Berlin had the Brown Shirts; Miami has the Green Shirts

Are you aware that Miami has been one of the meanest cities in America for years? Are you aware that Miami has actually tried to overturn a law protecting the homeless from status-based arrests at least as far back as 2013?

If anyone has doubts that Ron Book is bullying the homeless, look at the parallel story on the Green Shirts harassing and destroying the property of homeless Miamians.

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/miami-dade-sex-offenders-face-arrest-with-closure-of-encampment-on-may-6-10299920

Updated: Miami-Dade Will Close Sex Offender Camp by May 6, Threatens Jail Time for Stragglers
JESSICA LIPSCOMB | APRIL 27, 2018 | 8:00AM

In December, after New Times published its latest story chronicling the squalid conditions of the camp and its effect on local business owners, Miami-Dade's Public Safety and Health Committee took action. With a vote of 3-1, commissioners on the committee voted to amend an outdoor camping ordinance in a way that would effectively shut down the camp. The rest of the county commission passed the item in January, and Mayor Carlos Gimenez in March issued a memo giving the homeless residents 45 days to vacate.

With the May 6 deadline quickly approaching, outreach groups have been working with the sex offenders to find new places to live. But thanks to stringent local laws governing where sex offenders can live, many homeless advocates worry they have few alternatives to their camp near the intersection of NW 71st Street and 36th Court. According to the mayor's letter, Miami-Dade Police officers have the option to "remove" those who stay, a clause that refers to a local law permitting police to arrest those who trespass on county property.

"The message being given to the people living there is if you're there on May 7, that you'll be subject to arrest," says Jeffrey Hearne, an attorney with Legal Services who has represented residents of the camp.

As many as 300 sex offenders have a registered address at or near the encampment, according to state records. Under a 2005 county law ordinance named for Lauren Book, a Florida senator and survivor of child sex abuse, offenders who abused victims under the age of 16 must live 2,500 feet from any school, much farther than the 1,000 feet required under state law.

A 2017 report commissioned by the ACLU found that across the county, only 320 affordable rental units met those guidelines.

Since August, the Homeless Trust, its chairman Ron Book (Lauren's father), and the Housing Assistance Network of Dade have been distributing information about rental assistance to the homeless offenders who live at the camp. But other homeless advocates say the assistance is no good if the offenders can't find a landlord who will rent them a home.

"Many people there would love to accept that rental assistance, but they have not been able to find the housing which would permit them to accept it," the ACLU's Jeanne Baker told commissioners in December.

As the deadline looms, it remains unclear what will become of the people who stay behind at the camp. Frank Diaz, a pastor who works with the homeless residents, says probation officers are encouraging some offenders to move near the Krome Service Processing Center at the edge of the Everglades.

"They have been told starting May 6, whoever remains is gonna be taken away, have all their possessions thrown away, and possibly be arrested," Diaz says.

The Miami-Dade Police Department has not yet answered New Times' questions about what will happen after the deadline.

Update: Detective Alvaro Zabaleta, a spokesman for Miami-Dade Police, says the department’s sexual predator unit is aware of the memorandum and is monitoring the situation to determine a plan of action come May 6.

“We’re hoping everyone gets placed and everything works itself out between the county and them,” he says. “The memo says we are the last resort. We want to make sure that is the case.”

No formal directive has been issued yet because it’s still unclear if or how many offenders will remain at the camp after the deadline.

“The last thing we want is to have to take any enforcement,” Zabaleta says. “It just depends how everything lays out between now and May 6. It’s hard for us to have a plan of action if we don’t know how things are going to go.”

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/video-shows-miami-green-shirts-destroying-homeless-property-violating-pottinger-agreement-10292474

Video Shows City Workers Destroying Property of Homeless Miamians
TARPLEY HITT | APRIL 25, 2018 | 8:31AM

The morning of April 17, Wilbur Cauley left all of his belongings in their usual place: stacked by a fence under the I-395 overpass at NW First Court and 13th Street. It was in the middle of a four-block area where about 30 homeless Miamians live. That morning, Cauley, an Army veteran in his late 50s who served three years in Germany, went to a nearby store for a soda. When he returned, he says, a man in a dark-green shirt was kicking bags that contained Cauley's birth certificate, driver's license, clothes, bedding, and even the food he keeps on hand to avoid diabetic shock.

"I said, 'Hey, what are you doing?' and I tried to get my stuff," Cauley recalls. "But the guy wouldn't let me get anything. He grabbed my arm and then he took all my stuff... They threw it all away. They took everything I have."

Cauley's version of events is supported by photos, video footage, and testimony from a half-dozen eyewitnesses, including Benji Waxman, a Miami lawyer and volunteer at the American Civil Liberties Union, and David Peery, a local activist who has experienced homelessness himself. Waxman and Peery have been involved in homelessness advocacy in Miami for years, and they say tensions between the city and locals have spiked in recent months.

