Two homeless men sit handcuffed on the pavement. As far as we know, they’ve done nothing wrong, and it’s because of us that they’re detained here.
This isn’t how the morning was supposed to go.
It’s well past 7 a.m., and we’d been waiting for the police to arrive for at least a half hour, standing bored outside the 7-Eleven on West Stowell Road with two homeless men we met while helping out with the county’s biennial attempt to tally every unsheltered homeless person in the area.
Information gathered by volunteers during the Point in Time Count is used by various organizations and the county to secure further funding and resources for the local homeless population. We’re supposed to be helping them, but these men weren’t so sure we’d be “helping” when we called the police earlier.
“They don’t like Mexicans,” one of the men had said to me and the other two volunteers in my group as we were waiting.
“They see tattoos on you and they think they know you right off the bat,” the other had said.
“They”—the police—were on their way. During our survey with the men, they told us a 7-Eleven employee had hit one of them in the face minutes before we got there. A red mark on his face seemed to prove it. They said they’d like to file a report—the store’s cameras would make their case a winning one, they said—but thought nobody would listen to them.
Covered in tattoos, the men said that they’d both had their fair share of run-ins with the law. They had records and really didn’t get along with cops. So instead of reporting the crime, they wanted to leave before the police showed up.
We had convinced them to stay, to hold the alleged assailant accountable, to get justice.
Now, an officer is shouting at the men, the victims of the incident we reported, telling them to shut up and get down on the ground. He searches them, cuffs them, and yells at us to back away from the area.
My group-mates shout back, trying to tell the officer that we were the ones who called, that there must be a mistake, that he is arresting the wrong people.
“Stop talking or I’m going to cuff you and put you in the car!” the officer yells back, clearly overwhelmed by the situation and confused by my acquaintances’ vocal presence.
We obey and watch the situation unfold, stunned. Between spats of back-talking the officer, the men we’d tried and miserably failed to help look back at us knowingly, and shake their heads. A physical manifestation of “I told you so.”
“This is why they don’t trust the police,” one of my group-mates says.
***
I hadn’t thought much about the Point in Time Count before it was finally time to do it. But as I stand in a line of sleepy volunteers on the steps of the Ethel Pope Auditorium at Santa Maria High School at 5 a.m. on Jan. 24, I start feeling nervous.
I hadn’t been able to make any of the one-hour-long trainings, so I had scanned the informational PowerPoint that was sent to me the day before, and I didn’t learn much. I had heard, however, that each group would have an experienced leader, and that made me feel better.
I get my volunteer badge, a cup of complimentary (and cold) coffee, and sit near a few groups of other women.
At about 5:30 a.m., Dorothy Mogavero, regional director of outreach for Northern Santa Barbara County United Way, walks to the front of the auditorium and signals for the crowd’s attention. She runs down the list of tips and safety precautions I’d read over the night before:
Always stay with your group.
Don’t take any risks.
Keep an appropriate distance.
Don’t be overly emotional.
My group would eventually break each of these rules.
Each group is to be made up of three to four volunteers, Mogavero tells us, including one predesignated group leader who had either experienced homelessness in the past or who is well acquainted with the local homeless community. They know where to find people, and how to approach them.
However, Mogavero says there aren’t enough of these guides for every geographical area that needs to be covered in Santa Maria. She asks for a few volunteers.
A woman sitting directly behind me, Alicia Wolff, jumps up and says she’d be happy to lead. She grabs a map from Mogavero, sits back down, and seconds later, asks me if I’d like to join her group.
I gladly accept. Wolff’s group consists of her and one other woman, Amber Maness, and both seem outgoing and confident about completing the task ahead.
We grab a clipboard, a tote bag filled with “tools of engagement,”—socks, snacks, McDonald’s gift cards, and toiletries to give out while surveying people—and we are on our way.
“So,” Alicia says as we walk out of auditorium toward her car, “have either of you done this before?”
Amber and I both shake our heads. Alicia cringes a little when she realizes that we’re all first-timers.
“The blind leading the blind,” she says with a laugh.
I laugh, too, but my nerves persist.
***
I zip my coat up higher as we scour the edges of a parking lot. Alicia, adhering to her role as team leader, guides Amber and me behind bushes and around light poles, shining her flashlight into corners kept dark despite the slowly rising sun.
If anyone had slept there throughout the night, there is no trace left now.
It’s getting lighter out, but we’d only surveyed one person. He’d slept in a park the night before, and he said he lost his apartment when his significant other died months earlier and he couldn’t afford the rent on his own. He hadn’t found a place to work yet, he said. Even if he did score a job interview, he didn’t have anywhere to shave or clean up for it.
I’m thinking about that first participant as Alicia, Amber, and I make our way down West Stowell Road toward Broadway. It took longer than I’d expected to interview him, and he was surprisingly open with us, willing to share all kinds of information about his life and situation.
Alicia and Amber had been so laid-back and natural throughout the survey process that it felt like nothing more than a regular conversation between old friends.
Alicia says that she’s always been extroverted, and never judgemental. Amber, who works at a local Salvation Army, says she has significant experience working with the homeless, and she volunteered in an effort to further build rapport with the community.
I was tense during our first survey, but I’m feeling more confident as we approach the 7-Eleven on Stowell near Santa Maria High School.
A man with ragged clothes stands near a red shopping cart at the entrance. We offer him a gift card, some food, and toiletries, which he accepts. But he doesn’t want to answer any questions.
