The Answer to Albany's Burning Question...

There is a transcript of Albany Police Chief McQuiston's remarks at the December 20, 2012 Homeless Task Force meeting, filed as evidence by the plaintiffs in the lawsuit over the impending enforcement of Albany's camping ordinance. 

I was in attendance at that meeting.

I believe the transcript sheds some light on interactions and motivating factors with regards to the relationship between APD and Albany's Waterfront-dwelling population as well as the enforcement (or lack, thereof) of AMC 8-4.4. (These documents, and others, can be found at http://www.albanyca.org/index.aspx?page=1297 ) 

Below are some quotes that I found to be quite illuminating.

Chief McQuiston on the 14th Amendment:
"So essentially, they should be treated no differently than anyone else on the street. That having been said, there’s the caveat that often, they’re the subject of a report to the police that they are doing something unlawful and it, and we find ourselves, like I say, we’re at the point of conflict between society at large and the homeless population. You mentioned best practices and I’m not sure, I’m not sure from a law enforcement perspective what is out there. I think that we do a pretty good job of not really overstepping our bounds when it comes to that. We have very clear political direction about how we handle the Bulb in particular. And we make pretty regular visits out there. But it’s not, it’s not meant to harass or intimidate."

Chief McQuiston on sustainability:
"Let me start with long-term. Long-term, I think, is less expensive than the near term. Another thing I said at the outset of this is that it [the Bulb] [23:04] encourages homelessness. And by changing that posture, and putting services in place that help discourage it, and then the other part of that, frankly, is, again, going back to our experience the last time we cleaned out that area down there of inhabitants, there was no thought given to enforcement afterwards and maintaining the roads so police could make regular patrols, and things of that sort, that over time get, it gets cheaper. You make an initial investment in that infrastructure to bring it into the rest of town, basically. And so it gets part of our patrol patterns, and we get comfortable out there if we know the lay of the land as well. So the political piece I would say behind that is, the willingness to let, once that change has been made, let the police enforce, and not pull the police back. 
And again, it should go hand-in-hand with having options for the way we talk about Berkeley Mental Health and the Mobile Crisis Team, but it’s not always that, it’s, to use the example of the gentleman that’s out on East Bay Regional Parks land right now, they have no services. They had offered, they have no resources that they can bring to the situation, and so that’s, in terms of sustainability, we’re typically the primary contact. I don’t think that the City of Albany is ever going to be in a position to have a social services department or outreach people that are permanently working on this sort of a thing.  We would need to have options, so when we are moving someone out of the park, that we’re able to offer them something other than, well you can check in at 711 Harrison, or here’s a voucher for the Rescue Mission in Richmond.
So, I guess that’s kind of the two parts of the sustainability. One is, one should make the change to no longer encourage homelessness, that you have consistent enforcement of rules that will discourage it, and that you provide, probably the police, or other agencies in the city, with the resources that they can bring to that, to the problem. Whether it be county resources that are contracted or, I have no idea, really. And that’s another thing, I want the disclaimer out here, neither Chris nor I are experts on this by any stretch of the imagination. We just have experience with it over the years here in a very small area."

Chief McQuiston on who generally gives him his orders:
"Yeah in 2002, our last elected police chief left. And the police chief’s position became appointed at that time. And what that did was that transferred that authority, essentially, to the appointing body, and that’s the city council, that gives me my job, and through the city manager gives me my priorities and budgets appropriate funds for whatever goals they have for us."

Chief McQuiston on enforcement and interactions with Albany's homeless residents:
"I think it might be Chapter 8, the community code that deals with waterfront open space. And there are a few of those subsections in that code that we’ve been directed not to enforce. That’s basically my main point [34:36]. And so if someone looks like they have a need to stay there, we let them stay there, okay? So we don’t take any serious [34:41] code to move them. We still enforce generally California Penal Code, so if there’s theft and if there’s crimes of violence or anything like that, that’ll be cause for [34:54]. But we have, we have pulled back on some of the municipal code stuff. I shouldn’t say a little, we’ve pulled back a lot. 
In town, in general, it’s generally is our municipal code, which doesn’t come into play too often, but it’s police patrol work to ride around and investigate when something’s going on. And that includes if somebody’s on private property going through a bin, the officers talk to them. Sometimes those are the results of calls, all right? I can remember being on patrol, it’s been quite a while, but driving by the dumpster behind Happy Donuts, there’s a huge pile of trash there, and it’s getting bigger, and someone’s throwing stuff out of there, I mean it, there are other factors that kind of come into play when we decide to take that kind of action to stop and detain and identify someone. 
I know that a lot of the officers, if it’s like it used to be when I worked the street, know many of these people, and have very increasing relationships with them, I’m sure probably good, and bad. And that may factor into some of that too when they make contact with someone and the person reacts to the officer, the officer reacts to the person."


