This report follows an earlier report by the U.S. Human Rights Committee criticizing the U.S. for the disproportionate racial impact of homelessness, noting that while African-Americans make up 12% of the overall U.S. population, they constitute some 50% of the homeless population.
The United States, elected to the U.N. Human Rights Council only last month, immediately replied it was "profoundly committed to the fight against racism and racial discrimination" and agreed with the Special Rapporteur that "more needs to be done" furthering that fight. President Obama, the U.S. said, "is committed to reinvigorating traditional civil rights enforcement in the United States&including police misconduct."
The U.S. stated it has circulated the report with the federal agencies in order to seriously consider the Special Rapporteur's recommendations in future policy changes.
According to Maria Foscarinis, Executive Director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty (NLCHP) which presented testimony to the Rapporteur on homeless issues, "Cities across the U.S. are criminalizing homelessness, and the actions being taken in L.A. are especially egregious. What this report makes crystal clear is that police targeting of homeless people implicates human right norms as well as constitutional rights. We urge President Obama to order an investigation into this human rights violation."
A thorough evaluation of the first year of the Safer Cities Initiative was done by Prof. Gary Blasi of the UCLA School of Law. Among many other findings, the report shows that in the first year of SCI, approximately 9,000 arrests were made in the Skid Row target area, or about 64 arrests per 100 residents who are 75% African American. Additionally, in the first 10 months of SCI, 10,342 citations were issued, of which about 90% were written by the 50-officer SCI task force. This reflects a rate of citation issuance that is between 48 and 69 times greater in Skid Row than the rest of the City[1].
Becky Dennison, Co-Director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN), noted, "For over three years, community representatives have employed different strategies to try and ensure that the Los Angeles Police Department stop illegal and unfair practices in Skid Row including filing misconduct complaints, testifying at hearings and meeting with Mayor's staff. To date there has been no concrete response from city leadership and the majority of violations continue, which is why it is imperative that the Department of Justice intervene."
Earlier this year, Congress passed the Helping Families Save their Homes Act of 2009, which included a recommendation promoted by NLCHP that requires the US Inter-Agency Council on Homelessness to "develop constructive alternatives to criminalizing homelessness and laws and policies that prohibit sleeping, feeding, sitting, resting, or lying in public spaces when there are no suitable alternatives, result in the destruction of a homeless person's property without due process, or are selectively enforced against homeless persons."
Eric Tars, Human Rights Program Director at NLCHP stated, "We at NLCHP join President Obama's commitment to civil rights enforcement and call on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to follow the Administration's statements at the international level with concrete action here at home. In particular, the DOJ should immediately open an investigation into police misconduct in Skid Row."
For more information about the community activism in Skid Row, visit the Los Angeles portal of NLCHP's Wiki site, http://wiki.nlchp.org/display/Manual/Los+Angelesand LA CAN's website at http://cangress.org.
