 Funding for this program is provided by the National Institute of Justice. Hello, I'm James Wilson. Many kinds of people use the streets of our cities, people shopping, working, visiting, sightseeing, and people sleeping, begging, misbehaving. These are the homeless, the street people. By choice or circumstance, the number of homeless people on the streets of our cities has grown dramatically. Some are mentally ill persons who once might have been confined to hospitals. Some are persons or families who have lost their homes owing to poverty or family quarrels. Some are runaway youth fleeing from unhappy homes and seeking the real or imagined opportunities and excitement of the big city. But many are single males, often alcoholics and usually loners, who live the life of hobos. They have been part of city life for as long as there have been cities. Though all of the homeless are a problem for society, the derelict male is a special problem. He sleeps and drinks in public places. He often begs money from pedestrians. He appears unkempt and disorderly. We ordinary citizens often, perhaps wrongly, feel threatened. We expect the police to do something. But what, in fact, can they do? Santa Barbara, California. An idyllic community along the Pacific Coast, north of Los Angeles. White sands and palm trees, affluent citizens living the good life, tourists spending their money. And a growing community of homeless people living on the streets. They live that type of lifestyle because that's the type of lifestyle that they desire to live. Sergeant Thomas Clemens is a member of a special police task force on street crimes. They like to live out on the streets with little or no responsibilities and come and go as they please. Nancy McCready, a mother with two children who became homeless six years ago. Most of the homeless people here in town that stick around are pretty, very morally, you know, good people. Alice Hassler runs a shelter for the homeless. They're not committing a crime and they want to be in the park all day. But I think that that should be okay. Paul Lamberton is a local businessman. Yes, there are more here this year than there were last year. As there were last year, more than the previous year. At some point in time, if that continued, there could be a very real problem. Santa Barbara is not sure what to do about the problem. There is agreement that while 1,500 to 2,000 people are homeless here, only a small percentage are a police problem. There's a few transient people maybe coming through town who can cause a little bit of trouble, especially make it look bad for homeless people here at Santa Barbara. I also refer to them as street people, because they're people who primarily don't get into shelters because they either don't want to or don't feel that they can't. We've estimated that the hardcore group of street people ranges anywhere from 50 to 70. And that will fluctuate from time to time. They'll congregate usually at what is known as the fig tree at the fig tree park in Santa Barbara. I pay now. I pay now a lot. And I make good money sometimes. Other people tell me, you know, get the hell out of here. Get out of here, you know. Randy is an alcoholic who has lived on the Santa Barbara streets for at least four years. So I got to fight some people, you know. Not on my own choosing, just because of what they call me. They call me a bum and say, I'm not looking for work. I'm not trying to help myself. I tell them, go to hell, man. Give me a job, you son of a bitch. So I tell them that, you know. Excuse my words, but that's what I tell them. And then I get in a fight. Boom. You know, I got three people fighting me. You know, they like to jump on people homeless, you know. Randy is precisely the kind of street person Santa Barbara worries about but doesn't know how to handle. While some citizens provide compassion, others call the police. It's been that way at least since 1912 when part of this estate was opened as a haven for hobos by a wealthy eccentric, Mrs. John Howard Childs. City authorities predicted a festering sore of crime and drug addiction. At its height, the hobo village had 40 shacks. So we have a heritage of taking care of people in that category that goes way, way back to 1912. There's been some ride up in the press in recent months that this is a very cold and inhumane community that certainly is not the case. Businessman Paul Lamberton is talking about the bad press Santa Barbara got recently for a 1979 ordinance making it illegal to sleep in public. The city council rescinded the law in 1986 after homeless advocate Mitch Snyder threatened public demonstrations and Gary Trudeau ridiculed the city in his nationally syndicated cartoon Doonesbury. Still in the books in Santa Barbara, a 1984 ordinance against public drinking and a street crime task force set up in 1983. Well, many of these people living on the street with that type of lifestyle come in contact with many of our business people and people shopping in the downtown, old town areas of Santa Barbara just their mere presence sometimes intimidates people. Chris Olmberg is manager of the Open Door, one of lower state streets many establishments that have been gentrified in recent years. You couldn't fill up your bar on Fridays or Saturdays and nights. You didn't have a lunch crowd because the business people would not come down to lower state street. And it did get kind of, you know, grungy down there but since I think that it's been getting better since that public drinking ordinance has been passed. In the last three or four years because of the Santa Barbara Police Department, Sergeant Long has come in here a lot and actively cleaned up the area. And they are down here undercover and they do pick them up and keep them moving. And now everybody on lower state street, it's sort of the booming area. And I think there's less street fighting, I think there's less street crimes in that lower state street area and I think the merchants should count their blessings in that aspect. But there is a percentage of people who are still panhandling, it's all they have. So it can become quite a