SNYDER, CCNV TEAR DOWN FENCES AT 4 METRO STOPS

ADVOCATES FOR HOMELESS RENEW FIGHT FOR SPACE

Escalating their long-running feud with the Metro system, Mitch Snyder and other advocates for the homeless yesterday claimed responsibility for the early morning damage to barriers that prevent street people from sleeping in four downtown D.C. subway stations.

Snyder said at a news conference that the metal fences surrounding the stations "represent the walls and the barriers we have erected between ourselves and the people who have no place to go." Their existence, he said, "is forcing people to stay out of doors."

"We believe the walls have to come down," he said. "Down they came, and they didn't come down easily."

Snyder declined to provide details of his group's operation, except to say that all 50 members of his Community for Creative Non-Violence have agreed to accept responsibility for the action.

Fences were torn down at four stations in Northwest: Metro Center at 11th and G streets, McPherson Square at Vermont Avenue and I Street, Farragut North at Connecticut Avenue and L Street, and Farragut West and 17th and I streets.

As of late yesterday, Metro transit police were investigating the incident but had made no arrests, Metro spokeswoman Marilyn Dicus said. She said police have not yet assessed the cost of the damage, which she said is believed to have been done about 3 a.m.

"It is destruction of public property, and we will take any appropriate action that comes as a result of our investigation," Dicus said. If "we have cause to seek the arrest of someone, we'll do it."

"We don't know what they're going to do," Snyder said. "We've got to do what we've got to do."

At all the stations, the metal fences were smashed in, apparently with hammers. At the Farragut West station, the damage was so extensive that Metro workers took down and removed the fences.

Snyder has been fighting the Metro system since last winter, when officials erected a chain link fence around the Farragut West station, at a cost of $3,700.

After that, Metro erected metal fences at the other three stations that were attacked yesterday.

Dicus said the barriers -- which are similar to the metal structures that typically protect downtown stores at night -- were put up to "assure the security of the system when the system is closed. We're a transportation provider. The system exists to {transport} people, to move them from place to place."

But Snyder, flanked by about 20 members of his organization, said the subway stations have for 10 years protected dozens of people who could not get into city shelters. He said about 10 to 20 people a night were able to gather in the space near the bottom of the escalators.

He repeated charges -- often denied by D.C officials -- that there is not enough room at shelters for all the homeless people in the city. "All of the shelters are filled," Snyder said. "We turn away 30 to 50 people a night."

"This is done for people for whom there is no inside to come to," Snyder said. "We asked {Metro} not to put the fences up. They put the fences up anyway. They said they had no intention of putting them down."

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.