Joys of Homelessness: good cop, bad cop, jail, harrassment

The perpetual holy grail of the homeless person is a place
to sleep free of police harrassment and free of coercion to
get permissions, to listen to sermons, or to meet the
unsatisfiable expectations of others for how a homeless
person _must_ think, plan, act, and behave.  Most people who
are homeless, after all, find themselves in that status due
to being incapable by economics, physical health, mental
state, or otherwise, of satisfying society's expectations in
general.  Why would sleeping arrangements differ?

For four months, cryptozooic, I slept in an outdoor closet,
doorless, but with the doorway visually blocked by a large
free-standing bulletin board when I found it, and that
visual barrier enhanced by a 4'x8' hardboard modesty panel
stored within the closet after I took up residence there, on
the campus of California State University, Fresno.

There I slept, sometimes for most of every day when
depression got its hooks into me deeply, but always waking
at least every few hours to check on my experimental
software's test progress, annotating results of one test as
it completed and starting another: the closet came complete
with an electric outlet.

My software research, experimenting in the field of
computational complexity with the famous "traveling salesman
problem", was making good progress, and had come to a point
where I had sped up initial performance by a factor of
around 200, and needed to run a long series of experiments,
some running for four or five days at a time, before
planning new approaches.  In parallel, in my less depressed
times, I worked on documentation, did small obvious software
improvements, planned larger changes, and continued to learn
the Java programming language in which I was working.

All good things come to an end, and while many of the campus
staff and some of its faculty knew of my sleeping
arrangements and found them harmless at worst, of course
eventually someone chose to complain, and I ended up jailed
for trespassing.

That event is part of the story here, and the motivation for
the first paragraph; the issue of why the homeless, already
severely burdened by life and personal problems, have to
find that the State, supposedly instituted as part of the
Implied Social Contract especially to protect its weakest
members, instead in the person of its police power, chooses
to treat the homeless as enemies, and to harrass them
implacably.

[As I write this, a homeless, oriental man marches through
the FSU student union, checking trash cans for recyclable
beverage containers, something he does usually twice a day,
every day.  He does not ever respond when addressed, he
treats other homeless as competitors, he once tried to
abscond with some damp used books I rescued from a trash
can, which I was drying outside the student union in the
sun, and he wears a perpetual glower.]

My main conclusion will be that the Implied Social Contract
as long understood has mutated into something far less
admirable: a tool for the strong to use to keep the weak in
subjugation, of the sort common in more openly avowed
despotisms.  This is very evident in Fresno county, where
political contributions from the agricultural interests
return to power politicians whose policies perpetuate an
underclass of unemployed, poorly educated, mostly
non-English speaking persons readily available for hire as
field labor, equally readily disposable, who will work
happily for minimum wage and be unable to protest
effectively when most of their wages disappear in one or
another method of cheating used by employers.

[Efforts are still underway locally and statewide as I write
this, to get class action lawsuits certified by which to
recover agricultural laborers' wages stolen by employers
in incidents dating as far back as the Second World War.]

Unemployment in Fresno County overall is typically four to
six times the California norm as a result, and in individual
cites ranges up to 30%, and poverty is rampant.  One thing
that makes this possible, of course, is that the poor in
overwhelming numbers do not vote, and so allow it.  The
agricultural interests depend on this lack of participation
in government by the poor (except as its victims), but would
find other means to maintain the status quo if the poor
began to flock to the polls, as I'm sure and as history
demonstrates.

As a further result, every political proposal to do anything
effective to ameliorate the ongoing misery levels goes down
to defeat or sinks without a trace after being used as a
puff piece by the proposer.

["Tell the people how it went down, Kent."]

So, there I was at 11:15 AM on Tuesday, 18 June 2002,
sitting on a metal stool in an outdoor closet perhaps twelve
by fourteen feet in size, crowded with huge unused city block models
built
by city planning students and an industrial sized, very
rusty barbeque, a few unused desks stacked, and other
clutter and corruption, behind a visual barrier, working at
a draftsman's desk long stored in that closet but dusted off
and turned to face the open area by me, running test case
population size 188 of my "Nested Grid" layout for the
Traveling Salesman problem, and about fourteen hours into
that run (the nested grid is a particularly nasty instance
of TSP layouts, deliberately so to make the software I am
writing undergo stress during testing, and some smaller
instances have taken five days to solve to optimality on my
laptop computer, thus the desire for long term use of a
reliable electric outlet).

