mango4ever and fringe ministry

     I don’t tell this story because I want people to hate the police, I tell this story because if the city addresses issues like this it will strengthen our local police and make us all safer and make Salt Lake City the best city in the country.  The good thing about people in Utah is there is a huge willingness to change and to be better today than we were yesterday.  It really is as Utah as “Oh my heck.”  I’m not from here, but after living here for over 12 years I am basically a local now.  I don’t even know how to get around now in my home of Santa Fe, NM, which I do visit as much as I can because that is where my two sisters live.  But the stories I want to tell now are not the only ones I have and there are way too many stories just like mine happening every day.

     The reason I write about these issues that I have had with the police is because I know that we have a huge problem in Utah when our homeless rate is 11 in 10,000 which is a little more than half of the national rate which is 20 in 10,000.  But, and this is the important number, our homeless mortality rate is 10 times higher than that of the general population, and the national average mortality rate is about 3.5 times higher than that of the general population.  That is the best estimate that I could find in all the research I have done online.  That is a huge problem, and while there is naturally going to be a higher mortality rate among the homeless due to the dangers of the lifestyle and the fact that homeless people are more likely to be addicted to dangerous drugs like fentanyl, the fact that our rate is so high while we have such a small homeless population is scary.  Especially for people like me who have made careers out of helping vulnerable communities.

     Here are two stories about how I have been personally victimized by the Salt Lake City Police.  No matter what you feel about the homeless community, the fact is that systematic disenfranchisement like this is just deplorable and should not be accepted in a civilized society, no matter who it is happening to it is wrong. Period.

     In the winter of 2019-2020, I was recently homeless and working at a few options to get off the street.  At the time it was very hard to get beds at the shelter, so I had to camp out.  I tried to only camp out in places where I wouldn’t be seen or in the way of businesses.  One day while walking down the street, not loitering but walking down the street, I was stopped by the police who just grabbed my cart, not a shopping cart but a cart that I bought with my own money from ACE Hardware, with my two bags in it and just threw it in the back of a truck.  They threatened me and wouldn’t even allow me to get my wallet out of my backpack.  They literally stole everything I owned, including my driver’s license, my social security card, my birth certificate and all my credit and debit cards and about $75 that I had in cash.  They literally threatened me for trying to keep my identification, this can only be described as armed robbery.  I lost my job because of this, because I could barely survive after this let alone get to work. Yes, I had a job at the time, and after they stole all my identification it was very hard to get another job after that too.

     I understand the need to break up encampments when they become a crime or public health issue.  But I don’t see how accosting someone, stealing everything they own, and all their identification is helping the homeless issue in Salt Lake City.  The police are actively threatening the lives of innocent people with discriminatory practices like this. They had no right to stop me, let alone to steal everything I own. I would understand if I was illegally camped out, but the fact is I was only walking and homeless and they saw a vulnerable target that they could bully.  When these officers committed this armed robbery against me, I wasn’t camped out on the sidewalk, just walking down it.  I wasn’t breaking any laws, and everything they stole from me was stuff that I bought and paid for with money I earned at my job.  I would like to say that was the only time that I have been a victim of police misconduct in Salt Lake City, but after being here for about 12 years I have seen that is a far more common practice among them to threaten the lives of vulnerable people.  Most of the years I have been here I have not actually been homeless, but after my short homeless experience I have decided to make it my career to defend the homeless community from this kind of victimization at the hands of the police.

     I would like to count the police and the local government as allies in helping to ease the struggle of the people who do struggle with homelessness and do not want to become criminals.  I hope that in the future there can be better communication and training among the local police forces to end this kind of toxic discrimination.

     Here is the second story of how I was victimized by the Salt Lake City Police.  A few years ago, I had recently become homeless after my abusive boyfriend, Cameron James Harris, kidnapped me one morning, held me hostage in a moving vehicle and then forced me out of the vehicle at 35 mph.  After this I had to move out of my house and ended up losing my job.  I was also diagnosed with HIV and soon after that I got a bad blood infection that almost killed me.  While dealing with this, my doctor got me a bed at the Gail Miller Resource Center.  Within the first few weeks of being there I got attacked one day while walking back from the store to the shelter. 

     The details of the incident are as follows:

     As I was passing by Alpha Munitions (Address: 268 Paramount Avenue, Salt Lake City, Utah 84115), the proprietor of the business, Robert Danielson, kicked the gate into me so hard that I flew into the street (which thankfully had no traffic).  I didn’t see him because I wasn’t looking inside the fence I was walking by.  When I landed in the street, I was still not sure what was happening, all I knew was that someone had just attacked me, and I didn’t know who he was.  When he kicked the gate into me, he screamed “I hate all you f-ing junkies and I wish you would die!”

