‘It was really heartless’: Woman sues Sacramento after being evicted from campsite
Evelyn Alfred had been camping downtown along the American River near the Blue Diamond plant for about three months when Sacramento police showed up at her camp at about 11 a.m. on Jan. 13, she says.
The 59-year-old Sacramento woman says she had two tents filled with her belongings — including a gas generator, her false teeth, a bed, portable shower and her mother’s wedding ring — when officers told her she had to move.
“I was asleep and the officers came by and told me I had to leave,” she said. “They said I had five minutes to get my stuff and get out.”
Unable to gather up all her belongings in that time and pack it into her van, police used an excavator with a “claw or clamp on front,” scooped up all of her belongings and dumped them into the garbage, a civil rights suit filed in federal court in Sacramento claims.
“It was a particularly egregious clearing, as far as we’re concerned,” her attorney, Mark Merin, said Thursday. “They didn’t give her any time, and they took everything she had even though they knew she had been there for a while.
“She had a vehicle. She could have packed it all up. It was really heartless.”
Sacramento police declined to comment Thursday.
“The department takes these types of allegations seriously,” Officer Karl Chan said in an email to The Bee. “However, in accordance with city policy and procedure relating to pending litigation we will refrain from commenting at this time.”
The allegations demonstrate the homelessness crisis in the region even before the coronavirus pandemic began to tax city resources to the limit.
Alfred, who has been homeless for two-and-a-half years and is now living in a Toyota Corolla parked at a fast food restaurant outside city limits, said in her lawsuit that she had been camped near the American River bike trail because there was no other room at city shelters, and notes that one day after she was moved out the city declared a “shelter crisis.”
A January 2019 count estimated 5,570 homeless people were living in the county, mostly sleeping outdoors and mostly in the city of Sacramento. All the city’s shelters are typically full on any given night.
Merin, a longtime civil rights advocate who has championed protections for the homeless, says in the lawsuit that the city maintains “an unofficial custom whereby their personnel are permitted to harass homeless and unsheltered persons, including by seizing persons’ property and summarily disposing of the property.”
He also noted that a jury found in 2011 that the city had “a longstanding custom or practice of not giving adequate notice to homeless individuals concerning how they could retrieve their property.”
In Alfred’s case, she lost all of her clothes, her dentures, watches, a port-a-potty and other items, the suit says, “and nothing was stored for her to recover.”
The city rejected two claims filed on her behalf in February and March, and Merin filed the suit late Wednesday, naming the department, Police Chief Daniel Hahn and the city.
The lawsuit alleges unreasonable search and seizure, cruel and unusual punishment, negligence and other claims.