by Chizel Tooth
It was about midnight, and my girlfriend and I were walking back to the Catholic Worker where I live when we saw an officer waking up some folks sleeping in in between Sonny Lawson Park and the Blair Caldwell Library. Some had tarps draped over themselves. It was raining a bit, and there was a thick, dank fog. The officer was kicking them--though lightly--both men and women, urging them to wake up, move along. It’s a scene we’re familiar with, but I felt I needed to say something. This is what I remember from that conversation:
“Excuse me officer…”
“What?”
“I know that someone probably called, and you feel like you have to enforce the law, but where do you really expect these folks to go?”
“Oh, I don’t know… They ought to be in a shelter somewhere.”
“But it's midnight… who’s gonna accept them at midnight?”
“Hey, that’s not my problem. I’m just doing my job, and besides, they coulda gotten in hours ago. I mean, If they weren’t drinkin’…”
“Maybe, but you know there aren’t enough beds, right?”
“Well, yeah, I know.”
“Then, where do you realistically think they’ll go?”
“Probably in the alley.”
“But that’s illegal too… Listen, say you were out here with your wife, and you’re both trying to find a place to stay, like all of these people, would you split up with her just so you could get inside- you go to the men’s shelter and hope that she makes it into the women’s shelter that night? I mean, you know that those places aren’t nice to stay in, but you can’t even be with your partner…”
“I know, I wouldn’t. There’s all sorts of problems in the shelter, you got your drunks, your bedbugs, cranky people, the mentally ill, whatever. I’ve been in there, and I know it’s gross. There aren’t enough options for them, they got nowhere else to go, but at least they’re gonna go out of plain sight, into the alley, and I won’t get your neighbors calling me anymore… Listen, I agree with you, if we didn’t have this dumb ‘camping ban’ our calls would go down a big percent every night, and we could get back to fighting crime, not just making these people get up and put their crap in their milk crates and move down the road and sleep behind a dumpster. But you should talk to your neighbors, they don’t know the reality out here… but now that we got a ‘camping ban’, everybody and their brother can call us, and we got to come down here. If you got a problem with us hassling these folks, you should talk to your neighbors, bud.”
It was about midnight, and my girlfriend and I were walking back to the Catholic Worker where I live when we saw an officer waking up some folks sleeping in in between Sonny Lawson Park and the Blair Caldwell Library. Some had tarps draped over themselves. It was raining a bit, and there was a thick, dank fog. The officer was kicking them--though lightly--both men and women, urging them to wake up, move along. It’s a scene we’re familiar with, but I felt I needed to say something. This is what I remember from that conversation:
“Excuse me officer…”
“What?”
“I know that someone probably called, and you feel like you have to enforce the law, but where do you really expect these folks to go?”
“Oh, I don’t know… They ought to be in a shelter somewhere.”
“But it's midnight… who’s gonna accept them at midnight?”
“Hey, that’s not my problem. I’m just doing my job, and besides, they coulda gotten in hours ago. I mean, If they weren’t drinkin’…”
“Maybe, but you know there aren’t enough beds, right?”
“Well, yeah, I know.”
“Then, where do you realistically think they’ll go?”
“Probably in the alley.”
“But that’s illegal too… Listen, say you were out here with your wife, and you’re both trying to find a place to stay, like all of these people, would you split up with her just so you could get inside- you go to the men’s shelter and hope that she makes it into the women’s shelter that night? I mean, you know that those places aren’t nice to stay in, but you can’t even be with your partner…”
“I know, I wouldn’t. There’s all sorts of problems in the shelter, you got your drunks, your bedbugs, cranky people, the mentally ill, whatever. I’ve been in there, and I know it’s gross. There aren’t enough options for them, they got nowhere else to go, but at least they’re gonna go out of plain sight, into the alley, and I won’t get your neighbors calling me anymore… Listen, I agree with you, if we didn’t have this dumb ‘camping ban’ our calls would go down a big percent every night, and we could get back to fighting crime, not just making these people get up and put their crap in their milk crates and move down the road and sleep behind a dumpster. But you should talk to your neighbors, they don’t know the reality out here… but now that we got a ‘camping ban’, everybody and their brother can call us, and we got to come down here. If you got a problem with us hassling these folks, you should talk to your neighbors, bud.”
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