Homeless camp relocation considered
SANTA CRUZ >> A federal district court has ordered the City of Santa Cruz and a group of homeless-rights advocates to discuss a proposal to relocate a large encampment inside a city park.
The court order comes in the midst of a civil rights lawsuit filed on behalf of the Santa Cruz Homeless Union and several citizens reportedly living unsheltered in San Lorenzo Park. In January, Northern District U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen ordered the city to temporarily hold off on its plans to displace the homeless encampment, largely due to concerns about distributing the large population during the coronavirus pandemic, she wrote.
The city and homeless union are scheduled to appear for a status conference hearing Wednesday morning, but van Keulen on Monday issued a new directive that the two parties privately meet and confer ahead of time. Both the city and homeless union submitted on Friday lengthy separate written status update reports to the court, and van Keulen referred specifically to a proposal made in the city filing.
Though the city primarily asked for the judge to do away with the temporary injunction in its entirety, it offered a proposed compromise: that the roughly 140 denizens in 118 tents of the camp be moved from the grounds of the upper San Lorenzo Park down into the park’s less visible “Benchlands” area, designed as a flood plain for the nearby San Lorenzo River during the rainy season.
“Because the Benchlands is further away from homes, businesses, the lawn bowling green, and other major park features,
the City’s hope is that the proposal above could potentially give a small amount of much-needed relief to neighbors and park users,” the city filing states.
The city is proposing that it lay out a grid of 122 temporarily demarcated campsites and that the city subsequently be allowed to remove any individuals caught setting up their camps in unsanctioned areas in and around San Lorenzo Park. The city proposal also includes options for government officials to create a permit process for those in the approved encampment area and to enforce a basic code of conduct there. Finally, the city proposed to extend the Benchlands
camp only until 30 days after camp denizens are offered vaccines.
In its own status report, the homeless union asked that the encampment be allowed to remain at San Lorenzo Park for at least as long as the City of Santa Cruz’s recently renewed COVID-19 emergency order, through May 8. The filing also requests the court to order the city to “take all necessary steps to protect Park residents, including thorough investigation of an appropriate police action against self-identified makes of criminal threats and solicitations; provide the necessary services and support to residents of the encampment and generally cease and desist from undermining this Court’s order.”
In their separate status reports, the city and homeless union paint night-andday
descriptions of conditions with the camp. The city’s filing cites a litany of examples of ongoing concerns backed by photographs and city staff and citizen declarations, including an assertion that “the public health, safety, property damage, and nuisance impacts at San Lorenzo Park remain dire.” The filing cites city Police Chief Andy Mills’ declaration of 74 arrests at the park in January and February, and
$12,372 spent on “outside services” for the encampment since November.
Conversely, the homeless union’s update describes a camp that is generally tidy and free of serious risk of harm both to its residents and the general public and where tents are safely distanced, disturbances are rare and daily clean-ups occur. The report attaches declarations from two housed neighborhood residents, Food Not Bombs, a scientist and photographs of the encampment. The homeless status report does acknowledge a “more crowded but isolated section inhabited by what appears to be drug users” and the relocation of Homeless Union leaders for fear of “potentially violent vigilantism.”
A Florida correctional officer polled his colleagues earlier this year in a private Facebook group: “Will you take the COVID-19 vaccine if offered?”
The answer from more than half: “Hell no.” Only 40 of the 475 respondents said yes.
In Massachusetts, more than half the people employed by the Department of Correction declined to be immunized. A statewide survey in California showed that half of all correction employees will wait to be vaccinated. In Rhode Island, prison staff have refused the vaccine at higher rates than the incarcerated, according to medical director Dr. Justin Berk. And in Iowa, early polling among employees showed a little more than half the staff said they’d get vaccinated.
As states have begun COVID-19 inoculations at prisons across the country, corrections employees are refusing vaccines at alarming rates, causing some public health experts to worry about the prospect of controlling the pandemic both inside and outside. Infection rates in prisons are more than three times as high as in the general public. Prison staff helped accelerate outbreaks by refusing to wear masks, downplaying people’s symptoms, and haphazardly enforcing social distancing and hygiene protocols in confined, poorly ventilated spaces ripe for viral spread.
