It wasn’t the Sun coming up that woke Patrick Hogan in the pre-dawn hours of October 24, 2023. It was the glare of multiple flashlights and threatening calls from unidentified officers to “Hurry up . . . you got 15 minutes” to roll up all his life’s possessions in the dark with blinding light directed on his face. His only other option was to leave his belongings behind (as most do) and flee to avoid harassment, citation, physical confrontation, or jail. Law enforcement has come to expect this avoidance behavior from their prey, even prefer it, as it makes homeless possessions easy targets for the bulldozers to scoop up and discard as “abandoned.”
But on this day a homeless and tired of running Patrick Hogan decided enough was enough. In the face of insulting officers and anxious Caltrans cleanup crews, with bulldozers idling behind them. Invoking his legal right to secure his possessions under an Alameda County Superior Court ruling applying to all Caltrans properties requiring a 48 hour notice of intention to sweep, offers of shelter, and storage and retrieval of his belongings commonly referred to as a “bag and tag” policy, he challenged the near universal and unaccountable practice by law enforcement in Orange County of simply seizing and trashing the last possessions of the homeless without any semblance of due process.
“I asked them their names,” Hogan added, “Multiple times. They wouldn’t give ‘em. They just moved on and started going through tents.” Others in the camp reported to Hogan that Caltrans workers just scooped everything up as if it all was trash, no storage offered.
When the officers got back to Hogan, he asked for a bag to place his possessions in. They seemed surprised by the question and said they don’t provide bags. Eventually, a Caltrans worker went to his truck and did get some landscape bags. But when Hogan asked for “receipts and tags” for the bags the officers said they didn’t have any such tags.
“When I asked them where the storage location was, they said ‘call the number on the posting.’” But when Hogan called the number (to Caltrans general dispatch) they knew nothing about any storage policy.
Even the required posting of the 2-day Notice to Vacate would not have been posted at all if Hogan and others in the camp had not confronted CHP and Caltrans a month earlier at the same campsite, when CHP/Caltrans attempted to conduct a sweep without any notification.
On that day, Hogan recounts, “We stopped them at the gates and asked them. . . Where are your postings. . . your two-day notices? Where are the required outreach workers with offers of shelter as the notice requires? Where are the bags and tags?”
Having been called out for failing to post notice or provide offers of shelter, CHP and Caltrans packed up their bulldozers and left, but not before CHP Officer Lopez made the ominous threat on the way out “don’t worry, we’re not going to touch you, yet.”
A month later, CHP and Caltrans did return, posting the required 2-day notices . . . .six days in advance of the actual sweep, but again, entered the camp unannounced and unidentified, no outreach workers, no offers for shelter, no offer to bag and tag, and according to Patrick Hogan, no mercy for the startled campers.
The last minutes of Hogan’s tense eviction, captured by video from the embankment above, shows CHP and Caltrans workers taking possession of his last belongings. His were the only personal belongings bagged and presumably taken to storage.
As Hogan later explains the sweep and his follow up attempts to retrieve his seized belongings, it took several months for Caltrans to text him the admission that “nothing was stored that day.”
He then filed a claim with Caltrans District 12, who anonymously informed him his “claim was rejected” and that the department was “not liable” for any of his “lost” possessions.
Hogan was undeterred. “After that, I had no other option than to sue them (Caltrans) in small claims court.”
Representing himself and armed with only the video footage he and others had taken of the attempted sweeps showing that Caltrans, under the supervision of CHP, had in fact taken possession of his belongings. He had one other arrow in his quiver. A current and enforceable court ruling won by the Northern California Chapter of the ACLU on behalf of homeless persons deprived of their “due process” rights and loss of personal possessions similar to Patrick Hogan’s circumstances.
The case is Sanchez vs. Caltrans , and while establishing a pilot program in the Bay area for specifically enforcing and monitoring the process of collection, tagging, documenting, storing and retrieval of personal items during any Caltrans “sweep,” the ruling applied to Caltrans properties throughout the state.
Mr. Hogan cited the Sanchez decision in his impassioned pleading to OC Superior Court Acting Judge Lori Kim as well as presenting compelling video footage of the sweep, as well as the clear transfer of custody of his personal possessions to Caltrans workers.
Caltrans presented in their defense a worker and a field supervisor on site that day and their regional claims officer to make their case. Judge Kim had just three questions for the Caltrans team.
Does Caltrans have a policy toward notification and storage of seized property from homeless sweeps? Answer from Michael Vasquez: (Caltrans supervisor present) ‘We thought Officer Lopez (CHP homeless liaison) would call Hogan. That is basically our policy.”
Second question: “Did you in fact seize and remove the personal possessions of the plaintiff?” Answer: (from Vasquez after some deliberations. . . “Yes.”
Question three: What happened to the items taken? None of the Caltrans defendants could say.
Judge Kim noted the evidence presented by Plaintiff Hogan and the failure of the Caltrans defendants to respond affirmatively to questions presented to them, then took the case under submission. Hogan was optimistic as he left the courthouse that day that “someone was listening,” and hopeful for more than recovery of his losses, but also that this case could be potentially “a blueprint for others to follow.” Two weeks later, judgment for the plaintiff Hogan.
Since its ruling 5 years ago there have been numerous claims filed and won now in Northern California on behalf of homeless subjected to illegal “sweeps” under the Sanchez decision. But Patrick Hogan is the first individual unhoused plaintiff to sue Caltrans in small claims court in OC, citing the Sanchez ruling for wrongful seizure and destruction of property, and win.
For Patrick Hogan it was more than a win over the loss of his property. It was a line drawn in the sand on the side of that freeway that stood for all the displaced homeless of OC who have lived and lost and hoped for a better day, and who instead are endlessly churned up and discarded by a system of care that is at the very least care-less with the homeless and their possessions.
Mr. Hogan said it best : “My first hope to come out of all of this is for the public to become more aware of the homeless as people. And then to make sure that law enforcement who are there to protect the people and the laws do so without the contempt they show us. . . . . ( They) take an oath to the constitution to protect these citizens too, and then treat them as if they were rats, to be drowned in a river,. . . just because they are homeless.”
Hogan urges his peers to take control of their lives, clear their warrants. Assert their rights. Take a stand, as he has done.
“The last thing law enforcement wants to encounter,” he says, “is a person who knows his rights and expresses them. (preferably with a camera rolling). They may beat you down, that certainly has happened to me. But they are more afraid of those who know their rights than those who run.”
Patrick Hogan has certainly experienced his share of beatdowns and homeless sweeps. But in this moment, he has held his ground, made his point. And remains standing.
John Underwood is a local journalist and long-time advocate for the OC homeless
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