Cauley’s antagonist was a member of the Miami Homeless Assistance Program, a group also known as "green shirts” because of their signature forest-green uniforms. The program, staffed partially by former homeless men and women, is tasked with providing aid and services to the area's homeless population. Over the years, the green shirts have been both praised for their hard work and criticized for harassing and even stealing from the very people they are supposed to help.

Now, Peery and Waxman say, they are at it again — conducting biweekly "cleanups" of areas where homeless people congregate, damaging property, and throwing away people's belongings. Waxman says the green shirts, police officers, and workers from several other city departments have mounted an aggressive campaign across Miami to chase homeless people out of the areas where they live. According to Cauley, the city has been “cleaning up” the First Court area twice a week for almost six months — acting in what Waxman and Peery claim is a direct violation of the famous South Florida federal court decision Pottinger v. City of Miami.

The historic class-action lawsuit was filed in 1988 by a group of 6,000 homeless people against the City of Miami. The plaintiffs, then led by a man named Michael Pottinger, and now by Peery, argued the city had criminalized homelessness by prosecuting people for misdemeanors they could not avoid committing — such as sleeping, bathing, or building a fire for warmth. “You cannot make a person an outlaw just because they don’t have a home,” Peery says.

When the case was settled a decade later, the judge set in place certain agreements between the City of Miami and the homeless population. Homeless individuals are now protected under the Pottinger agreement from being arrested for performing necessary, life-sustaining activities in public. Instead, the city must offer shelter and services before evacuating certain areas.

The decision includes another key stipulation: City officials may not seize or damage the belongings of homeless people unless they pose an obvious threat to public health. But Cauley, Waxman, and Peery say that’s exactly what the green shirts were doing April 17.

The city has a different story. “All property and people are treated with dignity and respect,” says Eugene Ramirez, director of communications for the City of Miami. “If our outreach staff finds any documents in clean-up areas, they collect them and bring them to the office for safekeeping. They leave a notice where the property is found so people can come collect their items.”

Ron Book, who runs the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust, says the county is working with the City of Miami to reduce homelessness. “Our goal is to be as aggressive as we can to encourage people to take housing,” Book says. “I am aware that there have been street cleanings to try to clear the streets.”

Many green shirts go to great lengths to ensure the well-being of their clients — Ramirez claims they collect items to protect them from damage during street cleaning. But Cauley responds that some of the outreach personnel go out of their way to harass the homeless community, such as conducting street cleanings at ungodly hours (as early as 3 a.m.), waking residents while they sleep, and forcing people out of public areas without offering another place to go.

“It’s total harassment,” he says. “Even if you’re sitting on the curb and nothing is behind you, they’ll say you’re blocking the sidewalk. You have to sit up against the fence like you’re in the military or something.”

So what exactly happened the morning of April 17? According to Waxman, six green shirts arrived in the area around 8:30 a.m. They came with several police officers, a handful of Neighborhood Enhancement Team  members, and a parade of cleaning vehicles: a dump truck, a water pressure cleaner, three or four pickup trucks, and a street sweeper. The group stood around for a while, surveying the scene, and about an hour later, one of the green shirts announced the cleanup would begin.

"He walked up the middle of NW 1st Court and loudly ordered everyone to move their possessions immediately," Peery wrote in a complaint letter to the city. "When they walked up to Wilbur Cauley's possessions — bedding, clothes, a backpack and sheets that were stacked neatly against a fence — the large male Greenshirt shouted ‘Okay, now we're going to throw your shit away!’”

Peery filmed the incident on his phone. The video shows the green shirt moving Cauley’s possessions into a pile in the middle of the sidewalk and throwing other items on top. A woman on the sidewalk screams at the official and tells him to stop stealing her things. The man ignores her — he kicks and throws more stuff onto the pile. Only one person in the video is able to retrieve something from the pile. Others photos shows the same green shirt standing over and blocking Cauley’s stuff.

In all, Cauley lost every piece of identification he had, including his veteran bus card and his social security card. Losing your ID is always a nightmare, but it’s especially horrible if you’re homeless. Any shelter he might visit or any job he might apply for requires ID.

Peery says these regular cleanups are a less-than-subtle way of herding homeless people away from popular congregating spots.

“The campaign is working,” Peery says. “I went down to Lot 16 the other day, and no one was there.” Lot 16 is an area south of the Main Library and east of the Miami River, where some 50 or 60 homeless people used to live. After the city began conducting regular street cleanings, Peery says, everyone relocated. “And it’s happening here too. You see today, people have already left.”