problem maintaining control over these people because it's so easy to commit these types of violations of drinking ordinance, the moochings, the cells and so on in narcotics that it's quite a task to keep up with. But I think that they probably have the sort of notion that if we arrest them and make it hard for them here that they will move on. I don't think that's true and from the little that I've talked with them in on the street that's not going to, if anything that's going to make them angry and make them obstinate and make them want to stay. It's just not going to go away no matter what type of enforcement posture you have on it. You just can't sweep them up and move them out of town. Here to discuss these matters are Gerald Lowry, Chief of Police in Santa Barbara, Robert Hayes, Legal Counsel for the Coalition for the Homeless, and James Durkin, an Inspector with the Philadelphia Police Department. Chief Lowry, explain to me now what laws in Santa Barbara govern public order. For example, is it illegal to be drunk in public? Yes, that's a state penal code violation. The city also passed in 1984 a anti-drinking ordinance which allows an officer to contact a person prior to the time that he is intoxicated. If we see someone drinking on the street we can approach him then before he becomes intoxicated and issue him a citation. Is it illegal to panhandle or beg for money? Yes, it is. That's a state penal code violation also. Is it illegal to sleep in a public place such as in a park or on a bus bench? Not at this point, no. At one time it was? At one time it was part of an anti-sleeping, anti-camping ordinance. The provisions on sleeping have been removed. However, the camping ordinance still remains. How do you enforce these laws on public drunkenness, public drinking, panhandling and the like? Do you wait for a complaint or do the officers take their own initiative? Quite often it comes by a complaint and other times it comes by initiative. An arrest and an officer may make an arrest if a person is intoxicated and we then book at the county jail. There's merely drinking, we issue a citation. I see. Now, suppose we go back to that tape that you just saw and the bartender who said, the police down here on Lower State Street, pick them up, keep them moving. What did he mean by that? Well, that is referring to the old town area of Santa Barbara Street and it's a district near the waterfront that had badly gone downhill. There were a lot of transits in the area. There was a lot of street crime. We had a lot of drinking, we had a lot of salts. We had panhandling. It became a special problem in part of the city that needed to be addressed. The merchants were, many stores were going out of business. People were not frequent areas. So we have sent a special enforcement team in to work on that type of crime, the nuisance types of crime, panhandling, drinking, fighting, generally disturbing the peace. Do the people that are picked up for violating these nuisance ordinances or these public order ordinances, do they often commit real crimes in addition or is this the extent of their misconduct? In that area, of course, the crimes that are committed by these people, some are assaults, which some are felonies or assaults with a deadly weapon. Others have been narcotic sales. We make many arrests for narcotics in that area. By the street people, we have a lot of LSD. We are finding amongst that transient group. What has done with people that your officers arrest for violating, say, the public drunkenness statute? What does the judge do? Usually they are booked at the county jail and they are turned loose after six hours. People who are issued a citation for drinking in public, many of them have had as many as six or seven citations issued against them. That would depend upon the judge himself or the judge presiding at a time and how he feels about enforcement of that type of crime. Usually the people who are involved do not have any money. They are sometimes given time to pay and sometimes the cases are dismissed. Do you think the repeal of the law banning sleeping in public places was a good idea or a bad idea? I think that the retention of the anti-camping ordinance was a good idea. The sleeping ordinance was really not one that we were enforcing. We were mostly enforcing the camping ordinance which meant that a person had to have a sleeping bag or a tent or some other type of bedding and that allowed us to then issue the citation. But the sleeping ordinance itself was rarely cited. Suppose a person is on the streets and is acting in an eccentric manner but has not violated any specific statute and you think the person might be disturbed, is endangered himself, perhaps is mentally ill. What authority do your officers have to approach such a person? Usually we are quite often approached by a call. Someone will see, a citizen will see somebody acting in a rather bizarre behavior. An officer would be dispatched but since 1964 when the Pettus Norman bill was passed which had to do with mental illness in the state of California. The police powers to do anything really are very, very restrictive. The only thing we can do is arrive on the scene and wait for a psychiatric evaluation team to come. The only way that this person may be incarcerated is if it's determined that he is a danger to himself or others. That is rarely discernible and usually the officer is in a pep team pack up and leave. Let me turn to Inspector Durkin. You work in Philadelphia a much larger city which presumably has a much larger population of street people. How do your laws resemble or differ from those you've heard described by Chief Lowry in Santa Barbara? Some of them are similar. We can take people into custody for public drunkenness. Our policy is that we will release that person to a family member or when the person becomes sober enough to take care of themselves it will be released. Is it illegal to drink in public in Philadelphia? There is a city ordinance about public drinking. Can you get in trouble for violating that city ordinance? It would be a summary citation. I see. What about panhandling? Is