Hundreds March on City Hall to Ask for Relief From Crime, Litter, Unruly Homeless Camps

A month ago Santa Cruz was under siege as the first two police officers in 150 years were murdered investigating a sex abuse case.

On the anniversary, hundreds of families marched on City Hall asking the city council to do something to help clean up a city they see as overrun by homeless people, mentally ill people and drug addicts.

For months they have been picking up needles and trash from illegal campsites. They have also videoed homeless people polluting the rivers and beaches with drugs, needles, urine bottles with which to make methampetamine, stolen goods and all sorts of sordid things they don't want their kids to be exposed to.

The movement, and its bumper sticker shorthand of wanting to keep Santa Cruz safe, rather than weird, has even garnered attention in the New York Times last Sunday. The newspaper called it an "identity crisis."

Some of those in a city once known for its compassion for the less fortunate has come to feel taken advantage by those who don't want to work and want to get free food and services. They are making the city unsafe and unsavory, they say.

Meanwhile, others worry that compassion will be taken out of the picture and Santa Cruz will become some kind of heartless Carmel, with clean, well-lighted streets, toys for the rich and no soul. Or in the words of some of the most radical throwbacks to the city's hippie days, a gestapo-like place where people will lose the right to sleep wherever they want.

former Mayor Don Lane worried that compassion has become a bad word lately for some around town.

Mayor Hilary Bryant thanked the families who walked to City Hall and passed out cookies to the kids, who were attending their first political event. Some of them were chanting, "No more needles."

"There's no easy answer," said Bryant, in an interview last week. 

That was never more clear than after the rally, eating at Pizza My Heart downtown, when this reporter and friends spotted two men in their 20s  eating food from the garbage pail outside. One of them stole salad dressing from inside to season the pickings from the trash bin.

Both walked down the street reaching into every garbage for food – all while blocks away the Homeless Services Center offered free meals.