In Miami its War on the Homeless

From the Miami Herald

Miami has officially moved to dissolve a 20-year-old legal agreement that protects the city’s homeless from undue police harassment — a change that would allow the police to arrest the homeless for loitering.

The city filed a motion in federal court Wednesday to terminate the Pottinger agreement, a consent decree that prevents police from arresting homeless people for “life-sustaining” activities such as sleeping on the sidewalk, starting a cooking fire or urinating in public. The agreement stems from a landmark lawsuit brought against the city in the early 1990s by 5,000 homeless people and the American Civil Liberties Union to stop the police practice of arresting the homeless for loitering, saying it was unconstitutional.

For two decades, the Pottinger agreement has governed how police can interact with the homeless, but city commissioners in April unanimously passed a resolution instructing the city attorney to takes steps toward ending or amending the agreement. That resolution was sponsored by Mayor Francis Suarez and commissioners Joe Carollo and Manolo Reyes.