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For Jeremiah, being tossed in the back of a police cruiser and booked into to the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center is just one more part of being homeless in Columbia— and, for him, a weekly occurrence.

“I’d rather be out of jail,” he said, “but what the hell? I’m homeless so who gives a fuck?”

Ain’t nothing like freedom

By Corey Hutchins

“I go to jail like every damn week.” That’s what the middle-aged homeless man limping down Saluda Ave. told City Paper shortly before midnight Dec. 1. In fact, he said, he had just gotten out jail the very morning of this interview after police arrested him for pushing a shopping cart down Greene Street. The charge: possession of stolen property. The shopping cart had belonged to Food Lion.

For Jeremiah, being tossed in the back of a police cruiser and booked into to the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center is just one more part of being homeless in Columbia— and, for him, a weekly occurrence.

“I’d rather be out of jail,” he said, “but what the hell? I’m homeless so who gives a fuck?”

About five years ago Jeremiah was riding a city bus when the bus was hit by another automobile. He and four other people, he said, were “messed up” pretty bad and he’s had a limp that causes him to drag his left leg ever since. Behind him he pulls a black suitcase on wheels with an old wooden tennis racket poking out of it that he found in the trash.

“I didn’t pursue it like I should have,” he says about the accident and trying to get any compensation from the city for it. In fact, he says, he actually owes money because of it.

Why?

“You tell me that,” he says. “Because I’m poor? Black? They think I’m stupid?” Jeremiah’s name appears on several incident reports at the Columbia police department and he has appeared in this publication’s own Crime Report in both the distant and recent past. Some Columbia residents even joke that if Jeremiah calls you by name then you’ve been in Columbia far too long. During his years on the streets of Five Points, though, the man who sleeps in the street corners or under bridges says most of the crimes he’s been charged with were for either carrying an open container or for loitering.

“Everybody gets an open container [charge] in Five Points,” he said, also saying he would much rather be out on the street than stuck in a jail cell even though he’d have food and shelter.

“Ain’t nothing like freedom,” he said as he paused in front of the Gourmet Shop and smelled the open air around him. “Shit, [I’d rather] go sleep on any damn corner [or] sleep up under the bridge— wherever— then be in jail. But they [the police] don’t give me no choice. I ain’t doin’ nothing wrong. I ain’t going around here stealing and robbing and playing games with people, goddamn. I’m just a real nigga, OK? Excuse the damn expression; I’m a straight up nigga, I don’t play games.

“I ain’t about robbin’, stealin’, breakin’ into cars or none of that bullshit, OK? I’ll ask you if you got something you can spare and if you have something you can spare I appreciate it. If you don’t, I appreciate it. You don’t owe me nothing, shit. Don’t owe me a damn thing.”