There was a "knock" at my bulletin board!  [Horrors!
Busted!]  Officer Henry Okazaki, badge # 22, of the
California State University, Fresno University Police
Department. [He later gave me his business card at my
request; Henry is the "good cop" of the title:
hokazaki@csufresno.edu to his fan club.]

"Hello! What are you doing here?"

"Research programming in computational complexity."

"That sounds complicated. ...  Are you a student here?"

"No."

"Do you work here?"

"No, I'm a homeless person using this closet as a
workplace."

"Well, you can't stay here."

"Okay."

The closet being rather close in the Fresno overheated
climate, I go outside to talk to him.  To make sure I'm not
armed to the teeth and ready to slaughter campus cops at no
provocation, Henry relieves me of my pocket knife, a US Navy
"TL29" electrician's knife issued to me by the government in
1964 and carried ever since.  [As I am still technically a
US Government employee, even though "retired", according to
a Texas Region US Appellate Court decision in some divorce
case division of military pension dispute (which held that
what a military retiree receives is "wages" for "ongoing
employment" rather than "pension" for a "retiree"), in a
very picky legality, I am still carrying that knife "on
duty" these almost four decades later.  This turns out to be
probably important.  What a universe!]

About this time, the villian of the piece arrives, one Cpl.
J. Underwood, badge # C-3.  Corporal Underwood is everything
that a police force should strive to exclude: a bully with a
chance to practice his personality flaws backed up by a
badge and a gun, a person with profoundly poor judgement,
and an incessant harrasser of anyone he can put into
"victim" status.  Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure "Cpl."
outranks "Off.", and thus our tale starts to devolve.

I told the two officers that, as my travelling rig and ruck
dolly was in disarray, and much property scattered about the
premesis, it was going to take me about thirty minutes to
pack up and leave.  Corporal Underwood was at once enraged:
"How can it take you thirty minutes? You're going to be out
of here in five minutes. [...]" and on and on.  Have I
mentioned I don't respond well to fools?  I must have said
that a hundred times on the net, and here I was in the coils
of one.  Sigh.

My diet consisting mostly of foodstuffs scavanged from the
university cafeteria dumpster, a source of very high class
provender, once you wash it off, I first took my plastic
bucket of edible refuse down to the end of the parking lot,
and tossed the contents (some three days ripe roast beef)
into the dumpster, then stopped to wash out the bucket at an
outdoor faucet.

By the time I got back, Corporal Underwood had demonstrated
bad judgement number one (after applying to be a policeman,
I suppose), by upending my laptop computer to read its
serial number so he could "check if it's stolen, we have
lots of computers stolen here on campus".  Right, and the
thieves then stop for weeks to use them still on campus.  A
person with better judgement might have waited to ask me if
I had proof of ownership, which I do, but a bull in a china
shop will do damage, and he did, somehow in his messing with
things he didn't understand and had no right to touch,
managing to interrupt power to the machine, so that by the
time I got back, it was rebooting, fourteen hours testing
was lost, all my ongoing editing was at risk, and the repair
status of my machine was suddenly in question.  I was of
course miffed, and managed to say so, vociferously.  Have I
mentioned my temper problems when dealing with fools?
Probably.

I also told Corporal Underwood that he had added ten minutes
to my departure workload, while I checked for and repaired
as best possible the damage he had done.  This sent him into
low earth orbit, and he began a raging stream of invective
against homeless and me in particular, full of threats and
noise, which I roundly ignored while I waited for the
machine to finish rebooting, and then began to check the
integrity of the files that had been under edit.  I did
notice from the corner of my eye that Coporal Underwood, as
his self pity at being ingored increased, was literally
dancing foot to foot, like a five year old in desperate need
of a toilet.

It was about this time that I was physically ripped away
from my machine and placed under arrest, an obvious
immediate threat to the public order, but more important, to
Corporal Underwood's self image as a _successful_ bully.

