S.T.O.P. TO MONITOR POLICE TREATMENT OF THE HOMELESS IN ORLANDO'S LAKE LUCERNE NEIGHBORHOOD

For immediate release:

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Members of S.T.O.P.--Stop the Ordinance Partnership, the S.T.O.P. legal team, and other concerned citizens will be inside the City of Orlando's designated homeless feeding site--Sylvia Lane--tomorrow (Mon., Nov. 20), beginning at 6 a.m. We will monitor how the Orlando Police Department and City of Orlando employees treat the homeless people who have been camping under the 408 overpass on Sylvia Lane and by the CSX railroad tracks near Sylvia Lane (both in the Lake Lucerne neighborhood). We also will hand out coffee and donuts, the funds for which have been donated by local citizens.

The OPD and City employees began forcible evictions of homeless people from those sites early Friday morning (Nov. 17), apparently under orders from Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and with the support of City Commissioner Patty Sheehan. The City took this action despite the fact that only 2,000 shelter beds are available for Central Florida's homeless population, conservatively estimated at 7,000. So thousands of homeless individuals have no alternative but to sleep and camp in such outdoor locations. In addition to the forced evictions, Orlando police stood by on Friday while City employees callously and illegally confiscated personal property of the homeless evictees, including clothes and prescription medications.

S.T.O.P. has collected more than 20 sworn declarations from homeless individuals detailing the illegal taking of their personal possessions by City employees. These statements will form part of the evidence being marshalled in support of the pleading for a temporary injunction being readied by S.T.O.P.'s legal team. ... The Court will be asked to bar the city from further evictions of homeless individuals living on public property within the City and from illegally confiscating and destroying homeless individuals' personal possessions.

Orlando has attempted, not entirely successfully, to force groups that formerly shared food with the homeless in downtown parks to use the Sylvia Lane site. Although it is a small parking lot surrounded by a barb-wire topped fence and only has portable toilets and no running water, S.T.O.P. feels it must use the site as a temporary sanctuary on Monday morning for homeless individuals who still may be residing in the Lake Lucerne neighborhood. S.T.O.P. is hopeful this will provide a measure of protection to these defenseless and destitute individuals, and that our non-violent presence will preclude a repeat of the strong-arm intimidation tactics employed against them on Friday morning by the OPD and City employees, including the deployment of OPD's SWAT team!

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