The Marshall Project and The Associated Press spoke with correctional officers and union leaders nationwide, as well as with public health experts and doctors working inside prisons, to understand why officers are declining to be vaccinated, despite being at higher risk of contracting COVID-19. Many employees spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared they would lose their jobs if they spoke out.
In December and January, at least 37 prison systems began to offer vaccines to their employees, particularly front-line correctional officers and those who work in health care. More than 106,000 prison employees in 29 systems, including the Federal Bureau of Prisons, have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to data compiled by The Marshall Project and The Associated Press since December. And some states are not tracking employees who get vaccinated in a community setting such as a clinic or pharmacy.
Still, some correctional officers are refusing the vaccine because they fear both short- and long-term side effects of the immunizations. Others have embraced conspiracy theories about the vaccine. Distrust of the prison administration and its handling of the virus has also discouraged officers from being immunized. In some instances, correctional officers said they would rather be fired than be vaccinated.
The resistance to the vaccine is not unique to correctional officers. Health care workers, caretakers in nursing homes and police officers — who have witnessed the worst effects of the pandemic — have declined to be vaccinated at unexpectedly high rates.
The refusal of prison workers to take the vaccine threatens to undermine efforts to control the pandemic both inside and outside of prisons, according to public health experts. Prisons are coronavirus hot spots, so when staff move between the prisons and their home communities after work, they create a pathway for the virus to spread. More than 388,000 incarcerated people and 105,000 staff members have contracted the coronavirus over the last year. In states like Michigan, Kansas and Arizona, that’s meant 1 in 3 staff members have been infected. In Maine, the state with the lowest infection rate, 1 in 20 staff members tested positive for COVID-19. Nationwide, those infections proved fatal for 2,474 prisoners and at least 193 staff members.
“People who work in prisons are an essential part of the equation that will lead to reduced disease and less chance of renewed explosive COVID-19 outbreaks in the future,” said Brie Williams, a correctional health expert at the University of California, San Francisco, or UCSF.
At FCI Miami, a federal prison in Florida, fewer than half the facility’s 240 employees had been fully vaccinated as of March 11, according to Kareen Troitino, the local corrections officer union president. Many of the workers who refused had expressed concerns about the vaccine’s efficacy and side effects, Troitino said.
In January, Troitino and FCI Miami warden Sylvester Jenkins sent an email to employees saying that “in an act of solidarity,” they had agreed to get vaccinated and encouraged staff to do the same. “Even though we recognize and respect that this motion is not mandatory; nevertheless, with the intent of promoting staff safety, we encourage all staff to join us,” the Jan. 27 email said.
Only 25 employees signed up as a result of the email. FCI Miami has had two major coronavirus outbreaks, Troitino said: last July, when more than 400 prisoners out of 852 were suspected of having the disease, and in December, when about 100 people were affected at the facility’s minimum-security camp.
Because so many correctional officers and prisoners haven’t been vaccinated, there are fears that could happen again. “Everybody is on edge,” Troitino said. Though he’s gotten the shot, he’s worried about another outbreak and the impact on already stretched staffing at the prison.
The pandemic has strained prisons already struggling with low staffing rates and subpar health care. Low vaccination rates among officers could push prisons to their breaking point. At the height of the outbreak behind bars, several states had to call in the National Guard to temporarily run the facilities because so many staff members had called out sick or refused to work.
At FCI Miami, officers are constantly shuttling sick and elderly prisoners to the hospital, Troitino said. As a result, a skeleton crew of staff is left to operate the prison. Unvaccinated staff only compound the problem as they run the risk of getting sick when outbreaks crop up in the prisons.
“A lot of employees get scared when they find out, ‘Oh, we had an outbreak in a unit, 150 inmates have COVID,’” Troitino said. “Everybody calls in sick.”
Part of the resistance to the vaccine is widespread misinformation among correctional staff, said Brian Dawe, a former correctional officer and national director of One Voice United, a policy and advocacy group for officers. A majority of people in law enforcement lean right, Dawe said. “They get a lot of their information from the right-wing media outlets,” he said. “A lot of them believe you don’t have to wear masks. That it’s like the flu.” National polls have shown that Republicans without college degrees are the most resistant to the vaccine.