Suburban Station becomes a refuge for homeless people during the cold weather. Many avoid shelters because of the rules.
On a frigid night in January, SEPTA police stepped among the dozens of people camped out in Suburban Station’s long corridors and ordered them to leave the station. Outside it was 26 degrees.
It’s a closing-time routine for officers, clearing out people, many of them homeless, who seek shelter in the transit hub. This time, though, the crowd protested. It was too cold, they argued, and their resistance escalated into a melee that SEPTA officers quelled with pepper spray and swinging batons.
SEPTA police clear Suburban Station’s halls to ensure security and make space for cleaning crews, Nestel said. Typically, officers direct people who need shelter to a Department of Behavioral Health facility at 15th and Market Streets. The people in Suburban Station late at night say officers can be brusque, but a physical confrontation is an anomaly.
About 12:30 a.m. on Jan. 15, when officers asked people sleeping on the station floor to leave, some became physical with officers, Nestel said.
One of the people involved said she argued with officers because of the cold.
At Suburban Station, Tracy Amador talks about being pepper-sprayed by transit police there in January.
About 10 SEPTA officers responded, Nestel said, along with a number of Philadelphia police. Two people were charged, both accused of assaulting an officer. One faces charges of inciting a riot and vandalism — glass was broken in one of the station’s doors. Amador and one of the men charged, Tysan Bostic, 38, have sought social services for homeless people, Scullion said.
SEPTA police’s internal affairs reviewed the incident, which included watching video, and concluded officers acted appropriately. Nestel has made no changes to department policy, though he said: “If I can come up with a better way to handle it, I’m going to.” SEPTA declined to share video, saying it was the subject of an ongoing investigation.
Amador, who says she has been homeless since leaving her husband in 2016, described standing in front of the exit to the station near a post office to discourage people from leaving. “Police were cattling us through the door,” she said.
She suffered a black eye and bruises on her body, said staffers from Project HOME who saw her the day after the incident. Amador said her teeth were also damaged. Nestel said his officers knew her because of medical problems she has had, and she was once escorted out, but not arrested, after being found in a construction zone.
Suburban Station has the highest concentration of officers in any of the city’s transit hubs.
That January night was designated a code blue, which means temperatures were so low that additional resources were being made available by the city Office of Homeless Services. Philadelphia has about 5,700 people without permanent housing, but of those, fewer than 1,000 are living on the street. On such nights, Scullion said, the priority for social service agencies is helping people who are exposed to the elements. The organization would prefer police grant sanctuary to people in the station on cold nights, said Carol Thomas, Project HOME’s director of homeless services.
Police asked people that night if they wanted help finding shelter as they cleared the hallway, Nestel said, and people declined. Thomas said police have called her organization in the past, and it has sent a van for those people being removed. Police should have done that before the situation escalated, she said. No incidents were reported the next week, when temperatures plunged into single digits, a SEPTA spokesman said.
Police acknowledged many of the people lingering in the station late at night have mental-health conditions, and the department has cooperated with Project HOME to create a list of close to 70 people who are in urgent need of mental-health assistance, Scullion said. Half of SEPTA’s 270 transit officers have received training to interact with people suffering from mental-health conditions. The department is working toward training all officers. They are also working with the city to assign behavioral health experts to the station.
The eruption of tensions came as police and social service agencies navigate the murky, ambiguous subculture that comes to the station long after rush-hour commuters are gone. Philadelphia has 12,000 beds available to assist people who are homeless, and in winter months about 2,900 of those are open to people in immediate need of a place to sleep. There are those who, due to addiction, mental illness, or preference, refuse to seek aid.
Homeless people asleep in Suburban Station between 10 and midnight on a recent night.
Suburban Station’s corridors splay out from its cavernous central concourse like the legs of a spider, and scattered along them late at night are dozens of people.
About 11 p.m. on a recent night, two huddled in the doorway of a closed shop. Across from them, another person sprawled facedown on the floor, the leaves from a self-rolled cigarette scattered beside him. One crew sat in a circle beneath the bright, harsh lights. Another slouched against a maintenance vehicle. A man nearby appeared on the verge of falling asleep on his feet. The air carried, echoing laughter and smoke with a spicy tang, likely K2, a synthetic marijuana that people in the station readily admit to using. People defecate and urinate on the floors.
During much of the last year, the number of indigent people in the station had been declining, Scullion said, but a head count on a cold night in January recorded 200 homeless people there, roughly equivalent to the same time last year.
SEPTA sought middle ground last year when it worked with Project HOME to create the Hub of Hope, an 11,000-square-foot facility in the station that provides an array of assistance. It’s well used but closes at 7 p.m. And Scullion noted the people lying on Suburban Station’s floors late at night might not be the same people who turn to Hub of Hope for help.