Gilroy
– No one blames the police. It’s the law: No drinking in
public.
Gilroy – No one blames the police. It’s the law: No drinking in public.
Yet as homeless people turn up again and again on Gilroy’s police blotter, usually on public intoxication charges, some advocates become frustrated. In 2005, a county task force recommended that homeless drunk-in-public arrestees be diverted from jail cells, calling such arrests “expensive and ineffective.”
It’s frustrating for police as well, who are well-acquainted with Gilroy’s homeless. Gilroy police Sgt. Kurt Svardal said officers refer the homeless to St. Joseph’s Family Center and the Gilroy National Guard Armory – a wintertime shelter – but can’t force them to quit drinking. Homeless people are most often cited for petty crimes such as public intoxication and trespassing, crimes that often elicit a ticket, not a night in jail. From 2002 to 2006, nearly 30 percent of transient arrests were for public intoxication; warrant arrests, tacked on to outstanding charges, were also common. Though stigmatized as dangerous, Gilroy’s homeless are rarely arrested for crimes of violence.
“Very rarely do you see a homeless person get busted for DUI or assault,” said shelter worker Raul Padilla, who searches people at the entrance to the Gilroy Armory. “But still, you see them in the blotter – and you see them in the obituaries.”
Often, homeless arrestees flout instructions to appear in court, said Cathy Koslowski, an Emergency Housing Consortium program manager. Some lack transportation, some fear the court, and some, battling mental health problems, “don’t have the capacity to remember to come in,” Koslowski said.
The result? Homeless people often rack up tickets for petty crimes, which accumulate into not-so-petty penalties. Padilla said he saw one homeless man toting a bag full of tickets – all for “$20, $30, $40 crimes,” he said.
“I asked him what he was going to do,” Padilla recalled, “and he said, ‘I’ll use ’em to start a fire, if I have to.’ He hasn’t done anything really grave – but he could end up in prison because of it.”
Homeless people make up almost one-fifth of public intoxication arrests in Gilroy, though they compose less than 1 percent of its population. Some are battling drug or alcohol addiction – and losing. One-fifth of homeless people surveyed countywide in 2005 said drug or alcohol use had led to their homelessness, and roughly 45 percent said they’d experienced alcoholism. Others are self-medicating and drink out of depression.
“I drink a lot more than I should, to take the pain away,” said Chris Salazar, a 47-year-old homeless man, originally from Sunol. Monday morning, he wandered through Miller Park, carrying a black backpack on his small frame. Police stop there “two or three times a day,” he claimed, “but I don’t have too many problems with them.”
For others, alcohol quiets their psychological demons, in the absence of clinical medication.
“Alcohol can be a way of self-medicating,” explained Dina Campeau, chairwoman of the South County Collaborative. “If they have voices or other impulses, they get high or drunk to blot those out. That’s very rarely taken into account, with public intoxication issues.”
Outstanding tickets can clutter the way to recovery, said Jeff Fishback, employment services director at St. Joseph’s Family Center. Sullied credit reports can keep homeless people from the jobs or apartments they want, once they’ve scraped the funds together. Other transients avoid getting an ID, fearing their stack of old tickets.
“A lot of my clients have outstanding tickets and failure-to-appears,” he explained. “In some cases, I’ll go to bat for them, to get tickets erased.”
One approach is the county’s Outreach Court, a San Jose-based program started in 2002. Roughly nine times a year, Judge Jerome Nadler considers homeless people’s cases, often opting for community service, drug treatment or counseling instead of fines and jail time. Its next session is this Saturday, in San Jose.
“The idea is pretty straightforward,” said Koslowski, EHC’s contact person for the court. “Homeless people can come before a judge, without fear of being arrested.”
The problem is, Gilroy’s transients are unlikely to travel to San Jose. Access to bus tokens is limited, said Padilla – “we don’t get a whole lot” – and homeless people who shy from court are unlikely to go the extra mile, or 30, to San Jose. Campeau coordinates periodic Homeless Connect Outreach days, where service providers gather in a single, accessible spot, such as a park, and share information on services, and Koslowski has made the trip south to attend. But last time, only one person signed up for Outreach Court, she said, “and they didn’t make it to court.”
Meanwhile, programs to wean homeless people off drugs and alcohol are “limited,” said Fishback. Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings are readily available, but intensive programs are scarce, especially in South County. At the county’s Mental Health Department, “you have to make an appointment to make an appointment,” Campeau complained. “With homeless folks, it’s got to be treatment-on-demand.”
As a result, she said, “The Corrections Department is the largest provider of shelter for the mentally ill.”
Just over a year ago, St. Joseph’s staff reached out to police and library staff, “those on the front lines, encountering homeless folks,” said Fishback, and encouraged them to funnel homeless people toward the center. That outreach might account for some of the drop-in transient arrests, which plummeted in 2004, even as overall arrest rates remained steady. Svardal was surprised to hear the statistics, and said he’s unsure why transient arrest rates dropped so dramatically. For Gilroy police, it doesn’t feel like anything’s changed.
“Everyone knows that tickets don’t do anything,” said Campeau, “but there really is no comprehensive approach to dealing with this problem yet.”
And the cycle continues. Homeless people drink, trespass, or steal recyclables from homeowners’ bins; police cite them, and the tickets pile up. Sometimes, said Padilla, homeless people will commit crimes on purpose, just to get into jail, where a warm bed and three daily meals await. Some even call it “home.”
“It’s a little game we play,” said Salazar, shrugging. “Gilroy: It’s a beautiful town, but it’s hard to be homeless here.”
