Top reasons why homeless are shot by police

In September 2013, Jack Collins was in a public restroom, attempting to commit suicide with his knife.  A park worker saw this, and called 911.  A police officer came, commanded the man to get out of the bathroom.  He came out, dripping blood.  The officer commanded him to drop the knife.  He didn't do so, and so he was shot and killed.

Early March of this year, a homeless man from Cameroon, known on the street as "Africa", was on the street.  He was approached by two police officers, and he ran.  They tased him, had him on the ground, and then they shot him five times.  On June 23, 2014, Nicholas Davis from Portland, was shot and killed by the Portland police as he wielded a crowbar.  In March of 2014, two police officers shot and killed a homeless man wielding a knife in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  These officers have since been charged with murder.   

Police shootings of the homeless are frequent and happen in every major city of the U.S.  As homelessness increases, the frequency of these shootings increases.  Why do they happen?  Are they the fault of the homeless?  Or of the police?  Here is the general context of every shooting of the homeless.

1.       The homeless are generally considered lesser people

Dr. Susan Fiske, a sociologist who has done brain scans on Americans judging our social viewpoint of a variety of groups has determined that the homeless are generally seen as disgusting and offensive, showing a similar brain pattern as looking at a “garbage pile”.  This isn't a problem with a certain segment of our society but rather an assumption that underlies most interactions between the homeless and society at large. 

2.       Cities pass laws to eliminate the homeless

Since the homeless are seen as “garbage piles”, most cities respond to them as if they are a sanitation issue.  They hire people to get rid of their possessions, they prevent them from loitering in public spaces, they use their police force to push them out of the city.  They might even make it illegal to feed the homeless because cities don’t want to have their garbage piles grow.

3.       Neighbors call the police to get rid of the homeless

Housed citizens see the homeless as nuisances that should be moved out of their neighborhood, partly out of disgust and partly out of fear.  A homeless person might be walking down a neighborhood street, sleeping in a public park, or talking with a couple of his friends and a neighbor will call the police.  They might fear for their children, or they might assume that a homeless person is up to criminal activity and so the police are called.  The police may not want to deal with a homeless person, but if they are called, they will come. 

4.       The regular contacts between the homeless and police are negative
When the police are called to deal with a homeless person, they have to prepare themselves for the worst.  They don’t know if the person is in the middle of a criminal act, dangerous or crazy.  They are ready to handle whatever bad situation comes up.  The homeless person, for the most part, isn't doing anything apart from trying to live the best they can.  So when they are confronted by officers who assume the worst, they react to that assumption negatively.  This creates a continuing tension between officers and the homeless.  The homeless are seen as up to no good by police, and the police are seen as hostile forces that bark orders and give no respect.  Many homeless people have automatic animosity to the police because of so many negative, hostile contacts.

5.       The homeless live in public areas

When we all are asleep in our rooms, we feel secure and free from harm.  None of the homeless have that luxury, as they live in public areas, not protected by society at large.  Neighbors, fellow homeless, and the authorities all feel free to enter into tents or the private possessions of a homeless person.  When a homeless person is in their tent or car, they feel at “home” as much as they can.  But others don’t see it that way.  This means that they feel a greater need to protect themselves than those who have locks and four secure walls.

6.       The homeless carry knives as part of their survival gear

Knives are part of the basic gear of a homeless person, just as they would be for any person who is camping.  Knives are essential for establishing and maintaining a camp, as well as personal security.   If a homeless person has had many people steal their items or attack them for no reason, they are more likely to grab a knife on anyone who approaches them, especially when they are sleeping.

7.       The mentally ill require different treatment

There are perhaps 25 percent of the homeless who have been diagnosed with mental illness, and homelessness increases any eccentricities that a person may already have, due to the enormous stress of living on the street.  The police are almost never trained to deal with people who act in a manner which is abnormal, or exceedingly disrespectful.  A homeless person with anxiety might very well run from the police when they come, which is seen as a sign of guilt by some officers.  Or a person might talk crazy, even angrily, to the “voices” in her head, making her seem suspicious or even dangerous.

