A1 0 FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 2019 LATIMES.COM
had agreed to pull back
on enforcing at night after
being sued by skid row
residents.
Sobel, one of the attor-
neys who represented home-
less people in the Jones vs.
City of Los Angeles case,
called the proposed rules
“completely unworkable”
and argued that it was ridic-
ulous for city officials to
frame their newly proposed
restrictions as an effort
to comply with the Boise
ruling.
The Boise ruling “does
not require you to put in all
these restrictions,” Sobel
said, arguing in a letter to
council members that the
proposed rules would make
it almost impossible to sleep
anywhere on skid row.
The disputed section of
the Municipal Code —
41.18(d) — has been a rallying
cry for neighborhood activ-
ists who argue that the
Jones settlement has led to
chaos and blight on city side-
walks. Mark Ryavec, presi-
dent of the Venice Stake-
holders Assn., said that the
proposed rules failed to ad-
dress the most important is-
sue: homeless encamp-
ments in or abutting resi-
dential areas.
“What we’re dealing with
here in Venice — and what is
so difficult for residents — is
these encampments literally
being in their frontyard,” ar-
gued Ryavec, whose group
has repeatedly sued the city
over homelessness issues.
The proposed rules were
unveiled at the council’s
homelessness committee
meeting Wednesday at City
Hall, where Senior Assistant
City Atty. Valerie Flores said
that prohibiting people from
sleeping near schools, parks,
newly established shelters
and in other specified areas
would be legally defensible,
even after the federal deci-
sion that tossed out rules
against sleeping on public
property in Boise. In that
case, a federal court ruled
that “as long as there is no
option of sleeping indoors,
the government cannot
criminalize indigent, home-
less people for sleeping out-
doors, on public property.”
But the court also opined
that “even where shelter is
unavailable, an ordinance
prohibiting sitting, lying, or
sleeping outside at particu-
lar times or in particular lo-
cations might well be consti-
tutionally permissible.”
Flores argued that L.A.’s
existing laws on sidewalk
sleeping “would benefit from
modernization, clarification
and a better balance be-
tween the competing needs
of persons using the public
right-of-way.”
After meeting with Flores
and other city staffers be-
hind closed doors Wednes-
day, O’Farrell laid out the
proposed rules: No sitting,
lying down or sleeping
within 500 feet of schools,
parks or day care centers. No
bedding down near home-
less housing, shelters or
other facilities to serve
homeless people that have
opened in recent years.
People would also be
banned from bunking down
on bicycle paths, in tunnels
or on bridges designated as
school routes, in public
areas with signs barring
trespassing or setting clos-
ing times for safety or main-
tenance purposes, and in
crowded areas near big ven-
ues such as Staples Center.
And people sleeping on
the streets would still have
to stay away from entrances
and driveways and leave
enough room for wheelchair
users to pass under theAmericans With Disabilities
Act.
O’Farrell said in a state-
ment Thursday that “the re-
ality is we have sensitive
areas to consider and as city
leaders we must strike the
balance between the needs
of those experiencing home-
lessness and keeping our
public spaces safe and ac-
cessible.”
John Lee, who was re-
cently elected to represent
the northwestern San Fer-
nando Valley in a council
race that focused heavily on
homelessness, said he was
still reviewing the proposed
rules but called them “a
good step” toward protect-
ing public safety and ensur-
ing sidewalks are accessible.
“As I said during the cam-
paign, we need to be com-
passionate to homeless peo-
ple,” Lee said. “But we have
to be compassionate to busi-
nesses and homeowners
too.”
The proposed rules still
have to be vetted by the full
City Council and drafted by
city lawyers before coming
back to council members for
approval. At the Wednesday
meeting, council and com-
mittee member David Ryusaid he was hearing the pro-
posal for the first time. A
spokesman for Mayor Eric
Garcetti said Thursday that
their office was reviewing
the proposal.
Progressive activists said
they were galled by the idea.
Such rules would “create
containment zones like skid
row all over the city,” putting
homelessness out of sight
without addressing the
need, said Jed Parriott, a
member of the Services Not
Sweeps coalition.
He and other activists
had urged the city to repeal,
rather than amend or re-
place, the existing ban on
sidewalk sleeping.
