New York City’s uber liberal Mayor Bill de Blasio kicked off a new effort to get homeless people off the streets by forcibly removing a homeless man who came to Tompkins Square Park for a press conference announcing the program Tuesday.

The New York Observer reports Jerry Foust sat down in one of the blue chairs laid out for the press to cover Home-Stat, De Blasio’s new plan to address homelessness, because he wanted to hear what it was all about. But shortly before the mayor took the stage, police assigned to the outreach unit leading Home-Stat forced Foust to leave, supposedly because he was consuming alcohol.

 

“I wanted to see the mayor talk about homelessness, because I’m homeless,” Foust told the news site. “And I wanted to f***in’ help homeless people. If I had the money, honey, no one would be homeless in this country.”

The Observer’s Jillian Jorgensen posted to Twitter a series of comments and pictures of police escorting Foust from the park, and asked De Blasio about it.

“A homeless man was just escorted away by police from a @BilldeBlasio presser on helping the homeless,” she wrote.

“.@BilldeBlasio says he doesn’t know anything about the homeless man escorted away from presser on homelessness right before he arrived,” she wrote, adding that the mayor instead talked about police interactions with the homeless in general.

“But if I had to guess, I’d bet the police approach is different when the homeless person is sitting at a mayoral presser,” Jorgenson tweeted.

In her Observer story, Jorgenson wrote that police contend they removed Foust because he had an open alcohol container in the park, which Foust didn’t deny. Foust wasn’t arrested but simply forced to move some place else.

“They really didn’t say anything,” Foust said. “I took a nip. You know, the mayor’s coming. Let me see this entertainment … The same as it ever was. Bill de blah blah blah.”

Foust refused the police officers’ offer to help find him shelter and services.

The homeless man is among tens of thousands in the city, about 60,400 of which use shelters overseen by the city. Many homeless people, however, refuse to go to the shelters because they claim they’re dangerous places rife with thieves. Other homeless folks avoid the shelters in part because of their struggles with mental illness and drug or alcohol abuse, according to the news site.

“Interactions between the homeless outreach teams, from the police and the not-for-profit teams, are complex,” Human Resources Administration Commissioner Steve Banks told the Observer.

Police Chief William Morris said it often takes officers multiple attempts to convince the city’s homeless to seek help.

“The initial encounter may not always be positive,” he said. “But the challenge is to keep going – not to be defeated, but to get beyond that and get an eventual positive solution.”

Foust said his solution was to leave his assigned shelter for a better life on the streets.

“They sent me to East New York. There’s nothing wrong with East New York – I lived all over Brooklyn, all over Brooklyn. But I like the East Village, man,” Foust said. “Try to order food in East New York – nothing, man.”