Lawsuit: St. Pete police, officials targeting homeless

St. Petersburg officials and police are using local ordinances to target and harass the homeless, depriving them of their constitutional rights, according to a federal lawsuit.

A Gainesville public advocacy law firm and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty in Washington filed the 63-page complaint Wednesday on behalf of six named defendants. The lawsuit is seeking class-action status.

"We urge the city to look at solutions for homelessness rather than penalizing people for their status of being homeless," said Tulin Ozdeger, the national center's civil rights director.

"They are penalizing people for doing the things they need to do to survive," Ozdeger said.

The lawsuit claims St. Petersburg officers and officials are using the city's laws on trespass, outdoor storage, sleeping in public and public urination and defecation to deprive the homeless of their rights.

It also contends police illegally stop and search homeless individuals, often seizing their property in an effort to force them from public areas. Many of the plaintiffs have been forced from Williams Park and other city parks and forbidden from using public restrooms.

Mark Winn, assistant city attorney, had no comment today, saying city officials hadn't seen the lawsuit.

In January 2007, videos of St. Petersburg police slashing the tents of homeless got national attention.

The city council last year adopted a number of laws after downtown merchants and residents complained about the homeless. The council made it illegal to keep personal belongings outdoors on public property and to sleep or recline on sidewalks or public property.

The named plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit range in age from 23 to 61 and include a Vietnam veteran, a woman in a wheelchair and a diabetic.

Citing information compiled by the Pinellas County Coalition for the Homeless, the lawsuit says there are 6,235 homeless people in Pinellas, of which 2,232 live within the city of St. Petersburg.

The lawsuit says 3,789 homeless people were arrested from 2005 through April 2008, and that St. Petersburg police make 55 percent of all the arrests in the county for violation of local ordinances.

The lawsuit says those arrests accounted for 12,051 days in jail and incarceration costs of $1.1 million.

"The city of St. Petersburg has essentially turned the issue of homelessness over to the criminal justice system," said Kirsten Clanton, an attorney for the Southern Legal Counsel in Gainesville.

She and Ozdeger said the lack of affordable housing and shelter space forces many to live outside. They said the money spent arresting and jailing the homeless would better be spent on attacking the root causes of homelessness.