Message to the New San Jose Police Chief: Get to Know Homeless Youth

Message to the next San Jose Police Chief 2010 from DE BUG on Vimeo.

New Chief Needs Better Understanding of Homeless Youth’s Backgrounds

By Alex Gutierrez

I am a 23-year-old resident of San Jose, and have been living on and off the streets of downtown for 13 years and counting. I have witnessed and experienced interactions between the police and homeless youth that the rest of the city has rarely seen or talked about. From my perspective, a new police chief can go a long way on changing the interaction between law enforcement and San Jose’s homeless population, which I would currently define as unnecessarily conflicting.

All 23 years of my life I’ve had a huge confusion of whether or not to trust the police or not. My concern of police attention started when I was young, growing up chronically homeless with my family. My fear was that police contact would lead to being taken away from my mother, that I would end up lost somewhere in the foster care system, along with my sister.

I know often times when police approach and cite or arrest homeless residents, they are just doing their job, but sometimes officers seem intent on humiliating the homeless. I can remember times growing up with my mother and sister, being woken with a kick to the ribs by an officer. In those moments, my family was not being criminals, we were only looking for a safe, public, place to rest for the night. If they just talked to us as human beings, our impressions of law enforcement would be different.

Now that I am a grown man living in downtown San Jose, my interactions with the SJPD have continued in this way. Now if the police see me, some will go into my belongings, without permission, and toss them around, and then tell me I have less then two minutes to pick it and go somewhere else.

With the economy as it is, San Jose is likely going to be seeing more homeless youth. That is why it is critical that the new chief have a clear plan on how his or her force is going to interact with the homeless. For things to improve, we need our new chief to have a history of experience of not only working a beat that had homeless citizens but also homeless youth in particular.

The changes I expect to see with the new chief is a better understanding of the back story and situations we all live in day-to-day life. I will know the chief is doing a good job of bettering the relationship with San Jose's homeless if people are actually not stressing off the small stuff and not having to look over their shoulders in fright every five minutes.