Police Study Urges Joint Efforts for Homeless

A Santa Ana Police Department study has warned that the city cannot solve its homeless problem through police action alone and should work with local social service providers to create more shelter for the homeless.

Police Chief Clyde L. Cronkhite said Thursday that his department, which began a crackdown on the city’s homeless six weeks ago, is considering the report and may follow some of its recommendations.

The report, written by Lt. Felix Osuna, recommends that grants and permits be issued to several of the city’s shelters and feeding programs for the homeless to allow the organizations to expand services to the down and out. It also recommends that the department step up its patrols of city parks and the Civic Center, where many homeless people spend their time.

The study was completed May 27, the day after the city began confiscating the belongings of homeless people from parks and the Civic Center. The report was never released, but a copy was obtained earlier this week by The Times.

Cronkhite said his department has already followed one recommendation by assigning four lieutenants to negotiate conflicts between the city’s business owners and those who provide services to the homeless.

He said the other recommendations, which include awarding $18,200 to the Southwest Community Center so it can serve dinner to about 100 homeless people, are beyond police purview and will be examined by other city agencies.

“These (recommendations) will be presented as we go along,” Cronkhite said. “I know people in the city who are looking at these things.”

Earlier this week, Cronkhite announced that the police would close Center Park at 11 each night and ask the homeless who sleep there to move on. Cronkhite said police may issue citations to those who refuse to leave the park but will not arrest them.

Local advocates for the poor praised Osuna’s report as a humane and reasonable bid to deal with a thorny problem but said they are disappointed that the city has so far acted only on the recommendation to increase police action against the homeless.

Don Blankenship, president of the Santa Ana Police Benevolent Assn., also approved of the report, especially its conclusion that homelessness cannot be solved by the police. “There’s no way we can address it,” Blankenship said about police officers, adding that city officials would “like us to cart them (the homeless) off, but there’s no place to put them. . . . If he (Cronkhite) puts it in police hands, he’s going to find that he’ll strike out.”

Cronkhite has maintained that police are cracking down only on those homeless who have refused offers of shelter. But advocates for the poor such as Scott Mather, chairman of the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter in Costa Mesa, said the great majority of Santa Ana’s homeless live on the streets because there is no place else to sleep.

Cronkhite recently listed vagrancy as one of five quality-of-life crimes that the department will attack this year. The others on his list are gangs, prostitution, drugs and traffic.

But in the study, Osuna openly questioned the morality and efficacy of treating homelessness as a criminal issue.

“A question that we have to ask ourselves as a law enforcement agency is whether enforcement is in any way a solution,” Osuna wrote.

“The problem is finding facilities to place these individuals. Law enforcement personnel confronting these vagrants realize that issuing them a citation does nothing more than make a mockery of our system.”

The key question, he wrote, is: “Are we prepared to mount a campaign of enforcement against these people and fully understand the repercussions the department will suffer, not to mention the negative media attention, or do we accept the position of being morally and professionally responsible for this problem and attempt to work with these community groups in addressing this problem?”

At a meeting Thursday night in Santa Ana, the Orange County Human Relations Commission decided to draft a letter to the Santa Ana City Council opposing the city’s policy of confiscating the unattended belongings of homeless people.

The commission made its decision after City Manager David N. Ream told commissioners at a meeting earlier this week that the city would continue seizing bedrolls despite the commission’s opposition to the policy.

Commissioners said Thursday night that they would ask the City Council to seek more humane solutions to the city’s homeless problem.

“We have a huge problem of homelessness, which is growing,” commission member Jean Forbath said. “We can set up a colony, like a leper colony, but where are these people going to go? . . . We have no housing for them.”