     I’m not a junkie, but I am sure I probably looked like one because the infection that almost killed me also caused me to lose over 100 pounds in less than a month.  Even if I was a drug user at the time, that would not give him the right to assault me just for walking down the sidewalk.  A woman in a wheelchair down the street had seen this and called the police for me because she thought I was in danger and really hurt because I couldn’t get up out of the street right away, and the truth is I was in danger as I had just been attacked by an armed thug.  I had to be helped up by another passerby who didn’t want to stick around very long, they told me later that they were afraid of Mr. Danielson.  They had every reason to be afraid of him too, he is a very unstable individual.

     When the police showed up, they did everything they could to feel like I didn’t have the right to call them, they were dismissive of me and my witness who called.  While taking my report the officer even had the nerve to say, “you don’t’ look hurt, you don’t’ even have a bruise,” mind you that was after I was kicked so hard that I flew into the street and couldn’t get up right away and had to have assistance getting up.  In the condition that I was in, being on many antibiotics to fight the infection in my blood, recovering from the very invasive surgery I had just had.  I have problems from the attack, physical and psychological, to this day.  So being told that I “didn’t look hurt” was very offensive to me.  Then they spent over an hour in his office and left me and my witness outside until I eventually just told her she could go because I felt bad keeping a sick woman in a wheelchair, who clearly had health concerns of her own, out in 90-degree weather for so long.  So, she was never able to give them her witness statement and they didn’t seem interested in taking her statement anyway.

     I was never able to prove the crime, even though it was captured on a police camera that Mr. Danielson lets them park in his business parking lot (as I mentioned before he has a working relationship with the police).  I could never get it that far anyway because I was unable to pursue my charges against Mr. Danielson because the police lied in their report and said that they couldn’t contact the suspect and therefore couldn’t charge him, and I could never get another officer to charge him either.  I find it hard to believe that the man who sells them bullets and even sat on the Ballpark city council and knows a lot of the local officers by name, was unable to be contacted the entire hour or more that they spent in his office.  So, the police protected him from ever being charged with the crime that he committed against me.

     That day is when I learned that the Gail Miller Resource Center has a whole file on how Mr. Danielson has been terrorizing their residents since the center opened.  He uses the fact that there is a lot of crime in the area to excuse his attacks against innocent people and the police don’t just let him get away with walking around the neighborhood, armed, and attacking anyone he wants, but they actively aid and abet his violent crimes.

     Another time when I was returning to the shelter, I saw that the security of the center had to protect a younger guy who must have been very early twenties at least from Mr. Danielson who was driving his jeep up and down the street chasing the kid and threatening him even after he ran into the shelter.  I found out later that he would wait for people to come out of the shelter so that he could threaten them too.  He would chase people around in his jeep and threaten them.  He had a lot of people scared in the center, and they had a good reason to fear the armed thug who terrorized them.  He is unstable and violent and terrorizes the community that lives in the center all the time.  In the center they all know about him, and they are all afraid of him, not just people who are committing crimes, but everyone is afraid of him, even some of the staff.  They have a nickname for him, Bullet Bob, and they all know to fear him.

     I don’t think it is appropriate that he uses the excuse that some homeless people commit crimes as an excuse to attack anyone that he wants.  Mark my words, he is a menace, and he should not be allowed to get away with violent crimes just because of his position and his working relationship with the police.  I support anyone who wants to help lower crime in the neighborhood around Gail Miller Resource Center, or anywhere else in the city for that matter.  But you can’t fight crime with more crime and that is what he is doing.

     If left unchecked this man is only going to get more and more dangerous.  Coming from the life I have I can tell a killer when I see one.  This man is a killer, and if he is allowed to continue terrorizing the community around the Gail Miller Resource Center much longer than he is going to kill someone if he hasn’t already.  He is far more dangerous than any gang member or drug dealer that I have ever met.

     As for what Mr. Danielson did to me, he could be charged with a violent felony if the police had not protected him.  If anyone else had hurt someone who was just walking down the street by kicking a large metal gate (which could be considered a weapon) into them, they would be charged with felony assault. 

     The police should be allies for citizen safety whether they are rich or poor, they should not be the biggest danger to them.  This is not acceptable.  These are criminal thugs who are terrorizing people and taking advantage of the fact that they are vulnerable and less likely to speak out about the things that the police are doing to them.