A woman was raped in a Charlottesville homeless encampment that city officials knew was dangerous — and a lawsuit filed hours before the attack predicted exactly this outcome.
The Free Bridge encampment, home to an estimated 80 people in a public park along the Rivanna River, has become a zone of lawlessness that progressive governance created and now cannot manage. A 57-year-old man was found dead in a tent last month. Another man's tent burned down in May. On July 9, a sexual assault was reported. Charlottesville City Council voted last year to spend $6.25 million on a former hotel to convert into a low-barrier shelter, but the project moves at what the Augusta Free Press called a "glacial pace." The latest word is that staff and community groups hope to have a "meeting of the minds" in August to discuss next steps. A meeting to discuss next steps — a year after the purchase.
Michael Shaft Brewington, 48, was arrested Wednesday and charged with aggravated sexual battery in connection with the July 9 assault, according to the Augusta Free Press.
Charlottesville Police Chief Michael Kochis responded with the kind of language that reveals the problem. "Every member of our community deserves to feel safe, and that includes our unhoused neighbors," Kochis said. "This arrest reflects our commitment to ensuring that those living unsheltered receive the same level of protection, respect, and diligent investigative effort as anyone else in Charlottesville."
Note what's absent from that statement: any acknowledgment that the encampment itself is the hazard. Kochis was named in a lawsuit filed by a city resident just hours before the rape, accusing the police department of failing to enforce trespassing laws at the site. The suit states the encampment "poses a threat to public safety and health" and lists the evidence: sewage produced by the encampment, dirty needles left by individuals, and violence against the homeless themselves.
This is the progressive formula: declare compassion, spend money, deliver nothing, and wait for the inevitable harm. The encampment didn't appear by accident. It grew because the city refused to enforce vagrancy and trespassing laws. It grew because officials chose to let people live in squalor rather than confront the reality that some among the homeless population need institutionalization, not a tent by a river.
The lawsuit predicted the rape. The city had the money and the mandate. What it lacked was the will to act before someone paid the price for their "compassion." Now a woman has. The question is whether any official will answer for the policies that made this violence predictable.