David Busch, a longtime
activist who is homeless in
Venice, said the city was
“looking at this problem
backwards.”
“Instead of saying,
‘Where can people sleep?’
they continue to pass things
telling us where we can’t
sleep,” Busch said. “We can
issue hundreds more tick-
ets, tie up more courtrooms,
more jails, more police time
with homeless people ... and
the city can pay out millions
more in civil rights lawsuits,
or we can do what we needto do.”
Other Angelenos had ar-
gued against loosening the
law on the books. In a letter
to council members before
Wednesday’s meeting,
Venice resident Travis Bi-
nen said that with tens of
thousands of people living
on the streets, “the city
needs to be able to legally
move them instead of leav-
ing them on the sidewalk to
die or harm others.”
Ryavec, the Venice asso-
ciation president, said that
it was premature to adjust
the rules, arguing that the
city should instead be work-
ing with Boise to reverse the
“ridiculous decision” that
was handed down by the
U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Ap-
peals. Attorneys represent-
ing Boise filed a petition
Thursday asking the U.S.
Supreme Court to review the
federal ruling, arguing that
the court decision would
have “catastrophic” effects.
L.A. and other cities “are
grappling with how to inter-
pret and follow the deci-
sion,” which “raises more
questions than it answers,”
said Theane Evangelis, lead
counsel for Boise.
Evangelis argued thatthe Boise ruling ties the
hands of cities seeking to
deal with the harmful effects
of encampments, including
fires and disease. “It’s laud-
able that L.A. is trying to lim-
it these encampments — but
what the 9th Circuit decision
is going to mean, in practice,
is very much an open ques-
tion,” Evangelis said.
Gary Blasi, professor
emeritus of law at UCLA,
said that whether L.A.’s pro-
posed rules could survive a
court challenge would de-
pend on how they were
implemented, including
whether people have a prac-
tical way to know where they
can legally sleep and
whether the proposed rules
leave enough room on city
sidewalks for them to do so.
“Could anyone reason-
ably be expected to know if a
particular spot is more than
500 feet from something?”
Blasi asked.
The debate marks the
latest turn in L.A.’s long, im-
passioned battle over where
homeless people can lay
their heads. More than half a
century ago, L.A. enacted a
law declaring that “no per-
son shall sit, lie or sleep in or
upon any street, sidewalk or
other public way.”
After homeless residents
sued in the Jones case, L.A.
reached a settlement agree-
ing that until it had built a
minimum amount of home-
less housing, it would allow
people to sleep on sidewalks
from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. if they
stayed far enough from
doorways and driveways.
When the 9th Circuit struck
down the Boise law, home-
less advocates said it reaf-
firmed the arguments in the
Jones case.
The clash also echoes the
recent furor over L.A.’s re-
strictions on where people
can sleep in their cars. L.A.
had crafted the disputed
rules, which ban sleeping in
vehicles in residential areas
and near parks and schools,
after a federal court struck
down a citywide ban.
The Los Angeles City
Council recently voted to ex-
tend the rules over the angry
objections of activists, who
argued that lawmakers had
piled on so many restric-
tions on parking and sleep-
ing that L.A. effectively had
a “de facto ban” on bunking
in vehicles. Backers of the
plan said the rules were
needed to fend off trash and
filth from RVs and other ve-
hicles repurposed as homes.L.A. revisits sidewalk sleeping limits
[R ules,from A1]
TAMELA KERNEGHANcamps with her dog on a sidewalk near Grand Park in the shadow of L.A. City Hall.Luis SincoLos Angeles Times“demagogue” who stokes
racial division to spread fear
and anxiety, and in response
has adopted a policy estab-
lished by Brown to use the
governor’s pardon authority
—granted to the chief execu-
tive by the California Consti-
tution — to shield certain
refugees and legal immi-
grants with a criminal his-
tory from facing deporta-
tion.
Birru’s case, however,
promises to test the tradi-
tional bounds of executive
clemency in California. The
act of forgiveness has been
almost exclusively reserved
for people who have spent
years proving they were fit,
productive members of soci-
ety after being released from
prison.
