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Homeless: The Costly Logic of Busts and Sweeps

March 20, 2016 By Bruce Frohman 3 Comments

Dangerous Criminal?
Dangerous Criminal?

Whether by coincidence or design, homeless people in Modesto’s parks have been subjected to heightened harassment and arrests ever since the new mayor and councilmembers took office. Despite the costs and lack of observable benefits, sweeps and busts are occurring more often than ever.

Years ago Modesto residents learned through bitter experience that the police department was too short-handed to respond to burglaries and other petty crimes, yet lately there seem to be more than enough officers to bust and harass homeless people on a routine basis.

Recently, four officers surrounded and arrested a homeless person involved in a ten dollar sale of methamphetamine. While there’s no question we should try to reduce the harm from drug use, there’s also no question such busts don’t work.

Drug possession is now a misdemeanor in California, not a felony. Selling drugs rises to higher levels of punishment, but focusing on drug use among the homeless is like trying to control floods by damming mud puddles: Big-time dealers sell to customers with homes and money, not destitute homeless people.

Apologists for the arrests and sweeps of homeless people cite trash, needles, drug use, and human waste as justification for their actions, but even they will admit privately arrests and sweeps don’t work. When city workers and police move people, tents, and trash out of a local park, they know the people, tents, and trash will be back within days.

Drug users who are arrested ricochet back into the homeless population within weeks or even days. Taxpayers foot the bill while petty “criminals” are incarcerated and fed, then brought to court and released, so that the cycle of sweep, bust, release, and repeat can begin all over again.

Nevertheless, any suggestion of establishing a tent city for homeless people is met with adamant resistance. Rather than concentrate problems, isolate the worst perpetrators, and identify the mentally and physically ill, our public officials prefer to move people with nowhere to go out into the streets.

Rousts don’t eliminate trash, needles, drug use, and human waste. Instead, they disperse the problems over a wider area that includes private property.

While no one believes tent cities eliminate problems or offer permanent solutions to homelessness, advocates say they at least provide minimal shelter, offer a sense of community, and enable volunteers and officials to identify worst offenders and individuals who could be helped by existing programs.

Modesto’s new mayor has said he will do a line-by-line budget analysis to identify unnecessary expenditures. It would benefit everyone if he were to calculate the man hours wasted on busts and sweeps that are little more than costly exercises in futility.

People familiar with the many mentally ill homeless people soon realize rousts and arrests only exacerbate their illness. After a while, the sole end seems to be punishment itself.

If busts and rousts don’t work and are expensive to boot, you’ve got to wonder why we keep using them, especially against our helpless homeless population. But maybe that’s the point: Maybe we’re busting them precisely because they’re helpless.

Filed Under: Featured, History Tagged With: Homelessness in Stanislaus County, Homelessness Modesto

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Mrs B says

    March 20, 2016 at 7:10 pm

    As always, your right Eric. Oakdale is in the process of adding a homeless shelter. I would rather see a tent city. When I lived in Modesto years ago I lived in the La Loma area and a new shelter/meal serving went in on Yosemite. Notice that it was going in was sent but I never received anything about a public meeting to see if there were any objections. This whole thing did not make me happy at all! First of all, the homeless can only spend the night, they have to take all belongings with them in the morning. That put them out on the street to wander near by residential areas till lunch was served at noon. They didn’t wander far from the building. In the La Loma area garbage cans were always being gone through and the homeless hung out where ever there was shade, lawns, business… the burglaries went up etc…
    Shelters draw the homeless from nearby towns and the crime rate in Oakdale has gone up so much in the last few years as it is, why in the world would the powers that be want to invite more crime to the once low crime city? There are at least 12 police vehicles sitting around the station, not including the cars that are on patrol. The police don’t have the man power for things like cyber stalking (my guess is they dont know how to even attemp to do that), being threatned or harrassed by gang members (don’t know why they wouldn’t want to catch that one before some law obiding taxpayer feels the need to take matters into their own hands) domestic violance (in less a gun is involved) etc…
    Who’s going to take responsibility for the even higher rise in crime when the powers that be put a shelter in, against public opinion?

    Reply
  2. Eric Caine says

    March 20, 2016 at 8:46 pm

    Shelters are ok when people have places to go during the day. A big problem is lack of storage, so no way to establish oneself. Pets aren’t allowed, so there is not only no daytime place to go, there is no way to get established as anything other than a transient. Not certain crime and shelters have to be related; release of inmates is at an all-time high and parolees are on the streets in increased numbers. Most of the people I’ve seen in shelters don’t seem capable of much more than petty drug use. Many in the shelters don’t even have bicycles, so it’s hard for them to go very far.

    Reply
  3. Tammy says

    March 21, 2016 at 5:34 am

    We need social workers to go out to our homeless populations and refer them to programs that will be helpful,take food and water and let them know we care as a community and help the ones that we can.

    Reply

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