[endothrowho333]

From my own experiences, the author is slightly overstating the danger of being homeless:

The police -- for the most part -- don't care. As long as you're not causing trouble (e.g trespassing and getting complaints against you), they just want you to go away and not cause them any problems either. Maybe it was because I was white, well-spoken, and generally pleasent, but I've never had issues with the police during that period in my life.

I was going to write more on how the biggest danger you face homeless is other homeless (and tweakers!) and very poor sleep, but I don't have the time.

The poor sleep sneaks up on you and slowly erodes your decision-making and risk-assessment skills and consistantly compromised my ability to make good decisions, i.e get myself out of that mess. I believe the author experienced the same, because his belief in the impending danger he felt does not match the reality of my experiences, but does match a mindset I would fall into while sleep-deprived.

[xenocyon]

Perhaps, but trespassing and getting complained about is something that can happen fairly easily to a homeless person.

As a young (housed) person I once called the cops on a person sleeping soundly in the exterior stairwell of my apartment complex - a thoughtless decision on my part that I now regret. The cops who responded were unnecessarily brutal: kicking him awake, then demanding he stand against a wall and spread his legs to be frisked (when there wasn't any reason to suspect a weapon). The trespasser was compliant and meek throughout, but the cops nonetheless spoke roughly to him. I later asked myself why I had been so naive as to expect any other outcome. Since then I've learned better.

And this was in Seattle, where cops are reputedly much gentler than many other places.

[vkou]

> And this was in Seattle, where cops are reputedly much gentler than many other places.

SPD are not gentler than many other places. They've been absolutely blasted for police brutality in a 2011 DOJ investigation. [1]

Now, to SPD's credit, it has been taking steps to improve since then. [2]

What you can count on, though, is them usually ignoring homelessness - if nobody complains. There's just too many homeless people in Seattle for them to do anything proactive about it.

If somebody does, and it's a slow day, the homeless person in question will get ran off by them. Law enforcement against the homeless is incredibly selective, which is one of the reasons why being homeless is so hard - you always live in fear of being the target of essentially random violence.

You never know if you're actually going to get 8 hours of sleep, or if you're going to be kicked (Or shouted) awake half-way through it.

[1] https://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Feds-findings-in-Sea...

[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/in-major-ste...

[catalogia]

SPD often ignore matters even if somebody complains.

Two years ago there was a homeless woman in my neighborhood who began screaming in the middle of the night as though she were being murdered. I called 911, obviously. An hour later she was still screaming and there were no police in sight. The next night she was still screaming. A week later she was still screaming. Thankfully she wasn't being murdered, not that the police would know, because they never came.

Incidentally this experience gave me a new perspective on the bystander effect. After I stopped calling 911 because it was accomplishing nothing, what if one night she really was being murdered? But what is somebody meant to do, call 911 every night until they stop taking your calls?

[droithomme]

A guy down the street was a drug dealer. He would also do meth cooks, which everyone could smell. He was a polite guy though and didn't seem to have weapons. However, customers would come to buy drugs, exchanges would take place right in his front yard. Stuff would go missing around the neighborhood, apparently stolen by customers who noticed stuff like riding mowers in yards, and would come back when they needed something to pawn to get cash for drugs.

I regularly called the police department and talk to the narcotics detective. He'd always say he'd look into it. Neighbors told me it was useless to call the police. The detective was obviously getting annoyed by my calls.

One day the drug dealer knocks on my door. Tells me no use in calling Steve (name of narcotics detective) because they have an arrangement and Steve is getting annoyed by my calls.

A couple years later Detective Steve was arrested in a federal sting. His entire house was full of drugs and cash.

The drug dealer eventually died of a disease he contracted from needles.

Some squatters moved into that house for a while. Sometimes I'd hear screaming and gunfire. The property is overgrown now and the last car parked in the yard has four flat tires. Maybe there's corpses inside the house. Who knows. At least I don't smell meth cooks anymore. And theft has gone down on the street now that we don't have customers coming to buy drugs.

So, yeah I no longer call police for anything, they won't do anything and if you keep calling they consider you a nuisance caller and can create problems for you. It would be better to stop public funding of police all together and replace it with either private security contractors hired on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis, or citizen's patrols like the Guardian Angels, Black Panthers, or a version of Neighborhood Watch.

[ggcdn]

> It would be better to stop public funding of police all together and replace it with either private security contractors hired on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis, or citizen's patrols like the Guardian Angels, Black Panthers, or a version of Neighborhood Watch.

This is a bad take, in my opinion. For the most part, all types of crime have been steadily declining since the 1990's [0][1][2]. You can't say policing is ineffective as a whole. There are certainly things to be improved upon, though.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Property_Crime_Rates_in_t...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violent_crime_rates_by_ge...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Burglaries_per_1,000_pop....

[droithomme]

Yeah that crime rate decline was not due to better policing though. Most likely the main factor was the elimination of leaded gasoline.

