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Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho complained of a lack of prosecutions against homeless encampments in August 2023. A month later, he sued the city and continue to do so. s<\/p>\n
Paul Kitagaki Jr.<\/p>\n
pkitagaki@sacbee.com<\/p>\n
More than two years ago, under a different Sacramento mayor, in a dark moment in our region\u2019s struggle with chronic homelessness, District Attorney Thien Ho, with extraordinary fanfare, sued the city. He thought Sacramento\u2019s response to the ongoing humanitarian crisis was insufficient and downright unlawful.<\/p>\n
It took only a matter of months for the Sacramento County Superior Court to neuter Ho\u2019s argument as unfounded as a matter of law. It was a complete defeat. Ho nonetheless filed another similar case.<\/p>\n
Instead of pushing aggressively for a new hearing on his lawsuit\u2019s merits, Ho has basically been looking for some way out of his self-created political mess \u2014 a prosecutor who doesn\u2019t know what he is doing.<\/p>\n
Now, as detailed by The Bee\u2019s Ishani Desai<\/a>, Ho has filed a vague motion in court suggesting a possible settlement with the Sacramento City Council, although none has been approved.<\/p>\n Thien Ho lost this case a long time ago.<\/p>\n An ignorance of the law<\/p>\n There is something in governance and the law known as the separation of powers. A district attorney, for example, prosecutes criminals and those who have committed civil wrongdoing. A city, meanwhile, manages everything from water and parks to police and, yes, its unhoused population.<\/p>\n Neither has jurisdiction over the other. Our whole structure \u2014 in the Constitution and statutes \u2014 is designed to prevent one body of government from swimming outside its legal lane to take over what another is lawfully doing, rightly or wrongly.<\/p>\n Thien Ho basically tried to become the city manager of Sacramento. It didn\u2019t work. It never will.<\/p>\n This stunt began to unfold in a pleading filed in September 2023. Its debut was in a bizarre press conference<\/a> where Ho was surrounded by residents affected by the homeless crisis. Our top prosecutor then began to advance his case.<\/p>\n \u201cThe City of Sacramento\u2019s complete and utter failure to enforce any of its city ordinances related to the unhoused crisis has been hidden from the public,\u201d Ho detailed in his initial pleading. \u201cThis failure has resulted in the decay and destruction of the once-bucolic City of Trees.\u201d<\/p>\n Conveniently missing from Ho\u2019s complaint was how a federal court ruling in the Western District that includes Sacramento had largely prevented cities from removing homeless people from their boundaries absent an option for shelter. And then there was that pesky constitutional boundary about how a district attorney does not manage a city.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t take long for Sacramento\u2019s lead attorney at the time, Susana Alcala Wood, to run rings around Ho in court. Her capable staff filed a motion known as a demurrer. This is a way, prior to trial, to eviscerate a claim as legally insufficient.<\/a><\/p>\n In May 2024, Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Jill H. Talley<\/a> agreed with Sacramento and approved the demurrer.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Court agrees that the separation of powers doctrine bars all of the People\u2019s claims as presently alleged,\u201d Talley wrote.<\/p>\n When Ho began to stall<\/p>\n The judge gave Ho 30 days to try again and file another case. He foolishly did<\/a>. And then he began to punt. One motion after another called to stay the case. Ho was avoiding the day of reckoning.<\/p>\n On Thursday, Ho filed a motion that was, per custom, confused. \u201cThe settlement agreement conditions dismissal of this matter on the satisfactory completion of specified terms that are not to be performed within 45 days of the date of the settlement.\u201d<\/p>\n Pause.<\/p>\n \u201cThe settlement.\u201d<\/p>\n There is no settlement.<\/p>\n Setting aside this case, Ho actually was on the winning side of a broader national legal debate about homelessness management back in the summer of 2024. That was when the U.S. Supreme Court unshackled Sacramento and every other jurisdiction to move homeless people, even if there was no alternative option for shelter. The city has increased such citations and arrests ever since. Ho should have claimed victory and withdrawn his case.<\/p>\n Ho\u2019s lawsuit against Sacramento is by far his most important and telling action while district attorney. Nobody in his office in modern times, if ever, has dragged Sacramento so needlessly through the mud like Thien Ho. The council is scheduled to discuss the lawsuit in closed session, yet again, Tuesday at noon.<\/p>\n And surely, the timing of this alleged settlement has absolutely and positively nothing to do with Ho running for Congress<\/a> in California\u2019s 6th District, which includes the northern portion of the city. This means Ho seeks to represent a portion of a city he continues to sue.<\/p>\n Ho\u2019s awkward predicament is its own delicious form of justice. The Sacramento City Council shouldn\u2019t provide him any semblance of a safe harbor given how horribly he has treated the city. There\u2019s only one way to deal with a bully.<\/p>\n Related Stories from Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n
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