Sacramento Homeless, Miller Park. (Photo: Art Taylor)
Sacramento DA Accuses City of Allowing Homeless Vagrants to Pollute Rivers
‘The Mayor and City Attorney are making it about politics to distract away from their failures’
By Katy Grimes, December 8, 2023 2:55 am
The stark contrast between Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho and Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg is growing over how to deal with the homeless vagrant population in the region.
DA Ho filed a lawsuit in September against the City of Sacramento for failing to abate the homeless crisis in the Capitol city. DA Ho said Sacramento’s homeless crisis has exploded by more than 250% in just 7 years – the exact amount of time Steinberg has been Mayor.
Mayor Steinberg retorted that DA Ho is seeking to run for State Attorney General and is using the lawsuit to bolster his public image.
The District Attorney and Sacramento Attorney Ognian Gavrilov explained they had to file lawsuits against the city, to force city officials to uphold the laws they are ignoring. Ho and Gavrilov say they have more than 400 witnesses for the trial and plan to depose Mayor Steinberg.
What it comes down to is that the DA is listening to the people, and the Mayor is not – he’s got his own agenda and it appears to involve the plethora of federal and state homeless funding he’s received. However, as we noted previously, politicians don’t spend all of that funding to help get the drug addicted and mentally ill vagrants off the streets. Instead the billions spent have been funneled into ill-conceived housing, as well as dubious non-profit organizations and non-governmental organizations, often paying out big salaries, as the Globe has reported for many years. This model is not at all prioritizing eradicating the homeless plague but in growing it so the funding spigot remains on.
And there is enough money involved that Mayor Steinberg appears to be just fine resembling an arrogant politician who hates his constituents.
And, it is Steinberg who has his sites set on the State Attorney General position – and has for many years.
This week, DA Ho added two environmental violations to his lawsuit – violation of a fish and game code, and state water code, caused by illegal homeless camps along the waterways.
The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board beclowned themselves this week claiming that the river pollution is caused by goose poo from Canada Geese – and not the human excrement, used hypodermic syringes, drugs and hundreds of other items discarded by homeless vagrants.
DA Ho said he asked Mayor Steinberg to pass a daytime camping ban, but the Mayor refused to. Instead, three city council members – Eric Guerra, Rick Jennings and Lisa Kaplan – stepped up and have proposed the daytime camping ban.
You can watch DA Ho’s press conference along the banks of Steelhead Creek on Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023.
“The rivers run through the heart of our community and they are the true natural jewels of our community,” Ho said at his press meeting at Steelhead Creek. “But over the last seven years, the city of Sacramento has allowed that natural jewel to be soiled, sullied and polluted.”
Ho said garbage and human waste from the homeless camps are polluting the rivers and waterways.
“If you grew up in Sacramento, how many times did you go to the river?” Ho asked. “Would anybody now want to swim in the American River? Would anybody want to fish in the American River? Would anybody even want to kayak in the American River anymore?” Ho asked. “And the answer’s no. Shame on the city.”
A member of the media asked DA Ho his response to the city attorney and Mayor Steinberg claiming that he is just grandstanding so he can run for AG. Da Ho said he was elected by a large majority “to represent the people of this community. And as the people’s prosecutor, that is what I am doing. I am protecting the community.”
“I’m not the one terming out of office,” Ho said. “I’m not the one who has opened up an account to run for another office. This is the only office and job that I want.”
DA Ho said this isn’t about politics for him – but the Mayor and City Attorney “are making it about politics to distract away from their failures.”
“It’s just about facts and the law,” he added.
Ho has repeatedly said the primary mandate of the District Attorney is to ensure public safety for all while balancing the equal administration of justice.
In his lawsuit, DA Ho describes violence, intimidation, threats, assaults and attacks, as well as animal abuse and other actual crimes, homeless individuals have perpetrated on local home owners, business owners, and on each other. He tells of a resident who called police for four hours as a dog was screaming and crying loudly as it was getting beaten. She described it as the “noise of an animal screaming in torment.”
The dog was eventually found dead in the morning. Another day, another dog was found to have many broken bones due to the abuse it suffered by a zone inhabitant.
