NAMED BEST CAMPUS NEWSPAPER IN CALIFORNIA FOR 2022 BY THE CALIFORNIA COLLEGE MEDIA ASSOCIATION
Thursday, Mar. 16, 2023
Volume 160 No. 22 SERVING SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY SINCE 1934
WWW.SJSUNEWS.COM/SPARTAN_DAILY
INFOGRAPHIC BY VANESSA TRAN SOURCE: NBC BAY AREA
Panel brings light to public safety issues, concerns By Brandon Nicolas STAFF WRITER
ALINA TA | SPARTAN DAILY
Scott Wager (left), founder of Community Homeless Alliance Ministry, and a collaborator pass out free clothes and shoes to a group of unhoused people on Monday at the encampment in Roosevelt Park.
SJSU student organization fights houseless sweeps By Alina Ta STAFF WRITER
Students Against Sweeps is a student-run campaign fighting against police sweeps by advocating for houseless people to be treated fairly in San Jose. Sociology freshman Armando Guillen, a member of Students Against Sweeps, said the students involved in the campaign are pressuring city officials to use alternative solutions to decrease houselessness. Students Against Sweeps is campaigning for the city to stop doing police sweeps and to find other alternative solutions. The campaign was created as a part of sociology and interdisciplinary social sciences professor Scott Myers-Lipton’s sociology class. Myers-Lipton said he invited Scott Wagers, pastor for the Community Homeless Alliance Ministry and co-founder of the Student Homeless Alliance, and other speakers to give students the opportunity to learn more about being more active in the community. “The general idea of [it is] students come into the class and instead of just, like, taking notes and listening to lectures – the idea is that students still read books and read articles, but they [also] choose a campaign to work on. So about 50% of the class is the student campaign,” Myers-Lipton said. Sweeps, referred to by the city of San Jose as “abatements,” are the forced disbanding of encampments on public property, including the removal of unhoused people and their respective property from that area, according to a Jan. 11
American Civil Liberties Union Washington article. Wagers said during police sweeps they throw away or demolish houseless peoples tents and take their belongings. “It’s, you know, inhumane and it’s a waste of money, waste of time,” Guillen said. San Jose city officials cleared 606 tons of debris from 303 encampments in 2019, according to a March 3, 2021 memorandum from the city of San Jose. The city carried out a sweep of a large houseless encampment near San Jose Mineta International Airport, according to a Sept. 2, 2022 article by SFGATE. City officials cleared away vehicles, personal belongings and makeshift homes belonging to around 300 unhoused people, according to the same SFGATE article. Wagers said many city officials resort to doing police sweeps in response to concerns from housed community members living near encampments. Guillen said the city is spending millions of dollars doing police sweeps. San Jose spent $1,084,619 on “encampment abatements,” another term for police sweeps, according to the city of San Jose memorandum. The city of San Jose in 2019 also spent $4.85 million on police sweeps, according to a Dec. 2, 2021 San Jose Spotlight news article. “Let’s say this week, this camp probably cost $10, $12 [up] to $14,000 just for one sweep,” Wagers said, referring to a houseless encampment in Roosevelt STUDENT ORGANIZATION | Page 2
San Jose’s non-profit news organization Spotlight held an event, “De-escalate,” a conversation on public safety with featured panelists that involved police and community organizers, on Wednesday at its headquarters. The panelists included Santa Clara County Sheriff Bob Jonsen, Santa Clara Police Chief Pat Nikolai, community health advocate Darcie Green and community organizer Derrick Sanderlin. The discussion started with Jonsen’s plan to reinstate the trust with the community, after former Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith was found guilty of six civil counts of corruption and willful misconduct, according to a Nov. 3, 2020 NBC Bay Area article. “I think it’s really important in rebuilding that trust with the community,” Jonsen said. He said the sheriff organization took several steps toward public safety in the community. One of the proposals was a psychological exam for people who apply for a concealed weapons license, as well as doubling the training requirement to receive a license to 16 hours. Sanderlin said he led bias training with the San Jose Police Department during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. “There isn’t a way to measure the success of an implicit bias training and whether or not, it’s actually changing the culture of the department,” he said. “Except for brutality complaints and officerinvolved shootings, which happen every year.” Sanderlin was shot with a rubber bullet by police during a protest on May 26, 2020 when attempting to de-escalate tension between protesters and police, according to a June 6, 2020 Los Angeles Times article. Sanderlin said it is difficult to hold police officers accountable for their actions because of the arbitration
process and police union. “Oftentimes, officers get reinstated or just moved to a different jurisdiction and continue putting on the uniform,” he said. Anthony Mata, San Jose Police Department Chief, and the San Jose Police Officers’ Association declined the invitation to appear on the panel. Green, who served on San Jose’s Community Safety Advisory Group, came up with 50 proposals regarding public safety. “What I took away from that process was that our community doesn’t want safety that comes at the expense of black lives, brown lives, or immigrant lives,” Green said. She said some of the group’s priorities included a community based response to interpersonal violence, decriminalizing houselessness and investments in safer street design. “Like Darcie mentioned, there is more to policing than just police work,” Nikolai said. “We understand that and we want to reach out to the community and help them in any way that we can.” Nikolai said one of the current plans for the department is the addition of crisis intervention specialists, officers who have special training to deal with mental health issues. “We would love to get help from other people, but unfortunately, the police department is the one that is called,” Nikolai said. “Especially at 9 p.m. on a Friday night when there is someone having a mental health crisis with a handgun – they are going to call the police.” Nikolai said, following the George Floyd murder in May of 2020, he and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan created a diversity, equity and inclusion task force for the city of Santa Clara. “Their mission was to review not only the police department, but the entire city to see if there are ways to make ourselves better,” Nikolai said. Jonsen said it is important to SAFETY | Page 2