Speaker 6 asks the Chief who gave the orders to let people stay on the Bulb: 
"I'd like to go back to the municipal installation portion, because of California penal enforcement [37:41]. You said that you were directed not to force municipal law, or some components of that, I’m assuming that’s directive came from the council.

Chief McQuiston's response to Speaker 6:
"Well I get my direction generally from the city manager who I think gets hers generally from the policymakers on the council, yes."


Chief McQuiston on "the big two":
"So generally our direction and our current policy is, we can enforce just about all of those, but we generally don’t. The big ones, I think, there are the two big ones. One is, if someone can demonstrate a need, they need to stay there, they need to live there, I’ll give you a perfect example. Sometimes the young people rocking out a rave party or something like that. We tell them to leave. If we can catch them before they’re all out there having a ball. Whereas someone that we think clearly is homeless, and they’re staying there, we don’t, we don’t enforce the municipal code that says you can't sleep there."


Chief McQuiston on the spirit of the law:
"So we can’t do any more than what the law says. We could always exercise discretion and do less in again what we call in the interest of the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law. And that’s kind of where we’re at on our enforcement out on the Bulb [41:33] right now, we’re trying to get away from the letter of the law and kind of do a little more spirit of the law, and that is not to necessarily to move people off simply because they’re homeless. In this sense Albany is offering an option."

Speaker 6's direct response: 
"Which is why you define it as a community that encourages it (homelessness)?"

Chief McQuiston's direct response to Speaker 6:
"Yeah. And we have, to my knowledge, very little to offer in terms of, when we talk about as high as, or maybe more than 20% that are ready, we have very little to offer them at the end of the day [42:12], so absolutely."


Chief McQuiston on discrimination:
"Yeah. Let me just share one more thing with you that I’ve shared with other people in the past is. I mentioned earlier the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and one of things that it gives us all is equal protection under the law. And this has come into play a couple of times when we’ve been asked to deal differently with someone in Albany proper versus someone out in the waterfront [44:29]. And I get very concerned when I have to tell the police deal with that one, look the other way with that one, because I think that really skirts in that area of constitutional law that my people, frankly are very good about not violating. So it can be challenging for us to treat it differently because we are trained, and I encourage them, or discourage them from ever treating people differently. It comes into play all the time when someone wants somebody to move along from the front of their liquor store because they’re homeless. We they might not call us and have you move them off. And so we have to really be careful about disparate treatment of people. And that is my, my red flag goes up when we start talking about defining it differently. It doesn’t mean it’s not working, but it’s really problematic, or it can be. What I’ve said in at least one case, I’ll say this because I speak my mind and encourage you to do as well [45:39], so you’re good. I get very uncomfortable knowing that we have a majority Caucasian population on the Bulb [45:48] and when there’s transient African-American in town and it suddenly becomes the priority to deal with that. Meanwhile we leave this other population alone. That concerns me deeply as your police chief."

Sgt. Chris Willis on contact with Albany's homeless residents: 
"I'll probably have three to four contacts usually. But, there's alot of them, just self-initiate after that they’ll talk to someone they haven’t seen for a few days, or just discuss what’s going on. So a lot of times we go to fill up our gas early morning, they’re at the gas station to get something to eat, a couple of minutes talking, that has contact and it's a positive contact I think generally."

There is another document (summarizing the exact same portion of the meeting as is transcribed above) that I stumbled upon on the City website, with the header: "Homeless Task Force Meeting (12-20-12) Report Prepared for Waterfront Committee (1-2-13)  Guest speakers Albany Police Chief Mike McQuiston and Sgt. Chris Willis (primary contact with Bulb residents)", written by some unnamed City Staff person. 

From that document:
"The chief emphasized current municipal policy 'encourages homelessness,' a socioeconomic problem the police department cannot 'fix.' Unfortunately, the department remains the city’s primary point of contact with this population."
And:
"Acting under guidelines by the city council, the police department exercises enforcement discretion when dealing with Bulb residents, with the caveat being all California penal codes are enforced to ensure health and safety."

You're welcome. :-)

Who in their right mind would vote (again) for people who have knowingly allowed this situation to develop into the mess we are all in, today?...