Crimes on the Homeless

As homelessness increases in the U.S., how many of those people are disappearing without anyone noticing?

This week, I came across a local case in which there was a grand jury tapped. As the legal nerd I am, I got excited because grand juries are fascinating. The case is The People of Colorado v. John Taylor, 2024CR1203 in Mesa County, Colorado. The case is one that allegedly falls down to self-defense or not, but in the end, it is the killing of two “unhomed” people by a regular “homed” person. The killing was back in May 2024, but elected DA Dan Rubinstein left it up to the grand jury for his charging, which ultimately returned two indictments for second-degree homicide a few days ago. But hold on a bit, where my stats at?

Not to be Forgotten

Robert McCall and David Doolin were both pronounced dead at the hospital in May 2024 after they were shot by John Taylor in (self defense/not in sense defense).¹ The only information I can find² at this time is a few smattering of local articles, some a brief paragraph and others just a copy and paste job.³ Journalistic excellence. I digress - in recent years as homelessness has increased, crimes against the homelessness has also increased. This is probably not so surprising but it does mean that there is a completely different subset of victims and crimes for prosecutors to prosecute. Because of the lack of data gathering, most stories turn out to be on homeless people being violent or acting criminally at a higher clip. This is true, when related to property crimes, as we will see later. But those who are homeless are far more likely to be a victim of violent crime as we know it. This misconception breeds apathy towards the unhoused population.⁴

Since 1999, at least 558 people have been killed violently mostly because they were unhoused. A series of state and local studies and surveys cited in Senate testimony showed annual criminal victimization rates for the homeless between 34% and 81.9%.⁵ In contrast, in 2013 the National Crime Victimization Survey showed the overall housed population 12 years and older faced an annual rate of victimization of 1.2% for violent crime and 0.4% for serious violent crimes. Recent trends have picked up (from the National Coalition of The Homeless (NCH) report 2020):

• Acts of violence occurred in 24 states and the District of Columbia, with 45.3% occurring in just three states: California (19.5%), Oregon (15.5%) and Florida (10.3%).

• Of the 47 fatal acts of violence, almost half (48.9%) occurred in just two states: Oregon (29.8%) and California (19.1%).

• Of the non-lethal acts of violence, 53.3% were beatings — of which more than a third (37.5%) came at the hands of law enforcement.

• A significant majority of the victims of both non-lethal (66%) and fatal (87.2%) acts were male.

• Nearly four in five (79.5%) of the perpetrators of non-fatal acts were 40 years old or younger; more than four in five (82.3%) of the perpetrators of fatal acts were 40 years old or younger.

• Between 22 and 57% of all homeless women report that domestic violence was the immediate cause of their homelessness.

• Women and men who experienced food and housing insecurity in the past 12 months reported a significantly higher 12-month prevalence of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner compared to women and men who did not experience food and housing insecurity.

This is just a glimpse of what I am talking about, but you get the point: when you don’t have a house, you open yourself up to violence you otherwise would not have had. Everyone gets that. But a portion of these people have been killed or assaulted simply because they were homeless. Most of the perpetrators are young men. Case and point, the criminal case of John Taylor.

Self Defense or no?

Taylor⁶ is 33 and a resident of Mesa County. He manages property for a real estate management company, but also was reported to be a “security guard” although that was denied. The shooting was at an Advance Auto parts on North Ave, which is a main thoroughfare. The few details we have on the case come from the elected DA:

According to Dan Rubinstein, the district attorney of the 21st Judicial District, Taylor worked in property management for a real estate company. He was working on the property near the crossroads of 29 Road and North Avenue when he noticed two homeless people were camped on the property. Rubinstein says Taylor tried to get the two people to move along.

“It ended up resulting in a shooting; a shooting where he shot and killed both of them. He remained on the scene,” recalled Rubinstein, “He called 911 after shooting the first victim, and was on the phone during the shooting of the second victim. He stayed there until police arrived, and came down to the police station. He gave a lengthy interview alleging that he was acting in self-defense.”

KKCO 11 News

The first thing that comes to my mind is that there must be a good reason that they did not believe his self-defense interview to give it over to a grand jury. The reason being: if Taylor called 911 after he shot the first person, stayed on the phone with them through the next incident, and then stayed on scene until police arrived - those would be a set of facts that either: (a) support a self-defense claim or; (b) indicate that Taylor felt justified shooting unhomed folk irrespective of an actual self-defense claim. This meaning if the victims had not been homeless, Taylor may have not felt justified in shooting them. This is my opinion and reasoning here, but when local news is rather flat on analysis - someone has to fill the void right?

But for the sake of going deeper lets take a look at possible logistics here. The shooting occurred on a property near the intersection of 29 Road⁷ and North Ave, a main thoroughfare in Grand Junction. In another article we get an address of 2893 North Avenue which is the newer Advance Auto Parts nearby to that aforementioned intersection, which is relatively busy.⁸ It is more likely that Taylor worked for a commercial real estate business who owns the parcels. The shooting was around 3 PM, and the day was sunny and bright by the looks of the reporting on the scene. So, this shooting was in broad daylight. The chances of there being direct witnesses available increases exponentially.

But What About…

Intra-unhomed violence is not something where there are many readily available statistics available, and for a reason: who reports the crime? Those who are homeless and experience violence from other unhomed on the streets have a similar chance of being beat by a law enforcement officer as well. So, we don’t exactly know the violent propensity among the homeless population. If you are wondering where I am going, I am trying to set us up for the next part where we discuss the legal defense and charges, when Taylor returns on Dec 11th. Part of that process is to look at dangerous propensity of homeless people in general. But here’s some stats to round this out.

• States with highest crime per capita: Arkansas, California, New Mexico, Colorado and Louisiana.⁹

• States with highest homeless populations per capita: California, Oregon, Vermont, New York, Hawai’i.

• States with lowest crime per capita: New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey

• States with lowest homeless populations by capita: Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Virginia

• The San Diego County District Attorney’s Office 2022 data shows homeless individuals face murder 19 times more often, attempted murder 27 times more often, assault 12 times more often, and sexual assault nine times more often than the housed population.

• In the same study, those who were homeless were 175 times likely to commit robbery, with those high rates extending to most other property crimes.

As we will learn, there is defense of “self”, “others” and of “property” which are different burdens, some of them not being an exact complete defense in Colorado. So it is to say, although I question Taylor’s self defense claim, I do not know the facts and cannot say exactly my thoughts on it. It easily could have been a situation that escalated beyond his control, enough to believe he was in imminent danger. I do not know, and like Rubinstein says everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Stay tuned for the next part after return filing of charges.

Thanks for reading!

-HJRC