that legal or illegal? Panhandling is also illegal. What about sleeping in public on a park or on a bus bench? No, I don't believe so, sir. That's not illegal, so you can do that. How large a population of street people would you estimate you find in the downtown area of Philadelphia on a typical evening? Our estimates vary between 2 and 300. How do you handle this population? Do you have any special units whose job it is to work this group? We have a special team only during the winter months. We have what we call an emergency winter outreach program. How does that work? When a combination of factors are combined to produce either a weather emergency involving a 10 degree above zero or the temperature and wind chill is combined to be 10 degrees above zero we then begin our emergency program. What does the emergency program consist of? Is it a police program or a mental health program? It is interdepartmental. We have people who are trained mental health workers. We have social workers from our adult services department. We also have two police officers. The mental health worker and the adult services worker patrol the center city area in an unmarked van along with the police officers who are uniform police officers in a marked van. And we encourage people to seek shelter from the weather. What if they refuse to seek shelter? What do you do then? One of the purposes of the interdepartmental teams being formed was to diagnose the ability of our street people to recognize their level of risk. And what we're concerned with is that they are rational enough to realize that the weather could be a serious problem for their health that it could possibly even kill them. That the weather is so bad on a particular night. And if you're convinced they're not aware of these risks what then are you empowered to do? We can proceed several different ways. Under the mental health act in Pennsylvania we can seek an involuntary commitment. Section 302 of the mental health act will allow us to seek an involuntary commitment for up to five days. I see. Do the people of Philadelphia feel that you are being sufficiently aggressive or insufficiently aggressive in handling the street population? Do you think most citizens would like to see more people off the streets or they not care? Well, we had a member of the Chamber of Commerce suggest that we address the problem by a specific city ordinance. A vagrancy ordinance? A type of vagrancy ordinance. That's correct. What kind of response did he get? He got very little public support. The media reaction was very much against his particular position. Thank you. Bob Hayes, you are the legal counsel for the Coalition for the Homeless in New York City but you're also familiar with this problem in many other cities. What rights do street people of the sort we're talking about now have or ought to have? Fundamentally, like other citizens of the country they have the same rights everyone else does so they don't have a right to misbehave. And growing number of jurisdictions around the country they have some very important fundamental rights like the right to have a place inside to get out of the cold and folks particularly police officers as on your film suggest that homeless people choose to live outside that is almost always wrong. There are rare exceptions of severely mentally ill people who may not know enough to come inside but neither alcoholism nor mental illness are disabilities that result in people enjoying things like malnutrition, hypothermia, frostbite. So you're saying that the city has an obligation to provide shelter for people who are in this homeless category? There are now a number of jurisdictions. Philadelphia, Atlantic City, the state of West Virginia, parts of California, where courts have recognized that society does have an obligation to provide some emergency shelter to homeless people. It's a growing development in the area of law. It's a sad development because primarily we are fighting for things like the right to shelter simply because there's not enough housing for these folks. Do you think it should be illegal to drink in public or to be drunk in public? Possibly. I think with regard to street people the constitutional argument will always be and the sensible argument will always be you've got to apply law fairly. So if public drunkenness is illegal and police officers have an obligation to clean up the streets in a particular section of town, it should be done. On the other hand, if half of Yale Bowl is filled with drunks during a football game against Harvard, I suppose the same law should apply. I see. Do you think it should be illegal to sleep in a public place such as on a park bench or on a bus stop? I wish to God in this country in the mid 1980s it could be made illegal. The reason people are out there is not because they're rejecting offers inside. You can go to Santa Barbara and hear the police sergeant say, these people are choosing to live on the streets but I would define that same sergeant to find a place inside that was safe, that was decent, that homeless person who was on the park bench could go to. We shouldn't have to be discussing a relatively affluent society whether people should have a right to sleep outside. They shouldn't have to be, they wouldn't be choosing it except in the rare exceptions of people who are very mentally ill or people who want to camp out because a lot of campers like to do that. But that's recreation, that's not homelessness. I see. Suppose it could be established and I'm not sure whether this is right or not that a person having had all the opportunities to have shelter provided nonetheless said he prefers to sleep in the public park in the downtown area. So the police should try to preserve the quality of that park by taking the person off of it or do you think that after all is said and done if he wants to camp there he should be allowed to camp there? You're asking basically an academic question. True. We have a country where maybe two or three million Americans have been squeezed out of a housing market and maybe there's a handful of free spirits who want to live outside