After failing in September to halt city sweeps of homeless encampments, the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii now wants a federal judge to prevent the immediate destruction of homeless individuals’ property that city workers pick up.
The ACLU and the Honolulu law firm of Alston Hunt Floyd & Ing wrote in a motion that the city is consistently violating its own policies by destroying homeless belongings instead of storing them, where they could be reclaimed by their owners.
The motion filed late Tuesday in U.S. District Court asks that the city store seized property instead of destroying or disposing of it “on the spot.”
“The requested order does not require the city to store excrement or other items that could not possibly meet the definition of ‘property’ in the city’s laws,” according to the motion. “The order does, however, put an end to the city’s consistent practice of destroying life necessities such as tents, bedding, clothing, and the like.”
No hearing date has been set.
The city regularly clears sidewalks of homeless belongings and spent six weeks clearing out tons of material from the Kakaako makai encampment that at one point included 293 people.
City spokesman Jesse Broder Van Dyke said in a statement: “The city’s enforcement actions in Kakaako cleared a tremendous amount of things and materials that obstructed the safe use of the sidewalks. The city will continue to do what is necessary to keep the sidewalks clear, consistent with the Stored Property Ordinance, the Sidewalk Nuisance Ordinance, and prior court decisions.”
The motion alleges that the head of the city’s homeless sweeps, Ross Sasamura — director and chief engineer for the Department of Facility Maintenance — declared that “other than empty cups, plastic bottles and caps, used napkins, and empty packages and plastic bags, nothing is thrown away.”
But in a deposition, according to the motion, Sasamura “readily admitted that the city throws away all manner of items, including tents, bedding, tarps, clothing, food, children’s toys and so on.”
The city’s statements “created the false and misleading impression that it stored all property encountered while enforcing the stored property ordinance and sidewalk nuisance ordinance (excluding things like human waste and other objects that are unmistakably refuse),” according to the motion. “It is now clear that those claims are not true.”
After U.S. District Judge Helen Gillmor on Sept. 22 denied the ACLU’s earlier motion for a temporary restraining order to halt the city sweeps, the ACLU and Alston Hunt Floyd & Ing said that a “bulk of new evidence developed … including photographic and video evidence of the city’s actions.”