Being homeless, I get arrested a lot just for existing, and
there is a problem there.  I'm crippled; it doesn't show
much, but I'd already shown the (identifying) scar to
Officer Okizaki, before he photographed me.  The standard
procedure in arrests is to handcuff the arrestee with hands
behind his back, but my left shoulder joint is partially
prosthetic, and the prosthesis doesn't allow my left hand to
be pulled to the center of my back without tearing tissues
(the metal prothesis has a protruding padeye through which
the tendons and ligaments are threaded, which runs into my
"rotator cuff" tissues when my arm is turned that
direction).

A previous arrest in which a policeman tried to _force_ my
arm back there despite my protests caused me injury and
pain, and the policeman's supervisor six months of
paperwork, all of which I attempted to explain to a
shouting, tugging, and threatening Corporal Underwood to
limited avail.  Officer Okizaki, far the saner of the two,
just said "Okay, then we'll handcuff your hands in front",
which he proceeded to do.

He and his partner then discussed packing up my gear,
since they had interrupted my attempts, at which point I
made a tactical blunder, reminding him to put my pocket
knife with the rest of my ruck.  Corporal Underwood,
overhearing, pounced on this, his chance to get revenge for
being ignored while harrassing me.  "He had a knife?  We can
felony him for that!"

Officer Okizaki then took me to his car, where he finished
emptying my pockets, locked me in the back, started the car,
turned on the air conditioning (thank Klortho), sat down in
the front seat eventually after talking with his cohort more
about moving out my ruck, and proceeded with that bane of a
policeman's existence, the paperwork.

Sure enough, as I look over his shoulder, I am now an
arrested felon, the legal length for a pocket knife carried
on a campus having dropped from 6.5" when I was a young
sailor to 2.5" when I was no longer young, and only still a
sailor by court decree.  The knife I've carried all this
time is perhaps three inches in blade length.

He opened up my billfold to count my cash, and found $63 in
there, a fair haul for a homeless dude [I'm not particularly
poor, but my $144/month remnant uniformed service pension
(after most of the original $1500 of it was awarded by the
divorce court judge to my first wife) doesn't come close to
paying for shelter when I'm long-term unemployed, so I am
and remain homeless.]  I got to sign various things, and
while his cohort struggled trying to figure out the complex
strapping arrangements that make my ruck dolly roll as a
unit (and failing utterly, before I left but while I was
distracted he apparently called for one of the campus
jitneys, loaded in most of what was there loose, and left).
I noticed even at a distance that he'd managed to leave
behind my 40 foot extension cord (and, as it turned out
later, when I got back to campus, my dinner fork and some
ointment), which I called to the attention of Officer
Okazaki, who kindly fetched it.

Off we went to the Fresno County Jail, about ten miles away,
with radio chatter about vehicular motion and such, and I
was (again, I've done this before), checked in, searched,
stripped and re-dressed, and all the other usual indignities
afforded to the arrestee.  The jail still does inkpad finger
printing, but has upgraded since my last visit, and now also
does some sort of spiffy direct sensing finger prints.

This time around, though, with a standard $5000 bail for
"carrying" on a campus, plus $150 for trespassing (I'd tried
to explain to Officer Okizaki that he wanted 647(j),
"lodging", instead, but he chose the wrong code flavor), I
wasn't going out the same night, so I got to stick around
until a cell could be assigned to my use.

I think for now I'll skip the jail experience, I've already
written up some of it on the Net, and just say that as a
result of whatever, the district attorney chose (at least at
that time) not to take me before a judge, released me before
the mandated 72 hours, and I got to walk the distance back
to campus late Thursday night to early Friday morning,
arriving sweaty, exhausted, only to find out that my ruck
was locked up and no one knew quite where or had a key, but
perhaps at 07:30 investigating officer Kevin Vu
(kevin_vu@csufresno.edu) might be able to return my stuff to
me.  So, in the chill of the night, minus sleeping bag and
coat, wearing short sleeves and light pants, I wandered for
too many hours in falling down exhaustion trying to keep
warm and awake to stay alive.

Come morning, two newspapers later (Thursday's Fresno Bee
had a nice article on new efforts by Fresno police to
harrass the homeless, as yet another meatheaded policy
choice to "solve" homelessness, and to seize unattended
shopping carts full of homeless assets (I'm sure they'll be
_thrilled_ here in Fresno when they later join Miami in
paying around $1800 per shopping cart compensation for ruck
that wouldn't fetch $100, as a result of a class action
lawsuit, after a similar attack of civic stupidity), I went
back to the campus police station, and (after mentioning
such seemingly justifiable terms as "false arrest",
considering this was my second "show up at jail, spend time
behind bars, never have charges filed" experience in Fresno
for being homeless), eventually managed to have Investigator
Vu called in on his off day to bail out my ruck.  He would
not, however, return my pocket knife, claiming it had status
as "evidence" (of what, with no charges filed, I'm not
sure).

