Amid the debate over a controversial proposal that would make it a crime for unhoused residents to refuse available shelter, some San Jose residents and advocates blame a violent confrontation with police seen striking and then mocking a man sleeping on the street on the city’s recent aggressive approach to combating the homelessness epidemic.
In a video — recorded Monday evening by multiple residents on Fruitdale Avenue between Leigh Avenue and Southwest Expressway — police officers subdued a frail older man identified only as Oscar before one officer repeatedly landed blows that were audible from multiple homes away, and another kneels near his head and neck area.
Jennette Holzworth — a resident who recorded the incident — filed an internal affairs complaint Tuesday with the department to pursue accountability and faulted Mayor Matt Mahan’s homelessness initiatives, asserting that the continued vilification of the unhoused contributed to Monday’s events.
“This language has emboldened threats against the unhoused, facilitating responses like what the officers took on this man,” Holzworth wrote in an email addressed to Mahan that was sent to the city.” He was simply doing what the human body requires, but had no other place to do so, and a home-owning neighbor of mine felt it was problematic.”
Although none of the videos residents captured document the events that preceded the physical altercation, a video shared with the Bay Area News Group shows an officer telling bystanders that police had received multiple calls about the homeless man and neighbors felt threatened by him. The police department told this news organization Wednesday that officers responded to the scene after a nearby resident reported that an unhoused man — who allegedly masturbated outside the day prior — was trespassing on her property.
When police arrived, the unhoused man was lying on the sidewalk, but then stood up and ran away from the scene. The department stated that the man’s active resistance, which included biting one officer, warranted the use of force. He was transported to Santa Clara County Jail and booked on suspicion of indecent exposure, resisting arrest and battery on an officer. San Jose police have declined to release his name.
The San Jose Silicon Valley NAACP has also filed a formal complaint, asking for a thorough investigation into potential administrative and criminal violations.
“The San Jose Police Department has a troubling history of disproportionately using force against Black and Brown populations, exhibiting excessive force and inhumane treatment toward individuals who are unhoused and mentally ill,” President Sean Allen wrote in the complaint.
“The excessive force used while multiple officers restrained Oscar, whose ability to resist was obstructed by his clothing, underscores the disparity of force applied by the officers present. Additionally, there was force (that) was used while Oscar was handcuffed and restrained, which is a blatant violation of use of force laws.”
In a statement to this news organization, Mahan said the incident is already under review and that the independent police auditor is aware of it.
“But the truth is, the suspect should have been indoors and in care, not exposing himself in a neighborhood – this is yet another example of why I am calling on our county to expand treatment options for those living and dying on our streets,” Mahan said. “If this person had received the care he clearly needs, a neighbor would have never had to call 911 because she was scared that a homeless man was masturbating outside her residence and he never would have repeatedly bit a police officer. ”
Holzworth, who initially declined to give a statement to police, acknowledged that the man at one point during the week was not wearing pants, but expressed skepticism at the sequence of events before police arrived.
She said that the man wrapped himself in a tarp and that she had not seen him exhibit threatening behavior all week or in viewing her security cameras, calling San Jose’s rhetoric on the homeless increasingly hostile and “dangerous.”
Along with what she described as unnecessary blows to the man, Holzworth added that one of the most disturbing aspects of Monday’s incident was the lack of empathy she perceived from the officers after the incident. She said she did not see the man receive medical treatment and members of the force told the bitten officer, “You’re probably fine, his mouth looked really clean (and) I’m sure he brushes his teeth every day.”
“It’s troubling,” Holzworth said in an interview with the Bay Area News Group. “They didn’t even care with the way they were openly talking about him.”
In the past year, San Jose has taken a more hardline approach to homelessness through initiatives like expanding a sidewalk sleeping ban downtown and a more aggressive abatement of RV encampments as the city’s unsheltered population has swelled to more than 5,500 residents.
But last week, Mahan earned both praise and scorn — showing how divisive the topic has become — as he announced a new policy proposal to amend the municipal code that would allow the city to charge residents who refuse available shelter three times with trespassing. He scoffed at the suggestion that the policy amounted to criminalizing homelessness and said it offered a middle ground between a do-nothing approach and the power to ban encampments as allowed in the Supreme Court’s June 2024 decision in the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson.
Mahan cited a refusal by 32% of unhoused residents to use the newly opened interim housing community at Branham Lane and Monterey Road in his rationale, which included his belief that residents could not choose to be homeless and needed to accept some responsibility. Otherwise, it was inhumane and unacceptable for hundreds of residents to continue to die on Santa Clara County streets each year, he argued.
He added that the goal would be to get service-resistant residents into behavioral health court, where a judge can determine the right course of action in hopes of trying to break the underlying causes that led them to their predicament.
While Mahan received support from many San Jose residents and various people across the state — including some pumping up his gubernatorial prospects — nonprofit leaders and housing advocates rebuked him. This included Assemblymember Alex Lee — the state legislator representing portions of San Jose up to the Alameda County communities of Fremont, Newark, and Sunol – who called Mahan’s policy push “immoral, ineffective and stupid,” leading to a public spat that spilled out over X, formerly known as Twitter, for a few days.
Mahan fired back, using Lee’s own words to describe what it meant to leave residents dying on the streets, and continued to refute claims of criminalizing homelessness.
“Some of our most vulnerable residents, suffering from severe addiction or other mental health issues, are beyond the point of being able to make rational choices about their own wellbeing and beyond the capacity of the City to help,” Mahan wrote in a post on X. “A brief interaction with our justice system and diversion into a behavioral court could save their life by getting them into treatment.”
For the bystanders who witnessed Monday’s altercation, San Jose’s approach has divided them even if they reached common ground that the police actions went too far.
“From my standpoint, if you do something wrong, you’ve got to pay the price but when three officers have you on the ground, I don’t see the need for you to keep punching them like that,” said Dominic Cordero, who captured video of the incident but believed homeless residents should be required to use shelters. “I don’t think that’s how they were trained. You don’t book someone like that.”
Meanwhile, nonprofit leaders and advocates that railed against Mahan last week said Monday’s incident was a byproduct of the continued “riling up the town square” rhetoric against homeless residents and the increasingly negative perception of them.
“This assault is just another reason why we should be concerned about the City’s push to arrest more unhoused individuals,” Destination: Home CEO Jen Loving told the Bay Area News Group. “Being homeless is not a crime and our community has nowhere near enough safe options for people who are simply trying to survive. Responding to homelessness with criminalized enforcement doesn’t solve this crisis and will never result in less people on the streets.”
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Holzworth agreed and challenged Mahan to change his beliefs and policies toward the unhoused, including trying to find success through more innovative pathways.
“You have the opportunity to be Netflix instead of Blockbuster; Apple instead of Nokia,” Holzworth said. “It requires releasing outdated and ineffectual approaches to the issue of homelessness.”
