ShareThisCAL-HOMELESS (Lundstrom, Sacramento Bee) -- Study: California second worst in the nation for violent attacks on the homeless. 600.
They were beaten, shot, stabbed, raped, pelted with paintballs and set on fire.
Last year, 22 homeless men and women were attacked -- 10 of them killed -- in 10 California cities, according to a study released this month.
In a dubious new distinction for the Golden State, the National Coalition for the Homeless ranks California second in the nation for violent attacks on the homeless.
Behind the stark statistics are the less visible human beings: Five men and women, shot to death last November in a homeless "hot spot" off Interstate 405 in Long Beach; a 55-year-old homeless man, doused with flammable liquid and burned to death a month earlier in a Los Angeles neighborhood; two transgender homeless men, attacked in May 2008 beneath an Interstate 80 overpass in Sacramento by a man with a large "skins" tattoo across his neck.
The deaths and injuries helped place California second only to Florida for violence against the homeless in 2008. Since 2005, California has consistently been near the top of the list.
"There's just absolutely no place in California you can go without coming upon a visible homeless population, unless you're in the parks," said Michael Stoops, executive director of the Washington, D.C., based National Coalition for the Homeless.
With that visibility, he said, comes tension -- and great vulnerability for the homeless.
As more people land on the streets in the economic downtown, they also find themselves more open to exploitation and attacks, he said.
While the number of violent acts against homeless people dropped nationwide from 160 in 2007 to 106 last year, the "attacks are getting more serious, with more bodily harm," Stoops said. Last year's 27 deaths nationwide were the highest since 2001.
"People think they can hurt a homeless person because no one will care, and they won't fight back," Stoops said.
The group's analysis, which dates back to 1999, has renewed calls among advocates to expand the definition of "hate crime" to include the homeless -- a move that has been resisted in California and other states.
The data also reveal a consistency in the attackers: They are young.
Over the last 10 years, 78 percent of those accused or convicted of attacking the homeless were age 25 and under, the advocacy group said. (The group did not include incidents where the attackers themselves were known to be homeless.)
The attackers are also overwhelmingly male, according to the study.
Shirley Cliff, a 58-year-old Sacramento woman who has been in and out of homelessness for 27 years, said she and her late husband were repeatedly assaulted several years ago by a group of young males outside a midtown church.
Cliff said the teens would pelt them with oranges and apples. Once, she was hospitalized for three days after a rock was hurled into her chest, she said.
"It was mostly youngsters, not older folks," said Cliff, spending time this week at Friendship Park near Loaves & Fishes, where homeless adults and children gather daily.
Cathy Roberts, 48, said she and a friend were fired upon with BB guns while bicycling near Loaves & Fishes.
"There's lots of crimes on the homeless," Roberts said. "People are bored, and they come down here."
Troublemaking teens and young men running in packs make up one type of attacker -- a group one California criminologist refers to as the "thrill offender."
Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, said these young males are often drunk and "are going out for excitement as part of an exercise in peer validation."
In Costa Mesa, a sleeping homeless man was nearly blinded last December when he was struck by a barrage of paintballs suspected of being fired by a group of teenage boys, according to media accounts.
Days later in Riverside, two 16-year-old boys were arrested after one fired a paintball out of a truck window at a homeless man.
An apparent beating spree of homeless men was captured on video in 2006 in Florida, where two teenagers were accused of a string of attacks that left one homeless man dead and several injured. A surveillance camera captured one of the beatings
E-mail Marjie Lundstrom at mlundstrom(at)sacbee.com.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit Sacramento Bee
