Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

A symposium on the homeless and public safety

On May 26, Ronald Poppo, a Miami man, was the victim of a gruesome attack that left him badly injured and disfigured. Poppo, 65, who has undergone several surgeries and is still hospitalized, had made his home in the stairwell of a parking lot near where the assault took place, vulnerable to the weather and to those who would harm him — or help him. Efforts to assist the homeless are often focused on pushing them off the street and into a shelter or a home. The trouble is that many of them have psychological conditions and refuse to move in. Poppo, who suffered from alcoholism, rejected social workers' repeated attempts to take him into a shelter, the Daily Beast reported. To compel him to move — there had been complaints about his presence in the stairwell — they took everything that was his home, his food, water, rags, and utensils, and threw them in a Dumpster. That didn't work. Poppo dug his belongings out of the Dumpster and re-formed his camp. In response, the city trucked all his belongings away.

On May 26, Ronald Poppo, a Miami man, was the victim of a gruesome attack that left him badly injured and disfigured. Poppo, 65, who has undergone several surgeries and is still hospitalized, had made his home in the stairwell of a parking lot near where the assault took place, vulnerable to the weather and to those who would harm him — or help him.

Efforts to assist the homeless are often focused on pushing them off the street and into a shelter or a home. The trouble is that many of them have psychological conditions and refuse to move in. Poppo, who suffered from alcoholism, rejected social workers' repeated attempts to take him into a shelter, the Daily Beast reported. To compel him to move — there had been complaints about his presence in the stairwell — they took everything that was his home, his food, water, rags, and utensils, and threw them in a Dumpster. That didn't work. Poppo dug his belongings out of the Dumpster and re-formed his camp. In response, the city trucked all his belongings away.

Poppo was recognized as one of the region's "chronically homeless," and the reality is that there will always be people sleeping in the streets. For them, insecurity is on the rise. A recent survey by the group 100,000 Homes said that 36 percent of those surveyed said they had been the victims of a violent attack since becoming homeless.

Is it the city's responsibility to protect them from theft, beatings, or deadly attacks? If so, should Philadelphia and other cities take steps to guarantee the safety of its homeless population? We asked local activists and opinionmakers to offer their suggestions.

Joe Eastman is director of veterans services at Broad Street Ministry

The horrific and gruesome attack on the homeless gentleman in Miami is but another example of the many challenges, some life-threatening, that our homeless population faces on the streets of this country every day.

What can, or should, Philadelphia do to protect people living on the street?

I'm a neighborhood town watch president whose neighborhood is bordered by homeless shelters to the northeast and northwest, and also a Navy veteran who works with homeless military veterans. Because of this experience, I have the opportunity to interact almost daily with the homeless, and I believe there are some short-term things the city can do to protect and better serve this often vulnerable group of people.

The homeless are human beings just like the rest of us and should be treated with the same dignity and respect we all expect. Some of them believe it is safer to be on the street than inside a shelter. So the city should do more to ensure that its shelters, both city-run and contracted, are environments where people feel safe.

There should be strict accountability of staff and shelter residents to clearly articulated and accepted standards of behavior that are consistently applied throughout the shelter system. Those who prey upon people who reside in shelters must be promptly removed from the system, banned if appropriate, and dealt with through the judicial system if necessary. People who abuse the shelter system need to understand that there are consequences to unacceptable or criminal behavior.

Enforced standards of behavior might also help ease the overcrowding in our shelters and possibly encourage more people to come off the street and into a safer environment. There is something terribly wrong with a system when people believe it is safer to be on the street than inside a shelter.

Dom Giordano is a radio talk-show host on WPHT-AM (1210)

I've lived in Philadelphia all my life and have encountered the homeless on the street and at local Wawas a thousand times. I've covered a public feeding of the homeless at LOVE Park on a very hot day and saw the chaos that resulted when the organizers decided to throw packages of new underwear to the hundreds of homeless.

As tough as these things were, the cannibal attack on a homeless man in Miami is still shocking.