The Pottinger settlement did leave in place a mediation clause — where plaintiffs can request meetings with the city over perceived violations of the agreement. Peery and Waxman requested a mediation, and one was scheduled for the morning of April 24. There is no report yet on the outcome.

“I’m hoping to convince the mediator of three things,” Peery says. “Number one, to tell the city to please stop. Number two, to compensate people for all the possessions they have lost. And number three, to please guarantee this won’t happen again.”

There has never been been a better time to use this graphic

Book Crime Family & the Miami-Dade County wants the homeless to move out to the Everglades, where there are absolutely NO resources within 2 miles of the facility, except a casino

Game of Musical Registrants coming to a head as the May 7th deadline for homeless RCs looms over Miami

Recently, I watched Lauren Book in that BBC documentary that aired recently; in it, she claims she disagrees with residency restriction laws. Well, Lauren, whose name is the bill named for? It isn’t named the RON Book Child Safety Ordinance, but the LAUREN Book child safety ordinance! If I disagreed with something, I would not allow myself to have my namesake used for a law I disagreed with. You are a lying sack of manure, just like your recidivist criminal father.

But I digress. The Book Crime Family is trying to sweep the problem THEY created into jail. They should be in prison themselves.

https://injusticetoday.com/as-deadline-approaches-for-homeless-ex-offenders-in-florida-county-threatens-to-jail-them-d0504fe1970c

As Deadline Approaches for Homeless Ex-Offenders in Florida, County Threatens to Jail Them

Steven Yoder
Steven Yoder covers criminal justice for national magazines and news sites. His work has appeared in The American Prospect, Al Jazeera America and elsewhere.
Apr 5

A few miles from Miami International Airport, outside of Hialeah, sits a tent camp of about 280 homeless people. There’s no electricity or running water and no bathrooms. News reports describe the stench of human waste and garbage, tents that flood when it rains, and flies, mosquitoes, and rats infesting the area. “Animals live better than this,” one resident told a reporter.

He and the others there are on the state sex offender registry. Miami-Dade County laws make it almost impossible for them to find places to live and bar homeless shelters from taking them in. For many registrants, the encampment has been a last resort, but in January, county leaders passed a new rule that makes them subject to arrest if they don’t find housing by May 7.

The person most responsible for the camp’s existence may be state lobbyist Ron Book. In 1996, he and his wife hired Waldina Flores as a nanny for their three children in their home outside Fort Lauderdale. Over the course of six years, Flores sexually and physically abused their oldest child, Lauren. Lauren Book eventually told a psychiatrist, and Flores was arrested and ultimately sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Lauren Book went on to found a nonprofit that promotes sexual abuse prevention, of which Ron Book is the chair; Lauren is now a Florida state senator. But Ron Book also lobbied for new laws. In 2005, he helped convince Miami Beach to pass an ordinance that bans people on sex offender registries from living within 2,500 feet of a school, a rule later adopted countywide. State legislators earlier had passed a law barring registrants from living within 1,000 feet of day care centers, parks, playgrounds, and schools.

In combination, those policies left only tiny patches where Miami-Dade registrants could live. By 2007, news reports were describing people with sex-crime records living under the Julia Tuttle Causeway, some literally dropped off there by their probation officers. In 2010, a spate of negative news stories forced the county to shut down that encampment.

Book has been at the center of this debate for years, as both an advocate for the restrictions and as chair of the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, the lead body for implementing county plans for solving homelessness. After the Julia Tuttle camp closure, he used the proceeds of local food and beverage taxes to find short-term housing in a trailer park and hotels for some of the homeless people. But when that money ran out and the the trailer park was found to be too close to a school, the registrants were out on the streets again. In March 2014, the Miami New Times reported that 57 men were living at the Hialeah encampment, and its numbers have since more than quadrupled.

A 2013 study in the journal Criminal Justice Policy Review found that only 4 percent of Miami-Dade county residences were outside a ban zone, and only 1 percent of legal residences rented for $1,250 a month or less. Registrants in the county are more than 50 times as likely as those in the general population to be homeless, the researchers found. Many of the people living in the encampment have family members who would take them in, but their homes are off-limits, says Jeanne Baker, legal panel chair of the ACLU’s greater Miami chapter.

Take Jeff*, convicted in 2004 of viewing child pornography. (He doesn’t want his real name used for fear of jeopardizing his housing and job situations, and putting himself at risk of vigilante attacks.) “I remember looking at stuff on the internet for reasons that I can’t justify,” he told In Justice Today. “I didn’t realize that you can go to jail for looking at something on the internet. I should have known better.”

