Cops know we are not a solution to homelessness – Orange County Register

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Grants Pass v. Johnson, issuing a decision that could be one of the most consequential for homeless people in the past 40 years. The case examines whether laws punishing unhoused people for sleeping outside with basic items, such as a blanket or cardboard box when no shelter options are available, violate bail protections excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishments enshrined in the Eighth Amendment to our Constitution. .

Until June’s decision, based on my experience as a law enforcement professional, I know that criminalizing homelessness is a misguided and inhumane approach that does nothing to address the heart of this crisis.

Instead, the type of orders at issue in Grants Pass v. Johnson only make the problem worse, further destabilizing individuals who are already struggling to get back on their feet, while directing vital resources from the forces of order towards low quality of life offenses that have little impact. on public safety. This response is harmful to both homeless communities and police, who end up wasting a lot of time responding to minor incidents – time that could be spent on more violent and dangerous crimes.

Throughout my policing career, I have often been tasked with enforcing policies based on criminalization and arrest. After seeing many of these policies fail to achieve the desired results, I firmly believe, like many law enforcement officials across the country, that no one should be punished simply because they did not place to live. Grants Pass v. Johnson comes at a time of understandable frustration, where policymakers across the country have failed to address the growing homeless crisis. But this case challenges us to reject false solutions that only send unhoused people back into vicious cycles of arrest, incarceration and fines.

This alarming trend in homelessness is primarily fueled by the lack of affordable housing, as highlighted by research from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. Although many people believe that substance use and mental illness are the primary causes of homelessness, this is an oversimplification because living conditions on the streets often lead to a decline in mental health or increased dependence on drugs.

Considering all of these factors, it is clear that an approach based on criminalization does nothing to address the root causes of homelessness. The criminal justice system does not create more affordable housing. It also fails to provide meaningful help to people struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues. For decades, however, it served as a conduit to house individuals who had nowhere else to live.

Policies that place police more at the center of these criminalized responses to homelessness are also ineffective and counterproductive. Law enforcement officers are neither trained nor equipped to handle the myriad social problems often present in unhoused communities. Nor should they have to be. And yet, law enforcement remains the default response to homelessness in many cities in California and across the country. In San Francisco, for example, police were dispatched to nearly 100,000 complaints about homeless people in 2017 alone, according to a study by the American Sociological Association.