Image: Brad Phillips, an attorney with Munger Tolles & Olson LLP, speaks during the announcement of the lawsuit. He is joined by Mark Rosenbaum, ACLU/SC legal director, and Jennie Pasquarella, ACLU/SC staff attorney.

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – The ACLU of Southern California and the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP sued the city of Santa Monica today for violating the constitutional rights of chronically homeless people by arresting and harassing them even though the city lacks sufficient shelter space for these homeless persons to sleep. The lawsuit – on behalf of certain homeless residents suffering from mental and physical disabilities – was filed in federal district court in Los Angeles.

Despite its reputation as a liberal bastion with progressive political and social policies, the city of Santa Monica has used its police officers to harass and intimidate disabled homeless residents in recent years, citing or arresting them for sitting or sleeping in public places, and compelling them to “move on” to other cities.

“It's not only illegal but callous and inhumane for any city to have its police officers cite, arrest and harass mentally ill or physically disabled homeless persons, even as it fails to provide them with sufficient shelter space. But it's particularly shocking and hypocritical in Santa Monica, which touts itself on its website as a, forward-thinking, caring community,” said Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU/SC.

Santa Monica is the third city to be sued by the ACLU/SC in recent months for criminalizing chronically homeless people – those who have mental or physical disabilities and have been homeless repeatedly or for an extended period of time. The ACLU/SC previously sued Laguna Beach and Santa Barbara, and reached a settlement with the city of Laguna Beach last month.

“What these communities have in common is an effort to criminalize the chronically homeless by making homelessness and mental illness crimes, and then driving homeless persons to other communities,” Rosenbaum said. “Among these three cities, however, Santa Monica stands out for the hostility of its police toward chronically disabled homeless people. Santa Monica is functionally operating a deportation program against its mentally disabled homeless, acting to eliminate the homeless, not homelessness.”

One such man, a recovering addict, was arrested by Santa Monica police for sleeping at 4 a.m. just outside a local homeless shelter where there were no available beds. He showed the police his employee badge and pleaded to be permitted to go to his job. The police responded that there was a city policy to arrest anyone sleeping in public, handcuffed him and jailed him for two days. Afterward he was fired from his job.

A chronically homeless woman who is a paranoid schizophrenic and believes spaceships are trying to kill her has been arrested and jailed at least three times by Santa Monica police officers for “camping” on city streets. Repeatedly, police have told her to “move on.” As a result she currently sleeps on a sidewalk near Venice Beach.

The Santa Monica city website estimates that there are about 915 homeless people in the city on a given day. Meanwhile, Santa Monica has only about 180 beds in shelters for short-term stays of up to six months, and only about 45 shelter beds that are available to mentally ill homeless, accommodating less than 20 percent of the population.

According to a 2006 report by the Urban Institute, 94 percent of Santa Monica's homeless population suffers from mental illness, substance abuse or both – a percentage far higher than anywhere else in the country.

“If you strip away the rhetoric of city officials, it's clear that Santa Monica is doing less for the chronically homeless than it was 10 years ago,” said Jennie Pasquarella, a staff attorney for the ACLU/SC. “Yet the daily cost of providing a chronically homeless person permanent supportive housing is a fraction of the daily cost of arresting and incarcerating a homeless person. It's time for Santa Monica to acknowledge reality and show the kind of leadership on providing services for the homeless that would make it truly deserving of the description forward-thinking.”

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LOS ANGELES, Calif. – Alarmed at the prospect of further overcrowding and violence in Los Angeles County’s jails, the American Civil Liberties Union today asked a judge to prevent the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department from closing a 1,600-bed jail facility without first preparing a detailed plan to cope with the potential for a serious worsening of conditions in other jails.

In documents filed in federal court, the ACLU further demanded that Sheriff Lee Baca consider closing the dilapidated Men’s Central Jail instead of the more modern North Facility at Pitchess Detention Center, which Baca has said he will shutter on September 1, 2009.

“Closing the North Facility without a careful plan will have a grave impact on inmates already forced to endure substandard conditions,” said Melinda Bird, senior counsel for the ACLU of Southern California. “As it is now, the Sheriff’s Department is violating the Constitution by holding thousands of mentally ill inmates in windowless cells in Men’s Central Jail, without access to medical and mental health treatment, and literally driving them mad. We cannot afford to make this bad situation even worse.”

The Sheriff Department’s failure to adequately plan for closures in the past has led to deadly rioting and caused severe back-ups at the inmate reception center. After bed reductions in 2006 and 2007, the ACLU found that pre-trial detainees were being packed into holding cells for days or even weeks at a time, where they were forced to sleep on the floor, often without food or access to telephones.

The ACLU’s request for a preliminary injunction asks a federal judge to require the Sheriff’s Department to prepare a report on the closure’s impact on conditions in the county’s remaining jail facilities, and include criteria used to release or transfer individuals held in the North Facility. The ACLU also seeks a follow-up, weekly count of inmates in jail cells.

“The county must have a strong closure plan in place, one that diverts overcrowding and ensures peace, not one that could exacerbate conditions in Men’s Central Jail -- the decaying and most overcrowded portion of the jail system,” Bird said.

A series of declarations filed with the court today paint a bleak picture of the Men’s Central Jail, one where detainees are left for a week without a change of clothes, are forced to bathe in moldy dirty showers and infrequently see daylight. The detainees report a cockroach-infested facility so filthy that one detainee had a rodent literally fall onto his face. As many as 120 detainees are crammed into a single dorm room at a time, and some wait days on end for medical attention. In these abysmal conditions, one detainee details in the court filings how he sank into a depressive state, while another tells of how he complained of pain for days but was ignored by medical staff. He was finally taken to the hospital after blood appeared in his colostomy bag.

Baca himself called for Men’s Central Jail to be closed last February, saying that the jail has “outlived its time.” Nevertheless, blaming budget cutbacks, he now has chosen to close the North Facility, which is more modern.

“Because Los Angeles County has to be serious about saving money, given the current economy, the Board of Supervisors should commit to developing alternatives to detention that reduce jail populations and treat many detainees more effectively without any increased risk to public safety,” said Margaret Winter, associate director of the ACLU National Prison Project.

A comprehensive pre-trial release program that makes use of electronic monitoring, supported housing, and drug and mental-health treatment programs could be adopted at a fraction of the cost of jail. And because countless studies have shown that these programs reduce recidivism and the risk of new offenses, they do far more to protect public safety than a brutalizing jail stay.

The filing is part of Rutherford v. Baca, the ACLU’s decades-long litigation challenging the conditions at the Los Angeles County Jail – the nation's largest correctional facility.