Latest Denver Police Sweep Forces 3 Dozen Homeless From RiNo

DENVER, CO – By Alex Burness for The Colorado Independent. A young woman shrieked and howled Wednesday morning as she stomped across Arkins Court toward Brighton Boulevard, away from the homeless encampment where she’d been sleeping of late. She overturned a metal trash barrel as if to punctuate her anger, and people in the area turned their heads at the loud clang.

Earlier in the day, police had busted the encampment along the South Platte River near Arkins and 29th Street. At least three dozen people have been camping there, in the shadow of a massive new housing development in the gentrified Five Points enclave known as the River North Art District.

Those who happened to be there when the cops arrived were given the chance to bundle their things or send them to a storage facility a few blocks away, where the city will hold people’s belongings for up to 30 days.

Those who weren’t around when the sweep began — the young woman included — returned to find their things had been sent to storage without their consent.

“She’s freaking out because her stuff was taken,” explained Terese Howard, a volunteer organizer with Denver Homeless Out Loud. “Her stuff is gone because she went somewhere to run an errand, came back, and her stuff was gone. She’s trying to retrieve it but she can’t right now because the storage place isn’t even open and the stuff wasn’t labeled under her name. It was just taken.”

Such scenes are becoming more routine in Denver. People experiencing homelessness camp out, alone or in groups, and they are inevitably told to move along during what are known as “sweeps” of the homeless. Wednesday’s crack-down was relatively large-scale, and came just 17 days after Denver’s biggest sweep in recent memory, near the intersection of Park Avenue West and Lawrence Street in the Ballpark neighborhood. That one affected more than 100 people, some of whom relocated to the spot police cleared out on Wednesday.

The sweep in Ballpark was necessary, city officials said, because the tent city that had sprung up there brought with it public health concerns.

“You should have seen the feces and rats around here,” Denver Police Sgt. Brian Conover told Westword.

Conover was present for Wednesday’s sweep, too, which the city said was a response to safety concerns. “We had a life safety issue occurring along this stretch of Arkins, with people putting up tents adjacent to a busy roadway,” said Nancy Kuhn, a spokeswoman for Denver’s Department of Public Works, in a text message. “There were about 30 people sleeping/camping adjacent to a busy roadway. It’s not a safe place for people to be.”

Kuhn said the city also responded because it got a complaint about the encampment, which was on Denver Parks and Recreation land.

READ MORE at The Colorado Independent

Image: Denver Police Sgt. Brian Conover, seen here speaking with a homeless man named Dorian Phillips, supervised Wednesday's sweep of an encampment in Five Points. It's the second major sweep in Denver in the past three weeks. (Photo by Alex Burness for The Colorado Independent)