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Minor charges regularly land the homeless in jail
By KATHRYN WEXLER © St. Petersburg Times, published September 19, 2000 TAMPA -- Whenever John Morgan plops down beneath his favorite bridge, sheltered from traffic and the scorching sun, he is trespassing on public property.
Whenever he cracks open a can of beer, the 57-year-old homeless man is guilty of public consumption. And whenever he flashes a cardboard sign at passing cars that says he's hungry, he is soliciting by the edge of a roadway. Those offenses have gotten John Morgan arrested 13 times so far this year. He has spent 86 nights in the Hillsborough County Jail. Taxpayers swallowed the bill: $4,988. Morgan is one of hundreds of local homeless people regularly jailed for offenses that arise mostly from struggling to stay alive. On both sides of Tampa Bay, thousands of dollars are spent annually to hold homeless people facing minor charges in overcrowded jails. "We don't hurt nobody, we don't harm nobody," John Morgan said last week as he sat beneath a W Hillsborough Avenue bridge. When an officer writes similar misdemeanors for residents with permanent addresses, he hands them a notice to appear in court and sends them on their way. People of means who are arrested have collateral for a bond, which buys their freedom until a trial or sentencing. The homeless almost always are hauled to jail because they don't tend to show up for court hearings. Without assets or cash to meet bail, they wait several days for a judge to sentence them, and usually are released for time served. At times, though, the jail stays can stretch into weeks if there are several misdemeanor charges at once. Street dwellers and observers say jailing the homeless contributes to a self-defeating cycle. After incarceration, they are released, only to embark on a long walk back to their familiar, meager nook. In Pinellas County, St. Petersburg officers use binoculars to pick out homeless people drinking in downtown Williams Park. For open-container charges, homeless offenders are much more likely to be locked up than those with home addresses, said police spokesman Rick Stelljes. He said officers do not target the homeless specifically. "We don't go out with the express purpose to try to get the homeless off the street," Stelljes said. Sweeps are common in Hillsborough. The homeless "accept it as part of the territory, and it just becomes another barrier, another hardship to deal with," said James Joyce, supervisor of Hillsborough's Homeless Recovery Program. More frequent arrests of the homeless may be in store. A newly amended state law makes it easier to arrest squatters on private land by no longer requiring that property owners be present when officers issue trespass warnings. "There are a lot of cases where you have remote properties and there's a problem with trespassers or dumpers," said Sgt. Jim Hicks, a sheriff's deputy who works in Town 'N Country in northwest Hillsborough. "It'll be real helpful with things like that." For all the efforts of deputies, prosecutors and judges to keep Morgan out of the public's way for a while, he was right back last week where he always starts: collapsed on the trash-strewn banks of Sweet Water Creek. "I've been under this bridge for 10 years," said Morgan, rail thin and gulping a Natural Ice beer from a can thicker than his boney biceps Wednesday morning. Said his friend, Ray Owens, crouched next to him, "You never know when you walk on that street if you're coming back." Five hours later, deputies beckoned Owens from beneath the bridge and took him to jail for trespassing. He spent three nights behind bars. Police say they pursue the homeless after citizens' complaints, mostly about loitering or aggressive panhandling. Hillsborough deputies have been rousting squatters in Town 'N Country at a high clip, though the homeless seem to be trying to stay hidden lately, said Hillsborough Deputy Steve Ferreira. "I think they're scared they're going to jail, so they're lying low," said Ferreira. Officers say that when they arrest the homeless, they have no choice but to take them to jail. The homeless are such a bother to working people in downtown Tampa, Tampa police Sgt. Tom Wolff said, that officers make a point of running them out of parking lots and overpasses in the early morning. Even so, Wolff and other officers have doubts about the arrests. "Going to jail isn't necessarily the answer," Wolff said. "They need some services that we can't provide." In Fort Lauderdale, the police recently decided on a maverick tack to deal with the homeless. Instead of using a federal grant of $50,000 to pay for police overtime to sweep transients from beaches and parks, the department gave officers sensitivity classes. They teamed up with outreach workers, even giving the homeless rides to shelters. Most radically, officers