Do Long Beach Police jail the homeless during Grand Prix week?

PHOTO by DANIEL DE BOOM

“Every legend has a basis in truth,” James Strickland responds, finally, after taking maybe 20 seconds to survey through squinted eyes the gentle rustle of sunny-spring-morning activity in downtown’s Lincoln Park. The wry smile on his beatific face—framed by a baseball cap, clean-and-straight shoulder-length hair and a light beard—suggests he knows he hasn’t quite answered the question. But also, that he hasn’t quite avoided it, either. He takes another hit off the joint he’s been discreetly sharing with his friend, Isaiah.

The legend Strickland is referring to—or the rumor, which is how I’d presented it to him—is that the annual arrival of the Long Beach Grand Prix triggers a roundup and relocation of the downtown homeless by the Long Beach Police Department.

According to that story, cops operating on orders from higher-ups sweep through the streets closest to the waterfront racetrack and try to bust everybody with a backpack, shopping cart, sun-baked cheeks or disheveled hair—in order to get them out of sight of the many thousands of visitors who may be forming consequential impressions of Long Beach.

The story came to me from representatives of homeless aid agencies, and they told it adamantly, in detail—but also under the precondition that neither they nor their agencies be identified. They expressed fear that complaints could cut them off from government cooperation and financial aid.

In that context, Strickland’s deft answer may be more than wordplay, no matter how subtly he seems to be enjoying the chance to display an inscrutable nature beyond his 31 years—or the effects of that joint. Since leaving the Coast Guard, this strapping white man has spent a decade on the streets—mostly in downtown Long Beach—where people throughout Lincoln Park can attest that being good-naturedly hard to pin down frequently qualifies as a survival skill.

“I just mind my business, do what I do,” says Isaiah, a small black man in his mid-20s whose deferential posture makes him seem smaller. He comments reluctantly, only out of courtesy, because he’s been asked. As he speaks, he seems to shrink further, a by now reflexive demonstration of his strategy.

Strickland picks up on Isaiah’s remark to drift back toward the original topic—the alleged relocation of the homeless during Grand Prix week. Depending on the rumor, this can range from the soft suggestion to go elsewhere, to a crackdown on warrants that sends violators to jail, to involuntary one-way bus trips out of the city.

“This park is usually peaceful; some positive things happen here, but they don’t happen during Grand Prix week,” he says. “The police do try to get you to be someplace else. The city wants to fool visitors into thinking it doesn’t have homeless people. I don’t know about bussing people out—nothing as open as that—but the police have done some pretty messed-up things in this park.”

When contacted for comment, LBPD Officer Joe Seminara—who, along with Officer Merle McGee, comprises the Quality of Life unit that patrols the homeless population based at Lincoln Park—said he couldn’t answer questions.

“I’m not authorized to speak,” Seminara apologized, referring the inquiry to the department’s public relations staff.

A telephoned request for an interview with an authorized-to-speak member of the Police Department went unanswered for two days. On the third day, I dropped by the department personally to check up on the request. By the end of the day, the phone rang. There was no one available to discuss reports that the homeless are relocated during Grand Prix week, although someone had composed this official LBPD-approved response:

“It is not our practice to move the homeless. Any individual is subject to arrest if they have a warrant, which is ultimately a judge’s order to arrest for a crime already committed. It has been our experience that many of the homeless don’t like the large crowds that the Grand Prix and other events draw, and oftentimes they will leave the area on their own. We are always sensitive to the needs of individuals, and everyone is treated with respect. There has been no practice of moving or shuffling people along as the result of an upcoming event.”

Not much, but it’s more than what Councilwoman Suja Lowenthal, whose 2nd District constituents include the Lincoln Park homeless, offered. About 24 hours after requesting her perspective on the issue—whether an interview or an e-mailed response—spokesperson Jemie Sae Koo phoned to report that Lowenthal was “unavailable for comment.”

All in all, pretty inscrutable, too.

Back in Lincoln Park, people who hear about the city officials’ responses universally react with an I-coulda-told-you-so roll of the eyes, although they embellish it differently. Some huff in disgust, others shrug helplessly, a few are indignant, even fewer are outright angry. By now, they’re used to this.

Among a group of black men playing dominos on the southeast quadrant of the park—near the Pacific Avenue approach to the Central Library—those emotions tend to run the gamut.

“Hell, Officer McGee already told us—the Grand Prix is coming in, and everyone with a dollar warrant is going to jail,” says a man named Jay. “He told me to tell all my friends. In actuality, somebody got taken to jail yesterday.”

Farther north along Pacific, where a diverse group of men and women is sitting on a bench beneath a shade tree, a thin balding white man who introduces himself as “Cowboy” says arrest isn’t the only tactic.

“They’ve recently removed the port-a-potties, which pressures people to move or risk citation for public urination—none of the local businesses will let us use their bathrooms,” Cowboy says. “And they are ticketing anybody who comes to the park to distribute food or clothing.”

“The littlest thing,” says Andrea, a Latina sharing lunch with friends on the park’s far west edge, “and you are in big trouble.”

But the law is the law, right?

“Yeah, except that most of these warrants are for the so-called crime of homelessness,” says Jay. “Somebody lays down in the park—which if you are homeless, will get you cited for illegal camping—and doesn’t have the money to pay the ticket, so it goes to warrant. And then, during Grand Prix week, turns into a trip to jail.”

“It happened to me a couple of years ago,” says a man nicknamed Capone. “I was minding my business when they pointed me out, asked for my name, ran me for warrants and hauled me off to jail. If you go down there now, you’d find a gang of people in there. Of course, you can’t do that.”

He pauses for a moment.

“But come by this park during the Grand Prix,” he suggests. “You won’t see anybody here.”

Tags: homeless, Lincoln Park, Long Beach, long beach grand prix, Long Beach Police Department