8.       The homeless have nothing to lose
After being accused, harassed, yelled at, having possessions stolen, their camps destroyed and no opportunities given for a better life, a homeless person might decide that they have nothing to lose.  If they get attacked or stolen from one more time, they will snap.  Since life has nothing for them, they feel no reason to toe the line.

All of this creates a context for the homeless to be shot and killed by police.  If a homeless person is sleeping in their tent, a neighbor calls the police to have the “vagrant” moved on.  The police come and roust the citizen out of his bed.  He has had enough of the harassment and theft from official channels, and so comes out with a knife, which is always kept with them.  An officer will command the person to throw down the knife, but they have nothing to lose.  So they will not release the thing that they need to survive, even if it is irrational.  If they are considering suicide or have some paranoia, they will see their knife as their last hope.  Eventually, unless the officer is trained in dealing with the mentally ill, the person will be shot, and likely killed.

This is not the fault of a single police officer, but a state of affairs our society is in because of how everyone treats the homeless.  The homeless are more and more getting backed into a corner, in which they have no options.  Back any mammal in a corner and if they feel attacked, they will fight back with whatever they have, even if the situation is hopeless.

Zeitgeist

Future generations always demonize the ethical blinds of the past. It is easy for us to demonize the choices of Columbus or Andrew Jackson, because their culture treated other races as less than human. I am not excusing them, for there were others of their culture who did not accept those cultural blinds, but were able to accept all people as equal. Perhaps Stowe or Wilberforce had their own limitations, and were not as enlightened as, say, Archbishop Tutu or MLK Jr., but without the message and sacrifices of these, the latter would never have had the opportunity to speak.

All I am trying to say is that every age has their own cultural blinders that limit them from, what looks to outsiders, obvious moral choices. The ethical choices are always there, always a possibility, but the zeitgeist of each era causes a fog to appear, and only those who choose to clear the fog from their own minds are able to see it.

It would be easy, and probably profitable, to look back on history to see the zeitgeists of eons past to see how these limitations limit people’s obvious moral choices. What is more difficult is to apply this principle to our own age, to our own lives. What are our own cultural blinders that limit us to obvious moral choices?

In the United States, and probably the West in general, one of the most significant ones is the destructive result of our lifestyles. Because of our lifestyles, millions are impoverished, the resources of the earth are being diminished, governments are being toppled, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children are being killed.

The obvious moral choice is to change our lifestyle. To change the way we look at our material wealth. To live in a completely different way, different from those who live around us.

And yet this change is so difficult. Impossible.

I’ve been teaching in my Sunday services about how Jesus requires all of us to be “anawim” in order to obtain God’s utopia. The anawim are the lowly and outcast who are seeking God. Jesus says that in order to be the type of anawim He wants us to be, we need to sacrifice our family and wealth; we need to be ready to be persecuted; we need to practice hospitality to all in need. Jesus demands a lifestyle change if we are going to be His disciples.

Perhaps we can’t do all that is necessary right off the bat. Perhaps we just need to be more bold in order to save our own souls. Perhaps we just need to start somewhere and then start again and again until our lives are in conformity to Jesus’.

So, two questions for us to ponder—what lifestyle choices can we make so as to escape the zeitgeist of materialism and empire? And what other zeitgeists are there that future generations will shake their heads in shame about when they read about us in history books?

Monoculturalism Destroys the World

Everyone wants to battle prejudice. To label people by their group, to stereotype an individual by who they look like or false ideas about their group is a horrendous crime. However, sociology teaches us that this is not a crime that we can just point at and jeer, but rather it is a sin within our own hearts. There is not a single person who has ever lived who has not made a determination of another’s personality, goals or vices based solely on one’s looks, one’s accent, one’s clothes or the people one is friendly with. Labeling on insufficient evidence is hardwired within us, and we will all stumble because we assume that our current experience with a person is based on a previous experience or story of an experience with someone we put in their same category. To confront a bigot, all we have to do is talk to the mirror.

