‘Cruel and cold’: man faces backlash for dousing unhoused woman with water
San Francisco is another time reckoning with its remedy of unhoused human beings after a video of a enterprise proprietor spraying a female with water from a lawn hose unfold online.
Collier Gwin, the proprietor of Foster Gwin Gallery in downtown San Francisco, admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle that he blasted water on an unhoused female sitting at the sidewalk in the front of his enterprise. The video, captured on Monday morning through the proprietor of a close-by bakery, suggests Gwin spraying the female, who changed into crying out in distress. In a relaxed voice, Gwin then tells her, “Just move,” earlier than spraying her again.
The Guardian has now no longer been capable of affirm the identification of the victim, who regarded to be a Black female that nearby enterprise proprietors had visible withinside the community earlier than.
Gwin did now no longer right now reply to the Guardian’s request for comment. In an interview with the Chronicle, he did now no longer specific remorse, saying: “I’m handiest sorry that … my manner of assisting her countlessly has gotten not anything done.”
“It changed into absolutely simply merciless and cold. And I suppose maximum folks who noticed the video had been absolutely stunned through the callousness and shortage of feeling of the act,” stated Jennifer Friedenbach, govt director of the Coalition on Homelessness. “It’s anti-Black and anti-homeless.”
The photos elicited surprise and outrage online. Commenters referred to as Gwin’s moves “reprehensible” and “evil”. The gallery’s Google web page were taken down through Tuesday afternoon, whilst dozens of one-supermegacelebrity opinions on its Yelp web page referenced the video.
The San Francisco police showed that officials spoke back to the incident on Monday. “Officers interviewed each events who declined in addition police motion at that time,” a spokesperson for the branch stated.
The incident, which prison professionals stated may be charged as assault, got here amid every week of severe storms withinside the Bay Area and California. Over the weekend, unhoused human beings in Sacramento died after timber fell directly to their tents.
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Although it changed into now no longer raining on Monday morning while Gwin attacked the female, amid frigid temperatures and heavy winds this week, Friedenbach mentioned that spraying a person who lives exterior with water ought to threaten their life. “Staying dry is the maximum essential element that an man or woman can do to keep away from hypothermia,” she stated.
The video is the modern day of numerous latest films depicting enraged San Francisco citizens attacking unhoused human beings, amid an escalating housing and homelessness disaster withinside the metropolis.
Last month, a decide issued an injunction barring San Francisco government from clearing homeless encampments, mentioning human beings for sound asleep in public or seizing their belongings. A federal lawsuit has alleged that the metropolis punishes human beings for sound asleep outdoor once they have nowhere else to go.
But homelessness advocates have alleged that the sweeps have continued, in violation of the ban. A Chronicle research additionally located that the management of the San Francisco mayor, London Breed, has spent hundreds of thousands because 2019 to evict human beings from single-room-occupancy lodges which have been touted as a method to the homelessness disaster.
Investigations through the Guardian have located that withinside the Bay Area and throughout California, the maximum susceptible unhoused human beings, along with the aged and people with disabilities, were evicted from encampments and forcibly eliminated from outside camps with out being presented a feasible opportunity vicinity to stay.
When government violently clean encampments and confiscate the belongings of human beings sound asleep exterior, it sends a message to citizens that such remedy is acceptable, stated Friedenbach.
“I suppose the metropolis’s moves set a tone, and that they began out telling that it’s OK to deal with unhoused human beings like garbage,” she stated. “This
is a reminder that we want to make certain that each one of our procedures to homelessness are infused with dignity and recognize for unhoused human beings.”
