A citizen's arrest need not involve forcibly detaining someone. In fact the words "citizens arrest" may simply mean that you are requiring a police officer to write a citation and get a promise to appear from a suspected criminal downtown.

It can involve simply taking a picture of a person committing a criminal act, informing the person s/he is committing a crime and asking that person to wait for a police officer to arrive. If the person declines to do so, the report can be forwarded to the police.

The most efficacious time to make arrests for violations of these selectively-enforced anti-homeless ordinances is when police are nearby with video equipment or witnesses ready to make statements. At that point, you point out the offending yuppie jaywalker (or person in a business suit sitting on the edge of a planter, or a Democratic Party organizer with a sign leaning against or posted on public property or a musician playing a guitar while seated on a public bench or in front of a public cafe) to a police officer.

You announce (before witnesses and/or on videotape if possible) that you are making a citizen's arrest and would like to turn the offending individual into the police and DEMAND that a citation be issued.

For those concerned with fine points, you must be careful to know the exact text of the law. Some of the Downtown Ordinances have language that requires that a police officer, host, etc. warn an individual that s/he is guilty of a violation before making the arrest.

Such cases are problematic, (and perhaps unconstitutional) since they seem to bar citizen arrests without the participation of police or crypto-cops like the hosts.
It's not clear to me in such cases who can legitimately give "warnings" to police, though one can always try and then ask the police officer to issue a citation when your warning (again, tape or video recorded, if possible) is ignored.

You needn't follow through with the ticket,though, and presumably, without your testimony in court, the "perpetrator" will go free if s/he demands a court trial.


The problem, of course, with this whole approach is that it mirrors police practices downtown. Instead of a furthering a festival of life and expanding public spaces, this is a punitive approach that involves using bad laws against innocent people.

I have myself made a Citizen's Arrest of Host Terry Butler, for loud and offensive noise, when he was the Host in the Downtown Information Center in charge of the "classical music" that was being blasted out in January to get rid of youth and hippie folk in front of New Leaf. Butler was cited, but shortly thereafter (which I learned only later), the police officer himself quashed the ticket under a code section stating that Butler's behavior (blasting out amplified music under the direction of the Redevelopment Agency which bothered workers across the street at Cottontales) did not rise to a crime.

In the case of somehow whom you have video evidence that he technically broke the law (jaywalking), it would be harder for the police department to avoid legal liability.

Note that the above remarks are speculative and the process untested. The real point is to find some way to rein in a police department that has been harassing musicians, performers, and poor people downtown as well as to dump the 1994 and recent Downtown Ordinances.

We have real problems downtown. No need to contribute to them with stupid anti-homeless laws.