Segue to later in the day, when, after restrapping my ruck
to make it portable, I have set it on the fourth floor of
the library, as I have for most days for four months, where
it is out of the way and won't block pedestrian traffic in
the narrower lower aisles, and spent the day on the Internet
searching for jobs and chattering on Usenet, and as I return
downstairs with my ruck at the end of the  library day, I am
accosted by an officer, I was never able to see his name,
might have said "Montoya", who illegally physically blocked
my exit with his body (let's call him the "unprofessionally
obese officer") while threatening me with seizure of my
goods (without benefit of judicial order, in violation of
the US Constitution's fourth amendment), telling me,
incomprehensibly, that the library was "not a hotel" (I said
it was?) and detailing that he'd gone to the trouble to get
advice on his unlawful behavior, assaults, hostage taking,
threats, and harrassment from his sergeant and "the lady who
runs this place" (perhaps the head librarian, perhaps the
female (I think) head of campus police,
lynn_button@csufresno.edu).  Now pretty obviously, after
four months sitting upstairs without objections, my ruck
dolly becoming an issue was a police created event, not a
Kent-created event, and therefore part of a deliberate
campaign of harrassment (outlawed somewhere in Title 18,
United States Code).

Let's see, two or more people engaged, ongoing pattern of
activity, criminal behavior, sure enough, yep, FSU falls
under the RICO statutes! Feds can seize all their assets so
they cannot afford attorneys, sell their goods at auction
and use the proceeds for funding law enforcement, yadda
yadda.  I wonder what a campus in a good location goes for
these days?

To cap off the day, as I rolled off campus and laid down on
the sidewalk, really ready to sleep long before the sun went
down, yet another policeman, name unnoticed, stopped and
ordered me out, claiming mysterious provisions of the Fresno
municipal code that outlaw sleeping on sidewalks (not
according to Capt. John Palm of the Clovis PD, who explained
to me the three rules for sleeping on sidewalks, in
particular the one in front of his police station: 1) cannot
entirely block the sidewalk, 2) cannot block a doorway, 3)
may not panhandle aggressively.

I suppose these folks have never heard the story of The
Bully and the Crazy Boy, but...here we go again!  The local
Clovis police bully was practically in tears and was
literally begging me for mercy, last time we met.  I get to
go back to court to measure his success, come Thursday.

xanthian, the crazy boy.

The good news was, the folks at the Catholic "St. Paul"
Newman Campus Center extended me permission to sleep around
back of the building for the night, and some nice lady later
brought me pizza, candy, and a bottle of apple juice, topped
by a "God Bless You" sign, unsolicited.  Heavy stuff for an
atheist to handle.

Oh, and since the Student Union is owned by the students, I
got nine of them to sign a permission slip for me to be in
here, in perpetuity.  Most were angry that it could even be
necessary.  There really are nice folks in the world, just
not enough in positions of authority.

Oh, and when I got to jail, my money assets had mysteriously
swelled by $22.  I blame Officer Okazaki, who may have
accidently dropped in his own loose cash as well, probably
embarrassed beyond the ability of the oriental to express to
an occidental by the humiliatingly boorish behavior of
Corporal Underwood, a blemish to his profession, a danger to
the students, a liability to the University, and a role
model to bullies everywhere.  Had he been able to
demonstrate any patience or good judgement at all, none of
this would have been necessary, and the taxpayers wouldn't
have had to pay my room and board for just under three days,
at the going rate, including the medical care I received,
around $164 of tax money.

[Officer Okazaki is second generation American, so probably
his grandfather and my father were on opposite sides in a
war.  We talked about this in his car for a bit, to pass the
time as humans do, trying to find things in common.]

[Met another frequently and potentially homeless fellow,
Erin, a bit younger than me, in the Student Union before
writing this.  He's been, would like to be again, a
programmer.  I'm going to spend some S.U. time teaching him
what I know of Java and Object Oriented programming, to give
him a start.]