Desertrain v. City of Los Angeles

Facts

On September 23, 2010, Los Angeles officials held a “Town Hall on Homelessness” to address complaints of homeless individuals with vehicles living on local streets in Venice. City officials repeated throughout the meeting that their concern was not homelessness generally, but the illegal dumping of trash and human waste on city streets that was endangering public health. Within the week, the LAPD created the Venice Homelessness Task Force. The Task Force’s twenty-one officers were to use Section 85.02 to cite and arrest homeless people using their automobiles as “living quarters,” and were also to distribute to such people information concerning providers of shelter and other social services. Defendant Captain Jon Peters ran the Task Force. Task Force officers received informal, verbal training, as well as internal policy memoranda. According to the instructions, an individual need not be sleeping or have slept in the vehicle to violate Section 85.02. Supervisors directed officers to issue a warning and to provide information concerning local shelters on the first instance of a violation, to issue a citation on the second instance, and to make an arrest on the third.