Alex Darocy Photography

The Freedom Sleepers encountered the first real rain of the season at their latest community sleepout held at Santa Cruz City Hall on November 24. Since July 4, a group of unhoused and housed activists, many of whom call themselves "Freedom Sleepers" have slept at Santa Cruz City hall every week to protest local laws that criminalize homelessness and the act of sleep. The next sleepout is planned for tonight, December 1, again at Santa Cruz City Hall. SCPD arrests a person sleeping at City Hall Due to the extreme weather on November 24, the majority of those attending the protest chose locations to sleep that were sheltered from the rain and wind. After the evening's city council meeting had concluded, one individual lay in a blanket in the walkway that leads to the main office in the city hall complex, which has a roof and is covered. The walkway also leads to council chambers, which is the location where the city council's agendas are posted for public disp...

On the evening of September 15, two First Alarm security guards, Nathan Hammack and Ken Hietala, violently detained Christina Latic Barnes, a black woman who had been peacefully sitting on the lawn in the courtyard of Santa Cruz City Hall during hours the area is open to the public. The security guards were employed by the city to monitor the Freedom Sleepers, who held their tenth in a series of all-night sleepouts at City Hall organized to protest local laws that criminalize homelessness. On September 15 at around 8pm, Nathan Hammack and Ken Hietla were patrolling the City Hall courtyard when they suddenly approached Barnes, who was sitting with a friend on a blanket on the lawn. When Barnes stood up, Hietala then walked behind her and stood very near to her body. Hammack also quickly moved in. "I was bombarded by two men," she recalled in an interview conducted later that evening. She was standing next to her blanket, and within an area that was delineated by o...

As a group of approximately one dozen Santa Cruz community members sat in the shade of a tree overlooking the San Lorenzo Park benchlands on the warm afternoon of June 19, a security guard from First Alarm stood nearby them watching every move they made. One of the community members subjected to the close and extended scrutiny said he was cited for being in possession of an open container that was not his, and he thought the initial contact with authorities was due to their perception he was still on probation, and that he would be violating his terms of release if caught doing something wrong. A security guard watches San Lorenzo Park users from approximately 30 feet away, using the pedestrian bridge as cover. The individual cited said he was not on probation and he was unknowingly sitting near the beer bottle when a security guard with First Alarm spotted it during one of several on-foot sweeps made directly through the group of park users that day. Those in the group said t...