The ACLU of Colorado today sent a letter to the Denver City Council, opposing the proposed city-wide ordinance to prohibit unauthorized camping, calling it an unconstitutional and mean-spirited attempt to criminalize homelessness.

In the letter dated April 16, 2012, ACLU Public Policy Director Denise Maes said the proposed ordinance is unwise because it frustrates the work of service providers and is a costly investment of city dollars. The ordinance, Maes wrote, is likely to be counterproductive, if approved, because it perpetuates the cycles of homelessness, resulting in arrests, convictions and making it more difficult for homeless people to gain housing and/or employment.

Maes said the ordinance, as proposed, criminalizes homelessness in plain view.

Denver, Maes wrote, can do better than a criminalization approach and must address the true problem of homelessness in the city.

Read the letter here.

Members of the Denver City Council will debate a proposal that would make it illegal, and impose fines or jail time, for sleeping outside on public property anywhere in the city.

This proposed city ordinance is unnecessary, mean-spirited and potentially unconstitutional. Boulder recently passed a similar ordinance, and we can't let city government criminalize homelessness in Denver too.

At any given time, the number of homeless persons in Denver far exceeds the number of available shelter beds. The proposed ordinance provides two choices: leave Denver or go to jail.

People who are homeless are afforded all the rights and protections guaranteed by the Constitution and should not be made criminals because they need to sleep outside. The proposed Denver ordinance, according to ACLU of Colorado Legal Director Mark Silverstein, is neither productive nor humane.

“When the homeless shelters are closed or full, it is terribly unfair, and unconstitutional, to impose fines and jail sentences on persons who have no choice but to sleep outdoors,” Silverstein said. “For the sake of justice for those who are homeless, we must turn back this proposal.”

In an April 12, 2012 news release, the ACLU of Colorado announced it has submitted a detailed complaint to Denver Police Chief Robert White and the Denver Office of the Independent Monitor today, requesting a formal investigation of unreasonable and abusive use of force and other misconduct in policing Occupy Denver demonstrations at Civic Center Park last fall. The complaint calls for Chief White to ban on the use of pepper ball guns for crowd control.

Focused primarily on events that occurred October 29, 2011, the complaint traces police overreaction to a misguided and irresponsible decision to forcibly enforce a minor ordinance that prohibits erecting tents in city parks. The ACLU asserts that Denver police violated their own crowd control policies (as well as common sense) by needlessly antagonizing a large crowd of mostly peaceful demonstrators, prompting a confrontation that escalated in intensity and severity.

In the ensuing confrontation – documented in the ACLU complaint with photographs, video, and excerpts from police reports – Denver police responded with abusive use of batons (knocking nonviolent demonstrators to the ground); needless destruction of personal property; and the unjustifiably hazardous shooting of pepper ball guns into crowds.

“Shooting pepper balls into a crowd of demonstrators, especially a crowd of moving people, is reckless and extremely dangerous,” explained Mark Silverstein, ACLU Legal Director. “The Boston police learned this several years ago, when a police pepper ball hit a bystander in the eye and killed her. We call on Chief White to forbid police from firing these dangerous weapons into crowds of persons who are exercising their First Amendment rights.”

A copy of the ACLU’s complaint will also go to the United States Department of Justice, which is still considering the ACLU’s call —made last year in a detailed 26-page letter -- for a federal investigation of the Denver Police Department’s pattern of civil rights violations. Denver has resisted that call, maintaining that its police department can adequately investigate allegations of police misconduct.

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