Pottinger v. City of Miami, 88-2406-CIV-ATKINS.

Citation810 F. Supp. 1551
Decision Date16 November 1992
Docket NumberNo. 88-2406-CIV-ATKINS.,88-2406-CIV-ATKINS.
PartiesMichael POTTINGER, Peter Carter, Berry Young, et al., Plaintiffs, v. CITY OF MIAMI, Defendant.
CourtUnited States District Courts. 11th Circuit. United States District Courts. 11th Circuit. Southern District of Florida

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Valerie Jonas, Public Defender's Office, Benjamin Waxman, Weiner, Robbins, Tunkey & Ross, P.A., Miami, FL, for plaintiffs.

Leon M. Firtel, Asst. City Atty., Miami, FL, for defendant.

FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW AND ORDER ON PLAINTIFFS' REQUEST FOR DECLARATORY AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF

ATKINS, Senior District Judge.

THIS CAUSE is before the court on the non-jury portion of this bifurcated trial, which focused solely on the issue of liability. The background relevant to the court's findings and conclusions regarding the City's liability can be summarized as follows.

Plaintiffs ("plaintiffs" or "class members") filed this action in December of 1988 on behalf of themselves and approximately 6,000 other homeless people living in the City of Miami. Plaintiffs' complaint alleges that the City of Miami ("defendant" or "City") has a custom, practice and policy of arresting, harassing and otherwise interfering with homeless people for engaging in basic activities of daily life — including sleeping and eating — in the public places where they are forced to live. Plaintiffs further claim that the City has arrested thousands of homeless people for such lifesustaining conduct under various City of Miami ordinances and Florida Statutes. In addition, plaintiffs assert that the City routinely seizes and destroys their property and has failed to follow its own inventory procedures regarding the seized personal property of homeless arrestees and homeless persons in general.

Plaintiffs allege, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983,1 that the property destruction and arrests, which often result in no criminal charges, prosecutions or convictions, violate their rights under the United States and Florida Constitutions. Because the arrested plaintiffs are released without further official process, the argument continues, plaintiffs never have the opportunity to raise such valid defenses as necessity or duress. As discussed below, plaintiffs do not challenge the facial validity of the ordinances or statutes under which they are arrested. Rather, they contend that the City applies these laws to homeless individuals as part of a custom and practice of driving the homeless from public places. Accordingly, plaintiffs do not argue that any of the ordinances should be stricken; instead, they ask that the City be enjoined from arresting homeless individuals for inoffensive conduct, such as sleeping or bathing, that they are forced to perform in public.

Upon careful review the evidence presented at trial and at prior proceedings and after weighing the various arguments presented throughout this litigation, the court finds that injunctive relief is warranted in this case for the following reasons, which are discussed more fully below. First, plaintiffs have shown that the City has a pattern and practice of arresting homeless people for the purpose of driving them from public areas. See section III.B. Second, the City's practice of arresting homeless individuals for harmless, involuntary conduct which they must perform in public is cruel and unusual in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. See section III.C. Third, such arrests violate plaintiffs' due process rights because they reach innocent and inoffensive conduct. See section III.G.2. Fourth, the City's failure to follow its own written procedure for handling personal property when seizing or destroying the property of homeless individuals violates plaintiffs' fourth amendment rights. See section III.F. Fifth, the City's practice of arresting homeless individuals for performing essential, life-sustaining acts in public when they have absolutely no place to go effectively infringes on their fundamental right to travel in violation of the equal protection clause. See section III.H.2.

In essence, this litigation results from an inevitable conflict between the need of homeless individuals to perform essential, life-sustaining acts in public and the responsibility of the government to maintain orderly, aesthetically pleasing public parks and streets. The issues raised in this case reveal various aspects of this conflict which, unfortunately, has become intensified by the overwhelming increase in the number of homeless people in recent years and a corresponding decrease in federal aid to cities. Because some of these issues have arisen in prior proceedings in this case, we briefly outline the history of this litigation before turning to the merits of the present inquiries.

