{"id":36842,"date":"2022-12-09T23:41:09","date_gmt":"2022-12-10T06:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/homeless-camp-sweeps-draw-criticism-in-durango-code-enforcement-explains-procedure\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:33:54","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:33:54","slug":"homeless-camp-sweeps-draw-criticism-in-durango-code-enforcement-explains-procedure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/homeless-camp-sweeps-draw-criticism-in-durango-code-enforcement-explains-procedure\/","title":{"rendered":"Homeless camp sweeps draw criticism in Durango; code enforcement explains procedure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Shadow
Shadow and his cat Meowth stand at his campsite along the Animas River on Thursday south of Ninth Street Bridge and along Roosa Avenue. He said he received tickets for his campsite and that he turned them over to his attorney. \u201cI\u2019m standing up until they provide a place for us street people,\u201d he said. Shadow has been in Durango for two years, camping near the former Purple Cliffs homeless campsite and in and around Durango, he said. He suffers from seizures so he likes to be around people and police in case he needs help when a seizure strikes. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Joel Berdie, who runs S.O.L. Community Health in Durango, said the city\u2019s code enforcement operations are at odds with community efforts to support the city\u2019s homeless population.<\/p>\n

Speaking during Durango City Council\u2019s public participation segment of its Tuesday meeting, Berdie said police cleared a camp along the Animas River south of the Ninth Street Bridge of homeless residents\u2019 belongings and dumped them in the garbage earlier that same morning.<\/p>\n

Among the items lost were a down comforter, Sorel boots worth $200, an emergency blanket and personal paperwork, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is all gear that folks have been accruing over months,\u201d he said. \u201cThese individuals immediately went into crisis. I\u2019ve been on and off the phone with these individuals today completing actual homicidal assessments. Everyone is safe and accounted for this evening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steve Barkley, city code enforcement officer, said on Thursday the procedure for collecting potentially abandoned property is to place an abandoned camp notice at a campsite if no one is around to claim the items. The notice amounts to a 24-hour warning that if the owner doesn\u2019t move the property it can be considered abandoned.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we return after 24 hours-plus, nobody\u2019s there, it looks like everything\u2019s the same, it is collected up and disposed of as abandoned property,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Barkley said a city ordinance disallows leaving personal property in the city\u2019s open spaces during daylight hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the person wants to retain that stuff they need to take it with them,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they fail to remove it and take it with them it can be considered abandoned. But once again, we usually tag that stuff for 24 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the homeless residents whose belongings were discarded, it was traumatizing and their PTSD reactions were triggered, Berdie told City Council.<\/p>\n

He said he has been in contact with the Durango Police Department, which told him officers are enforcing the city\u2019s orders.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo enforce a so-called camping ban, it is detracting from any of the work that providers are getting to do during the daytime when we are there to form connections,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Berdie said police cleared the camp between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m., hours when many homeless residents gather at Manna soup kitchen to warm up and get food.<\/p>\n

\u201cFolks come up there to heal, to find sanctuary, to feel safe,\u201d he said. \u201c\u2026 All of their belongings were not sorted through, they were simply all discarded into a dumpster.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said homeless residents have been forced to camp near the river because the city has provided them nowhere else to go.<\/p>\n

Barkley said police store some items if they appear to be in use. The police department has held onto one camp\u2019s belongings for over a day now, waiting to see if the owner or owners will come to claim the items. If nobody shows up to take the property, it will be disposed of.<\/p>\n

\"Steve
Steve Barkley, city code enforcement officer with the city of Durango, walks away from an illegal campsite along the Animas River south of Ninth Street Bridge along Roosa Avenue on Dec. 1, after placing a notice of unauthorized use. The notice said the campers had 24 hours to remove items before they were deemed abandoned. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cOne of the camps that we collected up the other day, we did receive information from the owner and it was returned to him. We try to do what we can with these folks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Berdie said police told him they \u201chave their hands behind their back\u201d because they don\u2019t know where to send homeless residents. The least the city can do is allow people to keep \u201cminimal survival gear\u201d and \u201cvital documents,\u201d and collaborate with the unhoused and support groups when camp sweeps must occur.<\/p>\n

Barkley said police do communicate with homeless residents about open rooms and services supplied by organizations such as Volunteers of America, although those services are dependent on availability.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s nothing available then unfortunately, we as an officer cannot \u2013 well, we could if we were independently wealthy \u2013 put them up in a hotel,\u201d he said. \u201cBut that\u2019s something that personally I cannot do.\u201d<\/p>\n

If there isn\u2019t availability with third-party services, officers don\u2019t cite unhoused residents for trespassing, he said.<\/p>\n

Berdie mentioned that homeless residents affected by the sweep on Tuesday morning were in crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe try to work in a positive attitude with the houseless versus being aggressive or randomly throwing away stuff just to irritate people, shall we say,\u201d Barkley said. \u201cWe\u2019re not out there to do that. They\u2019re in a bad situation and we\u2019re not there to make it worse. We\u2019re just trying to take care of what laws (people) are breaking and try to make the community safe and healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said camps along the Animas River are cause for health and safety concern because of the potential for trash and human and animal waste to be dumped into the river and washed downstream.<\/p>\n

When code enforcement officers do dispose of a camp, they don\u2019t rummage through belongings, he said. They roll the property up and dispose of it. If the site appears to be active, officers will tag the camp and continually check on it.<\/p>\n

Two camps are still present in the area; two others moved to another location; and one was deemed abandoned and disposed of on Tuesday, he said.<\/p>\n

cburney@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Potentially abandoned property is tagged and given 24 hours to be removed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[364,950,1065,28,611,51],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-36842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-community","tag-durango","tag-durango-police-department","tag-headlines","tag-homelessness","tag-police"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83474,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36842\/revisions\/83474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36842"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=36842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}