Red Tagged: The Creation of Vehicularily Housed Bill of Rights

pstrongVehicularily housed residents stage an art-action-rally to demand civil rights and establish a Bill of Rights/strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/349/photo_1_feature.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Kaponda/p pVladlen Pogorelov drifts off into the visions of twilight as the inscrutability of night cloaks his metallic motor residence. The continuous thumps on his window forces him to swerve back into the predictability of reality. Like a cub that looks into the eyes of a raging hyena, Vladlen Pogorelov sees the eyes of a police smoldering with anger as he stands with a stick, camouflaged by the night, next to his side. Vladlen knows that he will be ordered to move his 25-foot motor home to another location because it has suddenly become an object of scorn and frequent harassment by the San Francisco Police Department and the Department of Parking and Traffic./p pThe dire circumstances into which Vladlen Pogorelov has fallen brought him and many other vehicularly housed San Franciscans to the steps of City Hall on Wednesday, May 30th, to ask for relief from a law that unfairly classifies, punishes and renders them as criminals because they have a quilt and padding inside their legally owned vehicles. The volley of protests against human and civil rights violations at the event, dubbed, “They Towed My House Away,” by homeless advocates and civil rights attorneys has put the ball back into the court of the Board of Supervisors and George Smith of the Mayor’s Office on Homelessness./p pI asked Paul Boden, director of the The Coalition on Homelessness, who, along with POOR Magazine, coordinated the event, to explain how the San Francisco Police Department can arbitrarily cite vehicles and cause people to lose their housing by having their motor homes towed away, which has become, not unlike oxygen, a necessary condition for a reasonably healthy life?/p p “[The Municipal Police Codes that regulate parking] were designed to make sure that poor people can be legally chased out of communities -- just like its a code that the parks are closed, and a code that people cannot stand on the sidewalk. These are codes that government created in order to chase away and make disappear poverty in our community. We are not talking about people who choose to be out there [in their vehicles],” stated an enraged Boden with the sting of an agitated wasp./p pVladlen Pogorelov, a 31-year old staff writer for PNN who immigrated to the United States from Crimea, was evicted from his apartment in San Francisco during the latter part of last year. He bought a motor home in which he had hoped to eat and sleep as well as survive. Vladlen resided at China Basin, and, according to him, became the target of an aggressive harassment campaign that included citations, illegal tows and seizures of vehicles without due process./p pAdam Arms, an attorney with the Civil Rights Division of the Coalition on Homelessness, in response to my questions to him about statements brought by POOR Magazine, the Coalition on Homelessness and victims of vehicles which have been seized by city officials, stated that the ongoing policy of The City has been to “Criminalize people who sleep in their vehicle.”/p p “To tow their cars and misuse the laws have been the ongoing policy of The City. Also, they have targeted these people for harassment. It has been the ongoing policy. However, in the last six months, this policy has escalated,” stated Arms, as he held a copy of a Vehicularly Housed/Towed Person’s Bill of Rights, which he stated contained language which provides grounds for the city to relent in its ongoing policy to criminalize vehicularly housed residents./p pThe San Francisco Police Department and Department of Parking and Traffic are authorized by law to issue a citation, which is called “red-tag,” to any vehicle that, in their opinion, appears abandoned or broken down, or is not moving for an extensive amount of time. This law has been used to relegate vehicles that are not abandoned to obscure areas in remote tow garages, and leave the victims marooned in a swirl of desperation./p pI attempted to contact the director of the Department of Parking and Traffic (DPT), Fred Hamdun, to inquire about this aggressive policy which the City has adopted. I spoke with Diana Hammond, Public Affairs Director of DPT. I asked Hammond why has The City invested so much energy in going after the 300 to 500 motor homes in the entire city the owners of which have the misfortunate of doubling up their vehicles for transportation and residence? /p pAccording to Hammond, “The SFPD enforces the codes that regulate signs posted around San Francisco for illegally parked vehicles and not DPT. But, if a vehicle is abandoned, then under DPT 37(a), we can cite and tow that vehicle [within the limits of the city], stated Hammond in reference to vehicles that have been put out of mind and out of sight by their owners, like fallen trees in the forest./p pAs POOR Magazine featured the Po’ Poets, who conveyed the significance of the event at City Hall through their spoken words, on a day when the sun sprinkled its torrid rays liberally, I had an opportunity to interact with Vladlen Pogorelov. I asked Vladlen what reasons are given him by police for parking when, according to Dianna Hammond, citations are supposedly only given to vehicles that have been abandoned?/p p “Most times I find that I am red tagged immediately, not too long after I arrive, which constitutes a form of harassment, for me. They oftentimes justify this by stating that someone called to complain about a vehicle,” stated Vladlen./p pI asked Paul Boden about whether he felt that DPT is justified when it follows up on a complaint by a resident about a vehicle in the neighborhood?/p p “I have yet to find a record of the complaints that they keep talking about. The fact that these laws are on the book and that this enforcement is a priority makes it too goddamned easy for the cops or The City or anyone else to say, ‘Oh, well we got a complaint.’ Think about all the times people complaint -- they complain about the weather, but you don’t see them out there trying to change that,” concluded Boden in a passion kindled like the flare of a match./p pI went to Diana Hammond of DPT to ask if she could respond to charges by Paul Boden that he has yet to find a record of the complaints by citizens./p p “I will be happy to provide you with a record of complaints,” stated Hammond. “We record that information in a Complaint Log. Currently, the information is logged in by hand and includes driveway and sidewalk complaints against the over 454,000 regular vehicles. So, it will require extensive copying charges. We are, however, in the process of converting it over to automation,” concluded Hammond./p pMany people at the protest also indicated that “a complaint” was the reason they were given for citations issued by the SFPD. I was unable to contact anyone at SFPD to respond to the allegation of the complaints that Paul Boden suggested were phantom in nature, a device not unlike the throw-away gun that has been a part of the arsenal of corrupt cops to fritter away human and civil rights of poor people across America. /p pAs the protest drew to a conclusion, the crowd prepared to hand-deliver a copy of the Vehicularly Housed/Towed Person’s Bill of Rights to each member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors./p p “Vehicularly housed San Franciscans have the Constitution of the United States to protect them from harassment. The City, however, is not respecting those rights. This is the reason why we are taking the entire thing before the Board of Supervisors and ask them to implement the last three points right away and help people out. The last three points are:/p p 1) The City shall implement a formal fee waiver procedure for indigent lawful owners, possessors, or operators of vehicles whose vehicles are towed;/p p 2) The City shall create a centrally located body at which vehicularly housed people can address issues related to payment of fees and fines, vehicle tows and recovery, and property retrieval; and/p p 3) The City shall not prevent lawful vehicle owners, possessors, or operators from retrieving personal property contained within towed vehicles,” concluded Adam Arms of the Coalition of Homelessness, as he walked into the halls of the seat of government of San Francisco, where weak-minded lawmakers have traditionally earned a reputation of sucking up corporate hush dollars in smoke-filled rooms and repressing the rights of the most neediest of humanity./p pOn Monday, June 4th, representatives of POOR Magazine and the Coalition on Homelessness met with George Smith of the Mayor’s Office on Homeless. According to Lisa-Gray Garcia of POOR Magazine and Adam Arms of the Coalition on Homelessness, there was not even a smidgen of effort by George Smith to write a letter or do anything else of substance to commit government to sign on to providing a remedy to the ongoing policy by San Francisco of its harassment of innocent people. George Smith stated in closing that, “I will look into it.”br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p