The lawsuit describes violence against home owners and business owners: “continuously perpetrated by and against zone residents. They have hit a woman with a skateboard rendering her bloody and unconscious and attempted to run people over with a car. During the winter of 2020, an unhoused subject with a running chainsaw was cruising around the victim’s neighborhood on a skateboard laughing and chasing people. In March of 2021, another zone inhabitant violently raped a woman and threatened others not to intervene.”
“The violence never stopped,” the lawsuit says. “Similar acts of violence continued until February 2023, when Staci Doe and Ryan Doe were confronted by a felon who threatened to kill them with a firearm at their front porch. After that terror, they were forced to move out of their residence due to the trauma of what they experienced.”
These are just a few of the horrors described in DA Ho’s lawsuit, and very clearly why he reiterates that his job is to ensure public safety for all while balancing the equal administration of justice.
DA Ho’s lawsuit also describes how city residents have been poorly received by city officials when making a complaint about the homeless:
C Street victims have called the City’s 3-1-1 non-emergency response line (“311”), contacted the City’s Department of Community Response, as well as their council representative on numerous occasions. The victims have also complained to law enforcement’ In response to their complaints, the City of Sacramento, its offtcials, employees, and agents routinely informed C Street victims that nothing could be done. Multiple C Street victims have also been told by Councilmember Katie Valenzuela’s office to “get used to” the unhoused because there was nothing” the city was able to do, and that victims should consider themselves privileged” in comparison to the zone dwellers. Jennifer Doe was told to try and “step over needles” that were strewn in the streets and sidewalks of their neighborhood.
The DA’s lawsuit describes the many victims as now suffering from depression and PTSD because of constant negative interactions with the violent homeless vagrants. Victims feel unsafe in their homes and businesses.
The Sacramento Fire Department has reported to dozens of fires in buildings. One business at Broadway and 5th Avenue has had 14 fires since 2019.
What is clear when reading through the DA’s lawsuit is that city residents have made every attempt to properly report the physical attacks, fire incidents, violence, drug dealing, open sex, but the city is repeatedly and consistently unresponsive.
In one case, a building owner repeatedly requested permits from the City to demolish his vacant building, which was constantly broken into by homeless who set fires. Ironically, even though the City had deemed his building as “dangerous,” the City nonetheless routinely and inexplicably denied the owner’s requests for a demolition permit.
His repeated requests for the City to enforce the law by expelling trespassers, arresting arsonists, and clearing the unhoused from a vacant building, were refused. “The City refused to act-choosing instead to fine the property owner. During this time, Sacramento City Code Enforcement routinely fined the property owner for violations.”
His amended complaint names the waterways – Arcade Creek, Dry Creek, Steelhead Creek, Magpie Creek and Morrison Creek are creeks that flow through the City of Sacramento and flow into the American and Sacramento Rivers.
DA Ho says the City of Sacramento owns and exercise control over property along each of these waterways where homeless camps exist, adjacent to levees and on the banks of the rivers and creeks. The camps alter the habitat surrounding the creeks due to eliminating vegetation and increasing soil erosion, resulting in increased dirt and silt runoff and is dangerous to aquatic life – and the homeless vagrants “utilize the waterways as open toilets and trash receptacles.”
DA Ho lists the waste in the waterways: “Human and animal excreta, used hypodermic syringes, drugs and medicines, surfactants, food waste, cans, bottles, plastics, paper, bio-hazardous, toxic, and flammable items, large and small debris including tents, tarps, sleeping bags, carpets’ rugs’ clothing, rags, ropes wires and cordage, and other textiles, bicycles, bicycle parts, wagons and shopping carts, machinery, electronics, batteries, dishes and cooking utensils including camp stoves and fuel and petroleum products.”
District Attorney Ho provided the Globe a follow-up statement:
“On December 5, 2023, our office filed an amended complaint in our civil case against the City of Sacramento (Docket 23CV008658).
This amendment will allow us to focus on the violations that cause the most significant harm to the health and safety of everyone in the community, including environmental hazards that impact people and wildlife.
The initial complaint alleged three causes of action: 1) public nuisance, 2) private nuisance, and 3) inverse condemnation. After further investigation revealed that Sacramento waterways are being contaminated due to the City’s refusal to abate the nuisance caused by unhoused zones along the levees, we have replaced the last two causes of action with two new and more egregious violations: 1) Statutory Public Nuisance, and 2) Violation of Fish and Game Code section 5650 et.sec.
