Myers Attacks Council Policy on Homeless : Law enforcement: City attorney protests recent arrests of people sleeping in parks. His written rebuke irritates council members and police.

Sounding more like an advocate for the homeless than the city’s top-ranking lawyer, Santa Monica City Atty. Robert M. Myers has publicly attacked the City Council for its recent attempt to start reining in the city’s unruly homeless population.

In a written rebuke released Monday, Myers scolded the council for its new policy of subjecting homeless people to the “indignity of a criminal arrest” if they repeatedly disobey a law against sleeping overnight in city parks.

The controversial city attorney’s statement also indirectly attacked City Manager John Jalili and new Police Chief James T. Butts, who have been following the council’s Sept. 10 order to enforce the law.

The council action was sparked by widespread concern for public safety and comes when the city’s open-arms policy toward the homeless is being re-examined. Many residents--and the police chief--blame the policy for turning Santa Monica into a magnet for the disenfranchised. All City Council members are on record as favoring a major overhaul of the city’s system for serving and managing the homeless.

But Myers, an outspoken civil libertarian whose spirited defense of the rights of the homeless over the years has won him widespread admiration and loathing in the city, clearly does not intend to go along quietly with what he regards as a crackdown.

In what appeared to be an appeal to the liberalism for which Santa Monica voters are renowned, he wrote: “The city is subjecting the poor and the shelterless to the indignity of a criminal arrest solely because our society has failed in its commitment to provide affordable housing. I have been unable to identify any basis upon which the city’s action advances the cause of justice.”

Although proponents of enforcing laws against sleeping in the park view the matter as one of public safety, Myers’ memo seeks to reframe the matter as a liberal litmus test. Myers appealed to the City Council’s “character” by listing in the memo a series of progressive positions the council has taken on issues ranging from opposing intervention in El Salvador to urging an end to draft registration.

As authority for his view that people without shelter have the right to sleep in the park, Myers invoked a section of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides that every human being has the right to shelter, food, medical care and other services.

Myers issued the memo Monday after he found that two homeless people had been in jail overnight “awaiting a prosecution decision for no other reason than they had slept in a public park.”

According to police records, officers arrested, cited and released 89 people between Sept. 12 and Sept. 21 for violating the law against sleeping in the park. Only seven people were arrested in a nine-day period before the council called for the stepped-up enforcement.

Myers’ memo has churned the volatile waters of the homeless debate at a time when many had hoped for quiet deliberation, not polarizing rhetoric. A task force created by the City Council earlier this year to devise a comprehensive strategy for dealing with the homeless is drafting its recommendations and is expected to present them by the end of the year.

With his memo, Myers has put council members--who are his bosses--in an awkward position by accusing them of abandoning the liberal agenda that remains generally popular in the city.

Several council members and city officials were openly irritated by the attack. Several accused Myers of unprofessional conduct and overstepping his authority by substituting his own philosophical views for policies adopted by elected city officials.

Even Myers’ allies on the council, including Mayor Judy Abdo, were clearly dismayed by the tack he has taken, and its timing.

“We want to deal with these issues when the (homeless task force) report comes to us,” said Abdo.

Councilmen Herb Katz and Robert T. Holbrook, who favor more stringent controls on the homeless, accused Myers of overstepping his authority and setting up a confrontation by refusing to follow orders.

“His job is not to make policy,” said Katz. “His job is to enforce the law.”

Katz predicted that if the council majority “knuckles under (to Myers), they’ll bring the wrath of the city voters upon them.”

Jalili and Butts said they were taken by surprise by Myers’ memo because he had not first discussed his disagreement with them.

“It’s not appropriate professional conduct,” Jalili said.

Both he and Butts said they intend to stand firm by continuing to carry out the council directive. “As city officials we also have to look at the impacts on our residents,” Jalili said.

Butts said it is Myers’ decision whether to prosecute those who sleep in the park, but it is his own decision whether to arrest them. Myers’ memo has “no impact on my operation,” Butts said.

The chief said he is convinced that vagrants sleeping in the parks present a hazard to each other and to the community at large. Unless the parks are redesignated as public shelters, Butts said, he did not adhere to the view that people had the right to sleep in them when it is against the law.