Two months after announcing a controversial proposal to arrest the residents of the homeless who refuse the available refuge, San Jose officials unveiled plans on Thursday to enforce the new potential rules, in particular the creation of a new police unit which will intervene if awareness is unsuccessful.
While the policy and the financing of the refusal of the refusal of the new unit still requires the approval of the municipal council, the mayor of San Jose, Matt Mahan, described a strategy with several components when he strengthened the need for non-intestine residents to come inside, in particular when the city has invested massively in the reduction of the homeless without reproach.
“The goal has always been to bring people to the help they need,” said Mahan. “What is wrong and what we are going to continue to accept as a city is the idea you can say,” no thank you “, forever more and to choose indefinitely that you will camp in a place in our city when our community makes a historical effort and offers you the shelter, the services and the help you need.”
In March, Mahan proposed a policy that asked the City to modify its municipal code to allow the city to invoice residents of intrusion homeless if they refuse the shelter three times over 18 months.
Mahan argued that if the city and its taxpayers should continue to invest massively in homeless solutions – noting this year, its shelter system would add more than 1,400 investments to tiny houses, sleep and parking sites in complete safety, and motel and hotel conversions – people had the obligation to use them.
Although he recognized that the vast majority of residents of homeless people would accept the shelter if they were offered, Mahan’s broader intention was to petition behavioral health courts to act when the decision not to ask for shelter was affected by mental or dependence health problems.
Mahan said it was implementing the new law, the city had to take at least four steps to ensure that it has reached the impact it was looking for.
The first is to modify the City Code of Conduct from camps, which currently regulates authorized sizes and prohibited behaviors, to include the expectation that if a shelter is offered, non-underwater residents must accept it. The City also plans to modify its code to take into account the damage caused to the city’s property and to better define the intrusion and pollution which is often a sub-product of the camps.
Another change that the city will undertake is not to undergo awareness suppliers, but will rather provide internal service when it invests in training, quality control and data management to give the city a better understanding of what is offered and the way in which the embodied residents react.
The director of housing, Erik Solian, said that the city had three awareness -raising phases, in particular by putting individuals in a shelter, identifying the camps that have persisted and need more services and addressing sites where individuals, who have been released from another site such as hospital or prison, need more immediate interventions.
Solinvan said that awareness would also help identify housing residents who constitute a threat to the camp or the surrounding district and that information could be transmitted to the new quality of quality of life in the neighborhood that the city plans to create.
The unit – with a sergeant and six police officers – will apply the violations of the municipal code, including cases where residents without housing do not accept. Mahan said that he would favor the application of non-entertainment areas that the city has created, especially along the riparian corridors where San Jose must protect its sailing sailors to comply with the Clean Water Act and its rainwater permits.
The upcoming budget includes a line element for the unit, anticipating a cost of 2.1 million dollars.
Mahan, the city’s prosecutor’s office and police staff contacted the city of Fresno about a similar unit that she deploys where her awareness and police staff work together. Mahan said San Jose had decided not to send such teams so as not to hinder awareness efforts to strengthen confidence and learn more about the prediments of the without danger residents they contact.
“This is the establishment of relationships and not having an application of the law there and doing everything possible to try to help people,” said Mahan. “This is particularly relevant at a time when we make this massive expansion in the refuge and the accommodation and we do not expand any camp zone. We will work very hard to bring people with the help they need and help them come inside. ”
But the defenders of the homeless, who have already been alarmed by the initial proposal, have expressed their concerns concerning the deployment of the police, noting the level of disproportionate violence in cases where someone is afflicted with a mental health problem.
Lawyer of the homeless Gail Osmer referred to a recent incident during which a San Jose police officer was seen hitting a unscathed man with mental health problems who were accused of having resisted the arrest after the authorities responded to an appeal to an indecent exposure.
“Police without anyone else, there will be a disaster,” said the lawyer for the homeless Gail Osmer. “When the police enter the camps, people leave. There is no responsibility for what these police officers will do, and I saw too many times when they do what they want. ”
Although the arrests of non -violent offense will not generally translate into imprisonment, Mahan said that the City is committed to the County of Santa Clara to potentially direct residents that do not comply with rehabilitation focused on rehabilitation as an alternative.
Mahan specifically noted the Street mission recovery station – which, according to him, has an agreement with the city to accept the new Dui offenders – as a viable option.
But while the city focuses on progress to ensure that resistant service residents are making a treatment, Mahan reiterated that each person had the obligation to come inside and that the city and its residents could only tolerate so many things.
“If people really say:” I want to choose to camp “, at one point, they will have to find a different city that suits the campsite by choice,” said Mahan. “It is not possible for us on a large scale.”
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
