Antioch, police named in discrimination suit
Dateline:
07/16/2008The Antioch Police Department has been named in a federal class-action lawsuit contending the department's Community Action Team unfairly targets African-American families enrolled in the subsidized-housing program known as Section 8.
Filed in U.S. federal court in San Francisco on Wednesday by the ACLU of Northern California and three other nonprofit civil rights groups in the Bay Area, the suit contends the city and its police department "intentionally discriminate against African-American Section 8 households on the basis of their race and/or course of income, and has pursued policies and practices that have an unjustified adverse impact upon them."
Bay Area Legal Aid initially filed the lawsuit in May on behalf of four individuals. The ACLU, however, expanded the suit to seek class-action status for all Section 8 participants in Antioch. The suit seeks unspecified damages and a permanent injunction against the police department, prohibiting the alleged harassment and intimidation of Section 8 residents.
Brad Seligman, executive director of Impact Fund, a nonprofit legal foundation that focuses on civil rights, said there is "no question" Antioch police are trying to drive black families on Section 8 out of Antioch.
"The police have a deliberate policy of coercion, intimidation and threats that target these Section 8 families and their landlords," Seligman said. "The city's goal is to force these families to move out of town."
The city, in a written statement released through City Attorney Lynn Tracy Nerland's office, "emphatically" rejected the allegations.
"We believe that any objective review of our city's policing efforts will reveal that these efforts are focused exclusively on criminal and/or dangerous behavior," the statement said. "Claims of other sinister motivations are untrue and irresponsible."
Formed in July 2006, the Community Action Team investigates problem properties that adversely affect neighborhoods and assists the Contra Costa County Housing Authority in monitoring Antioch's subsidized housing.
In December, Public Advocates — a civil rights advocacy group involved in the suit — and Bay Area Legal Aid issued a 41-page report that said black families are four times more likely to be scrutinized by the team than are white families. The team is not "race neutral" in its enforcement of housing laws, and the team interferes with the housing rights of black families, according to the report.
"What we're seeing is a new variant of an old phenomenon: racial profiling," ACLU attorney Alan Schlosser said Wednesday. "We're seeing it in Antioch, of making it an offense to be a renter who is black."
One African-American woman named as a plaintiff, Alyce Payne, attended a news conference at the federal court building in San Francisco on Wednesday morning and said she was forced to leave Antioch after police responded to a domestic violence call at her house in January 2007.
"I didn't know being a victim of domestic violence is a crime," she said. "I moved to Antioch because I wanted to show my children a better life outside Oakland, a life away from crime where they could focus on education."
Police logs reviewed by the Times in September showed the Community Action Team responding to issues reported by neighbors, landlords and the Contra Costa Housing Authority. Many complaints read the same, dealing with loud parties, unruly juveniles, fights — some involving weapons — and piled-up trash.
"We don't care if it's owned, rented or if the guy owns the whole block, what we care about is proper behavior and that's what we respond to," Nerland said Wednesday at Antioch City Hall. "We hear continually from all sorts of folks who attend City Council meetings and say, 'We can't go to each other's house to have a cup of coffee because we walk by this one house and they threaten us.' This has got to stop. As long as we continue to hear these stories and we have residents who say they want to live in a safe community, the city will continue to support that right."
Reach Simon Read at 925-779-7166 or sread@bayareanewsgroup.com. Reach Jonathan Lockett at 925-779-7136 or jlockett@bayareanewsgroup.com.
Source:
East County Times - Login to post comments
Related stories:
