Santa Ana Police Chief Vows to Continue With Sweeps : Civil rights: Despite questions of legality, he defends the roundup of 64 homeless men at the Civic Center on Wednesday.

Despite criticism over the roundup of 64 homeless people at the Civic Center, Police Chief Paul M. Walters vowed Friday to continue the sweeps until crime is reduced in the area.

“As long as we have crime, we’re going to do this,” Walters said. “This is not a homeless issue. This is a crime issue.”

Walters was responding to criticism from Robert J. Cohen, executive director of the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, who warned the police chief that if he continues the sweeps, the city will face countless civil-rights lawsuits as well as the extra costs of pursuing each case in court.

“The city is going to find this to be a very costly venture. Santa Ana is going to find itself sued over and over again,” Cohen said.

He said the Legal Aid Society and other civil- and immigration-rights organizations are recruiting attorneys to represent those caught in the sweep.

Twenty-two of those arrested have told the Legal Aid Society that they will each seek a jury trial to fight the charges and then pursue civil-rights claims against the city, Cohen said.

Justin Clouser, an attorney with the Santa Ana-based Poverty Law Center, said he will also try to enlist a law firm to establish a coalition of attorneys to oversee the cases.

“I think those in the legal community are embarrassed by the Santa Ana police,” Clouser said. “For many people, it would be nice not to deal with the homeless. But these people’s rights have been trampled, and that’s completely out of line.”

On Wednesday afternoon, police rounded up the 64 homeless men from the Civic Center and transported them to Santa Ana Stadium. There, the men were marked with numbers on their arms for identification and then chained to a bench for more than six hours.

Each man then received a ticket for one of four infractions: jaywalking, urinating in public, public drunkenness or littering. The majority received littering citations. Nineteen were later determined to be illegal aliens and turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

INS officials had been called in advance of the roundup, and the men were bused to Tijuana.

Alejandro Garcia, 19, said in an interview that he was deported to Mexico even though he has temporary U.S. residency. Garcia said he did not have his residency card with him at the time of the sweep and was picked up for allegedly littering as he was standing outside Santa Ana police headquarters.

Garcia said that once he arrived in Tijuana, he recrossed the border and went to a San Clemente Border Patrol office, where agents verified his legal status and allowed him to return to Santa Ana.

In an interview Friday, Walters defended the roundup, saying that the number of crimes reported in the Civic Center area had grown.

Last year, 707 police incidents were reported in the Civic Center area from January to July. The comparable number this year was 790. In June of 1989, six crimes were reported in the Civic Center plaza. This year, 131 incidents were reported in June, police said.

“We’re looking after the safety of 10,000 state, county, federal and city employees who work at the Civic Center,” Walters said.