
Google's War Against the Homeless in Los Angeles - kushti
http://yashalevine.com/articles/we-got-geeks-inside-google-s-ugly-war-against-the-homeless-in-la
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tptacek
Something is off in this story. Early on, it recounts the story of a homeless
man who, along with his girlfriend, was maced by private security guards
(contracted, apparently, to Google) for not clearing off a public sidewalk.

That's bad, but it's not just that: it's a crime, and also a tort. No security
company that allowed its employees to pepper-spray nonviolent people on public
walkways --- or, really, _anywhere_ \--- could long remain in business.

If something like this is actually happening, Google's opponents don't need to
generate outrage. They just need to get onto the streets of Venice with
cameras, capture it happening, and help the victims make criminal and
(lucrative) civil complaints against one of the largest corporations in the
country.

What am I missing here?

~~~
DanBC
> What am I missing here?

You can do pretty much what you like (short of mass murder) to homeless people
and no-one, including police, gives a fuck.

Many homeless people have adversarial at best relationships with police and
will be reluctant to seek police assistance.

~~~
tptacek
That's just not true. In many places, it may (unfortunately) be the case that
there's no recourse when the _police_ assault homeless people. But ordinary
citizens have no presumptive right to use physical force against other people
in anything but self defense. Private security guards are nothing but ordinary
citizens.

The really famous cases of nonviolent people being pepper-sprayed are
instructive: they're university police, a special class of private security
guard actually deputized to use force.

I'm not here to argue that the homeless aren't abused, or aren't getting a
very raw deal with the law and law enforcement in general. I'm just saying
that the details in _this particular story_ seem off. Again, they should be
getting this on camera. Those videos could be worth a lot of money.

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Mithaldu
Impressive. I didn't think we'd experience Google explicitly doing evil this
quickly. In fact, if the mace anecdote is true, then this isn't even evil,
this is bodily assault, this is Google hiring people to commit crimes.

~~~
DanBC
(EDIT: Wait, they have Google employee badges?)

Google will claim that these are not google employees but contractors, and
that they're shocked at the lapse in standards, and that they've had strong
words with the contractors to remind them of Google's standards. They'll make
some token donation to a homeless shelter (or maybe they'll remind people of
the donations they presumably already make).

The pepper-spraying will continue, but in future guards will count to 3 before
spraying.

~~~
ryandrake
Nice, but you forgot the standard "We take XXXX very seriously" Mad-Lib PR
statement. Where, in this case, XXXX is "the rights of the homeless".

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ChuckMcM
These stories are always interesting to me, both from the author and the
target (in this case Google's) perspective.

The author goes out of their way to paint Google as a sort of tone deaf entity
with baskets of money spending a small amount on security to hassle and
threaten the "lesser" people who, through no fault of their own, find
themselves penniless and sitting on sidewalks near them.

The question though is a lot different. What, if any, responsibility does
Google have to the homeless? And what responsibility does Google have to its
employees?

I think the _responsibility_ for collecting funds from everyone in the form of
taxes and applying it the collective homeless problem, is that of the
Government. That is in part why we elect people to represent our neighborhoods
and our cities, so that they will use our taxes to address the issues the city
(or county) faces.

Google has the responsibility for making a safe and enjoyable workspace for
its employees. And pretty much that is it.

If we want to use Google's capital to help the homeless, the way we do that is
we tax them in the city, we take that tax money, and we apply it to the
homeless problem that the city faces.

Easy to say, hard to do. Many people will say that the great dumping of mental
patients into the streets[1] in the 1970's was a mistake. While the mentally
ill are not the majority of the population of homeless, they are the most
impactful on city services and on the _perception_ of the homeless issue.

It sounded from the article that Google was going to far in trying to improve
their employee's perception of safety, and the author was going to far in
implying that Google's wealth made them responsible to fix the problem. It
also sounds like the city councilman is in Google's employ :-) which tells you
perhaps the voters can have an impact here.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-
men...](http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-
patients-began.html?pagewanted=all)

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ghufran_syed
So if a journalist (together with a filmmaker and filmcrew) points a camera at
you without your permission, it's 'freedom of the press', but if you point a
camera at a journalist, it's classed as "aggressive", "creepy" and
"disturbing":

[the guard] "then got even more aggressive. He called us “paparazzi types” and
followed us around, repeatedly jamming his Android phone into our faces and
recording us in order to document our identities. It was creepy and disturbing
— especially because this all happened on public property."

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jbob2000
This happens all over the world, in every major city where there is a gap
between the rich and poor. This is not a Google, private security, or an LA
thing

In Toronto last year, I witnessed a homeless guy get kicked out of an ice
cream parlor by an undercover cop the moment he stepped in the door. The bank
up the street from me has a security guard outside 24/7, and during the
Winter, I saw him kick a homeless man out of the warm ATM vestibule. Last week
I watched the police round up a group of homeless sitting outside a McDonalds.
There's an article that floats around about Hawaii putting their homeless on a
one way trip to anywhere else.

There's no good place for people who don't have anywhere to be. They move to a
park and park-goers complain. Any place indoors they will get kicked out of
because they don't have money or a reason to be there. They can't stay in
shelters because they're overcrowded.

So this article sucks because it doesn't do anything but blame Google. Google
is just doing what any other independent actor would do; keeping a healthy and
safe appearance.

We can't solve the homeless problem, so I ask, where should they go?

~~~
teaneedz
I thought the article was helpful in shedding light on this disgraceful
practice. If Google is part of it, it deserves to be called out on it. The
problem may be bigger than just one company, but it doesn't mean that just
because others do it too, they should not be targeted. I appreciated the
article.

~~~
jbob2000
I don't know that I would call the practice of "displacing the homeless" as
disgraceful, but I agree that the way the private security elevated the
situation is. They shouldn't be defaulting to spraying mace, as one might
spray insecticide, it should just be there as a last resort.

The disgrace belongs to you and me and the rest of capitalistic society who
have let homelessness happen. Since we can't/won't house them, the only thing
we can do is shuffle them around.

~~~
teaneedz
Disgraceful is a good word for sweeping this huge social issue to places it's
less seen.

Yep, there's plenty of blame to go around. I hope we don't become desensitized
to the sufferings of others by moving "problems" out of eyesight though.

