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Attacks routine, say homeless

"This hasn't just started happening," one says, as police hunt thugs who battered three Fort Lauderdale street people, killing one.

FORT LAUDERDALE - Violent attacks like those inflicted on three homeless men Thursday are a fact of life on the streets, homeless people and advocates said Friday. What stood out in these cases was the savagery of the attacks - one man died - and the fact that one was caught on camera.

"This hasn't just started happening. It's been happening," said Stanley Thompson, 49, as he stood outside the Cooperative Feeding Program with other homeless people. "People think that just because you're homeless, you're not human. You're imperfect."

Homeless people interviewed Friday had tales of violence, often involving bands of youths. They told of bricks and rocks hurled at them, beatings, robberies of their meager possessions. They had suffered broken bones, lost teeth, blackened eyes and bruises. "You can't really go to sleep. You've got to sleep and be halfway awake at night," said Van Jackson, 53. "It's dangerous."

Police were searching Friday for a group of two to four young men believed involved in the separate attacks early Thursday against three homeless men with baseball bats or sticks. One of the victims, Norris Gaynor, 45, died.

Another of the attacks was recorded by a video security camera outside a building housing Florida Atlantic University and Broward Community College facilities. The video and images from it were televised and published nationally.

Attacks on the homeless are frequent in Broward County, where an estimated 10,000 people are homeless on a given day, said Laura Hansen, executive director of the Broward Coalition for the Homeless.

The National Coalition for the Homeless, which annually reports on attacks directed at homeless people, says the majority of attackers are males between 16 and 25.

In Florida, four teenagers were convicted in December in the beating death of a homeless man in Daytona Beach. Last year, Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, joined Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., in requesting that the Government Accountability Office conduct a review to determine whether such attacks should be categorized as hate crimes, which usually carry harsher sentences than other types of crime. The GAO has yet to issue a report.

[Last modified January 14, 2006, 01:38:14]