It is for this reason that many Western societies have targeted certain areas of prejudice. We have laws against some forms of racism and sexism. We decry homophobia and religious bigotry. And so we should. Because to limit one’s rights or ability to survive due to one’s beliefs, one’s sex, one’s race or one’s sexual orientation is wrong. Every adult, without exception, should be allowed to make their own decisions about how to meet their needs, as long as it does not harm another. If one person has the money for an apartment, then all who can afford it and not harm others should get the same apartment. If one person can sit in a bar to drink, then all should be allowed. This is what Martin Luther King Jr. died for.

There is far to go in these focuses. Yes, an African American has been elected president, but fifty percent of all abortions in the United States are on African American fetuses. Yes, women are now able to succeed in almost any occupation men used to hold a monopoly on, but the second most popular entertainment application on an iPhone is iGirl—where an endowed cyber-woman can be manipulated by her male “master”. Most people have the freedom to worship as they please, but any Muslim appointed to a high government position will soon have to resign because of false allegations that they have associated with terrorist groups. With prejudice, the work is never done.

With as much work as must be done on the bigotry that has been targeted, there is a problem with speaking of racism, or sexism or whatever other focus one has. For every prejudice our society focuses on and tries to wipe out, a hundred are ignored and five more are created. Yes, our society has made great strides in sexism, but assumptions are publicly made daily about the poor who receive welfare—that they are lazy, are cheating the system, are taking advantage of the government. Racism has changed and in some ways gone underground, but social workers can manipulate and control the lives of the mentally ill because the mentally ill have been deemed unable to care for themselves, even when they are not under a court-ordered commitment. People are allowed to worship as they please, but people who have pot for their own use are thrown into prison, although they have harmed no one—not even themselves.

The list of prejudices go on and on—the homeless are treated like criminals for not having a place to sleep, an immigrant is treated like an idiot for having an accent, someone who criticizes democracy or capitalism is held at arm’s length, distrusted, a person over 80 is treated as unable to make their own life decisions. Why is this? Not because we haven’t been taught about tolerance. Simply because our teaching of tolerance has been limited to only a few categories. Thus, we who are white males feel guilty at just glancing at a young black man, but we can openly speak hatred against the same man if we find out he is homeless and speaks with an African accent.

The issue is not racism, or sexism or any other ism of limited scope. Our prejudice is against those who are unlike ourselves—of any other culture that is unfamiliar and uncomfortable. When one person or a group of people make a values decision that is different than one we would make—whether or not it would hurt another—that person is wrong and potentially dangerous. The different are not allowed to rule the society, because they will not uphold the cultural standards, whatever they may be. No matter how we try to attack bigotry, as long as we limit it to just a few issues, we will always fall behind our own unknown prejudices. I believe that our problem is not racism or homophobia—rather it is monoculturalism. The limitation of the “acceptable life” to only a few choices.

Our problem is not simply a lack of education. Certainly Americans would be more tolerant if they learned more about cultures, religions, and a variety of cultural mores and habits. But knowledge is not the answer to a monocultural outlook. The prejudice against women persisted because there was a mutual agreement between the sexes to not interfere with each other’s way of life, mores and areas of influence. Only when they began to live as equals, interfering with each other’s lives was there the beginning of understanding and a breaking down of the wall of sexism. The prejudice against African Americans persisted (and will continue to persist) as long as there is separation in neighborhoods, schools and cultural blocks. Only when there is a free and equal mixing between races will understanding and true hope come about.

I believe that the answer to monoculturalism is living in other cultures, being humble in a situation apart from that which we grew up. When I visited India, after living my whole life in Southern California, I was confronted and ashamed by some of the things I did which was acceptable in my own society. I learned that not only were different races, religions and languages acceptable, but so were different ways of thought. When I began to live among the poor, I learned that there was much that I had an instant revulsion to—dumpster diving, for one—that was not only acceptable, but actually a moral benefit to society.

Only if we live humbly among different cultures will we learn to accept other cultures. Only if we are forced to confront our prejudices face to face with those who we appreciate but run in the face of our prejudices will we change.

How Does One Look Like A Bum?