The three immigrants
Newsom pardoned had all
been out of prison for more
than a decade. That was
long enough to demonstrate
that they had been “living an
upright life,” Newsom said in
his official pardons for each.
‘Free Liyah’
Birru hasn’t had that
chance.
The 35-year-old Ethi-
opian native, who came to
the United States in 2014 as a
legal resident, has been be-
hind bars since shooting her
husband in the back eight
months after her arrival. Af-
ter completing her four-year
sentence in state prison,
Birru was taken into custody
by U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement and
prepped for deportation.
Birru’s attorney, Anoop
Prasad, said Newsom has an
opportunity to correct an in-
justice against a woman
with no other history of vi-
olence or wrongdoing, even
while in prison.
Birru’s husband, Silas
D’Aloisio, has denied abus-
ing her. But Prasad argues in
the pardon application that
Birru felt trapped in an abu-
sive marriage and shot her
husband in desperation,
seeing no other means of es-
cape.
“She was forced into a sit-
uation where she really
didn’t have a choice,” said
Prasad, an immigration at-
torney for the group Asian
Americans Advancing Jus-
tice. “It’s not like she poses a
danger to society.”
Civil rights organizations
across Northern California
have taken up Birru’s cause,
launching a “Free Liyah”
campaign that gathered
more than 35,000 signatures
on a petition urging Newsom
to pardon her.
“We’re here today to af-
firm that black lives matter.
That black women matter.
That black immigrant wom-
en matter,” Marena Blan-
chard of Color of Change, a
civil rights group, said dur-
ing a July rally outside the
governor’s office at the state
Capitol.
Aylaliya “Liyah” Birru
owned a gift and clothing
shop in Addis Ababa, Ethi-
opia, when she first met
D’Aloisio, a Marine sta-
tioned at the U.S. Embassy,
in 2011. After dating for close
to a year, the two married in
Ethiopia. When D’Aloisio
was reassigned to the United
States, Birru had to wait two
years for a spousal visa be-
fore she could join him at the
couple’s apartment in Rose-ville, just outside Sacra-
mento.
Within weeks, Birru said,
her husband started berat-
ing her, calling her a “slut”
and “whore,” according to
court records. Birru said
D’Aliosio, in fits of rage, cut
up her clothes, threw her
against a wall, broke her lap-
top computer, threatened to
have her deported and
punched her in the ribs,
court records show.
D’Aliosio denied the alle-
gations, according to court
records. He did not respond
to requests to comment for
this article.
Birru said she wanted to
go to a shelter for victims of
domestic violence but that
without a car or much mon-
ey, she was unable to flee.
She knew no one nearby she
could turn to for help. She
once asked her husband to
take her to a shelter but he
refused, she claimed in court
records.
“I consider myself a
strong woman. I don’t know
how I allowed myself to be
controlled,” Birru said in an
interview with The Times
from Yuba County Jail,
where she is being held in
ICE custody. “I wondered
how people got into these
situations, and then I was [in
one] myself. I didn’t even
know it.”One bullet left
On the morning of Dec.
14, 2014, Birru and D’Aliosio
engaged in a heated argu-
ment after she accused him
of being unfaithful. Birru
told police that her husband
pushed her against a wall,
struck her in ribs and pulled
her hair. Officers called to
the apartment later re-
ported that her face was
bruised and swollen and her
lower lip bloodied, court re-
cords show.
Birru went to the bed-
room and grabbed her hus-
band’s handgun from the
closet.
Birru told authorities she
removed all the bullets fromthe gun, or so she thought,
went to the living room to
confront him and then
pulled the trigger “so it
would make a sound to say,
‘Pay attention.’ ”
However, the gun still
had a bullet in the chamber
and it fired, striking D’Alio-
sio in the back and punctur-
ing one of his lungs. He fell
out of an open sliding glass
door and collapsed. D’Alio-
sio has since recovered, at
least partially, and was in-
terviewed during Birru’s
sentencing process.
Marriage and family
therapist Linda Barnard,
who evaluated Birru for the
defense during the criminal
trial, said she was a victim of
“intimate partner batter-
ing,” which led directly to her
shooting her husband.
