Violence Is Becoming a Threat for Homeless
Graeme Bacque (gbacque@idirect.com)
Thu, 23 Dec 1999 07:49:33 -0500
December 23, 1999 The New York Times
Violence Is Becoming a Threat for Homeless
By EVELYN NIEVES
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 22 -- In Denver, five were pummeled to death and two
more beheaded. In Richmond, Va., one was beaten, stabbed and beheaded, his
head then carried nearly a mile and placed for display on a footbridge. In
Seattle, one was stabbed 18 times, another beaten bloody and then stabbed.
There were others. One in Dallas, pelted with bullets from a 12-gauge
shotgun for rummaging through trash. One in Chico, Calif., beaten to death
for begging for spare change. Three in Portland, Ore., strangled for who
knows what.
They were all homeless people killed over the last year. And these were
just the killings that made the news. Exactly how many homeless people have
been victims of savage attacks is unknown. Police departments do not
tabulate crimes against homeless people, and in many cases, such as several
beatings that have frightened the large homeless population here, those who
survive attacks often do not report them.
What appears certain, advocates for the homeless say, is that living on the
streets is becoming more dangerous. In the last few years, police
departments across the country have reported more frequent, more vicious
attacks on those who are homeless. Nearly always, the victims are ambushed
as they sleep. Nearly as often, the suspects, who are not always caught,
are described as young men who appear to attack for no reason. In some
cases, suspects call it "bum-bashing" or "troll-busting," police and
advocates for the homeless say.
Attacks against homeless people rarely get attention, but nationally,
violence against people who are unsheltered is becoming so common that the
National Coalition for the Homeless is asking Congress to consider
"homeless people" as a maligned minority, or protected class, in drafting
any new legislation against hate crimes.
"There have always been isolated instances of homeless people being set on
fire," said Michael Stoops, a community organizer for the National
Coalition. "But what we're seeing now is a trend. And what's most
disturbing is that the likely suspects continue to be young people."
Based on news reports, the coalition has counted 29 homeless people who
were killed in 1999 in 11 cities, from San Francisco to Richmond, Va. It
listed six others who barely survived attacks. The youngest suspects in
these cases were 14 years old, and most were under 21.
No one can say for sure why young people in particular seem to be attacking
homeless people in increasing numbers. But looking at arrests in cases of
violence against homeless people over several years, by far the majority of
the suspects were young teenagers, or even pre-teenage boys, who bragged
about the attacks afterward.
In Seattle, for example, a 14-year-old middle school student was convicted
in March in the death of a 50-year-old homeless man. The youth struck the
victim repeatedly with a skateboard, robbed him, then stabbed him to death
with a pocket knife. He was caught a week later, when witnesses told police
he had been boasting about killing a "bum." In that same city, three
teenagers were charged in August with the murder of a 46-year-old homeless
man as he tried to sleep beneath an interstate overpass. Prosecutors said
that one told friends, "Let's just say there's one less bum on the face of
the Earth."
John Urquhart, a spokesman for the King County sheriff's office, which
covers Seattle, said he believed that the homeless were singled out
probably because they are accessible, anonymous and stigmatized as
"throwaways of society."
Indeed, many advocates for the homeless blame increasing crackdowns on
homeless people for sitting, sleeping or lying in public spaces as a
significant factor in the increased attacks. In Chicago, a homeless man was
doused with a flammable chemical and set aflame as he slept on a park bench
in July. He suffered third-degree burns over 20 percent of his body. John
Donahue, executive director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless,
said that he had noticed more of these kinds of attacks with the increased
gentrification of the city, the fencing of lower Wacker Drive, where an
encampment of homeless people had lived undisturbed for years, and the
increased police enforcement of laws designed to keep people off the streets.
"It's the underpinning of these hate crimes," he said. "It legitimizes them
because these people don't count. These people are criminals for being poor
-- that's what the official position is saying about these people."
Mr. Stoops of the National Coalition said that when he visited high schools
and asked students what they thought about homeless people, they often
called them bums and drunks who were too lazy to work. "We're obviously
sending a message to our young people that homeless people are not worthy
of their respect," he said.
In Denver, where the only suspects in a spate of seven slayings since
September are a 16-year-old, an 18-year-old and a 20-year-old charged with
murder for the death of one victim (and accused of the nonfatal beatings of
five other homeless people), police are investigating talk on the streets
that a pack of young men has been picking on homeless people for thrills.
In the only case so far with a witness, police said that someone reported
several juvenile men a homeless man in a downtown alley.
The perpetrators, said Lt. Judith Will of the Denver Police Department,
"may get a sort of high or thrill by beating up people, and homeless are
such an easy target."
There are, of course, instances where homeless people are killed simply
because they provide convenient targets for a deranged person. Such was the
case in San Francisco last year, when a man who believed he was a vampire
slashed the throats of four homeless people, one fatally, and then drank
their blood. In other cases, as one in San Francisco earlier this year
where a homeless man standing on a corner was killed by a bullet meant for
someone else, the victim is a bystander. And because many people on the
streets are mentally ill or drug addicted or both, they are easier to
victimize and harder to help, police say, since they are often unable to
describe the time and place of their attacks or their attackers.
In some cases, police say that they can find no evidence of attacks. In
Rapid City, S. D., eight homeless men have drowned in a trout stream in
less than two years, including three this year. The Rapid City Police
Department initially considered the cases accidental drownings because the
men all had high blood alcohol levels. But homeless men have insisted that
the victims, six of whom were American Indians, had actually been pushed
into the stream by racist white youths while the victims lay passed out
from alcohol. Chief Tom Hennies of the Rapid City police said that the
department, with help from state and federal law-enforcement officials, was
now considering the drownings possible homicides, "even though we don't
have a shred of physical proof."
In Anchorage, where three homeless people were killed this year, at least a
dozen older, homeless men have said they were attacked by bands of
marauding youths. But they were not able to provide concrete details of the
crimes or suspects, the police said.
The only comprehensive survey done on violence against homeless people was
a study in New York City in 1994, after several attacks where youths set
fire to sleeping homeless people. The survey found that 80 percent of
homeless people had been victims of violent crime.
While there have been no spectacular incidents of violence against homeless
people in New York since the survey was done, Mary Ann Brosnahan, director
of the New York Coalition for the Homeless, said the coalition occasionally
heard anecdotal reports of harassment.
"We know that homeless people are far more likely to be the victims of
violent crime," Ms. Brosnahan said, "than the perpetrators."