{"id":97524,"date":"2018-10-05T20:32:04","date_gmt":"2018-10-06T02:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/city-of-durango-dismisses-citations-against-homeless-protesters\/"},"modified":"2018-10-05T20:32:04","modified_gmt":"2018-10-06T02:32:04","slug":"city-of-durango-dismisses-citations-against-homeless-protesters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/city-of-durango-dismisses-citations-against-homeless-protesters\/","title":{"rendered":"City of Durango dismisses citations against homeless protesters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Mildred
Mildred Sanders and Rick Bowhay talk earlier this year about being homeless in Durango. The city of Durango has dropped citations against eight homeless residents accused of trespassing for refusing to dismantle their tents at a temporary homeless camp.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Durango prosecutors have dismissed charges against eight homeless people who were cited with trespassing on public property during a protest they held Aug. 24 opposing the city\u2019s camping ban.<\/p>\n

The dismissal of charges comes after last month\u2019s decision<\/a> by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that found it unconstitutional to prosecute people for sleeping or resting on public property when there is no shelter available.<\/p>\n

In emails to the city, the American Civil Liberties Union urged Durango officials to dismiss the trespassing citations issued to anyone after its homeless camp closed Aug. 24 near Greenmount Cemetery. The correspondence between the ACLU and the city began when the ACLU sent a letter to Durango city officials<\/a> Aug. 24 urging the city to stop enforcing its camping ban. The emails were obtained by The Durango Herald<\/em> through an open records request.<\/p>\n

The emails show a brief exchange between City Attorney Dirk Nelson and ACLU staff attorney Rebecca Wallace about the city\u2019s ordinance banning sleeping or camping on city property.<\/p>\n

In one email, Nelson summarizes a phone conversation he had with Wallace, in which he assured the ACLU the city would not issue citations or take other measures against homeless people who camp out in city open spaces between sunset and sunrise if they do not have access to a shelter.<\/p>\n

The city of Durango said last month it stopped issuing citations to people sleeping outside on public grounds<\/a>, excluding parks and sidewalks. That decision came after the ACLU wrote a letter challenging the city\u2019s position and the ruling from the 9th Circuit Court.<\/p>\n

But Wallace was concerned the city rules weren\u2019t defined well enough \u2013 for example, she asked what Nelson meant by \u201copen space\u201d in one of her emails. She also expressed concern that the city\u2019s position on allowing people to camp at night in public spaces hadn\u2019t been disseminated to law enforcement or the public in a timely manner.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if it is true that, since the shut-down (of the Greenmount Cemetery camp), the city has been following an internal directive to cease issuing tickets in open spaces, no one knew of the city\u2019s directive,\u201d Wallace wrote in an email to Nelson. \u201cThe ACLU, people experiencing homelessness and their advocates were wholly unaware that there was a temporary moratorium.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one should be penalized for failing to follow the city\u2019s new and temporary rules when the city did nothing to convey those new rules to the public,\u201d Wallace wrote.<\/p>\n

The eight individuals cited Aug. 24 by the Durango Police Department had been protesting a city ban against sleeping on public property after Durango closed a camp near Greenmount Cemetery. The eight people refused to take down their tents after sunrise. Each of them were cited for trespassing, two of whom were charged twice, records show.<\/p>\n

All of those cases were dismissed Sept. 12, records show.<\/p>\n

David Liberman, a city prosecutor, said the decision to dismiss the 10 charges was made because the city\u2019s camping ban was temporary, as was the camp itself. By the time the homeless residents were to appear in court, it was \u201cmoot to pursue\u201d the issue, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are homeless people who, by and large, are on tough times, and it didn\u2019t make sense to fine them or sentence them to community service because they had their hands full,\u201d Liberman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt (the trespassing) was a one-time occurrence, and it can\u2019t happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Durango defense attorney Brian Schowalter, who represented the eight residents experiencing homelessness pro bono, said it\u2019s unconstitutional to criminalize sleeping outdoors when there are no alternatives \u2013 the same argument made by a three jurist panel for the 9th Circuit Court, which found that enforcement of sleeping bans without alternatives violates the Constitution\u2019s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.<\/p>\n

The citations were dismissed before the case went to trial, meaning Schowalter didn\u2019t make his arguments before the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really do appreciate the homeless people who stood up for that issue,\u201d Schowalter said. \u201cIt would be easy to say, \u2018Whatever, I\u2019ll leave.\u2019 It\u2019s good to see kind of everybody take a stand together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richard Bowhay, a homeless man who has lived in Durango for about three years, said he and his partner, Mildred Sanders, stood in protest of the city\u2019s decision to cite people for sleeping on public grounds because \u201cit just wasn\u2019t right.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview this week with the Herald<\/em>, Bowhay said he hasn\u2019t noticed the homeless community being \u201charassed\u201d as it had been before the citations were dismissed. But he said that he still doesn\u2019t feel like he\u2019s part of the greater community. There\u2019s a stigma against homeless people, he said, and it is something that\u2019s made him feel ostracized in Durango.<\/p>\n

Bowhay said he is willing to file a lawsuit against the city if it were to enforce rules against sleeping on public property when there are no alternatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there were a case with Mildred and my name on it, there would be no renumeration,\u201d Bowhay said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want money, we want decency.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trespassing tickets were issued for challenging city\u2019s camping ban<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97525,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[120,13,611],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-97524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-colorado","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-homelessness"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97524"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=97524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}