Homeless Sweeps Up Close Episode 1: Destroying Black Trans Lives
Newly released SFPD footage shows city workers broke a $2,000 tent, stole belongings from someone returning from work, arrested a Black trans woman, & helped install anti-homeless planters.
SFPD officers and Public Works employees stand watch as an impatient paramedic yanks at a large mattress, trying to force it out of the small entrance of a high-quality tent. Its owner, a Black trans woman, stands handcuffed, imploring him to stop, explaining that the bottom disconnects and the whole thing folds down like an accordion. The paramedic doesn’t stop yanking and the woman exclaims: “That’s a $2,000 tent…you’re doing that on purpose, that is so ridiculous.”
SFPD officer Michael Chantal is heard asking “Is this a guy or a girl or what?” A pride flag hangs limply in the background.
The woman is whisked away in handcuffs where she is assured the tent will be properly dismantled.
Later, after she is driven to the police station, city workers seemingly decide they have had enough of trying to collapse the tent properly and break the poles in half before hauling it off to the Public Works yard. A man in the background is seen reacting in frustration as he was prevented from dismantling it properly himself.
Meanwhile, workers from the Lower Polk Community Benefit District, a group representing property owners and businesses in the area, stand by with several large metal troughs ready to be installed in place of the tents.
This scene is one of many moments captured in SFPD bodyworn camera footage I obtained from a November 2023 homeless sweep on Fern Alley in San Francisco. As far as I’m aware this is the first time bodycam footage of homeless sweeps has been released to the public, after months of pressure on SFPD via the Sunshine Task Force and City Attorney’s office. The sweep was part of the city’s weekly Healthy Street Operation Center (HSOC) “encampment resolutions'' in which a coalition of city departments displace unhoused people and confiscate their tents and belongings, forcing them to move from one block to another where they inevitably get hit with another sweep. Ostensibly, the city offers shelter and housing, but as has been widely documented there is little of either available and most of what exists isn’t suitable for unsheltered people, prompting an ongoing lawsuit against the city over 8th Amendment violations.
Broken and trashed belongings
San Francisco is also being sued for violating Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, specifically due to its handling of homeless people’s belongings during encampment sweeps. The city is supposed to “bag and tag” belongings it takes at encampment sweeps and preserve them for retrieval, but it’s been well documented that the Department of Public Works often fails to do so, either trashing them on-site, losing or damaging them, or storing them in a way that makes them virtually impossible to retrieve.
This context is critical for understanding that while what unfolds in this footage is disturbing, it’s also par for the course for unhoused residents. There’s sort of a “you know the deal” tone to the conversations throughout the videos, though punctuated by moments of defeat, fear, and loss on the part of unhoused residents. Here are some noteworthy moments:
Destroying shelter
Early in the footage city workers break a woman’s tent, a Shiftpod III, which retails for $1,699 before tax and shipping. It’s a quality, insulated tent, offering privacy and protection in a city that faced storms and temperatures in the 40s that winter. Unhoused people risk fatal hypothermia when temperatures reach 30 to 50 degrees. Footage captures the emotional significance of having this shelter as people at the scene plead with city workers to take care of it.
Public records show the city was aware of this specific tent ahead of time, yet on the scene seem totally unprepared and impatient to deal with it.
Home from work
One man arrives from his job to find his tent and belongings in the back of a DPW truck. SFPD officer Bradley and several DPW workers surround him as he tries to grab what he can from the back of the truck until the officer pressures him to stop. “I just got off work” he explains, to no avail. Later, Bradley tells him “It can get worse by interfering with them (the workers)”, to which he responds “they just threw all my shit away and won’t let me get my clothes.”
Garbage or belongings?
Throughout the videos, workers are tossing items into the back of a DPW truck as unhoused people scramble to grab what they can. It’s unclear what they are allowed to take. Even head of the city’s encampment-clearance team, David Nakanishi, is seen chipping in to throw bags and boxes of people’s belongings into the back of a truck to be trashed. The partner of the arrested woman is seen collecting belongings to save until Officer Bradley tells him to stop.
“That’s all garbage”, says Bradley. “It’s not,” responds the man. “It is,” Bradley says. “I’m telling you to get your stuff and get outta here.”
The impact of losing one’s belongings
Sweeps like this have devastating consequences for public health as documented by reporter Nuala Bishari in a series for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism. Bishari outlines how SF authorities confiscate life-saving medication during sweeps including insulin, anti-psychotics, HIV medication, hepatitis C medication, and over 100+ instances of overdose reversal medication in a single year.
People also lose their identification cards, and, as seen in this footage, their clothing, making applying for services and finding and keeping jobs (like the one the man was returning from) almost impossible, perpetuating the cycle of homelessness. After all, how can people escape homelessness if they can’t access city services or get a job to save enough money for a deposit?
Contrary to the city’s rhetoric about criminalizing homeless people at encampment sweeps as a form of “tough love” to force “involuntary homeless” people into housing, encampment sweeps like this one have devastating consequences to public health, civil rights, and prospects for escaping homelessness.
Public records show that at the sweep in November, the only items bagged and tagged were the silver tent (broken, naturally) and 1 black bag. Everything else that unhoused folks could not grab at the scene was trashed.
