Vanguard Sacramento Bureau Chief
SACRAMENTO, CA – It’s been a tumultuous week for the Sacramento Homeless Union. Monday, the city of Sacramento tore down Camp Resolution, a “safe ground” site off Arden Way for about 50 disabled, older homeless.
And, an expected court hearing Friday before Superior Court Judge Jill Talley was canceled, killing a chance for the union to argue emergency motions for relief.
“In so doing, the Court has used legal technicalities, form over content and abused its discretion in denying protection and relief to the dozens of mostly elderly homeless women, 90 percent of whom suffer from serious disabilities,” wrote Anthony Prince, chief legal counsel for the union.
Tuesday, a day after bulldozers, police, firefighters, and tow trucks invaded Camp Resolution, Prince charged the city of Sacramento—in its mass eviction of the unhoused Camp Resolution Monday—destroyed “evidence” and committed “numerous violations of the law” during the eviction.
Prince wrote the city was “previously notified regarding the City’s obligation to preserve and not destroy evidence. To the extent that the City has destroyed vehicles, habitations and property belonging to the residents the City has violated that obligation and, going forward, must not commit any further acts of destruction.”
Now, Prince and Crystal Sanchez, President, Sacramento Homeless Union, note, “We remember when former Chief Judge Michael Bowman sent a letter to the City demanding that the homeless be removed from the courthouse grounds where they had come to escape a deadly heatwave. We publicly denounced what was a clear violation of the rules of judicial conduct.
”With the tone set for the entire Superior court by the presiding judge, we wondered if a homeless person could ever receive a fair hearing in Sacramento County. Today we found out that the answer is NO.”
The union mused, “Judges have broad discretion to disregard technical pleading requirements when the interests of substantial justice are at stake. From the first hearing before Judge Talley on August 9 to today’s rulings without a hearing, the City of Sacramento has, in its pleadings and in its conduct in open court, repeatedly lied, presented false ‘evidence’ and a defiance of state and federal law, particularly as it applies to persons with disabilities.”
Prince and Sanchez have maintained the “harm that the closing of the Camp and the ongoing intensified sweeps of the former residents has caused and is causing as graphically depicted on the front pages and television screens is not just in Sacramento, but across the nation,” calling it a “gross miscarriage of justice.”
Camp Resolution, they added, was “formed by a courageous group of women who had had enough. Kicked by police from one end of town to the other, facing hunger, violence and death on the streets they occupied one of the City’s 4,000 vacant lots and created a safe community. The lesson of Camp Resolution is that the homeless organized, unionized and fought back.”
The union is pleading for help, stating, “For now, we urgently call upon all good and decent people to come to the aid of the dispossessed, to do what Judge Talley refused to do: protect the most vulnerable among us.”
The city closed the camp after the lease was cancelled by Safe Ground Sacramento, a longstanding ally of the unhoused that now claims it could no longer provide necessities to the residents, largely because of the city of Sacramento’s apparent desire to close the encampment, which has city-provided trailers but not much else.
Prince, in his statement Tuesday, said the city informed him “all trailers would be left at the camp so that people could return and retrieve their belongings as well as the privately owned trailers. Instead, vehicles and RVs were towed, some reportedly destroyed and, in any event, the site has been cleared of all persons, vehicles and property.”
The city claims the vehicles were “deemed abandoned,” and may be scattered throughout the area in various tow yards. The city said those seeking access to their trailers or possessions should contact the police.
“The City of Sacramento indelibly smeared itself with disgrace, violating state and federal disability laws after being warned not to do so by the Disability Rights California, designated the states’ official agency in 1978 for protection and advocacy of the disabled by an act of Congress,” Prince added.
Prince said city “bulldozers crushed the RVs in which human beings have safely lived for two years… skip loaders dumped clothing, food, medicine, and other personal property belonging to the residents… caused people to suffer seizures and mental health crises, to watch everything they owned get crushed and carted off like trash.”
