Early Thursday, Phillip “Wagon Man” Cargile left the van where he sleeps and trudged down to the Colorado Springs Municipal Courthouse to again face a judge for illegally pulling his wagons in the street.

Again he was convicted, for the third and fourth times, on tickets written by Colorado Springs police officer Michael Zamonas.

Again, Cargile was frustrated and angry during court proceedings. He struggled to maintain his composure and to understand simple instructions from sympathetic Judge William Cogswell.

Weeks ago, in his first court appearance, Cargile’s wife, Cheryl, blurted out to a frustrated judge that Phillip has “TBI,” or traumatic brain injury, and doesn’t understand things like others typically do. She was trying to explain his failure to comply with court procedures and instructions.

Cargile told me Thursday that he was severely injured as a teen when he was thrown off a moving car.

“But there’s nothing wrong with me,” he said. “I’m fine now.”

Still, it could explain why he spends his days dragging wagons around town with his arm stretched over his head, while wearing large cardboard signs around his neck declaring “BE POSITIVE” as he spreads a Christian message of salvation to passers-by.

It doesn’t matter to him that police in Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs are piling up tickets against him.

Or that he has no home and no income and no way to pay fines.

Or that he may end up in jail because he refuses to do court-ordered community service, insisting that walking the streets with his wagon train is the ultimate in community service because he’s saving lives.

“If I go to jail, it means I’m needed there,” he said Thursday.

Cargile said no amount of tickets will deter him.

As his story has unfolded over 18 months or so, readers have been divided over how police are treating Cargile. Many criticize police for taking a harsh approach, saying the Pikes Peak region ought to embrace the eccentrics among us. Others say police are just doing their jobs and trying to protect Cargile and motorists from a dangerous collision.

But Gail Murphy-Geiss, professor of sociology at Colorado College, sees Wagon Man as the symbol of a much larger issue: our society’s failure to properly deal with the homeless, the mentally ill and folks suffering from post traumatic stress.

“Everybody looks bad because they are not doing the right thing,” Murphy-Geiss said. “But the right thing is complicated. And expensive. So people like him get thrown around like hot potatoes. Or they give him enough tickets until they chase him out of town.”

The Cargiles left a year ago, saying they felt harassed by police in Manitou. But they returned in November because they were homesick.

Murphy-Geiss said tickets don’t work with people who don’t understand their crime. Same for the homeless. They often defy laws against begging or loitering because they have no choice or reason to comply.

“They are not going to respond to simple ticketing,” she said. “Criminalizing their behavior doesn’t help.”

But Murphy-Geiss doesn’t blame police for the ticketing.

“Police are in the untenable situation of having to uphold the law,” she said. “They are stuck with solving a problem that is larger than them.”

So what should police and the courts do with Wagon Man? He’s due in Manitou court June 19.

“Don’t look at the individual; the problem is much larger,” Murphy-Geiss said. “This is a social problem. Society needs to provide treatment and services to people who are mentally ill and homeless.

“Societies are judged by how they treat the least of their members. If this is how we treat him, it’s a sign of our problem, not his.”

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