Before our office sued the City, I asked them to pass a daytime camping ban similar to the successful San Diego ordinance. Mayor Steinberg refused to do so. I am supportive of the leadership shown by Councilmembers Jennings, Guerra and Kaplan in proposing this new law. It is a long overdue step in the right direction to address our unhoused crisis on the streets and along our rivers.”
– District Attorney Thien Ho
RELATED ARTICLES
-
November 28, 2018 -
-
Transient drug addicts in my community (or what the limp-wrist crowd refers to as “houseless”) have set up squalor camps adjacent to the river that runs through town. I have been arguing for years that the State and Regional Water Quality Control Boards should step in and use their enforcement powers to stop the gross pollution of the river. Crickets. However, if a legitimate business were to cause one tenth of this pollution the water boards would fine them out of existence. Transient drug addicts are a protected class in California because they make the Homeless Industrial Complex not only possible but financially viable. There is no incentive for the Homeless Industrial Complex to actually reduce homelessness. In fact, their industry benefits from increased homelessness. The incestuous relationship between politicians and the Complex is completely transparent.
Really appreciate, as always, Katy Grimes’ bulldog coverage of Sacramento’s vagrant nightmare and also how Sacramento D.A. Thien Ho is tackling this outrage. Press conferences are good; they inform the public about what is happening and why in their city and county. Specifics are good; as much as we wish we didn’t have to continually read the truly horrible horror stories and know the level of river pollution and what exactly is in it. That some self-righteous pipsqueak of a media person asks for D.A. Ho’s response to accusations (by Mayor Steinberg, how convenient, when he wants the A.G. job) of “grandstanding” for higher office is richly ironic and reeks of psychological projection and only serves to show how effective what D.A. Ho is doing, how effective what Katy Grimes and The Globe are doing, and how absolutely threatened the many-tentacled Homeless Industrial Complex is as a result. And by the way, so what if he is “grandstanding” for an Attorney General run? He certainly seems to be only doing his job and responding to public outcry as he should, but SO WHAT if he is “grandstanding”? Show me the “grandstanding”! Keep getting out there and updating the public and pounding away in this effort, D.A. Ho. The bad guys and their screaming, squawking response shows us how effective it is.
meanwhile down at the AZ border…the newest homeless (illegals) are handed 5,000.00 gift cards
http://www.renegadetribune.com/arizona-sheriff-illegal-immigrants-being-handed-5000-visa-gift-cards-cell-phones-and-plane-tickets/
Thein Ho is a real American Hero!
The Democrats running Sacramento right now, from the mayor all the way down to the city attorney and school superintendents, don’t care what DA Thien Ho has to say. They think the homeless drug addicts are worth saving to the exclusion of everything else.
In addition to the lawsuits that District Attorney Ho and Sacramento Attorney Ognian Gavrilov filed against the city to force city officials to uphold the laws they are ignoring, maybe civil lawsuits should be filed against Mayor Steinberg and the rest of the arrogant Democrats on the City Council to hold them personally liable? Not surprised that the Democrat owned clowns on the Sacramento Bee’s Editorial Board tried to claim that the river pollution is caused by goose poo from Canada Geese instead of the hundreds of homeless encampments along the river banks.
Projection and obfuscation seem to be order of the day at Sacramento City Hall. I believe the Mayor and the City Attorney are really the ones full of goose poo. And where is the outrage from the environmentalist community over the despoiling of our creeks and rivers? It’s heartening to see our County D.A. standing up for the people he represents. He takes his oath of office seriously.
I used to run and bike on the American River Parkway. Of course this was years ago and would never do that now due to all the drug addicts that camp along the river. There’s so many homeless people in Sacramento, concentrated mostly in the downtown area. I’ve seen homeless people beating up each other, doing drugs, stealing bikes, exposing themselves, throwing trash on the ground, and starting fires. It really sickened me to read in DA Ho’s lawsuit about the abuse of the dogs by the homeless.
I’m grateful to DA Ho for trying to fix the homeless problem in Sacramento. DA Ho, you’ll have my vote if you decide to run for AG.
Selective prosecution in these waterways pollution actions, should nullify and rescind all prior and now obviously discriminatory cases against everyone else.