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Homeless Woman in Children's Park Sleeps There All Day Every Day
Anonymous8 views8 answers
There is a homeless woman who sleeps all day in the park near my house. There are no other homeless people and lots of children at this park. The homeless woman doesn't seem to bother anyone, she just sleeps there all day. I see her walking up the street to the park very early in the morning every day. Heroin needles have been found in the sand in the children's play structure. This is the Santa Cruz area where heroin abuse is a problem everywhere. I have left messages on the local police hot line about this situation but the homeless woman continues to sleep in the park all day long and needles continue to pop up at the park. Is this woman breaking the law in any way by sleeping in the park all day long every day? If so, what law is she breaking specifically?
M. Richard AlvarezCriminal Defense AttorneyVisalia, CA ·
She may or may not be breaking the law. Most parks have a curfew, and if she is staying past the curfew, then she would be possibly trespassing. For example, where I live, you have to be out of the park by 10 pm, or you can be cited. You should walk the park and see if there are postings indicating a park curfew, or you can call your city hall and ask the parks and recreation department about park curfews. Lastly, if you see the woman discarding her needles around the park, then that is littering and you could report that.
What on earth do you have against a homeless person who sleeps in a public park? They have to be somewhere, don't they? You have stated there are no other homeless people there so you can't claim nuisance and you don't blame the needles on her. People with you attitudes are going to wake up one day but it will be too late.
It sounds as though the problem is not the homeless woman, it's the needles.
You need to contact your city council and get them to participate with the Sharps Program (http://sharpmedsolutions.org). Right now, the only place in Soquel to drop off needles is at: 2720 41st Avenue, at the Safeway Pharmacy. Obviously, the people who are so fried that they would discard needles in a children's' play area aren't going to go into Safeway and pop their needles into a container in the back of the store.
At the very least, the city should place an appropriate disposal site near the park so that people will not throw them in the sand. A sign about "keeping your children safe" might accompany a reference to where the disposal area is. But the city needs to know about this. They need to understand that the Safeway disposal site is probably for diabetics and the like, not street drug users.
