SF GATE : CRACKDOWN ON HOMELESS IN BART STATIONS HEATING UP
By Heather Knight
Some of the article
... "But boy, has that changed. The Coalition on Homelessness late last week released a video in which homeless people who sleep in BART stations are interviewed and talk about being roughed up and treated poorly just because they have nowhere else to go.
"We are facing an unprecedented housing crisis in San Francisco," reads the press release accompanying the video. "Mothers with their children are being forced to sleep at the Civic Center station while waiting six months for proper shelter. People are so desperate for a place to sleep, free of harassment, they are sneaking into elevator shafts and down train tunnels, literally risking their lives to get some rest."
(It's true, by the way, that homeless families are waiting many months for shelter. And that regular homeless shelters are 97 percent full each night. And that a transient was crushed to death in an elevator shaft at the Montgomery Street BART Station last year.)
Jennifer Friedenbach, director of the coalition, and Public Defender Jeff Adachi say BART police are misreading a section of the state penal code. It applies to public transit systems throughout California and states that people are subject to imprisonment for "willfully blocking the free movement of another person in a system facility or vehicle."
Adachi said most of the arrests are happening because people are lying or sitting against a wall in a 20-foot wide hallway or wide-open plaza, which he maintains hardly constitutes an obstruction. They're not lying at the bottom of escalators or sprawled across narrow passageways, he said...."
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