{"id":355966,"date":"2018-04-09T19:44:02","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T18:44:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/lawsuit-accuses-washington-d-c-of-destroying-personal-belongings-of-the-homeless\/"},"modified":"2018-04-09T19:44:02","modified_gmt":"2018-04-09T18:44:02","slug":"lawsuit-accuses-washington-d-c-of-destroying-personal-belongings-of-the-homeless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/lawsuit-accuses-washington-d-c-of-destroying-personal-belongings-of-the-homeless\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawsuit accuses Washington, D.C. of destroying personal belongings of the homeless"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>Lawsuit accuses Washington, D.C. of destroying personal belongings of the homeless<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    By<br \/>\n    Harvey Simpkins<br \/>\n    <br \/>9 April 2018<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>On March 28, a class action lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the D.C. government\u2019s practice of throwing out the personal belongings of the homeless. The lawsuit asserts that the city is violating the 4th Amendment\u2019s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as ignoring the city\u2019s own protocol requiring that possessions confiscated during the clearing of homeless encampments be stored for up to 60 days.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, the lawsuit states that the city \u201chas followed a consistent practice of destroying unattended belongings whenever the owner is absent for some or all of a clearing,\u201d including \u201ctents and other shelters, bicycles, blankets, clothing, identification documents, medications, Social Security cards, medical and court records, family photographs, letters, and other personal belongings.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Such actions put the homeless \u201cin grave danger of suffering irreparable harm through loss of personal property that is necessary for survival or that cannot be replaced,\u201d the suit states. As a remedy, the two named plaintiffs, Shanel Proctor and Charlaine Braxton, are seeking a permanent injunction against the District to prevent further destruction of homeless people\u2019s possessions.<\/p>\n<p>Proctor and Braxton allege in the lawsuit that their tents, mattresses, food, clothing, electronics, and identity documents were either lost or destroyed during numerous city-led clearings of their encampment in 2016 and 2017, a fate suffered by other homeless residents living there. The lawsuit also asserts that since November 2016, D.C. has conducted approximately 70 encampment clearings.<\/p>\n<p>In a declaration&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2018\/04\/09\/home-a09.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 Lawsuit accuses Washington, D.C. of destroying personal belongings of the homeless By Harvey Simpkins 9 April 2018 On March 28, a class action lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the D.C. government\u2019s practice of throwing out the personal belongings of the homeless. The lawsuit asserts that the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-355966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}