“It is a common myth
that battered women can,
and should, just leave the re-
lationship if it is really so
bad,” Barnard said in her re-
port submitted to the court.
“In this case, Aylaliya had
nowhere to go and no sup-
port system.”
The prosecutor disputed
Birru’s account of the shoot-
ing, saying a cellphone audio
recording she made of the in-
cident indicated that she
loaded the gun and “racked”
it, sliding a bullet into the
firing chamber, before
squeezing the trigger, a con-
clusion Birru disputes.
Birru pleaded no contest
to assault with a firearm.
Her attorney asked for pro-
bation in consideration of
the “almost daily physical
and verbal abuse” she en-
dured.
The probation report
conducted on behalf of the
court, however, concluded
that Birru “had an opportu-
nity to remove herself from
the alleged physical abuse
and call 911, however, she
chose to access a firearm.”
Placer County Superior
Court Judge Eugene Gini Jr.
concluded that much of the
abuse Birru reported was
not corroborated by the evi-dence and sentenced her to
prison. A California Court of
Appeal upheld the sentence.
“The evidence that was
the basis for the prosecution
demonstrated that the mo-
tive for defendant Birru’s ac-
tion was jealousy,” said Jeff-
rey Wilson of the Placer
County district attorney’s
office. “The evidence clearly
showed that she shot the vic-
tim in the back while he was
fleeing from the home and
that he posed no immediate
threat to the defendant.”Unrest back home
Because Birru was con-
victed of a violent felony, her
current attorney said she
was immediately flagged for
deportation. An immigra-
tion judge already has or-
dered her sent back to Ethi-
opia, a decision currently
under appeal.
Birru said the political
unrest in Ethiopia has her
worried about what would
happen if she is sent back.
“It’s not the best place
right now,” she said. “They
will look into who I am.
That’s what the government
does.”
Newsom now faces the
difficult task of weighing the
immediacy of Birru’s depor-
tation and whether her alle-
gations of abuse were given
adequate consideration
against the severity and vi-
olence of the crime she was
convicted of just four years
ago.
Facing similar petitions,
more governors nationwide
are considering whether to
use their pardon powers to
counteract Trump’s immi-
gration policies and to cor-
rect systemic injustices in
the courts, said Jane Shim of
the Immigrant Defense
Project in New York, which
launched a special initiative
to increase clemency appli-
cations for people facing de-
portation.
In New York, Gov. An-
drew Cuomo has issued doz-
ens of pardons to immi-
grants while criticizing theTrump administration’s
threats to “tear families
apart with deportation.” In
December, Michigan Gov.
Rick Snyder also pardoned
five Iraq immigrants to pre-
vent the Trump administra-
tion from deporting them.
Shim’s organization
wants governors to use the
clemency process not just to
reward successful rehabili-
tation but also to correct bi-
as in the criminal justice sys-
tem, such as the outsize per-
centage of blacks and Lat-
inos sentenced to long
prison sentences for rela-
tively minor drug crimes.
Among the most mis-
judged are victims of domes-
tic violence who lash out at
or kill their abusers, said
Kathleen Brown, a professor
of nursing at the University
of Pennsylvania and expert
on sexual assault. That’s
why there is an ongoing na-
tional effort to have gover-
nors revisit those cases
through the clemency proc-
ess, she said.
A California law passed in
2018 and signed by Gov.
Brown requires that the
state Board of Parole Hear-
ings give expedited review to
pardon requests from peo-
ple facing deportation.
Newsom’s office has
turned Birru’s case over to
the board for review, and an
investigator has already in-
terviewed her about her alle-
gations of abuse.
Daniel Zingale, one of
Newsom’s senior advisors,
meet briefly with Birru’s
supporters when they
dropped off their stack of pe-
titions at the Capitol.
He assured them that the
governor takes the clemency
process very seriously.
“The failed policies of
mass incarceration are no
longer the dominant, the
only narrative here,” Zingale
told them.
“So that changes all these
discussions about every-
thing that has to do with
criminal justice or survivors
or pardons.”Facing deportation, she looks to Newsom
[B irru,from A1]
LIYAH BIRRU,35, a
native of Ethiopia, faces
deportation after shoot-
ing her husband.