On July 1, Davis said, a Tempe park ranger spitefully cited him for trespassing at Moeur Park, where he’d arrived after the park had closed to clean up trash. As a result, Davis has been banned from all Tempe parks in the Papago Park Preserve — impeding but not halting his efforts to feed the unhoused there — through August 2.
The city already is engaged in a Tempe Municipal Court case against Davis, arguing that he violated the city’s special permit code by conducting “Sunday Picnics” for unhoused people in Tempe parks. The judge in the case denied the city’s request to prohibit Davis from holding the events and distributing food in the parks while the trial is ongoing.
But now, it seems, the city has found another way to make Davis’ mission more difficult.
“I’m trespassed from all the parks the homeless are ever at,” Davis told Phoenix New Times. “They’re basically saying it’s illegal for me to go to any of the parks to try to help anyone.”
The latest chapter in Davis’ saga began when three unhoused people called him on July 1, he told Phoenix New Times. Park rangers were forcing them out of Moeur Park, which had closed, but the unhoused people told Davis there was garbage left behind that they hadn't been able to clean up.
When Davis arrived at the park, he noticed a ranger’s car was taking up three parking spaces, a violation for which Davis had been ticketed a month earlier. He remarked to the ranger, whom the citation identified as having the last name Fernandez, about the double standard.
The comment went over poorly, Davis said. The ranger ticketed Davis for “curfew violation, interfering with duties and verbal aggression,” according to the citation.
“She said, ‘Now the cops are coming, and it’s your fault if anyone here gets trespassed.’ It was very obviously vindictive,” Davis said, adding that he regretted saying anything about the ranger’s parking job.
Since then, Davis has been cited two more times for trespassing, on July 6 and 7. However, Davis doubts that park rangers had evidence that he was in the park on those days. Davis contends that he remained off park grass and on the sidewalk, technically outside the park’s boundaries.
Also, Davis didn’t receive those two citations until July 10. That day, he was driving near the park when he noticed “a very obvious undercover cop” following him. Davis pulled into a gas station and the officer followed, activating the unmarked vehicle’s blue and red lights after Davis parked.
“They watched me the whole time and then followed me away from the park and away from the public to where I was alone at the gas station and served me these tickets from days ago,” Davis said. “It doesn’t make any sense. It’s just like, weird and creepy.”
The city reintroduced park rangers in November, 15 years after it cut the program and a day before Greg Ruiz, then an interim deputy city manager, sent Davis a letter demanding he apply for a permit for the feedings.
Though the first trespassing citation resulted in a month-long ban, it carried no associated fine. Davis is due in court on July 22 for the other two citations. A judge will decide if there is enough evidence to find him guilty.
Touching grass
Since being banned, Davis has engineered a workaround.Tempe officers told him if he touched the grass of the parks, he would be cited for violating the trespass order and possibly arrested. As a result, Davis has been relegated to the sidewalk, leaving volunteers to run the Sunday feedings.
He continues to help the homeless eat and fill out intake forms for housing and treatment centers, though. For a few days, he sat on park-adjacent sidewalks, baked by the brutal Phoenix sun. Davis said he and volunteers now have set up a table at the edge of the park so he could sit down without touching park grass while helping people look for detox, rehabilitation and shelter programs.
Davis isn’t the only person who isn’t allowed to touch park grass. The circumstances he faces have much in common with several unhoused people whom Tempe officials have kept looking over their backs.
“A lot of homeless people are trespassed from the parks, so this was also an opportunity for those folks to sit on my side of the table, and volunteers would bring down food and water,” Davis told New Times on Monday.
The arrangement also is apparently a headache for at least one Tempe officer assigned to watch Davis.
In a YouTube video recorded by videographer Jim Freedom, a Tempe police officer named Mitchell appeared troubled by having to monitor Davis during one night earlier this month.
“I understand what you’re doing,” Mitchell told Davis in conversation Freedom captured on video. “I never had an issue with it. But that is above me. You know this whole entire issue is way above me.”
Mitchell added, “I don’t like dealing with this stuff either,” noting that Davis sometimes responds to overdose calls with lifesaving Narcan treatment before Mitchell can. “I know you carry that stuff on you,” Mitchell said in the video, “and I think you beat me to one over here last time, too.”
Mitchell’s tone was exasperated as he lamented the unhoused community’s apparent distrust of police and his own inability to address the issue.
“There’s nothing I can do as one little, one person. I mean even when I talk to these (unhoused) people, I can only do so much. I can offer resources all day, but 95% of the time they don’t even take it from me,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell then walked over to speak with a group of park rangers, telling the videographer to keep a distance while filming “so (the rangers) don’t get riled up.”
The case continues
Meanwhile, the city’s case against Davis for allegedly violating its events permit code is moving forward. On July 12, Judge Kevin Kane rejected a motion from Davis’ attorney to dismiss the case. A pretrial conference is scheduled for Aug. 14.Initially, the Sunday Picnics hosted by Davis and his organization AZ Hugs were met with acclaim by local officials, winning the city’s “Neighborhood Event of the Year” in 2022.
But the winds changed — first slowly, then quickly. By November 2023, the city told Davis that he needed a permit to hold the events. When Davis requested one, he was denied because he hadn’t stopped his feedings in the meantime, according to a denial letter. As a consequence, Davis cannot apply for a permit again for a full year.
On June 13, it was revealed in court that another organization, the Aris Foundation, received an events permit despite hosting events during the application period, highlighting what Davis’ attorney has called Tempe's arbitrary enforcement of its own rules.
The same day the city denied the permit, Tempe prosecutors charged Davis with six violations of the city’s special permit ordinance. Each violation is punishable by a maximum fine of $2,500, up to six months in jail or both. Five charges were dropped temporarily, while the sixth is the subject of Davis’ trial.
After Davis’ court date in May, he told New Times he was simply “tired.” He hasn’t swayed from his mission, though with an estimated 10,000 unhoused in Maricopa County, the problem itself remains gargantuan. But the more the city of Tempe hounds him, the more he has to guard against the dimming of his optimism.
As a poet who still teaches a monthly poetry class at the Tempe Public Library, Davis often channels his feelings into verse. “Time and time again, when I don’t know what to do and am questioning everything, I always just write a poem,” he said. One of Davis’ poems, written since he became a target of the city and shared with New Times, reads in part:
everyone’s rented
a room in oblivion
in a past life
but this is the next life
& in this life
healing is lonely
& beautiful
& forever
