Harassing the Homeless

Santa Ana’s response to the court order barring the city from arbitrarily throwing away the unattended private property of the homeless is mean-spirited.

In reacting to the Superior Court order requiring city park workers to take all belongings with easily visible name tags to the Police Department’s lost-and-found area, Santa Ana officials offered to store such property free of charge.

But the proposed storage area is in a metal container, described by plaintiffs in the lawsuit as a trash dumpster, that is located in another park miles from where the bedrolls of the homeless are being seized. If unclaimed there, items worth more than $10 go to the Police Department.

The policy may technically meet the letter of the law, but it still violates the spirit of the court order.

Last May, Santa Ana officials began rousting the homeless sleeping in downtown parks and other Civic Center areas. Intent on driving them out of town, the city began seizing their property, mainly bedrolls, which many homeless people hid in bushes in the park. Officials callously called the bedrolls worthless trash, and carted them away.

What city officials called trash was clothing, identification, medication, food and other possessions of irreplaceable value to people forced to live on the street.

The court rightfully took a dim view of the city’s heartless and cavalier approach, and issued a temporary restraining order sought by the Legal Aid Society of Orange County and the American Civil Liberties Union. The issue will be back in court Tuesday, when the 20-day court order will expire.

If Santa Ana officials are not more responsive and don’t start treating all “found” items the same, the court ought to crack down even harder on the city’s cruel and selective harassment of the homeless.