He spent three years in federal prison and got out in 2007. He wanted to return to the house he and his wife owned in Miami-Dade, he said. But his release plan was denied because the 2005 law — passed after his conviction — put it in a no-go zone. Jeff’s parents would have been happy to house him too, but their home was also off-limits.

Jeff said he looked for months. The few places that were outside a residency zone turned him down once they found out he was on the registry. Finally, an old college friend who lived in a remote area rented him a room. That worked for five years until the friend had enough of roommate living. After another futile search, Jeff left for a nearby county in 2012.

“I know so many [registrants] who are homeless,” he said. “I had plenty of money and strong family support. If not for that, I’d likely be out there with them.”

Ironically, registrants like Jeff who are looking for housing depend on Book for help, given his role as the Trust’s chair. When unflattering stories on the Hialeah encampment emerged last summer, Book and other officials promised to shut it down by offering residents other housing. But those who can’t or won’t move will be subject to arrest.

It’s already illegal to camp overnight on county property. Violators can be arrested, though police have to offer them the chance to go to a shelter. Since area shelters don’t take registrants, however, they had been allowed to stay in the encampment. But in January, in an effort to abolish the encampment, the county commissioners eliminated the requirement to offer registrants shelter, so those in the encampment have until the May 7 deadline to relocate or face arrest. In the interim, the county has promised to bring in portable toilets, handwashing stations, and garbage cans to partially remediate conditions. (The county commissioner who drafted the rule didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment on the new policy, nor did the county mayor’s office. A spokesperson for the county police director declined an interview request.)

Book says the people in the encampment need to take more initiative to find housing. Trust staff have visited the encampment to tell them about available housing assistance, he said. “We’ve told folks repeatedly, ‘You gotta jump on it — our staff is available to respond to you,’” he told In Justice Today. “There are places they can live.”

But the “Housing Search Tool for Homeless Sex Offenders” on the Trust’s website contradicts that claim. The tool lets registrants plug in an address to check whether it’s in a banned zone. Of 20 randomly selected apartments under $1,100 selected from apartments.com and entered into the search tool, none fell outside a restricted zone. ($1,100 is the cutoff for what’s considered affordable for a Miami-Dade resident with the county annual median income of about $44,000.)

Presented with those results, Book blamed the local housing market and said the state legislature needs to appropriate money to house registrants away from the population, which he said he’s advocated for.

But he rejects the most obvious fix — getting rid of the 2,500-foot residency restriction. An October 2014 National Criminal Justice Association review of available research on these types of policies notes that “there is no empirical support for the effectiveness of residence restrictions.” Their unintended consequences — “loss of housing, loss of support systems, and financial hardship … may aggravate rather than mitigate offender risk,” the researchers concluded.

Book isn’t convinced. “You’re not going to get me to ever say that residency restrictions are not appropriate,” he told In Justice Today. “Just because there’s no study, no data [to show that they work], you’ve got to use some level of common sense…. And common sense tells me that I shouldn’t think it’s OK to have predators and offenders living in close proximity to schools, parks, playgrounds, daycare centers, and the like.”

But Gail Colletta, president of the Florida Action Committee, which advocates for reforming state and local sex-offense laws, says Book’s support of residency restrictions is misguided. “The situation with his daughter is very sad, but he pushes a lot of legislation that’s counterproductive to public safety,” she said. “People need to be with family, they need to have jobs, and they need to have a roof over their head.”

A glimmer of hope for activists like Colletta arrived on March 26 when a judge in neighboring Broward County dismissed a case against two registrants who had violated a similar residency ordinance in the city of Fort Lauderdale. The ACLU helped the pair fight the charges based on the U.S. and state constitutions’ ex post facto clauses: Fort Lauderdale’s ordinance was enacted in 2007 after the two plaintiffs were convicted. The ACLU has filed a similar lawsuit in federal court against Miami-Dade County that’s set to go to trial in June, says Baker. Still, the win in Fort Lauderdale is narrow — it applies only to those convicted before the city ordinance was passed.

Around the country, places that wall off large swaths of housing from those with sex-crime records continue to get the same results: people living on the street. Homeless registrants in Orlando, in a county where residency restrictions average 2,500 feet, sometimes list the local Walmart as their permanent address, according to a news report last November. In October 2014, Milwaukee passed a similar ordinance and the number of homeless registrants promptly soared from 15 to 230 in less than two years, according to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analysis. In Indiana’s Boone County, a thousand-foot residency restriction led the sheriff to require six homeless registrants there to find permanent residences or pitch their tents on county jail property.

At least one Miami-Dade official seems desperate for an alternative solution as the May 7 deadline approaches. On the day the county issued it, Baker said county Deputy Mayor Maurice Kemp approached her. “Can the ACLU help with housing?” he reportedly asked. “No, I’m afraid we can’t,” she said. “We don’t do housing.”