Feature Story from civilrights.org
civilrights.org staff
May 3, 2006
An unidentified homeless man sleeping in a Boston park was awakened early in the morning on March 5 when two men began kicking him in the stomach.
He fell back asleep after the attack, only to be reawakened when the two men returned and set fire to his legs. The man escaped alive, but with severe burns on his legs.
Norris Gaynor, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was not as lucky. On January 12, three teenage boys beat him to death with baseball bats.
The three teens now await trial on a charge of first degree murder, as well as attempted murder for the beating of Jacques Pierre, which was caught on a security camera and led to their initial arrest. They also attacked another homeless man that same night.
Violent assaults against homeless people are not a recent phenomenon, but they often fall below the radar of media coverage and public consciousness. According to a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH), hate crimes against homeless people led to the deaths of 13 homeless people in 2005.
The report, entitled "
Hate, Violence, and Death on Main Street USA: A Report on Hate Crimes and Violence Against People Experiencing Homelessness 2005," states that 86 acts of violence against homeless people occurred in 2005. This statistic does not include the many cases of rape perpetrated against homeless people or the many murder cases, but police could not identify any suspects.
"There is a clearly a disturbing amount of violence directed at homeless individuals - and we need to know more about the nature and magnitude of these odious crimes," said Michael Lieberman, director of the Anti-Defamation League's Civil Rights Policy Planning Center, about the report.
The perpetrators of these crimes are usually teenage boys identified as "thrill seekers," according to the report. One group of teenage boys in Holly Hill, Fla., admitted to beating to death a homeless man, Michael Roberts, on May 28, 2005, "just for something to do."
The report states that all people, regardless of economic and housing status, are entitled to civil rights as guaranteed by law. NCH released the report to educate lawmakers, advocates, and the general public about crimes against homeless people, in order to change the law to include homelessness in the definition of hate crimes.
Twenty-five members of the House of Representatives called for further investigation of the pattern of violence against homeless people in a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) sent on January 27. According to the letter, such an investigation "would assist Congress and the advocacy community in creating a much-needed benchmark for determining the extent of violent acts and potential legislative solutions for addressing crimes against people experiencing homelessness."
"We welcome congressional efforts to prompt a GAO study of violent crime against this very vulnerable segment of our society. Additional information about federal and state action to confront this violence will help educate future advocacy efforts to address this national problem," said Lieberman.
