,000 beds available for shelter.

“These rulings should have sent a strong message to other cities across the country that if they violate the rights of their most vulnerable residents, they will be held accountable,” Ozdeger said.

The Greenville Police Department disclosed the investigation Sept. 25 in a statement that said potential officer misconduct had been identified and was being looked into by the agency’s Internal Affairs Unit. The officers involved, the statement said, had been placed on administrative duties pending the conclusion of the inquiry.

“That was the first step,” the mayor said.

Rampey said this week the officers remain on administrative duty.

State agents launched their investigation Sept. 29 at Wilfong’s request, said Jennifer Timmons, spokeswoman for SLED.

The FBI and the U.S. Justice Department entered the case at the request of SLED, FBI Public Affairs Specialist Denise Taiste said.

Thrasher of the homeless day care in Greenville said homelessness is the outcome, not the issue itself.

“It isn’t uncommon for police not to have received the specific training to understand the majority of these social issues like poverty, alcohol abuse, addiction, untreated mental illness and cognitive developmental problem,” she said. “But that doesn’t in any way, shape or form excuse them from abusing anybody.”

Comments

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Cindy Zerga  - Gangs downtown   |71.12.1.xxx |2009-10-10 02:21:14 I don't understand this. These people are not threats to out citizens, they just have unforunate situations. The group they need to be more concerned about are the Gangs (children) hanging out downtown. Why don't they charge them with a no trespassing notice, vagrancy and I am sure there are other charges they can trump up. These kids are a threat to our citizens of Greenville. Reply

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