were instructed to overlook the law. "We encourage police to offer them assistance, even if they have charges against them," said Bob Pusins, assistant chief of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. As of last week, Fort Lauderdale officers had placed 542 homeless people in shelters, "people who more than likely would have been locked up by us if we were still in the enforcement mode," Pusins said. Helping the effort is a new city-funded emergency shelter where people can get a bed for the night, meals, haircuts, mailboxes and an identification card. * * * In Tampa, even if officers want to take the homeless to shelters, they will soon be hard-pressed to find room. Metropolitan Ministries, which has run Tampa's largest homeless shelter, which has 310 beds, is discontinuing its practice of temporarily housing nearly anyone who walks through its doors on N Tampa Street. In its place, Metropolitan Ministries has created a program for those people who commit to long-term stays. The program will offer more personal care, including counseling, child care and education. The shelter will be downsized to 218 beds. Meals no longer will be served on-site for people who are not residents, though administrators hope to move that service to other locations. As a result, shelters such as the Salvation Army, with its 113 emergency beds, or the Abundant Life Ministry, with 35 beds, are bracing for a surge. They already are near capacity. "Uh-oh," said Rodney Williams, manager for Abundant Life Ministry on N Tampa Street, when told of Metropolitan's plans. "What's the city going to do? Of course, it's going to be a terrible thing." Metropolitan Ministries said the emergency beds don't seem to be working in the long term. "We're phasing out beds for people who just want to sleep here and don't want to work in any way on their life situation," said Karleen Kos, designer of the new program. It's an approach that one homeless advocate called "a bunch of hokum." "If you're creaming the crop and only taking the people who are likely to succeed with or without your help, you're not dealing with the chronic homeless," said Michael Stoops of the National Coalition for the Homeless. "Emergency sheltering is the only way to bring them in." Morgan is the kind of "hardcore" homeless person that critics of social services point to. Like many of his peers, he says he has no desire to stay in a shelter. For starters, he can't drink there, and there are too many rules. Morgan's bed wasn't always a jail cot or a dingy mattress. Born in North Carolina, he used to fix power tools and other machines for a living. He owned a mobile home and was married to his first wife for 17 years. After she died in a car crash, he married again. A year later, after too many fights, he drove his pickup south to Daytona Beach. With no luck, a bad friend and a growing drinking problem, Morgan says, he lost the truck. Hitchhiking led him to Tampa, where he has been panhandling ever since. His six children now are grown. They sometimes send him money. The small community of a half-dozen people who live under the bridge work in daily labor pools doing construction work and spend much of their money on beer or cheap cigarettes. The county charges people $20 each time they are arrested, which often leaves the impoverished homeless without a dime. Morgan says he doesn't have the strength to do the lifting necessary for a construction job. Instead, he says, he begs for money while dodging cops. He makes no bones about being an alcoholic. "If I get a six-pack, I'll be out of pain and I'll be all right," he said. Homeless advocates say society shouldn't give up on people, even those like Morgan. "With a chronic homeless person who's been on the street 15 years, you might have to contact them 15 times before they come in," said R. Courtney, outreach coordinator for Broward County Coalition for the Homeless, which works with the Fort Lauderdale police. Courtney doesn't believe the argument that the homeless don't care that there's rarely a roof over their heads. "Nobody got up in the third grade and said, "I want to be homeless,' " Courtney said. * * * Even John Morgan has plans for the future. "As soon as my foot gets better, I can walk, I'm going to do something," he said quietly. "I went into Eckerd's and told them I want a part-time job." That was Wednesday. By Saturday, Morgan was back in jail. His charges: trespassing, public consumption, soliciting on the edge of a roadway. He also had a misdemeanor charge of criminal mischief because he lit up a cigarette in the jail's holding cell. Morgan still was in jail Monday. He said he won't be walking back to the bridge when he is released this time. "I panhandled enough that I can take a bus back." - Kathryn Wexler can be reached at (813) 226-3383 or wexler@sptimes.com.
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