Unfair Park from p4 which better protects against the current vi- rus variants.” On Friday, Dallas County health authori- ties received updated booster doses that pro- vide greater protection against the highly contagious omicron subvariants.The re- vamped boosters are designed to provide greater protection against the especially con- tagious omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5. As of last Wednesday, the Dallas Indepen- dent School District had documented at least 1,781 positive coronavirus cases since the start of the school year last month. Garland ISD has recorded more than 2,100 cases among students and campus staff this school year, but only 61 are considered active. According to data published by The New York Times, Texas has had more than 7.79 million coronavirus cases since the pan- demic first hit in early 2020. Of those cases, more than 90,000 resulted in deaths. Late last month, provisional data re- leased by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicated a dip in U.S. life expectancy for a second year in a row. In 2019, life expectancy was 79 years, but it dropped to 77 the next year. In 2021, that number fell again to 76.1. The CDC described COVID-19 as the “the leading cause contributing negatively to the change in life expectancy for the total population.” In Texas, around 62% of the population is fully vaccinated, compared with 68% of peo- ple across the U.S. ▼ HOMELESSNESS ‘ARMED RESISTANCE’ T DALLAS’ ENCAMPMENT SWEEPS HAVE GOTTEN TENSER, WITH SOME ACTIVISTS SHOWING UP IN PROTEST WITH RIFLES. BY JACOB VAUGHN he city is preparing for resistance during future sweeps at local home- less encampments. These sweeps can generally be separated into two categories: cleanings and closures. Cleanings aren’t supposed to lead to the displacement of any encampment residents. This isn’t true for closures, in which city staff will try to get camp residents into some form of housing. During some of these sweeps, homeless residents will lose per- sonal belongings, such as forms of identifi- cation that may be needed to get into local shelters. When city staff turned out for a cleanup of an encampment under Interstate 45 in July, they were met by dozens of activists, some of whom were armed with rifles. They used their bodies and cars to keep city staff from cleaning the encampment, according to a Dallas Morning News editorial con- demning the activists’ armed response. In a recent memo, Deputy City Manager John Fortune laid out a plan for how staff may handle future sweeps faced with resis- tance, armed or otherwise. “City employees have recently encoun- 6 tered resistance from activists and armed in- dividuals at the site of homeless encampment clean ups,” the memo says. So, the Dallas City Marshal’s Office, Dallas Po- lice Department, Code Enforcement, and Office of Homeless Solutions created a tiered response for what they might see at future encampment cleanings or closures. Tier 1 scenarios won’t see the closure of an encampment. In this scenario, if resis- tance isn’t expected, there will only be city marshals, and DPD neighborhood police of- ficers on standby. Tier 2 could involve a cleaning or closure of an encampment, and advanced knowl- edge that activists will be on the scene. In this case, the marshals and neighborhood officers would be on standby, on top of a sep- arate DPD response team. Tier 3 level responses will always involve an encampment closure with advanced knowledge of activists and open-carry pro- testers on the scene. With a high likelihood of active resistance and possible arrests, ac- cording to the memo, the marshals, neigh- borhood officers and DPD response team will all be on standby for tier 3 scenarios. In these events, DPD will notify the mayor and responsible City Council mem- ber about the planned resistance and possi- bility for arrests. DPD would also send out “advance messaging,” according to the memo, encouraging people to protest peace- fully and advise that “destruction of prop- erty, interference with city workers, threats and/or violence will not be tolerated.” The encampment sweeps are meant to be a part of the Dallas R.E.A.L Time Rapid Re- housing Initiative, which has helped remove hundreds of people from the streets and get them into housing since last September. But the city doesn’t always have a place to put the homeless after sweeping them from encampments, and local shelters are rou- tinely at capacity. When they can get into lo- cal shelters, some homeless people say they feel like they’re losing their autonomy be- cause of strict rules that may be in place, such as curfews, not allowing pets and sepa- rating genders. In a written statement to the Observer, a Dallas spokesperson said the city doesn’t sweep encampments. Page Jones, the spokesperson, said the city schedules clean- ings of the encampments, giving residents a 72-hour notice. “In special circumstances, individuals are given a longer period of time, which is Dallas attempts to clean up an encampment in 2021. dependent on multiple factors such as size of the encampment population, logistics of vendor