[modo_mario]

```So, yeah I no longer call police for anything, they won't do anything and if you keep calling they consider you a nuisance caller and can create problems for you. It would be better to stop public funding of police all together and replace it with either private security contractors hired on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis, or citizen's patrols like the Guardian Angels, Black Panthers, or a version of Neighborhood Watch. ```

Alternatively look at places where police does function properly and consider what's different.

Because what you can describe like your police compared to the police in some African hellhole or the police where I live can vary between unaccountable mercenaries perpetuating class imbalances, ghettoisation, etc or a well functioning local guardperson or a mob offering "protection"

[mandelbrotwurst]

> SPD are not gentler than many other places. They've been absolutely blasted for police brutality in a 2011 DOJ investigation. [1]

Gentler is a relative term. That fact doesn't refute the assertion that others are worse.

[gamblor956]

I called the cops on a vagrant sleeping in my building's parking structure stairwell.

The cops came, nudged him awake, and then waited calmly while his drunk ass gathered his crap and yelled at them as they escorted him down the stairs and away from our building.

LAPD may be brutal to suspected gangbangers and minority drivers but they're overly polite to the homeless to the point of being fairly useless at preventing the homeless from committing crimes (that affect others, like theft or property damage).

[jshevek]

I'm uncomfortable with the generalizations [that get] made on both sides of this debate.

Region specific policies and culture can play a role, but ultimately the behavior of the police can depend highly on the specific individual or even the type of day they are having.

[anarchodev]

Why would you want the cops to be overly aggressive to someone who, even in your hypothetical, hasn't committed a crime? Do you foresee any consequences that might arise from encouraging this behavior from cops towards the most powerless struggling members of our community?

[gamblor956]

In this case, I left out the part where said vagrant had broken into the parking structure and caused several thousands of dollars worth of damage to infrastructure that we had to pay to repair.

There's also the matter of the broken glass bottles he left in the stairwell, which created health and safety risks to everyone using the parking structure.

And there's also the distinct possibility he was the focker who broke into a bunch of cars over the holidays trying to find things to steal.

[anarchodev]

Yes, irrelevant details that slipped your mind, and which you most certainly did not just make up to justify your bloodlust. How was a dude who can't even afford to drink indoors able to do infrastructural damage to a parking garage? Did he bring his jackhammer?

[mc32]

Although not homeless, but rather being a “vagrant” in youth, I agree that cops will not go out of their way to rustle trespassers (schoolyards, parks, golf courses, under highways, etc) unless someone calls in or you bring attention to yourself/selves (causing smoke for example).

[kevingadd]

This has changed in recent years depending on where you live. Some locales in the US make a big deal of paying police to go around and do sweeps of places where you'd think nobody is causing trouble, it's been a source of controversy.

https://mynorthwest.com/1445501/seattle-homeless-sweeps-2019...

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/We-don-t-want-to...

A common theme in sweeps is also intentional destruction of property including personal belongings and medicine: https://www.courthousenews.com/homeless-residents-rip-la-ove...

[homonculus1]

FYI the author's name isn't directly listed on the article but she is our very own DoreenMichele

[DoreenMichele]

Yeah, my paranoid fears about being picked up by the police (as a consequence of my blog writing) were in part due to my prominence as the highest ranked woman on HN. I hit the leader board of HN (under my previous handle) about a month after I got back into housing.

If you're a big fat nobody, your online activities will fly under the radar and you don't need to worry too much. But being the most prominent woman on HN sometimes goes weird places and I have a very long history of attracting problematic attention for things that aren't a problem for other people.

[pc86]

I don't think the San Diego PD cares about how highly ranked someone is on Hacker News. What's more, I don't think 99.9% of the SDPD has ever heard of Hacker News.

[DoreenMichele]

I've had reporters and what not contact me due to my remarks on HN.

It's okay if you think I was being paranoid. I've already allowed as I was being paranoid. But I had my reasons.

[jshevek]

This doesn't change the fact that the risks of harrassment for a homeless person can increase (or also decrease, depending on details of the situation) if they become well known.

For example, a local business owner or homeowner could start their own private campaign of harrassment by making a series of reports to the police. This can even be done anonymously.

Edit: Also, people who live far away, and know her only as someone on HN, can find ways make her life difficult.

[mikorym]

Do you have advice for people who want to somehow be involved?

For example, I am from South Africa and one of the biggest problems here is the terrible quality of some government schools. However, I don't really know how to do anything about this, despite having an MSc in pure mathematics and being a somewhat capable programmer.

We do have some recycling programs that seem to be quite effective—the recyclers are quite prominent when you put out your trash and are strikingly serene people (for the most part).

[DoreenMichele]

There is a book called "Riches for the Poor: The Clemente Course in Humanities" that might interest you. Here is a related website:

https://clementecourse.org

You could get involved any number of ways in trying to offer educational options or improve the existing schools.

I run r/citizenplanners. You might want to check that out.

[mikorym]

Thanks for the links, and thank you for your work.

[burfog]

I found the story about sleeping under the bridge to be interesting. You had a tent, and you determined that the bridge made you sick, so why be under the bridge? It doesn't seem to offer any shelter advantage in the conditions. You lose the sunlight which disinfects and keeps you warmer. Looking back on that, was the bridge just a mistake?

[DoreenMichele]

No, it wasn't a mistake.

[burfog]

I'm still wondering why you picked the bridge when you had a tent and didn't like the bridge.

Did the tent have a huge leak? Was there baseball-sized hail? Were you on concrete or something else, and did that make the difference somehow?

[DoreenMichele]

My recollection is that there were bad storms with high winds. The tent was a cheap tent. It really wasn't going to be able to take that kind of battering.

[nabnob]

Hm, I'm not sure about that. In uptown Charlotte, I see homeless people (white or black) getting harassed by police and security guards when they're just sitting in a public area with a sign.

[aksss]

Right, now compare the degree of homelessness in uptown Charlotte vs San Diego. There's probably a relationship between how prevalent the homeless are and how the police treat them.