Systemic racism and transphobia
In the fall of 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd uprisings, the SF Public Works' Racial Equity Working Group began developing a report on racial equity investigating its own present and past role in perpetuating systemic racism. The report devoted an entire section to DPW’s role in responding to homelessness, noting “the treatment of homeless people and their personal belongings by local authorities, as well as homeless people’s access to sleeping and setting up tents on sidewalks have long been hotly contested civil rights issues, but they take on a racial justice element in San Francisco as well” because Black people “make up 6 percent of the City’s overall population but a staggering 37 percent of its homeless”. The report further criticizes the city for its failure to house people or return their belongings.
Likewise, as SF Mayor Breed stated in 2022, “Transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming San Franciscans are eighteen times more likely to experience homelessness compared to the general population, and we know that the rates are even higher for our minority trans communities.”
This newly released footage showcases these systemic themes in concrete terms. Several of the unhoused people at the sweep who lost belongings are Black. Unhoused trans Black women, like the one arrested, are disproportionately impacted by homelessness and disproportionately at risk on the street, including by harm caused by the city itself.
The video showcases casual transphobia as well, with one officer commenting “Is this a guy or a girl or what?” Another officer states a “female” officer could do the search on the woman, a suggestion another officer brushes off before performing the search himself without even offering the option to the woman. During the search, the officer removes the woman’s hair net against her will to search her hair.
The reason for the woman’s arrest further highlights the systemic nature of the problems outlined by DPW’s racial equity team. It’s common for SFPD to check the people they sweep for arrest warrants. If they find one, they can displace people and seize their belongings without risking violating enjoined laws. In this case, the woman at the scene was arrested for a felony warrant for failing to appear in court to address a prior violation of driving with a suspended license in San Mateo County, just south of the city. Racial disparities in traffic stops and license suspensions are common, often intersecting with the conditions of poverty. Add to that the difficulty unhoused people have making it to court in another county and a clear theme emerges wherein poor and unhoused people are locked in a cycle of poverty, lacking the time, money, transport, and naturally an address, often needed to escape it.
Ineptitude and corruption
It’s no secret that HSOC staff are often uneducated about the city’s own policies regarding encampment sweeps, even prompting a federal judge to express concern about the city’s training of frontline workers.
This footage provides evidence of this lack of training as workers seem unsure about the process for bagging and tagging belongings. One says “I think they can make a request. All I know that has to be bagged and tagged is the tent.”
Officer Minkel can be heard saying “Well, that’s the problem, we can’t negotiate, we gotta go in there like bam, nuclear bomb. ‘Oh you can’t do that’ - we already did *laughs*”
Later, he states he wanted to buy stock in the company that makes the anti-homeless planters.
Notably, Officer Minkel shot a man in the head and killed him on that same block in 2011. The man he killed had a warrant out of San Mateo, as did the woman Minkel is seen detaining in this footage from November.
Meanwhile, according to the SF Public Defender’s office, Officer Chantal who made the offhand transphobic comments had previously been involved in a corruption scandal when he failed to pursue a fellow officer who was driving a vehicle identified in the kidnapping of a 19-year old woman in the Tenderloin.
Out with the tents, in with the planters
“Make sure these guys don’t come back”
Public records I uncovered in recent months have shed light on the city’s role in the influx of anti-homeless planters which groups have installed explicitly to displace encampments. The planters frequently violate both the Americans with Disabilities Act and city code.
This newly released footage showcases a stark example of wealthy residents and business interests coordinating with the city to install such planters right after the sweep, preventing the residents who otherwise have the legal right to return from doing so.
“Make sure these guys don’t come back”, Nakanishi tells an officer.
This strategy has become increasingly common as a tool for the city to circumvent the injunction against sweeps. The city’s logic appears to be that they aren’t forcing people to move, they are simply asking them to move while they clean, then blocking the space where they used to be so they can’t return. A distinction without a difference by any reasonable read.
On Fern, workers from the Lower Polk Community Benefit District stood by with large metal containers to install after the tents were removed. Community Benefit Districts (CBD), also known as Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), are so-called “private-public partnerships” which allow property owners and businesses to advance their interests in a given neighborhood, often with the effect of criminalizing poor and unhoused communities.
Public records I obtained separately confirm that HSOC not only planned for the CBD’s presence in the sweep, but actively assigned a San Francisco Fire Department Lieutenant to advise on the installs.
This misuse of planters to displace encampments is now par for the course in San Francisco, noted in this exchange between officers at the scene:
“Behlen? They make water troughs.” “Now they make homeless abatement troughs.” “Think of all the farmers and ranchers that can’t buy farmer troughs because they’re all coming to San Francisco. Driving up the price in the market.”
“You guys did good”
The central contradiction underlying the tensions in the alley on that mid-November day is captured in the DPW racial equity report:
“The issue that underlies this contentious, confusing process is the mismatch between the City’s desire to clear encampments and its lack of viable housing options for its homeless population.”
Without confronting the root of the problem - a lack of permanent supportive housing for unsheltered people, the encampments aren’t going anywhere, the sweeps will not stop, and the harm will not cease. People will continue to be shuffled from block to block, with nobody happy, and the disastrous play will end as it did in November - with almost no one sheltered, belongings trashed, shelter broken, and those who aren’t arrested moving over one alley where it all happens again a week later.
Mayor London Breed, failing to lead the way in providing permanent supportive housing, dubiously points to temporary tent reductions rather than housing placements as a measure of success. Unsurprising given that while public records show that all 4 tents were removed on Fern, the majority of residents did not receive shelter or housing that day.
Breed’s emphasis on tent reductions has been fully adopted by city departments, evident at the end of the bodycam footage as the SFFD paramedic overseeing the sweep thanks Officer Bradley for his help. “Didn’t have to do much,” Bradley responds. “You guys did good.”