They were posted up at every cubicle. Threatening, over-muscled, green beret-like necks bulging with implied violence. Police officers, swat team members? The miniscule 1940’s doorways could barely hold them and there they stood anyway, watching us as we filed in to meet with the San Francisco District Attorney to file criminal charges of elder abuse under penal code 368, on the speculators using the Ellis Act to evict elders for profit.
“We don’t have the people-power alone in this office to investigate these cases alone which is why we want you to also approach the police department” said DA office manager Sharon Woo.
After a second press conference featuring more voices of displaced elders and their families who have lost their elders to the crime of Ellis Act eviction, we proceeded into the Hall of Injustice to meet with the District Attorney’s office. Once inside, we met with four staff members of the District Attorney’s office, two of them were the ones who investigate elder abuse cases.
In the meeting which lasted a little over an hour, Sharon Woo, who manages the District Attorneys, spent a lot of time trying to tell us, as she did in our first encounter the week before when she took our original claims, the many different reasons why the DA couldn’t help us. And just like in the first encounter, revolutionary lawyer Anthony Prince, along with all of us houseless, evicted and displaced mamaz, daddys and advocates present, pushed back.
“Are you saying you can’t investigate these claims,” Anthony Prince said.
“No I’m saying I need more evidence, which I understand you all have brought me today,”Sharon responded.
“When you end up homeless as an elder, many times you end up in a shelter or dead,” said Queenandi X, mama and poverty skola from POOR Magazine.
From 98 year old Mary Phillips who has no idea what is even happening to her and is in shock, to 75 year old Miss Smith, disabled African-American resident of the Fillmore for 43 years and is now unable to leave her apartment and yet has been harassed by the new owners speculators attorneys after they gave her the Ellis Act notice, to the well-known story of Jeremy Michaels who is still fighting to stay in his community where his medical care and network of support is, because he is an elder, disabled and has full-blown AIDS, these elders and countless families with young children have been abused by these speculators and like any criminals need to be charged.
California Pen Code 368 (Elder Abuse Law)
Any person who knows or reasonably should know that a person is an elder or dependent adult and who, under circumstances or conditions likely to produce great bodily harm or death, willfully causes or permits any elder or dependent adult to suffer, or inflicts thereon unjustifiable physical pain or mental suffering, or having the care or custody of any elder or dependent adult, willfully causes or permits the person or health of the elder or dependent adult to be injured, or willfully causes or permits the elder or dependent adult to be placed in a situation in which his or her person or health is endangered, is punishable by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by a fine not to exceed six thousand dollars ($6,000), or by both that fine and imprisonment, or by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three, or four years.
PNN reporters will be collecting stories/evidence to take into the special investigations unit of the Police dept on Tuesday, February 25th, 2014. If you want to include your story of Ellis Act eviction abuse please email us at deeandtiny@ poormagazine.org.
