Homeless People's Rights Violated at PMHS Shelter? St. Augustine Record Editorial Defends Sheriff, et al., Attacks Advocates. Sad.

Shelby Hoogendyk and her 17 month-old son Caelan, at the St. Francis House in St. Augustine, Florida on Sept. 22. Jason Dearen / AP

Unsigned St. Augustine Record attacks unsigned First Amendment protected activity on behalf of homeless people at shelter. While the Associated Press verified their allegations, the St. Augustine Record smeared them. Pitiful.

This is not the first time that the St. Augustine Record has attacked First Amendment values.
Gay rights, Rainbow flags on Bridge of Lions, arrests of artists and musicians on St. George Street -- tainted Record was always wrong when it opposed our constitutional rights. Enough.

Here in our Nation's Oldest City, MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS' 35 year reign of error is over.

This dumb 'ole editorial is the last MORRIS attack on free speech -- the last hick hack attack on our constitutional rights from MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS in St. Augustine:



St. Augustine Record
Posted September 29, 2017 12:02 am

EDITORIAL: Attack on shelter unwarranted, unsigned

You’ll see Superintendent Tim Forsen’s Guest Column opposite (sic) this editorial.  (Not on website).

In it he’s answering a memorandum circulated after Hurricane Irma. It was sent out to the county’s Continuum of Care group from “Concerned members of the Continuum of Care” — author(s) unknown.

That’s generally a tipoff that something unsubstantiated will follow. It’s the reason The Record mandates letters to the editor be signed. We follow-up many with phone calls to verify the writer.

This memorandum fit the anonymous letter scenario perfectly. It took no prisoners: “The behavior of both the school district and the sheriff’s department demonstrated a total lack of empathy and were void of humanity.”

It didn’t stop there.

“Yes, these individuals may be homeless, but there was no reason to insult, disrespect intentionally embarrass nor deny them resources.”

We spoke with Sheriff David Shoar and School Superintendent Tim Forson. Unfortunately we were unable to speak with the person(s) who crafted the memo.

It’s impossible to rebut all the charges in the space here, but let us say that, from everything we’ve been able to learn, including talks with other evacuees at Pedro Menendez’s evacuation shelter, the memo is more than bogus — it’s incendiary.

First, hurricane might be considered anomalies particularly hard to practice for —although the school district does do mock runs between these powerful events. Since Pedro was served up as the whipping boy, we’ll talk about experiences there.

In the face of an impending hurricane, schools are transformed from something they are, into something they are not — evacuation shelters — and predominately by volunteers. When they open, evacuees pile up quickly. They don’t walk in the door and grab a corner of a room. They’re consulted, given colored wristbands and sent to certain areas of the room(s) with colored tarps matching the wristbands all will wear. For instance, those with medical problems, the very elderly and other evacuees considered at-risk went to the yellow tarps located next to the medical facilities, showers and bathrooms. Those with young children may have been pointed in another direction: Those with pets in another.

The homeless came in buses and were generally sent to an area, this one closest to the cafeteria — and were first to be fed three times a day.

To be certain, this population was one that the law enforcement people watched more carefully, as they should have. Although this is politically incorrect to say, there are homeless people who lose their homes, and homeless people who lose their humanity then their homes.

Whether or not we like it, this population is more likely to be on drugs —prescription or otherwise. In reality, a bigger problem can occur because they may be OFF their medications, due to the hurricane. There’s illness. There’s dementia. There’s withdrawal.

At Pedro, there were instances of evacuees taking drugs and stealing drugs from one another. There was a fistfight. There was public urination. There were a couple of arrests.

We’re not picking on a population. Living in the woods or on the streets takes a toll in so many ways. Perhaps there should be a movement called “Hard Lives Matters.”

But the homeless numbered about 100. That left 400 other strangers, sleeping on floors in a gym together — with volunteers feeding them, answering hundreds of questions or just holding some hands.

This is a time of high anxiety and general discomfort. People are on edge. They don’t know whether or not they, too, will be homeless after the event. Many were. Many were … again.

In short, it’s a situation that defies the parameters of “normal.”

We know for a fact that the emergency shelters were staffed with caring volunteers and well trained EMTS, law enforcement and National Guard personnel.