However, these attacks don't mean that the Philadelphia Police Department should magically come up with some special squad or procedures to prevent cannibal attacks in Philadelphia. Ronald Poppo had thrown rocks at outreach workers who tried to help him before the attack. His relatives claim they can't figure out his actions. The police are viewed with even more suspicion by many of the homeless.

I think it's appropriate to demand that the police be professional toward the homeless and give them equal treatment and protection. However, I want to go on record to say that, as far as I can tell, the Miami police were not negligent in their protection of the homeless. Based on the reports, they used appropriate deadly force in the rescue of Poppo from his attacker.

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey has a lot of experience in policing urban areas and in dealing with the homeless. I have faith in him to protect all the citizens in Philadelphia. However, his force is stretched thin, and any calls for police to act as social workers are off the mark.

Calvin Helton Sr. is a former homeless person who is a writer and vendor for One Step Away, a Philadelphia newspaper that focuses on homelessness

An attack on any citizen is unacceptable, no matter what their social or economic standing.

This gruesome, cowardly display of violence against a homeless individual clearly shows that there are those within our society willing to prey upon the less fortunate. The rest of us must raise our collective voices in outrage, as this could be any one of us.

The overall safety of every citizen should be a priority and concern of any police department, and if there is an increase of such attacks on the homeless, then the police need to take whatever measures are needed to remedy the situation.

When it comes to the homeless, elected officials seem to turn a blind eye to the situation. However, from the White House down to city councils, there needs to be accountability when it comes to oversight of the growing ranks of the homeless.

Here in the City of Brotherly Love, there is very little such love shown to the homeless. The city is dictating the feeding of the homeless and closing down its largest homeless shelter as I write, with nothing set up to aid those being displaced.

While what happened in Miami is tragic, here at home, there needs to be a great awakening, and both the city and its citizens need to live up to our slogan of Brotherly Love. Let's share and spread that love.

Sister Mary Scullion is cofounder of Project HOME

Philadelphia should be a safe city for everyone. Every citizen deserves a sense of security and adequate protection from law enforcement.

Obviously, people who are living on the streets should be equally protected from assaults and harm. But we also need to understand that homelessness and poverty are institutionalized violence that destroy people every day. Those who experience chronic homelessness suffer from higher mortality rates at younger ages than in the overall society.

The real issue — and the best security — is to empower people to move off the streets into permanent housing and to provide people with meaningful opportunities for education and employment so they are able to live healthy and safe lives, to thrive, and to participate in society.

Larry Swetman is an organizer with Occupy Philadelphia

Homelessness, or houselessness as we like to say in the Occupy movement, is a crime committed on the most vulnerable in society by the richer classes. It is a global epidemic that is routinely swept under the rug of social priorities. But why?

Systematic greed and unfettered and unbalanced capitalism have created the conditions that are increasingly denying human beings of their universal rights to housing, food, clothing, and community for the sake of profit and "growth."

What about those who suffer as a result?

There are more than enough empty homes for every houseless person in the United States. In Philadelphia, there are any number of abandoned buildings. These buildings, which have devolved into derelict eyesores, are perfectly viable options for houseless people. And I have not even mentioned the shelters that are closing around the city to push the houseless out of the public eye — out of sight, out of mind. City Hall is more committed to protecting tourism than protecting its people. Look at Mayor Nutter's response to the needs of the hungry and houseless around the city. He has banned the sharing of food in public. Why? To keep those who do not meet certain standards of worth — those who don't have an income — out of sight and out of mind.

This apathy is the result of a culture that measures human worth in dollars and cents. Do we honestly think that if the rich were kicked out of their homes that the power structure would let that happen? By no means. We have already experienced the bank bailouts of 2008. But if a mentally ill person, or a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress or traumatic brain injuries, or a family that fell victim to predatory lenders loses livelihoods, we accept it as collateral damage. We blame them for their own misfortunes.

We need a culture shift. Why, in the richest country in the world, do we allow our neighbors to be treated this way? It is time we put our money where our mouth is.