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Sunday, Apr. 06, 2008

Homeless will fight charge of illegal lodging in a Modesto park

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James Burns was unlucky enough to get busted for sleeping at the edge of Dry Creek on the one and only night that he had no place to lay his head.

Leroy Cole began collecting disability payments in January, so he got an apartment and doesn't sleep in Kewin Park anymore.

Kenneth Hansen earned a certificate as a computer network specialist while homeless. But he hasn't found a job, so he still splits his time between the park, the Modesto Gospel Mission and The Salvation Army's emergency shelter.

Kevin Washburn got sick of having nothing to do all day and found a spot in a sober living home.

And Chuck Yates, who has been on the streets for three years, nurses a dream about a mobile home at his sister's house in Sonora, which he plans to fix up some day.

All five were homeless July 20, when Modesto police officers found them huddled under some brush at the end of a dusty trail that branches off the main path in the La Loma neighborhood park.

Four of the men head to trial Monday in Stanislaus County Superior Court. A fifth man took a deal last week, pleading no contest to illegal lodging, a misdemeanor, so he wouldn't have to take time off from work.

The remaining defendants said they won't negotiate with a prosecutor who initially offered 30 days in jail and a stay-away order aimed at keeping them out of the park, because they don't think it's illegal to be homeless.

"There's no deal to cut in our book," said Hansen, 45, who has a bicycle and carries his belongings on his back. "If I had some place to sleep, I sure as heck wouldn't have been down here."

Drop charges or go to trial

Such cases pop up from time to time in the courthouse, though most are resolved when offenders plead guilty to infractions or a judge dismisses the charges. For example, four men caught sleeping along a canal north of Elk Park in central Modesto on Aug. 3 got off with a warning four months later.

This time, a settlement is unlikely, said Frank Carson, a court-appointed attorney who is paid $75 an hour to represent Cole. He said he and his colleagues will go to trial unless a prosecutor drops all charges.

"These guys weren't littering, they weren't desecrating anything," Carson said. "They're just some poor devils who were broke and trying to get through the night."

Defense attorneys like Carson take a dim view of police sweeps that target the homeless, but Michael Moradian, president of the La Loma Neighborhood Association, is pleased to see the authorities take a seemingly minor case so seriously.

Moradian doesn't think homeless people are behind every nuisance in a neighborhood that recently hired a private security patrol to cut down on Dumpster diving and break-ins.

But he remains suspicious of transients who are in the park all hours of the day and night, saying they have turned a family recreation area into a zone that many moms and dads consider off-limits.

"Put them in jail for 30 days," Moradian said. "Force them to go to some drug rehabilitation or alcohol rehabilitation program."

Whether the men had other options on that summer night -- when they were woken at 4:40 a.m. by police officers who had them surrounded -- remains an open question.

On a 15-day 'out'

Cole, Hansen, Washburn and Yates said they were sleeping along the creek because they were on their 15 days "out" at the mission, which is the only year-round shelter in the county. The typical stay at the mission is no more than 30 days at a stretch, though extensions are sometimes given and people can return after 15 days away.