Los Angeles, Cal. — Last year Florida and California were ranked the states with the most lethal and non-lethal attacks against homeless people. California was cited as having 22, but Maria Foscarinis, the executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, believes the number is actually much higher because most incidents are never reported. She attributes this to the fact that homeless people are outside and can be attacked by anyone, for any reason, as well as the increasingly punitive action of cities against the homeless. In classes protected by hate-crime legislation, 0.1 percent of attacks result in death, while over 25 percent of attacks against the homeless result in death. Because of this, there is a movement to have the homeless covered by hate-crime legislation; two bills are being considered by the House of Representatives. Advocates are meanwhile working for other solutions, but believe hate crime legislation will send the message that the lives of the homeless are as valuable as the lives of anyone else. (Alison Stateman, Time with CNN, Oct. 22, 2008)
http://streetvibes.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/violence-against-the-homeless-a-hate-crime/Hate Crimes & Violence Against Homeless People Increasing
Washington D.C. - For the past six years (1999-2004), the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) has tracked and reported on a disturbing increase in crimes targeting homeless people. These violent attacks on homeless people, one of our most vulnerable populations, result in injury and in many cases death.
The well-documented affordable housing crisis is not the only crisis to affect the millions of people who are homeless every year. There is also an increasing pattern of civil rights abuses and violence directed at the homeless population. Homelessness is no longer simply an issue of the right to affordable housing but a matter of life and death. As the danger of living without a home increases, the lack of federal housing resources as well as the absence of the political will to end homelessness becomes increasingly more shameful.
In October of 2004, three Milwaukee teens murdered a homeless man at his forest campsite. The teens hit 49-year-old Rex Baum, with rocks, a flashlight, and a pipe, before smearing feces on his face and covering his body with leaves and plastic.
In August of 2004, Curtis Gordon Adams, 33, beat and stabbed a disabled homeless man to death and then licked the blood from his fingers on a Denver sidewalk.
More recently, on May 28th 2005, in Holly Hill, Florida, 53-year-old Michael Roberts was beaten and punched to death with sticks and logs by a group of teenagers who admitted to beating the man just for fun, to have something to do. The autopsy report indicates that Roberts died of blunt-force trauma to the head and body, his ribs were broken, his skull was fractured, and his legs were badly injured. Defensive wounds were found on his hands. The boys returned several times to make sure the job was done.
http://www.nationalhomeless.org/hatecrimes/pressrelease.html In Denver, five were pummeled to death and two more beheaded. In Richmond, Va., one was beaten, stabbed and beheaded, his head then carried nearly a mile and placed for display on a footbridge. In Seattle, one was stabbed 18 times, another beaten bloody and then stabbed.
There were others. One in Dallas, pelted with bullets from a 12-gauge shotgun for rummaging through trash. One in Chico, Calif., beaten to death for begging for spare change. Three in Portland, Ore., strangled for who knows what.
They were all homeless people killed over the last year. And these were just the killings that made the news. Exactly how many homeless people have been victims of savage attacks is unknown. Police departments do not tabulate crimes against homeless people, and in many cases, such as several beatings that have frightened the large homeless population here, those who survive attacks often do not report them.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D01E4DF1539F930A15751C1A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=allWhy don't police TABULATE these often brutal and sick crimes??
Because the homeless are scapegoats the lepers any insecure person can hate to feel superior to.The serve a function in this terrible class system.The angry frustrated teen or worker can't hit his bully boss so he kicks the homeless,and too often nobody does shit about it.
Factors ranging from local laws that criminalize homelessness to a current fad for “bum-bashing” videos “send a message to society that homeless people are not human
do not deserve respect”
http://streetroots.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/attacks-against-homeless-nationwide-on-the-rise/
http://www.nationalhomeless.org/faces/
Fun??!!?WTF!!
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/28/60minutes/main2049967.shtml
http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/trends.html