At what point does camping outside of your business and preventing people from coming in count as financial violence? If having complaints with the police and city management is as effective as yelling into the sky, how is that a solution?
Put yourself in the shoes of the business owner - what would you have done in this situation?
It doesn't. Homeless people aren't committing financial violence. You can think homelessness causes a blight on the community, it doesn't look good, or whatever. To try to say homeless people are commit financial violence by not having homes is something that I'm not going to entertain.
If your complaints aren't heard by the police and city management, you sue the police and city management. Straight forward. If PG&E cut off his lights, or refused to provide the necessary maintenance, would he go throw a rock through the window at the PG&E office? No, he would go through civilized channels.
The only reason he felt like he COULD spray her with water was because she was homeless. He thought he could do it, it would force her to move, and that nobody would care about a soaking wet homeless person. In society we have civilized channels to handle these types of situations, as difficult/annoying/longwinded as they may be.
We do this so that we don't descend into lawlessness. The same reason why the police and management should ACTUALLY be tackling the lawless homelessness are the same reasons that they should not allow him to spray homeless people with water without recourse.
When you decide to take things into your own hands and break the law doing so, there are consequences. Sucks to be him.
>To try to say homeless people are commit financial violence by not having homes is something that I'm not going to entertain.
I'm not saying that. I am saying that because the guy would refuse to leave and would physically block people from coming into the store.
I don't think you actually read any of the CBS article I linked given the insane assumptions you are immediately making that this person who you have never met is instantly in the wrong, with some of those assumptions being very obviously shown wrong in the article.
And on what grounds would you sue the police? That they aren't doing enough? Police do not legally have an obligation to protect anyone, or do anything for that matter. Also good luck suing the police when you have no money because you literally cannot get someone who is caring away customers to leave.
> I'm not saying that. I am saying that because the guy would refuse to leave and would physically block people from coming into the store.
The headline images shows the homeless person sitting beside a trashcan and a tree. That's blocking the door?
> I don't think you actually read any of the CBS article I linked given the insane assumptions you are immediately making that this person who you have never met is instantly in the wrong, with some of those assumptions being very obviously shown wrong in the article.
Please tell me what I've gotten wrong as outlined in the article, and also the insane assumption I have made.
< And on what grounds would you sue the police? That they aren't doing enough? Police do not legally have an obligation to protect anyone, or do anything for that matter. Also good luck suing the police when you have no money because you literally cannot get someone who is caring away customers to leave.
You can sue for damages with explanation in Civil court.
I'm starting to wonder if you even read my comment. So let me just repeat for you:
>Gwin has lived in San Francisco for 45 years. He said this confrontation was the result of multiple attempts to get the woman help, after he spent days cleaning up her mess and letting her sleep in his doorway. He added that she often knocks over trash cans, and her behavior has scared off his clients.
>Gwin said he and other business owners in the area have called SFPD and social services more than two dozen times in the last two weeks.
This person had:
- frequently made messes (i'm guessing defecating) outside of the business
- slept in the doorway of the business
- knocks over trash cans
- scares off clients
- had the cops and social services called on them multiple times with absolutely no action
I did. I reiterate my first comment again (which you responded to): all of that can be true, he still has no justification for spraying anyone with water. He needs to take it up with the city.
I'll also reiterate my second comment that you responded to: He needs to sue the city.
> If your complaints aren't heard by the police and city management, you sue the police and city management. Straight forward.
You think suing the police and city management are straightforward? That is an expensive and likely years-long process. If your problem is that you're losing a significant amount of business every day because of the presence of this woman, who is clearly breaking laws on a regular basis, then the reality is that a lawsuit against a city is likely to end in you going bankrupt before it even reaches a verdict.
How is that a straightforward solution? How is it any kind of a solution?
> We do this so that we don't descend into lawlessness.
If this guy is suffering serious harm because a woman is repeatedly breaking the law, why do you say his actions caused us to descend into lawlesness? Weren't we already there?
