-Caveat Lector-
Ruling Favors Church, HomelessBy Patricia Hurtado
STAFF WRITER NEWSDAY December 20, 2001 In an early holiday gift to the city's most destitute, a federal judge in Manhattan yesterday granted a temporary restraining order prohibiting city police from rousting the homeless off the property of a Manhattan church located on a tony stretch of Fifth Avenue. After a brief hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence McKenna granted the request made by the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church to stop police from conducting nightly sweeps of sleeping homeless people on its grounds, a practice started about two weeks ago. The order would remain in effect until a hearing on a preliminary injunction could be held on Dec. 28, McKenna said. For the past two years, the church, which has Cartier and Tiffany's for neighbors, has allowed the homeless who refuse to go to shelters to sleep within its property line at 55th Street and Fifth Avenue as part of its homeless outreach program. It also operates a 10-bed homeless shelter inside. But the church filed suit Monday charging that police - acting at the behest of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik - recently began sending in police officers to bang on the homeless' cardboard boxes and tents with their batons and threatening to arrest anyone who did not leave. Yesterday, a city lawyer, Daniel Connolly, argued that the church was not suffering any irreparable harm to its ministry because "no ministry is happening after 9 p.m. when people are out there sleeping." He also accused it of operating "the world's worst illegal homeless shelter" by allowing the homeless to sleep on the sidewalk. But McKenna disagreed, saying the church was not operating an illegal shelter but an alternative. "The city's acts would impinge on the church's rights to the free expression of religion under the ... First Amendment," McKenna said from the bench. Margaret Shafer, who works at the shelter, said police continued to make nightly pre-dawn sweeps of the church property and during one incident last week police threatened to arrest any homeless people who did not immediately leave the area. She said police also cordoned off entrance to the church's steps. Chris Dunn, a lawyer with the New York Civil Liberties Union, representing the church, told McKenna yesterday that the area was "private property" and argued that the city has known about the practice for years and not acted. Connolly denied police threatened to arrest the homeless, only telling the judge they had tried to "invite" the homeless to go to shelters. |
