The Michigan chapter of the ACLU has filed a complaint claiming that police in Detroit, MI have been picking up homeless people in the Greektown neighborhood and dropping them off miles away. In some extreme cases, they've even left people outside of the city's boundaries.
This has led to the homeless coining the phrase "being taken for a ride," which typically involves police officers approaching homeless people and ordering them into vans or other police vehicles. They're taken to random locations (often unfamiliar neighborhoods), told not to come back to Greektown and left stranded by police.
According to ACLU of Michigan attorney Sarah Mehta, the homeless aren't being targeted because of specific actions, it's all about appearance. Authorities confiscate any money they may have and they're occasionally forced to walk back to the city "with no guarantee of any safety."
The complaint is the culmination of a yearlong ACLU investigation. 37-year-old Andrew Sheehan reportedly told the ACLU that police had picked him up several times, promising to take him to a homeless shelter. Instead, they dropped him off 8 miles away on the border between Detroit and River Rouge.
Detroit Police Chief Chester Logan has promised to investigate the complaint.
[via Gawker]