My friend Styxx once said, "It's okay to be a bum, but don't look like a bum." This article I found reminds me of that:

You’re Crazy, You Smell, You Must Be Homeless
By admin on Oct 31, 2008 in Homeless Stereotypes
http://homelesstales.com/2008/10/youre-crazy-you-smell-you-must-be-homeless/

I pass people in the street every day and not one of them would know that I became homeless over seven months ago and am still legally registered as such. They wouldn’t know because I do not appear to fit the homeless stereotype.

I have been using twitter to study the public perception of homeless people. The following are all comments from twitter’s public time-line posted during October. They may be positive or negative reflections but all have one thing in common. See if you can spot what that factor is.


Some homeless guy is screaming “Enter Sandman” at the top of his lungs right outside my apartment.

I just saw a homeless guy skateboarding. I love this city.

Creepy homeless woman chanting something in Latin in front of a defunct protestant church. What?

Just saw a homeless crack ho with a bloody nose on the train.

A homeless man chased me and tried to steal my bike.

There is some homeless black dude in a huge wedding dress on north ave. Wtf.

Just walked past a homeless guy talking on a cell phone near wall street.

Just saw a homeless man getting beat up by a Chinese gang….welcome to san fran.

Saw the sweetest thing: Older homeless couple acting like newly weds. Lady sitting on the man’s lap just enjoying one another’s company. wow.

A band is playing outside Starbucks. There is a drunken, bearded homeless man dancing animatedly, much to the delight of patrons.

This morning on the bus, a homeless guy who smelled like dead fish sat down next to me.

I locked the bathroom door, apparently the lock was broken. On venice beach. Homeless man walked in on me.

Some crazy homeless dude at the bar keeps flicking my arm. Wicked crazy Wicked rude.

Chased by a homeless man yesterday. Scares me that I understood his insane ranting.. Strange that he showed no interest in the pizza I held.

The homeless man on roller-blades outside the venue made my night.

I just watched a homeless guy try and hurtle a barricade. I love orlando.

Creepy hooded homeless man on tram rubbed up against me. Aaaa.
All these relate to something which someone has witnessed and none give any indication that any actual conversation took place. So the question is, how can they know that the person they saw was homeless? Of course it is possible that they also witnessed this individual sleeping in an alley on a previous occasion but I doubt it. In most cases they have made an assumption based on the individual’s appearance, odor or behavior.

I did come across some statements where terms such as potentially homeless, possibly homeless or homeless-looking were used but it was a small minority. It comes as no surprise but it seems there is a general consensus that if someone in the street appears to be a combination of either drunk, dirty, smelly or behaving erratically they are often assumed to be homeless people.

There is of course a possibility that these individuals were indeed homeless but none of the factors used to make this determination are relevant. Most people will know of alcoholics who are housed. Many will know people who are often dirty or smelly but are housed. Many will also know people who are eccentric or mentally imbalanced but are housed or in care. The only real factor that determines if someone should be classed as homeless is whether or not they have a home to go to.

The problem lies in that the average person has little awareness of what constitutes homelessness and the issues homeless people face. These myth-busting homeless statistics demonstrate that the common held homeless stereotype is clearly flawed and as a result assumptions that someone must be homeless based on their appearance or behavior are regularly misplaced.

In case you still don’t think a housed person could be mistaken for homeless here are some twitter comments which demonstrate it can and does happen.

This cute little old lady thought my brother was homeless..gave him $10.

Went to Jewel in my pajamas to buy a tomato and some bitch thought I was homeless and tried to give me change. Wtf?

Work and Lifestyle

Work is a strange concept.

Not all by itself, mind you. To work is either to produce something or to serve someone. To work is to discipline one's mind and body toward a particular goal. Athletes work when they train to defeat their competitors. Mothers work when they care for their children. Artists work when they produce their art. Gardeners work when they plant, weed and harvest their plants. Administrative assistants work when they type a letter their employer has dictated. That's simple.

But we have another concept of work in our age, and it has to do with the division between work and leisure. This division isn't about how hard one works, but rather the result of the work. There are gardeners and artists who spend hours a day at their craft, honing their skills and perfecting their labor to create magnificent beauty and even practical use-- food to eat or a picture for water-- yet it is leisure, not work. Why is this? Because it is not laboring toward the basics of the modern lifestyle.