and partner availability, housing placement, and individual needs of the cli- ents,” Jones said. “Outside of the Dallas R.E.A.L Time Rapid Rehousing (DRTRR), encampments are only shut down if there is an immediate health or safety hazard dictat- ing that the site cannot remain because of the danger posed to the residents them- selves and the larger community or if it is on private property and the owner enforces a closure.” Jones said staff have found that armed re- sistance usually depends on people’s relation- ships with different camps. Staff is working on establishing relationships with residents to “deter the issue of armed resistance,” Jones said. City staff have been met with armed re- sistance at encampments three times this year. Jones also said some activists have showed up to community meetings with the intention to aggressively approach city staff. “To that point, the City’s Office of Homeless Solutions and other departmen- tal professionals are always willing to en- gage, educate, and partner with residents and organizations serious about addressing challenges facing our unsheltered popula- tion to make our community safer,” Jones said. “Armed and/or aggressive activists in- timidating and harassing city staff both on and off the job compound the problems our unsheltered residents face and threaten public safety.” The Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club, one of the groups involved in the July incident, told the Observer that “everyone possesses a right to defend their home from those who mean to harm them.” “Why should that home be relegated to the differentiation between a roof and a tent?” the group said in a statement by email, also criticizing the city for not implementing “concrete policy to [provide] transitionary and long-term housing.” “The city manager’s office own tiered plans for displacement include the level of violence they are willing to inflict on their own citizens, from partnership with Dallas Marshalls up to and including Dallas Police response teams,” the group said. “Can you imagine a world where elected bureaucrats devoted the same energy to housing folks as they did building memos on how many armed people to bring?” The statement added: “There are over 3,000 vacant homes in the city of Dallas, but the prioritization of the city has been hand- cuffs over housekeys. Until this monopoliza- tion of violence ends, everyone is entitled to defend themselves and their neighbors.” ▼ HOUSING EVICTION FEUD C Jacob Vaughn A DALLAS ATTORNEY CONTINUES HIS FIGHT WITH A JUSTICE OF THE PEACE COURT. BY JACOB VAUGHN lerks in a Dallas County justice of the peace court offered testimony sup- porting a local attorney’s claim that someone faked a letter purportedly notify- ing a defendant of a change in a hearing date in her eviction case. Chantel Hardaway, a single mother of seven, said she didn’t know about the hear- ing because she never got the letter telling her of the new trial date. Hardaway’s hear- ing was initially set for June 15 before Judge Margaret O’Brien, but Hardaway’s landlord asked for a postponement, so the hearing was reset for July 27. When Hardaway didn’t appear then, the court entered a default judgment against her. Both O’Brien and court clerk Lutishia Williams, who says she filed the notice in question, said the letter found in Hard- away’s court file about the new date is legiti- mate and was properly mailed. But last month, local attorney Mark Melton said a tipster told him that a clerk forged the docu- ment and Hardaway was never given notice. Even if the notice had made it her way, Hardaway likely wouldn’t have been able to show because she was still in the hospital af- ter giving birth to a son. Melton and a team of lawyers at the non- profit Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center have been working throughout the pandemic to help Dallas County residents fight evictions. Melton requested the default judgment be set aside so Hardaway could tell the court what happened, but O’Brien refused. That’s when Melton asked the court to turn over the notice they sent Hardaway about the trial date change. It didn’t look like others he’d seen. The notification looked like it had been typed using the Microsoft Word program and included the court’s seal in the letterhead. Shortly after, Melton heard from the tip- ster who said the notice about the hearing date had been forged. He filed a lawsuit against the landlord to have the eviction stopped and has been vocal ever since about getting to the bottom of what happened. On social media, Melton told followers he was deposing clerks in O’Brien’s court. He recently released those video deposi- tions to the Observer. Melton deposed four people with O’Brien’s court: Wendy Lopez, Tanya Carter, Beatriz Evans and Veronica Sanchez. They all said it’s common for defendants to claim they didn’t receive notices from the court. Usually, rectifying the situation is as simple as show- ing them documents in their file. It >> p8 SEPTEMBER 15–21, 2022 DALLAS OBSERVER CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS dallasobserver.com
