OPINION: City should not be so uncaring

City Hall should stop funding Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful until the organization cleans up its act.

It sounds like a great thing, keeping this beautiful city looking nice. Who can argue with volunteers picking up trash? Thanks to Gazette columnist Barry Noreen and others, we know a lot more about Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful's true nature.

Noreen, looking somewhat homeless, observed one of the organization's sweeps on the morning of Saturday, Oct. 11. Volunteers and cops showed up to clean under a bridge, a hidden location of the street homeless who live in cardboard boxes and makeshift tents.

What he saw was disturbing to say the least, and it was caught on tape. Noreen had been tipped off that Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful was in the business of raiding homeless camps and throwing away what few possessions the homeless have. They throw away sleeping bags, clothes, sheltering materials and even the identification documents Catholic Charities helps homeless people obtain.

Dee Cunningham, executive director of Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful, confirmed with Noreen that anything belonging to the homeless is fair game during the organization's routine transient sweeps. Thankfully, the law says otherwise and it should be enforced.

Cunningham said her organization supports the "hand-up not hand-out" philosophy of Homeward Pikes Peak. Homeward is the organization that tells us "don't give" to the homeless, and instead channel our money through agencies with high-paid professional staffs and government subsidies. Apparently, "hand-up not hand-out" justifies a variety of uncharitable acts, including destruction and disposal of personal possessions and unwarranted searches.

Neither Homeward Pikes Peak nor Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful should criticize handouts, as each is the recipient of handouts. Each receives government handouts as well as private handouts. Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful is slated to receive $42,300 from the city's 2009 general fund, after receiving $45,000 in 2008. Transients sometimes ask for money, but Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful gets its from money the city takes through taxation. And remember, this is the city that plans to lay off some 90 employees in coming months.

The city wants us to vote for a countywide 1-cent sales tax increase, because some of the money would go to help a police department we've been assured is poor. Yet the police had no trouble sending a patrol car and two officers to the transient sweep. And no, police weren't there to make sure cleanup volunteers respected the property and privacy rights of our homeless citizens. Quite the contrary, as the video shows us. At the sweep, police officer Colby Doolittle opened and rifled through two suitcases containing clothing and other personal items belonging to someone just trying to stay alive under the bridge. To see the search, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuBj44bHgD8&fmt=18

As can be seen in this video, the sweep had young volunteers picking up folded blankets in excellent condition, a jacket, and a pillow. Survival items were stuffed into garbage bags. Apparently a "hand-up" means taking whatever our street people need to survive cold Colorado nights.

The people of Colorado Springs, a city known for nationally prominent Christian organizations and mega churches, should not tolerate this. Few things could be less Christian than the organized, government-funded, confiscation of the modest possessions belonging to the poorest of the poor.

Not only was this sweep unethical, it was likely a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. Officer Doolittle's supervisor, Lt. Stephen Tobias, told The Gazette the officers had no warrant. Tobias insists they didn't need a warrant, because the homeless live on city property. Established case law says otherwise.

"Courts have found repeatedly that the homeless have an expectation of privacy in their belongings, even when those belongings are in public space," said Tulin Ozdeger, civil rights director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty in Washington. The organization brings lawsuits against organizations that violate the rights of the homeless, and Ozdeger said she'll review the video.

"Particularly when you're talking about police opening closed containers, there's no question that the people who own those containers have a lawful expectation of privacy, and it would be illegal to open them without a warrant," Ozdeger said.

One solid precedent for this involves a famous case decided by the Connecticut Supreme Court. The Fourth Amendment protects against unwarranted searches and seizures of private property, and the court ruled that the law was broken when police searched a duffle bag belonging to murder suspect David Mooney, who lived under an interstate on-ramp. Mooney's right to privacy was so highly valued by the court that his murder conviction was thrown out because the blood-stained pants found in the search and used for his conviction, were obtained without a warrant.

If it's unlawful to search a homeless murder suspect's duffle bag, one should surmise that it's unlawful to search the suitcases of homeless persons suspected of nothing. But it goes beyond the opening and searching of suitcases. Ozdeger said several court rulings have established precedent that says it's a violation of the Fourth Amendment to throw away the sleeping bags, jackets, pillows and other belongings of homeless people living on city property.

"You do not have the right to dispose of or destroy a homeless person's property. This is well established," Ozdeger said.

So it appears the city-funded Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful organization and the Springs Police Department likely broke the law, on camera, with the latest homeless sweep. In addition, the sweep was heartless and mean and beneath Colorado Springs. It caused hardship for people who already suffer. It made a mockery of the Christian charity one would expect in Colorado Springs.