I. PROCEDURAL HISTORY

On December 23, 1988, plaintiffs filed this action against the City of Miami on behalf of themselves and thousands of other homeless persons living within the City. The court granted plaintiffs' request for certification of class action on July 21, 1989. As certified, the class consists of involuntarily homeless people living in the "geographic area bordered on the North by Interstate 395, on the South by Flagler Street, on the East by Biscayne Bay, and on the West by Interstate 95." See Order Granting Plaintiffs' Motion for Certification of Class Action, dated July 21, 1989, 720 F.Supp. 955.

A. The Complaint

Specifically, plaintiffs allege the following in their six-count complaint:

Count I: that the ordinances under which the City arrests class members for engaging in essential, life-sustaining activities — such as sleeping, eating, standing and congregating — are used by the City to punish homeless persons based on their involuntary homeless status in violation of the protection against cruel and unusual punishment found in the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution;

Count II: that the City has used its legitimate arrest powers for the unlawful purpose of "pest control," that is, "sanitizing" its streets by removing unsightly homeless individuals, which amounts to malicious abuse of process;

Count III: that the arrests of homeless individuals are pretextual and amount to unreasonable searches and seizures in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 12 of the Florida Constitution;

Count IV: that the City's seizures of plaintiffs' property lack probable cause, are unreasonable and violate the Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 12 of the Florida Constitution;

Count V: that the City's arrests of homeless individuals for essential, life-sustaining activities violate their right to due process, privacy and decisional autonomy in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and corresponding provisions of the Florida Constitution; and

Count VI: that the right of homeless persons publicly to engage in essential activities such as sleeping, eating, bathing and congregating is "fundamental" for purposes of equal protection under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution; that arresting the homeless infringes upon these fundamental rights and other fundamental rights, such as the right to travel, and burdens the homeless as a suspect class; and that the City has no compelling interest in making these arrests. See Second Amended Complaint for Declaratory, Injunctive and Compensatory Relief/Class Action, filed September 8, 1989.

B. Prior Proceedings

During the course of this litigation, plaintiffs have moved for injunctive relief on a number of occasions. On December 23, 1988, plaintiffs asked this court to enjoin the City from conducting systematic police "sweeps" of homeless areas prior to highprofile events such as the Orange Bowl Parade. Plaintiffs alleged that the City conducted the "sweeps" to harass the homeless and to remove them from sight. See December 23, 1988 Application for Preliminary Injunction and Incorporated Memorandum of Law. The court denied this motion based on an inability to fashion an injunction with the specificity required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(d).2 See December 30, 1988 Order on Application for a Preliminary Injunction.

In April 1990, plaintiffs filed their Second Application for Preliminary Injunction after two burning incidents in Lummus Park in which City police officers awakened and handcuffed class members, dumped their personal possessions — including personal identification, medicine, clothing and a Bible — into a pile, and set the pile ablaze. Although the City expressed outrage over the incidents and reported that the officers were under investigation,3 this court found the City's threat of disciplinary action insufficient and ordered it to issue a directive to its police units "not to destroy property collected at the time of contact with homeless persons and to follow their own written policy of preserving property obtained in any manner by their police units." April 26, 1990 Order on Plaintiffs' Second Application for Preliminary Injunction at 4. The court further stated that it would consider finding persons responsible for violating the order in criminal contempt. Id.

Despite the strong wording of this order, plaintiffs again sought injunctive relief in March of 1991 as a result of another incident related to the destruction of property as well as the forced removal of the homeless from certain public areas. See Motion for Order to Show Cause, Application for Further Injunctive Relief, and Request for Evidentiary Hearing, filed March 5, 1991. As established at the three-day hearing,4 City police officers awakened homeless persons sleeping under the I-395 overpass and routed them to Lummus and Bicentennial Parks. The officers also distributed a notice advising homeless persons that the park closure hours would be strictly enforced and that unattended property would be confiscated and destroyed. Shortly...

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