San Francisco Clergy Speak Out Against Cruel Police Repression

by Casey Mills

As the colder weather of autumn approaches, a coalition of San Francisco's religious leaders joined together at City Hall recently to reveal the results of months of study on the city's homeless policy. The results, they said, depicted the Newsom administration as simultaneously working to house as many homeless people as possible, while criminalizing those it lacks the resources to serve.

Clergy members decried the 31,230 "quality of life" citations delivered in the past two-and-one-half years for behaviors such as sleeping outdoors or possessing an open container as "spiritually bankrupt;" and they also pointed out it cost taxpayers $5.7 million, and that 80 percent of the citations were dismissed.

In addition, a civil rights lawyer was on hand to show that these citations often prevent homeless people from getting the housing they so desperately need, revealing the contradictions in a city policy that works simultaneously to create housing opportunities, then takes these opportunities away. "It's a policy in this city at war with itself," said Reverend Schuyler Rhodes.

Religious Witness with Homeless People, a broad interfaith coalition of the city's religious leaders, initiated the study months ago and released it to the public on August 31, 2006. Headed up by Sister Bernie Galvin, the study sought to unearth the true costs of citing homeless people for "quality of life" infractions.

Religious leaders previously lambasted these citations, which punish various nonviolent behaviors that often come as a result of being homeless, for being a cruel way to treat San Francisco's less fortunate. The results of the new study, however, added important new critiques of the practice -- the fact that it costs taxpayers millions every year, and that it runs directly counter to the Newsom administration's effort to house all homeless people.

Since January of 2004, San Francisco has spent more than $5.7 million on issuing "quality of life citations." According to Elisa Dell-Piana of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, the high cost can be traced to a variety of causes, including paying the police officers to give the citations, funding the expenses of forcing offenders to appear for multiple court dates, and paying officers yet again to testify at these court dates.

Dell-Piana also explained that more than 80 percent of these citations are thrown out, proving that the expensive process for doling them out rarely brings any concrete result. When the citations aren't thrown out, however, they can make it far more difficult for the homeless to obtain housing, as screening processes often check applicants' criminal records.

Because the practice conflicts directly with San Francisco's attempts to house its homeless population, Rev. Schuyler Rhodes likened it to the disaster that occurred during the construction of the Verrazano Bridge. Workers built the bridge out from opposite sides of the New York Bay, only to discover near the completion of construction that the two sides didn't connect. Such, said Rhodes, is the city's homeless policy, with two arms of city government working against each other.

"We religious leaders are deeply disturbed by the mean-spiritedness of this punitive part of our current policy on homelessness," said Galvin. "We come today, compelled to speak out once again about this injustice and the subsequent suffering and pain our homeless sisters and brother endure."

Speak out they did, with representatives of the Jewish, Catholic, Protestant and Buddhist communities all weighing in on the recent study. While they represented a diverse group, their message remained clear -- the city must change its citation policy if it wants to consider itself both a moral city and a pragmatic one.

Rabbi Alan Lew said, "The truly shocking thing about the aggressive enforcement of the 'quality of life citations' is that it is not only spiritually and morally futile. It is that it has been futile on a practical level, too."

Unfortunately, the Newsom administration doesn't appear ready to act anytime soon. Despite numerous requests made by Religious Witness to meet directly with Mayor Gavin Newsom, he has steadfastly refused, making him the first mayor since the organization was founded to do so.

Casey Mills is a community organizer and the managing editor of www.Beyondchron.org.

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