Thomas Nimmo has been living along the American River Parkway in Sacramento for several years. Earlier this month, he said he had a run-in with a Sacramento County park ranger.
"I had just gotten to the park and was sitting down smoking a cigarette and then I saw the park ranger come by," Nimmo said. "They gave me a ticket for having the buggy in the park. They said, 'Well, we can't get you on anything else, but we'll get you on this.' "
Nimmo said he accepted the ticket and went down to Loaves & Fishes, which provides services to the homeless, to use their legal aid services to get it taken care of. He wound up with six hours of community service.
"I was really upset," Nimmo said.
Local officials say homeless camping along the American River Parkway, a 23-mile stretch along the American River, has always been an issue. The dense trees and brush make it easy to be discreet. But around this time of the year, when the river rises, it forces residents to move away from the water and to more visible spaces, such as levees.
Prior to this year, rangers would often ticket homeless residents during these seasons for camping on the parkway. But then the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the Martin v. City of Boise decision in 2018, which argued that citing homeless people for camping — when there's nowhere else for them to go — falls under cruel and unusual punishment and therefore is unconstitutional.
"Basically what it did was say, effectively, you cannot as a park ranger or a city cop give a ticket for camping," said Tamara Edge, legal director at Loaves & Fishes. "If anything, the harassment has increased, not decreased."
Edge said that, along with the rash of ticketing for specific offenses, they're seeing three or four under one citation.