Most of us have a pretty basic concept of work: that which obtains for us a paycheck, or at least a livable income if one is self-employed. The object of work is to obtain money and the object of that money is to maintain the modern lifestyle. It doesn't matter how difficult it is to raise three children, the stay-at-home mom doesn't "work" in this use of the term. Nor does the artist or gardener who doesn't get paid.

So the CEO who spends part of his working day at the golf course "works", but his wife who has to care for a toddler and an infant at home, cleaning after them, cooking, caring, comforting, making sure that they don't eat any pencils left on the table by her thoughtless, and "overworked" husband, doesn't "work".

And as much as we might often decry the hypocrisy between these two differing definitions, our society grants honor to those who "work" in the second definition, not the first. A man might have two children: His daughter works as a computer programmer, who spends most of the day lounging about, hanging out on Facebook, talking with non-cyber friends in the office, playing cards and then, in the last hour of the day, writes out a set of brilliant programming. She gets paid a fair salary. His son also spends his day in front of the computer, but he works eight to twelve hours a day writing his novel. He hasn't found a publisher yet, but he has sent out parts of his manuscript to many. He has gotten positive feedback from others, including some in the writing industry, but fiction is a difficult and crowded market. He lives at home, but he knows his break is just around the corner. The father is proud of his daughter because of the income she receives, even though she works little. But he considers his son lazy and no good because all he does is sit in front of his computer, writing.

Honor is always given to the successful, even if they don't deserve it. Honor is granted, not to those who produce, not to the disciplined, not even to those who excel at their craft. Honor is given to those who more successfully have the means to live the lifestyle that is approved by one's community.

To not live in accordance with the community's lifestyle is a grave sin against the community. You can be working positively for a community, serving the community, producing things that is beneficial for the community, but you will always be outside the community unless you live their lifestyle, or a version of their lifestyle they approve of. The middle class version of this is to have a job, receive a paycheck, use the money to pay one's bills, rent and groceries. One must have a permanent place to live, electricity, running water, and a phone.

People can live in a different lifestyle. We know that people in third world countries do. We know, intellectually, that some live in mud huts, but it is difficult for us to imagine it. We know that some people choose to change their lifestyle for idyllic or spiritual reasons, but we know that we could never be like them and that, fundamentally, they "aren't one of us." The polite way of saying this is, "Oh, I could NEVER do that."

The impolite way is to say, "Why don't those people just work?" Which is said about the homeless all the time.

This is the source of the false idea that the homeless are "lazy". They have a different lifestyle, one not acceptable to the middle class. Of course, anyone who really thinks about the homeless lifestyle know that it takes a lot of effort to be homeless. You walk for miles from your camp to a meal site. You stay all day in the weather. You may not get much sleep on any given night.

You might recycle or dumpster dive, which means walking across the city to collect items, climbing in and out of trash cans. If you recycle, then you bring the items back to one or more stores in order to get paid for your work, which might get you a few bucks an hour.

And you are doing the community a service if you perform this kind of labor. If you dumpster dive, then you are taking things out of a landfill in order to reuse it in a productive manner. If you are recycling then you are taking items that would have gone to a landfill and turning it back to industrial use. Other homeless spend their days cleaning trash off of sidewalks.

But rather than look at the "work" of the homeless, most people only see the non-"work" of the homeless. They are considered part of a "leisure class" those who are living off of society without serving it. It isn't true, however. The fact that their labor isn't leading them to a lifestyle that they are comfortable with. The amount of effort required to live a homeless lifestyle doesn't impress most of the populace. Rather, they are disgusted that anyone would live in a third world environment in their golden empire.

The fact is, most people on the street don't want to be there, but all their effort has done nothing to obtain the middle class lifestyle. But even if some do choose to be on the street-- who are we to judge? Who are we to say that everyone must work 40 hours a week to support someone else's goals and to prop up their inflated lifestyle so we can have an inflated lifestyle of our own?

Being homeless is hard work. Really. But perhaps it might be worth it if we took on some of the simplicity of that lifestyle on our own.