“Tie the kid up in duct tape and leave him next to a five gallon bucket of feces.”
Todd Root works as a fleet technician for Boulder Bike Sharing and is one of the most active members of Safer Boulder. According to his bio on Boulder Bike Sharing’s website, Todd moved to Boulder from Akron, Ohio in 2005.
Todd is one of the most active members of Safer Boulder, posting multiple times a day, every day. He regularly posts updates from the police blotter and has alluded to looking up suspects’ voter registration.
Todd’s posts about suspected crimes in Boulder seem arbitrary on their own, but in the context of his other posts it becomes clear that he believes the vast majority of people experiencing homelessness in Boulder are criminals.
Racism
Like many of the members of Safer Boulder, Todd’s prejudices don’t just stop at class. Here is Todd agreeing with Jillian Lloyd that Zayd Atkinson and Sammie Lawrence, two Black men who were subject to racist treatment by Boulder PD, “knew what they were doing.”
Zayd Atkinson was the subject of a viral video in which he was surrounded by 8 Boulder Police officers, someone of them brandishing firearms, as he was picking up garbage outside of his home. Mr. Atkinson was repeatedly ordered to put down his “weapon” which was a trash grabber and plastic bucket. The City of Boulder settled with Mr. Atkinson and the officer who initially instigated this harassment resigned before being disciplined.
Sammie Lawrence was tackled to the ground for refusing to put down his cane while he filmed an interaction between two Boulder Police officers (one of whom participated in Mr. Atkinson’s harassment) and a group of people experiencing homelessness.
In a hypothetical example identical to Sammie Lawrence’s case, Todd has proposed duct taping someone practicing their First Amendment right to film the police and placing them next to a five gallon bucket of feces.
While the City of Boulder found no wrongdoing in Mr. Lawrence’s case, the officer who pushed him to the ground and arrested him recently resigned amid controversy about social media posts glorifying police violence.
Racism and Policing
Black Americans are disproportionately stopped and killed by police than White Americans. A study from researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health published in PLOS One found that Black Americans are up to six times more likely to be killed by police than White Americans depending on their geographic location.
According to the Boulder Police Department, Black people in Boulder are twice as likely to be pulled over than white people, and twice as likely to be arrested after being pulled over.
Transphobia
On one occasion, Todd mocked the gender identity of a transgender person experiencing homelessness via purposeful misgendering and mocking of gender neutral pronouns.
Todd resumed his transphobia on September 19th, 2020, this time including Dan’s girlfriend Leslie in his misgendering.
Transphobia and Homelessness
Transgender individuals are far more likely to be discriminated against while housed and unhoused, leading to disproportionate rates homelessness and eviction. The 2017 U.S. Trans Survey Report found that 30% of transgender people in the United States have experienced homelessness. That same studied found that 70% of survey respondents who had stayed in a homeless shelter reported harassment as well as sexual and physical assault because of their gender identity.
The National Alliance to End Homelessness found large disparities in rates of shelter for transgender and gender non-binary adults experiencing homelessness.
Ableism
Todd regularly doubts and mocks poor people’s ability status. Here he is with Jillian again misgendering Dan suggesting that Dan is pretending to have epilepsy to get away with… Not having anywhere to live.
People experiencing homelessness are 8 times more likely to suffer from epilepsy and have a 53% rate of traumatic brain injury.
On Other Platforms
Todd uses his Reddit account /u/Fantastic-Amount-317 to share his contempt for people experiencing homelessness.
