For five years I've run the Homeless Action Facebook page and Google group. The Google group has 164 subscribers, most of whom get it as a daily email digest. You have to subscribe to post to it -- hostile  or useless posts will not be approved -- but the online archive is public and searchable.

The best information I could find on what Ruiz said -- no direct quotes -- to the Downtown Stakeholders group in Sept. comes from meeting notes posted on the HA Facebook page by Heather Sielicki, which I copied to the Google group. You can read it by following this link:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/homeless-action/surge%7Csort:date/homeless-action/pEpTARAtbjk/kcYBrUskAwAJ

I've lived in several US cities and none of them are safe. It is not possible to make them so. You can make them safer by taking care of people's needs. Arresting them and beating them up won't work, help will. People need to study and think.