>You think suing the police and city management are straightforward? That is an expensive and likely years-long process. If your problem is that you're losing a significant amount of business every day because of the presence of this woman, who is clearly breaking laws on a regular basis, then the reality is that a lawsuit against a city is likely to end in you going bankrupt before it even reaches a verdict.
I never said it was something that you could do in an afternoon, in fact I outlined how these process can be meandering. They are however the CORRECT and CIVILIZE process to have grievances heard. You are not entitled to microwave solutions.
> If this guy is suffering serious harm because a woman is repeatedly breaking the law, why do you say his actions caused us to descend into lawlesness? Weren't we already there?
He was not suffering any serious harm when he decided to spray her with water while she sat by a trashcan and and a tree. Be real.
And at any rate he is not entitled to spraying anyone with water. Hence the charges.
No one is entitled to stand outside of someone's business screaming obscenities, but that's what this woman is doing. If people should be arrested and prosecuted for engaging in illegal behavior that they're not entitled to engage in, she should be arrested and charged, correct?
She should not. Which is why the police should act. If the police do not act, you spur the city to get the police to act. Sue the city.
You're fishing for a justification for this man to assault a homeless person because he didn't want them there. There isn't one. The same sanctity of law that should spur the police to stop her from causing a disturbance is the same that should charge him for assault.
> You're fishing for a justification for this man to assault a homeless person because he didn't want them there.
I would slightly disagree with that - it's not just because he didn't want the homeless person there, it's because the homeless person was breaking the law in ways that directly harmed his business. I think there's a meaningful difference between the case of just not wanting someone to be somewhere vs. actually being harmed by that person, and this is the latter case.
> The same sanctity of law that should spur the police to stop her from causing a disturbance is the same that should charge him for assault.
This is true in theory, but we know in this case that the sanctity of law you're referring to doesn't exist, because if it did the police would have stopped her. Why should he do anything based on a principle that is demonstrable nonexistent, particular when it's nonexistent in the one case that he really, really needs to rely on it?
Everybody's saying nobody should be harmed, which is true in theory, but he is being harmed. Even though everyone purports to be against harm, their proposed answers are all that he should allow himself to continue being harmed (that includes any suggestion that he should sue - given the nature of the legal system, trying to resolve this with a lawsuit guarantees that he will continue to suffer harm for years).
If the police do not act, you spur the city to get the police to act. Sue the city.
You're absolutely right.
The man should deplete his wealth hiring lawyers to navigate the byzantine rules of dysfunctional city bureaucracy. He should dedicate his life to this goal on top of his full-time work.
After a few years, some statements will be made and nothing will happen. But at least he took the high road to nowhere.
"Financial violence" is a hell of a rhetorical turn. You don't get to redefine "violence" into anything you don't like, and you don't get to assault someone just because you think they're costing your business money. That's not a road we want to go down, as a society.
I had my entire life savings stolen by an ex-fiancée. My entire life was turned upside down, and every aspect of my life made public in the courts. I say that I was financially raped, because the experience gave me PTSD and worse.
This person sure has hell experienced what I would term financial violence. His business was being assaulted regularly. His government let it happen.
Honestly, he should have sprayed down the town police and politicians. They utterly failed both the woman and the business owner in this case.
“I killed off all of my competitors, you see, they were committing financial violence against me by having better products, no one wanted to buy from me anymore”
Financial crimes absolutely can cause death and bodily injury on a large scale. Madoff's ponzi scheme caused multiple suicides, for example, including Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet, and Charles Murphy. Then there are the thousands of people who suddenly could not afford healthcare, or lost their home.
How is spraying a woman with a water hose a solution? It certainly isn’t going to improve his store’s public image or help the woman get help. Business owners are not entitled to taking out their frustrations on homeless people.
He's not just taking out his frustrations about his general life problems on random homeless people; he's trying to get one specific homeless person who is actively causing problems for his business while repeatedly breaking the law to stop. He's also only doing so after having attempted to use more legal and appropriate interventions repeatedly, only to be blown off by the people in government who are responsible for resolving this kind of situation to totally ignore him.
Put yourself in the shoes of the business owner - what would you have done in this situation?