but that is not really the issue that has to be addressed and certainly it's not the police issue because by and large the poor victims of housing crunch and its lack of shelter for American people is not just homeless people living outside but police officers in cities across the country have absolutely no idea what to do with these folks. Let's talk about that. Suppose you were advising police departments. What advice would you give them as to how to organize and train themselves to deal with this problem? Number one, to understand that the police force as much as other members of a particular city have got to fight so that other responsible arms of government other than police force deal with these people. That means housing agencies, social welfare agencies and in some cases mental health agencies. I mean by and large people, even mentally ill people are not outside because of an abundance of civil liberties. In many cases there simply is no room inside a hospital. So again in city after city after city you see police officers knowing someone is in danger, knowing a person is severely mentally ill but also knowing if he takes the person in he'll wait for the rest of his shift at the hospital and then there won't be any room inside and the person will be discharged. So the first responsibility is to provide alternatives and to inform police officers as to what those alternatives are. I think that's fair. Let me turn to Chief Lauer. You've heard Bob Hayes say that he is convinced that only a tiny fraction of free spirits choose to sleep in public places. Would you agree or disagree with that? Well I think that probably depends upon the city and the area. We have a certain element of street people and we have a certain element of homeless people and we have a certain element, probably 20%, that is mentally ill. And mentally ill are extremely difficult to deal with because of the legislative law which doesn't allow us to do anything but refer to their case worker. These people are on the street and with no one to help them the city that they get their medicine they receive some funds each month which they do not know how to control and usually it's gone in two or three days probably sometimes as a victim of other street people. We have I think a hardcore group that has chosen a lifestyle, likes to be on the street. The rest that we make in just one area I think the latest figures of 108 people that we arrested, 62% of those people were had prior felony arrests. We find a lot of narcotics we find LSD. I think that's a different type of person. The housing that he spoke of is absolutely true. City of Santa Barbara is property is expensive we have a water moratorium there are all kinds of things that impact on that. 52% of my police officers can't afford to live in the city of Santa Barbara and they live in Oxnard and Ventura. Do your police officers feel that the city has an obligation to provide them with shelter? I think they feel much as the citizen does that the city does not have the responsibility of providing shelter to everybody. I think most of the citizens have stated that where does the city of Santa Barbara's responsibility end and how much is our fair share? Let me ask Inspector Durkin you've heard Bob Hayes comments how would you describe the proportion of people that your group comes in contact with who would prefer to live on the streets or who would really prefer to have shelter were it available? I think you have to differentiate between various groups. We have a number of people who are former mental patients at one time or another they were institutionalized. We have a group consisting mainly of alcoholics there are some other substance abusers in the group. Do you think the alcoholic people are focusing on them for a moment need shelter that the city is supplying shelter and they're not using or do you think there's a shelter shortage in Philadelphia? Well I think that as quickly as we provide shelter beds they're filled. Last year during our winter outreach when we began we very in a very short amount of time all the people who voluntarily wanted to come in and get shelter were off the streets we had to deal with the remainder of the winter with the group of people who had a problem with mental illness with the group of alcoholics with the substance abusers who constantly refused to go to shelter. I believe not so much that they chose to remain on the street as the types of shelter for instance provided to an alcoholic would be a treatment center and quite frankly some of these people do not want treatment. Let me ask Bob Hayes on this score do you think the city has an obligation to supply something more than shelter should this shelter also supply treatment for people who are alcohol abusers or mentally ill or the like? Whether it's cast as an obligation Mr. Wilson or his common sense my answer would be yes. Of course it makes a lot more sense to get out of the cold to survive the night but you don't want to maintain dependence on people so of course whether it's mental health care or in the case of growing numbers of homeless children literacy training, education or whether it's some kind of detoxification program yeah it's desperately needed and again sure some people won't go into it but more often than not in almost every city in this country there's a very very very long waiting list to get into those programs and people on the streets are very often the names should the police be involved in this at all or do you think some other kind of city agency should manage these outreach programs that contact people in the community? Police have to be involved in controlling the peace and dealing with criminal conduct and whether a street person, homeless person is committing it or a wall street lawyer is committing it I think the answer is yes there's a room for police involvement Thank you gentlemen and thank you ladies and gentlemen for watching. For Crime File I'm James Wilson Funding for this program was provided by the National Institute of Justice This program was produced by the Police Foundation which is solely responsible for its content