Michael Stoops Quotes (17 Quotes)

The most common law that targets homeless people is some version of a panhandling law, whether it's aggressive panhandling or saying you can only panhandle in certain areas of a city.

The Atlanta ordinance says this is how Atlanta is solving Atlanta's homeless problem. You're not aloud to say anything. You're not allowed to ask what time it is you're not allowed to ask for directions. You're not allowed to ask for food. We don't consider that to be a model ordinance.

We definitely feel that it's a widespread epidemic around the country. It seems like there's been a spike in incidents. We're not sure if it's copycat attacks or open season on the homeless population.

The videotape is our dream come true. It's putting a face to the issue. What happened in Fort Lauderdale will happen again in other parts of the country, and we know that it will happen again.

Las Vegas has always gotten an F (in those areas). Someday I hope the city will quit criminalizing homelessness and they'll get off the list.

The overwhelming majority of perpetrators are teens and young adults. We need to start with young people in public and private schools.

They do this because they think they can, that they can get away with beating a homeless person and nobody will care, and the homeless won't be able to fight back.

They (Sarasota) could have been taken off the mean list if they would have just done away with that ordinance. They continue to push and push and push, and push homeless people out of the city.

What happened in Fort Lauderdale will no doubt happen again. It might not be caught on videotape the next time, but I can assure you it will happen again.

It hurts everyone, worst of all homeless people. Criminalizing homelessness is a waste of time and resources.

If you die homeless, your death goes unnoticed, just like your life. This is a way for us to notice.

It's a good time of year to raise awareness, when it's real cold out. More Americans are thinking about poverty and homelessness this time of year.

The government is talking about ending homelessness, but it is creating it at the same time.

Just because there aren't official reports doesn't mean attacks don't happen. This sort of attack needs to be classified as a hate crime, so statistics can be compiled, but nobody does that.

In many of the cases, it's a crime of opportunity. A group of teenagers is roaming the street on a hot summer night and they come across a homeless person who might be mentally ill or alcoholic. When they hurt a homeless person, they think they can get away with it -- and they think they won't be hurt in return.

We have been tracking and documenting what has been going on in Las Vegas since 2002. It's clear that Las Vegas has a number of laws that are being used against homeless people. It has a sorry history of criminalizing the homeless. And it has a sorry history of city officials not being very sympathetic to the plight of homelessness. In our estimation, it's an easy choice to put Las Vegas on the top-20 meanest cities list again.

The truth is that these are not unusual.