San Francisco is reckoning with new reports of harassment and attacks on its homeless community, after video emerged of a person dumping a bucket of water on a homeless individual from the roof of a building.
The footage, which spread on social media this week, showed someone standing on a roof of a two-story building and throwing water on a person and their belongings on the street directly below. One witness told the Guardian it was clear the dousing on Sunday afternoon was intentional, and another local resident said he had witnessed a similar dumping incident targeting a homeless person on the same street a week prior.
“It was an attack,” said Richard Alexander Caraballo, who saw the incident from the window of an apartment across the street. “He just came out of nowhere … It was upsetting to see that happen as if it was his right to do that.”
The woman was standing with a shopping cart and other belongings when a man from above dumped a large bucket of water directly on her, said Caraballo, a 44-year-old graphic designer visiting from New York. He said that he initially thought it could have been an accident, but that the man then dumped a second bucket of water on to her things as she was trying to move her belongings.
“It was a direct hit … It seems like he’s really dead set on attacking people,” he said. “If he can do that, what’s next? Rocks?” The video shared on Twitter, first reported by NBC Bay Area, captured the second round of dumping, he said.
Brett Leader, who works in the building in the city’s Mission district where the video was shot, said he had seen an almost identical incident earlier this month. He was standing a few feet away when a bucket of water came pouring down on to a homeless person who was under a tarp on the street.
“This wasn’t an accident or coincidence. This was premeditated,” said Leader, who also lives in the area. “It just seemed so aggressive and immoral … It’s just not something you should do to anyone, regardless of whether they are homeless.”
The reward is now $1,000. And here is the video. Many thanks to the person who originally posted this. pic.twitter.com/9ileU656Y7
— Jim V.o.R. (@JimYoull) June 24, 2019
He said the individual had moved around under the tarp but had not gotten up: “It definitely soaked everything.”
Neither of the people in the video have been identified. A San Francisco police spokesperson said authorities were “aware of the incident” but that no victim had come forward to file a complaint.
The case follows a number of similar incidents in recent years in San Francisco and the surrounding northern California cities, which have struggled with a huge homeless crisis and housing shortage as the tech industry has boomed in the region.
Authorities released shocking video last year of a man in a suit kicking someone lying on the sidewalk in San Francisco, in an unprovoked attack. In Oakland, across the bay, a jogger was caught on camera grabbing a homeless man’s belongings and throwing them into a lake.
St Mary’s Cathedral, home of the Catholic archbishop of San Francisco, faced international backlash in 2015 after it installed water sprinklers above its doorways that were dousing homeless people seeking shelter there. A luxury fine arts and antiques auction faced similar criticism the following year after homeless people spoke out about the auctioneer using a sprinkler system to douse their belongings and prevent them from camping.
“This incident is indicative of the extreme level of class hatred against poor folks in San Francisco, especially hatred against unhoused residents,” said Leslie Dreyer, a local artist and organizer. She works with the Coalition on Homelessness on the Stolen Belonging project, which has been documenting raids on homeless people and incidents of the city and others trashing the belongings of people camped on the streets. “It’s just awful … There is so much hatred toward them, and they know it.”
A group of San Francisco residents in a wealthy neighborhood recently raised funds for a lawsuit to try and block a new homeless shelter from opening in the area.
Caraballo said the person who had dumped the water appeared to be an older white man with some gray hair and that his demeanor when he was pouring the water was disturbing: “This guy was just so calm … He was so cold about it.”
The woman, who was drenched, dried her belongings in the sun and set up a tent on the street that night, he added: “She could get sick, doesn’t he realize?”
A recent federal count showed vast increases of homeless people across the Bay Area, including a 20% surge in the number of unsheltered people in San Francisco, to nearly 5,200 total. The city has one of the highest concentrations of billionaires in the world.
In addition to city sweeps, businesses, private security officers and other residents also regularly bother people living on the streets, making it impossible for them to sleep or maintain their possessions, said Dreyer: “It has a mental health toll on people … It’s just horrible.”
Leader, who has lived in the city for 10 years, said he hoped the individual was caught and that this never happened again: “It’s important that folks are made aware that this is happening and it’s not OK.”