Watching from a wheelchair as crucial items are trashed: Unhoused people sue California cities
While much of San Bernardino was asleep, 55-year-old Lenka John watched from her wheelchair as city employees pitched her medical records, heart monitor, walker and disability assistance paperwork into a trash truck.
She pleaded with the workers to help retrieve her belongings from the compactor. But it was too late.
"I felt violated," John said.
She, along with a grassroots mutual aid organization and two other unhoused people with disabilities, filed a civil rights lawsuit earlier this month challenging San Bernardino's practice of seizing and destroying the personal belongings of unhoused people when forcing them to relocate.
The same day that complaint was filed, on Aug. 2, the city of Riverside was hit with a class-action lawsuit alleging many of the same violations.
The lawsuits against the Inland Empire's two largest cities are the latest targeting California
