A PROGRESS REPORT ON GOLDEN GATE PARK

One year ago this week, The Chronicle started publishing a series of
columns and articles about homeless campers in Golden Gate Park.
Complaints from neighbors and concerns about used hypodermic needles
lying around had created a hot public issue.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, who had promised to make the park into a San
Francisco version of New York City's Central Park, announced a number
of measures to crack down on the problems.

Police officers accompanied by 10 new park rangers and the city's
Homeless Outreach Team were sent out in the early morning every day
to round up campers. Park hours were changed from 6 a.m.-10 p.m. to 8
a.m.-8 p.m.

The results after a year? Well, the campers aren't completely gone.
Neither are the needles. But there are fewer of both.

On a morning trip to the park by myself, I spoke to Michael "Detroit"
Willis and Chris, who declined to give his last name. They were
pushing loaded shopping carts near the Conservatory of Flowers, and
they said the days of putting up a camp and settling in for months are over.

"It's changed," Chris said. "A lot of the old-school guys are gone.
You know that famous Treehouse Gary? He got out of Vietnam, came to
the park and never left. Even he got tired of (being moved around) and left."

Detroit and Chris are adamantly opposed to going into a shelter. "I'd
rather be in prison," Detroit said. They say some campers have moved
to streets in nearby neighborhoods at night.

"A lot of guys have given up and gone to the street," Detroit said.
"They sleep there and come back here during the day."

Still, you can't say city officials aren't trying. After complaints
about the lack of oversight of the city's Needle Exchange Program,
which critics said contributed to the piles of discarded syringes in
the park, the city announced a program to recover more needles.

Mark Cloutier, executive director of the San Francisco AIDS
Foundation, said needle collection has increased 22 percent since June 2007.

Gardeners say the number of needles found near the park's eastern
entrance has declined, and they credit Mary Howe, director of the
Homeless Youth Alliance Needle Exchange, whose office on Haight
Street provides syringes, for conscientiously leading cleanup groups
through the park.

Something must be working. At a site where I found a stack of 20 or
more syringes a year ago, I found only one this week. After an hour
of searching, a Chronicle photographer and I turned up just nine used
needles, some near the tennis courts and some just east of the
Conservatory of Flowers.

As for the campers, this week I went on the daily morning sweep at
the invitation of the mayor's homeless coordinator, Dariush Kayhan.

Starting at 4:30 a.m., we found 12 campers, all asleep. None of them
was belligerent. They didn't have syringes at their camp or
outstanding warrants. They were awakened, asked to pack up and then -
and this is new - were invited more than once to talk to the outreach
social workers.

"If we can get one person into services or on Homeward Bound (a free
bus ticket home), we've done some good," said San Francisco Police
Department Officer Bob Ramos, who is assigned to the dawn patrol.

That sounds like a manufactured sound bite, but Ramos handles this
job about as well as possible. He's loud and forceful when he enters
a camp. He issues citations for illegal camping, checks for
outstanding felony warrants and pushes homeless campers to meet with
the social workers. But he's quick to engage, too.

At one campsite, a man rolled out of his sleeping bag to reveal a
hash pipe. A park ranger, trying to avoid tacking on a minor drug
paraphernalia charge, tried to give him some cues.

"That's not your pipe, right?" he said. "It was just laying there, right?"

The guy, still looking a little dazed, clearly wasn't sure how to
explain how the pipe got there.

"A squirrel must have left it," Ramos said breezily, moving on to
asking the man if he would like to talk to the outreach team.

Social workers Bill Buehlman and Eula Sherman-Lawrence made a point
to stay back from the group to make it clear they were not part of
the police or ranger force. They held quiet conversations with a
heroin addict and a woman whose head was partially shaved where she
had needed surgical staples to close a wound from a beating.

"We try to meet everybody where they are," Buehlman said. "I'd say
that contact was a success. That one person had dropped out of his
methadone treatment, and I think he's ready to get back."

Kayhan said 239 homeless individuals from the park have received
temporary beds since last July, and 166 have taken the team up on its
Homeward Bound offer, which provides a free bus ticket anywhere in
the United States (with some limitations).

Inevitably, the authorities and social workers encounter certain
individuals over and over. Dempsey, camping with his partner, Amanda,
and their dog, Fire, had two shopping carts stashed in the trees with
cut branches placed over them. Dempsey insisted the carts contained
scrap metal, including 90 pounds of copper - "And we don't want to
know where that came from," Ramos interjected - that they were going
to sell for a bus ticket.

The two negotiated. Ramos finally agreed to Dempsey's suggestion that
he give them a day to cash in the scrap metal.

"You have my word that it will be out of the park by tomorrow," Dempsey said.

"That's all I can ask," Ramos replied.

Ramos will be in the park Monday morning. It will be interesting to
see if Dempsey is.