What Happens After a Homeless Person Is Arrested for Camping? Often, Not Much

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Wickey Two Hands sat at the defense table on a recent Thursday morning, holding in his lap the red baseball cap he’d doffed out of respect for the judge.

The 77-year-old homeless man was supposed to be the first person tried in court under an ordinance Fresno passed last year making it a crime to camp in all public places. Over the past six months, he’d spent hours in a courtroom, arriving early for each hearing. He’d packed up and moved his campsite multiple times, trying to find out-of-the-way spots where he could avoid getting arrested again.

But instead of sending Two Hands’ case before a jury, the judge — on the day trial was supposed to begin — dismissed all charges. The reason? The city waited too long to prosecute.

Two Hands’ case shines a spotlight on a contradiction seen around the state in recent months. California cities are passing ordinances left and right that allow police to arrest or cite unhoused people for camping on their streets and sidewalks, or in their parks. Police are making arrests. But when it comes to prosecuting, trying or sentencing people for violating these ordinances, some cities haven’t been able to follow through. In many cases, prosecutors aren’t filing charges. If people are charged, their cases often are dismissed quickly. Two Hands’ case was a rarity for how close it came to trial. But in the end, it too was thrown out.

That has some wondering: what’s the point of arresting people at all?

Two Hands’ case was set to be a bellwether to see if Fresno’s camping ban — under which police have made several hundred arrests already — would hold up before a jury. The city and county — as well as Two Hands’ lawyer, activists and even local journalists — invested a considerable amount of resources in the case before it was ultimately dismissed last week without a trial or any public hearings on its merits.

“They wasted a lot of time and money pursuing this case,” said Ron Hochbaum, a law professor at the University of the Pacific who specializes in homelessness and poverty law. “When you think about all the people who were involved, from police to the city attorney’s office to judges and court clerks and so on. That’s probably hundreds of hours of work and thousands of dollars wasted. And that money would be better spent by simply offering Mr. Two Hands housing without arresting him.”

CalMatters analyzed the resources that went into prosecuting Two Hands’ case:

At 8:40 a.m. on Oct. 14, 2024, two Fresno police officers came across Two Hands and his belongings on the side of the road and arrested him for camping in a public place and illegally possessing a shopping cart.

Over the next six months, Two Hands attended four hearings in three different courtrooms. Before each hearing, he dropped off his belongings at a friend’s house and then caught the bus to the downtown Fresno courthouse, sometimes arriving as much as an hour early so he didn’t miss anything. After court, an advocate sometimes drove him back to his campsite. On April 10, the day his trial was supposed to begin, he missed work to attend court, skipping his scheduled shift at a wrecking yard and with it, his chance to earn money for food and other necessities for the day.

City and county resources also went into each hearing. Public funds paid for the presence of a judge, a bailiff and staff from the city attorney’s office. The city brought on outside law firm Manning Kass to help prosecute the case.

Kevin Little, a private attorney who specializes in civil rights litigation, signed on to defend Two Hands pro bono. Little estimates he spent between 100 and 150 hours on Two Hands’ case. He had two additional staff members helping him, and they put in another 50 to 100 hours. The week the case was supposed to go to trial, Little said he spent a couple nights working in his office until 3 a.m.

Another attorney, Patience Milrod, was also in court on April 10. She was there to represent Pablo Orihuela, a Fresnoland journalist who had been covering Two Hands’ case and received a subpoena to testify on behalf of the prosecution. Attorney Karl Olson was standing by to contest a subpoena issued to Fresno Bee reporter Thaddeus Miller, according to the Bee.

In addition to Orihuela and Miller, journalists from CalMatters and ABC30 were there to cover the trial.

About two-dozen activists and local community members also showed up at the courthouse — some arriving as early as 7 a.m. despite work and childcare obligations — to support Two Hands on the day his trial was set to start. Activist Wes White drove two-and-a-half hours from Salinas to be there.

After all that, Judge Brian Alvarez dismissed the case. He found that the trial should have started by March 6, and going past that date would violate Two Hands’ right to a speedy trial. Two Hands’ supporters filed out of the courtroom and filled the hallway, cheering, until a bailiff asked them to keep it down.

“I’m really shocked by how much money and resources they put into this,” said advocate Dez Martinez, who recently helped Two Hands get into a shelter. “There was so much money used in this so they can make a point because they don’t want to lose a case. It just bothers me that they used that (many resources) and finances into punishing Wickey instead of doing what I did: sit down and talk to him, figure out why does he not want to go inside.”

The trial originally was set to start Feb. 20, but the city asked for a delay, which was granted by Judge Carlos Cabrera. Judge Alvarez appeared to disagree with that ruling.

The city blamed Two Hands’ team for the case getting thrown out. The defense’s subpoena request forced the city to review an extensive amount of documents, which took extra time, Deputy City Attorney Daniel Cisneros told the court. The city also had tried to prevent the case from going to trial by offering Two Hands a plea deal, which it said would come with a shelter bed. Two Hands declined, instead opting to try to clear his name through a trial.

“The City’s position is to continue to offer plea deals to defendants who accept housing and services offered by the City,” the city attorney’s office said in an emailed statement from Noemi Schwartz. “It is unfortunate that this defendant declined the services and housing offered by City at a congregate shelter at Travel Inn and will likely end up back on the streets without shelter and assistance.”

Fresno’s new camping ordinance went into effect in September, making it a misdemeanor to sit, lie, sleep or camp in a public place. But most people arrested aren’t prosecuted, and even fewer come close to a trial. Fresno police made 322 arrests under that ordinance from October 2024 through January 2025. During that time, the city attorney’s office filed charges in just 132 camping cases. The defendant failed to show up in court in more than half of the cases in which charges were filed. Only one other case, in addition to Two Hands’, was listed as headed toward trial.

It’s a similar situation in other cities, from the Bay Area to Southern California. Police in Los Angeles made 238 camping arrests last year, and the city attorney’s office declined to file charges in two-thirds of those cases. In San Francisco, nearly four in five illegal lodging arrests made since August 2024 have not resulted in charges, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Cities and district attorneys aren’t interested in prosecuting the cases because they know they don’t have enough room in jail and prisons to incarcerate everyone who is experiencing homelessness,” Hochbaum said. And they know slapping someone with a fine won’t stop them from sleeping outside, he said.

Instead, he said, many cities are using the threat of arrest to force unhoused people to move when they want to clear an encampment.

For the time being, Two Hands is sleeping inside after five years on the street. Martinez said she got him a 90-day stay at a city-run shelter — with no help from the city attorney’s office.

“(It’s) a pretty good day in my life,” Two Hands said outside the courthouse, after his case was dismissed. “Seventy-seven seasons I’ve been here, you know, I think I deserve it.”

While Two Hands was hesitant to accept a shelter bed at first, Martinez said after spending months talking to him, getting to know him and showing up at his side to his court dates, she won his trust. She promised to keep fighting to get Two Hands into permanent housing, sign him up for Social Security, help him access health care, and get him whatever else he needs.

“It’s not that he wants to stay outside,” Martinez said. “He’s tired. He doesn’t want to die on the sidewalk. He didn’t want to be given something and have it be taken away.”

Fresno still has yet to try anyone for sleeping outside, but that could change. Little is representing another unhoused man who was arrested for camping — and plans on bringing that case to trial.

“I hope the message the city gets,” Little said, “is leave the unhoused alone. Help them and don’t prosecute them. But if you are going to choose unfortunately to prosecute these cases, then you better come ready, because we’re not backing down.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.