According to the facts found by Judge Charles Crandall and set forth in his order enjoining the city, the San Luis Obispo Police Department in January 2012, at the direction of the City Council, descended upon the homeless sleeping in their motor homes and vehicles on Prado Road.

The police awakened them with sirens, flashing lights and bullhorns between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. They pounded on walls and doors to frighten the homeless occupants (including small children) into coming out. Once out of their vehicles, the homeless were ticketed and told to “get out of town.”

Judge Crandall found as a matter of law that the city deprived the homeless of the U.S. constitutional right to due process by misapplying the law, failing to give notice of violation, and enforcing the law in an arbitrary method.

The city paid its hired lawyers $134,000. Judge Crandall, on Jan. 17, awarded the attorneys for the homeless who procured the injunction $134,000 for the “enforcements of an important right affecting the public interest” (i.e. the due process clause). Thus, because the city acted in an unconstitutional, illegal manner, taxpayers are now saddled with $270,000 in unnecessary expenses.