Police Are Targeting Old People
Homeless old man on a bench (Port Townsend, Wa.)
This study caught my eye:
Policing
Policing disproportionately targets populations that often include many older adults: unhoused people, people who use drugs or alcohol, and people with cognitive disabilities. Nationally, the unhoused population is growing older. From 2007 to 2014, the number of unhoused people over age 50 expanded by 20%, and in 2014, this age group accounted for more than 30% of people experiencing homelessness. Given that unhoused people are up to 11 times more likely to be arrested than housed people, the likelihood of arrest for older, unhoused people is undoubtedly growing over time. Drug-related arrests among people aged 50 and older nearly doubled from 2000 to 2018, indicating a dramatic increase in criminal legal system involvement.
I know these results are true by first hand experience.
I live in a Skoolie, and therefore am by definition “unhoused” or “homeless”. I’m 66 years old.
I’ve been targeted many times by police for various sorts of harassment for years now.
In the most egregious example, I was arrested by a Coconino County, Arizona Sheriff and spent a night in jail in Flagstaff, facing felony charges!
These felony charges came with a mandatory minimum sentence of a minimum of 1 and up to 2 years in prison. No fucking joke.
My alleged crime was felony “disorderly conduct” in trying to prevent a vehicle from running over my dog, while we were camping in a National Forest.
The driver of that vehicle – after engaging in multiple lurching vehicle/jam on the brakes episodes and near misses in almost running over my dog, who was blocking his way on the national forest road – apparently felt threatened by my frantic efforts to make him stop until I could get my dog on a leash.
Seriously.
(I admit that I was guilty of having my dog off leash – which is a discretionary ticketable administrative violation in certain parts of some National Forests. Prior to this incident, I had received 3 dog off leash tickets and pled guilty for these violations, which averaged about $80 – $100 per ticket. I don’t think I am any different than any other dog owning visitor to a National Forest, other that I drive a Skoolie with politically controversial “Green New Deal” and “Drop the Charges” against those that provide water to desert immigrant logos.)
This felony charge was lodged in Arizona, a State that amounts to an insane asylum as a result of open carry and stand your ground laws, and out of control criminal Sheriff’s like Joe Arpaio.
In the course of prosecuting this trumped up “felony”, the Sheriff’s Office – with the presumed knowledge and approval of the County Prosecutor’s office – violated my rights, lied, filed false police reports and court documents, and doctored video and audio evidence. All crimes.
And they did this just to manufacture a “felony” charge against an old man defending his dog.
If they did this to me – who has the knowledge and verbal skills and tenacity to fight back – can you imagine what they do to homeless old people with all sorts of deficits?
[Post Script: I was held overnight in a tiny jail cell, packed like sardines with 13 other prisoners. It was the worst night of my life. The next morning, we were frog marched into a “courthouse” (a cinder block room in the county jail) to face the judge on a video screen. I counted over 100 people in this “courthouse”, over 95% of whom were black, Mexican or native American. The judge openly shook her head and audibly laughed as she was reviewing my charges. Welcome to Arizona, folks. Travel at your own risk.]