They were there for the safety and comfort of ALL the evacuees seeking a port in the storm at Pedro.

Where, exactly, was the author of the memo?

Edward Adelbert Slavin · 

Bete noir at Community Activist

1. This September 29, 2017 editorial mirrors Sheriff David Shoar's reported anger -- long on adjectives and short on substance, not unlike Shoar's angry response to the FDLE special agent and the victim's family in the Michelle O'Connell case. This editorial ignores the named sources in the Record's own article -- named people, including two named advocates for the homeless. AP got St. Augustine homeless people to give names; did the Record try?
2. The editorial errs by assuming anonymous speech is suspect. Whistleblowers often choose to remain anonymous and conceal their identities from wrongdoing governments or corporations. Anonymous speech is protected, under our First Amendment.
3. The St. Augustine Record itself for years had in print and then online "Talk of the Town" and then after ToTT was abolished, continued anonymous commenting below articles. The Record refused to disclose the name of the anonymous commenter who threatened violence against City officials over Mumford & Sons. Such anonymous hate speech was a daily occurence at the Record for years. Thus, the Record's editorial rings hollow in its attempt to cast aspersions (or asparagus) toward homeless people speaking their minds without disclosing their names -- their constittional right. The Record, along with Sheriff David Shoar, rushed to judgment and based opinions on errors and no facts.
4. The Associated Press covered this issue differently, in a September 29, 2017 article:
by ASSOCIATED PRESS September 29, 2017 2:29 PM
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — Shelby Hoogendyk says that when she, her husband and her 17-month-old son arrived at an emergency shelter as Hurricane Irma closed in, they were separated from others by yellow wristbands and told to stay in an area with other people like them — the homeless. Sheriff's deputies, she says, told them the wristbands were prompted by problems that arose among homeless people at the shelter during Hurricane Matthew a year earlier.
"We were treated like we were guilty criminals," Hoogendyk says.
In the storm's wake, homeless people and their advocates are complaining that some of them were turned away, segregated from the others, denied cots and food, deprived of medication refills and doctors' visits, or otherwise ill-treated during the evacuation.
Many of the complaints have been blamed on misunderstandings, the sheer magnitude of the disaster, the crush of people needing shelter immediately, or inadequate state and local emergency planning.
All told, a record 72,000 Floridians sought refuge from the hurricane in early September at nearly 400 shelters. The response varied widely by county.
In Miami, over 700 homeless were picked up and taken to shelters. In Collier County, the sheriff sent officers into homeless encampments in the woods to bring people to a shelter. But in Polk County, Sheriff Grady Judd warned that any evacuees with warrants against them and all sex offenders seeking shelter would be taken to jail. And in Volusia County, some officials were accused of turning homeless evacuees away from shelters without explanation.
"Communities were all dealing with the fallout of not having very comprehensive planning in place to deal with this population," said Kirsten Anderson, litigation director at Southern Legal Counsel, a nonprofit public interest law firm in Florida. She said if a shelter discriminated against people based on their economic status, it could be a violation of federal law that protects people in federal disaster zones.
In Hoogendyk's case, St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar and school officials who ran the shelter at Pedro Menendez High vigorously denied segregating the homeless, saying the yellow wristbands were simply used to identify people with "special needs" — substance abuse problems, mental illness or other "frailties" — who needed to be closer to the bathrooms.
But Hoogendyk said neither she nor her husband claimed any special needs when they checked in. Other homeless people said they, too, were automatically issued the yellow wristbands, while others around them got blue or other colors denoting them as part of the "general population."
Gary Usry, a 57-year-old homeless man who arrived at the same St. Augustine shelter, said the first night was rough.
"We were left on concrete floor overnight. No blanket, no nothing," he said. Usry said a few cots were provided to people with wristbands of other colors, but not to any of the homeless in his yellow-band section. Usry said he felt "insulted, demeaned."
While insisting homeless people were not singled out, the sheriff also said that the homeless population has "a disproportionate representation of those with mental illness, substance abuse problems and, quite frankly, those with criminal backgrounds."
Sheriff's spokesman Cmdr. Chuck Mulligan said that last year, during Hurricane Matthew, there were numerous arguments, fights and instances of drunkenness among homeless people at the shelter.