We walk toward the neighboring alleyway, which shares its entrance with the 7-Eleven parking lot. As Amber and Alicia canvass the alley, I pull up the Point in Time Count surveying app on my phone to answer questions included in the “observation survey.” Volunteers use it to count a homeless person who isn’t willing to participate. I fill out a description of him—estimated age range, ethnicity, location—as best I can.
We are deciding where to go next as two men fling open the door of the 7-Eleven, grab the shopping cart near the door, and head in our direction. Clearly agitated, they’re shouting, saying something is “bullshit.”
I immediately notice their tattoos. I scan their clothes: clean.
I’m not sure whether they’re homeless and don’t want to worsen the situation or insult them by asking.
But as I back away, Alicia and Amber approach them.
***
We confirm that the two men have been homeless off and on for months, and they agree to be surveyed. Then they tell us what had set them off.
One of the men says they were shopping in the store when, for some reason, an argument ensued between them and an employee. The confrontation, he says, ended with the employee walking around the register counter and hitting him.
Amber and Alicia gasp when he shows them the right side of his face, which is a little red. He says the mark is from the alleged assault. When we ask if the employee punched him, he laughs a little and says, “He bitch-slapped me!”
The story isn’t finished yet, but Amber marches into the store to yell at the employees.
“I don’t care what someone looks like,” she tells me later. “I was horrendously bullied in school, so I can’t handle seeing someone being taken advantage of.”
Next she calls the police.
Although the men had previously mentioned filing a report (or maybe even a lawsuit because of the security footage), now that the police are really on their way, the two debate whether to leave between answering the survey questions. They’d both done time in prison, and although they say that those lives are behind them, they don’t think the cops will see it that way. They don’t want to give the police their real names and grapple with the idea of being “snitches.”
Amber promises that she’ll do the talking. She tells the men that having tattoos, a bad past, or being homeless doesn’t give anyone a permit to physically assault them. So they stick around.
The Santa Maria Police were right in the middle of a shift change when Amber called, and said it would be a few minutes before any officers arrived. More than a few have passed, and still no sign of the cops.
Everyone’s getting antsy, and Alicia suggests we grab some snacks inside to pass the time. So she, Amber, and I, awkwardly buy coffees, soda, and taquitos from the very employees we’d just reported to the police.
A police car and motorcycle are sitting in the parking lot when we walk out. I hear shouting, and my heart drops.
As we round the corner to the alleyway, I see an officer, identified by his badge as D. Rhoads, shouting at the homeless men we’d met, telling them to sit on the ground. One of the men is holding a cellphone out, attempting to record the interaction as Rhoads repeatedly demands they get down.
Amber shouts for the officer to stop, and says that we are the ones who called.
Rhoads looks at us, clearly confused, and tells us to back away. Amber repeats herself, more aggressively this time, and adds that I work for a newspaper and am taking notes. Rhoads snaps back.
He cuffs the men.
Another officer, J. Uhl, had been standing by quietly. He introduces himself to us, takes down our names and information, and Amber panickedly tells him all about the Point in Time Count, the 7-Eleven employee, and the men we were trying to help.
“We’re supposed to be out here looking out for these guys,” she says.
Uhl tries to calm Amber down. He says he was just called in for backup, that the two men we’d surveyed weren’t exactly being cooperative when Rhoads arrived on scene. The 7-Eleven employee had also called the department to make his own report, Uhl says, a story that doesn’t quite align with what the men had told us.
Uhl then walks over to Rhoads—the chaos has since eased—and the officers quietly assess the situation.
Rhoads listens to the men’s story, uncuffs them, and asks if they want to file a report. The answer, obviously, is no. They just want to leave. And, shopping cart in tow, they do, no better off than before they knew us.
***
Rhoads says he arrived on scene with very little information: There had been an incident at 7-Eleven, two men with tattoos were involved and were still waiting around outside.
He tells us later that he recognized the men from past encounters, often ones they’d been on the wrong side of. He saw their tattoos, remembered their records, and assumed they were the instigators.
He made a snap judgement, he says, and it was the wrong one. He apologizes profusely.
Still, he adds that the men weren’t necessarily cooperative or wholly truthful about the situation.
“They aren’t exactly choir boys,” he says.
The cuffs, he says, were merely to prevent a physical fight from ensuing—Amber can’t believe that someone would attack an armed officer—and he says that our shouting didn’t help the situation.
He says he hopes we can understand his perspective, and I think we all can. He shakes our hands, and we leave, with lessons learned and little remaining time to continue our count.
Later, as we make our way back to Santa Maria High School to return our supplies, Amber reflects on her first count.
Although she says she understood and accepted Rhoads’ side of things, and greatly appreciated the apology, she was surprised by how he had treated the two men. She reiterates that situations like the one we’d just seen must be at least part of the reason why it’s sometimes so difficult to gain the trust of the homeless community. They apparently can’t always trust police, or even the volunteers who call them.
She says she was also shocked at how few of the other homeless individuals we met knew about available services in the area, including those who’d been homeless for years. Some didn’t know about the Salvation Army, or where to get free food and clothes.
Amber also says that if she were to do the count again, she’d want a little more guidance regarding where to find people and how to approach them. But when it comes to giving immediate help to those experiencing homelessness, Amber says she’s confident now that she knows what they really need:
“They just want someone to listen,” she says.
Staff Writer Kasey Bubnash can be reached at kbubnash@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 31 – Feb 7, 2019.
