A federal judge has found that the city of Los Angeles violated the constitutional rights of homeless people by seizing and destroying their personal property during cleanups.<\/p>\n
The ruling filed late Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer ended a seven-year-old case against the city without a trial. The decision hinged on Fischer\u2019s finding that the city had altered records of the cleanups<\/a> after the case was filed to make it appear that care was taken to separate personal property from trash or hazardous material. <\/p>\n She rejected the city\u2019s argument that any flaws were the result of \u201cerror-filled record keeping during the pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe timing of the City\u2019s modifications and fabrications is strong circumstantial evidence of bad faith, especially when considered alongside the types of modifications made to produced documents, including changing words to characterize items as biohazards, describing property as surrendered or dangerous, and adding narratives of procedures,\u201d Fischer wrote.<\/p>\n In a neutral forensic analysis she ordered, Fischer wrote that the examiner found records in 90% of 144 cleanups were \u201ceither modified or fabricated after the City was put on notice\u201d of its obligation to preserve documents.<\/p>\n She had been waiting on that final examination to make her ruling. <\/p>\n The ruling denied the city\u2019s proposal that the court could merely exclude the altered records as evidence, finding the evidence so tainted that a fair trial would not be possible. <\/p>\n \u201cThis means that the court has accepted all of the facts alleged in the case as true without a trial, effectively granting a win for the plaintiffs,\u201d lead plaintiffs\u2019 attorney Shayla Myers of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles said at a news conference Thursday.<\/p>\n The ruling did not specify what the city must do to comply with the law. Fischer ordered the parties to file briefs by March 15 on proposed relief.<\/p>\n Myers said the plaintiffs are seeking monetary damages and an injunction requiring the city to provide homeless people the opportunity to contest the seizure of their property and recover seized items.<\/p>\n In an October status report, Myers outlined potential terms for an injunction setting conditions for property seizure. Among them, sanitation workers would have to give 24-hour notice and describe the property to be seized and the basis for the seizure.<\/p>\n The city would then have to store the property for at least 90 days and provide the owner an itemized list of the seized belongings and information on how to retrieve it.<\/p>\n For the destruction of hazardous property, it would establish a standard of \u201ca substantial likelihood of causing significant harm\u201d that is reasonably expected to occur immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n The case, Garcia vs. City of Los Angeles, was filed in 2019 on behalf of seven homeless people and KTown For All<\/a>, a volunteer organization that provides direct assistance and advocacy for homeless people. The homeless plaintiffs allege that the city violated their rights by destroying their belongings in camp cleanups in 2018 and 2019.<\/a><\/p>\n One of the plaintiffs has since died, Myers said.<\/p>\n