BUREAUCRACY WATCH : Homeless Go-round

Two weeks ago, police in Orange County rounded up 64 suspects, mostly homeless regulars in the Civic Center area, and herded them into Santa Ana Stadium for booking and later release.

Despite the protests of homeless-rights activists and Latino spokespersons, police vowed to continue, and arrested 26 more people last week.

This campaign has taken place against the backdrop of a growing crisis in the county’s criminal justice system. At the very moment the homeless were being rounded up, the county’s supervisors found themselves deeper into a quandary over the latest finding about the overcrowded-prison situation.

Santa Ana Police Chief Paul Walters has written that the crackdown is in response to disorderly behavior in the Civic Center, and that, if left unchallenged, it will send a signal that invites more anti- social behavior. He’s right about the problem, but wrong about the solution.

Santa Ana needs more constructive, community-based ways of helping the homeless. In its palpable frustration, it has turned from rational answers to contributing to the logjam in the criminal justice system.

It cannot profit the city to be tightening the noose with humiliating arrests of the homeless on such charges as drinking in public, blocking entrance ways and urinating in public, when last year more than 50,000 criminals were freed by the county because of prison overcrowding.

Santa Ana is right to want to restore order. It needs positive answers to meet that challenge.