{"id":98617,"date":"2018-07-26T18:57:53","date_gmt":"2018-07-27T00:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/police-end-homeless-camp-protest\/"},"modified":"2018-07-26T18:57:53","modified_gmt":"2018-07-27T00:57:53","slug":"police-end-homeless-camp-protest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/police-end-homeless-camp-protest\/","title":{"rendered":"Police end homeless camp protest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"On
On Tuesday night, police evicted eight homeless residents from a temporary overnight camp adjacent to Greenmount Cemetery. The evicted campers had protested city rules for use of the camp by leaving their tents up during the day. They had protested for five days before the eviction because they said city rules had caused problems.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Durango Police Department officers forced homeless residents who protested city rules for a temporary overnight camp near Greenmount Cemetery to leave the site Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

Some residents of the camp had left their tents up during the day for five days in protest of the city\u2019s requirements that they break camp each morning and leave the site from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Residents said the rules caused problems with theft and property damage.<\/p>\n

Homeless resident Millie Sanders said about five police officers arrived about 8 p.m. and gave those people who had been cited for disobeying city rules 30 minutes to an hour to leave.<\/p>\n

She spent Tuesday night walking the streets because she does not have anywhere to go, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel very broken,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She was one of eight people who were forced to leave, she said.<\/p>\n

Police arrived shortly after Durango City councilors agreed in a public meeting that camp rules must be upheld.<\/p>\n

Police Chief Kamran Afzal confirmed officers required those who were previously cited for trespassing on city property to leave.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what trespassing means, right, that you are banned from being somewhere,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sanders said the police did not inform her before Tuesday night that she was not allowed to sleep overnight on the city\u2019s site.<\/p>\n

Former volunteer camp manager Jacob Jost said he asked officers where campers should go because they have a right to rest overnight if sufficient shelter in a permanent building is unavailable.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do know my rights,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Police told him he had 30 minutes to leave or be taken to jail, he said.<\/p>\n

Durango City Councilor Dean Brookie said the police action was in line with councilors\u2019 direction to uphold camp rules.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody\u2019s been asked to leave that has not been fully aware of their noncompliance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

City councilors do not want to allow people to stay all day on the property because they do not want the city to be responsible for relocating the residents when the camp closes. The city doesn\u2019t have the resources, land or expertise to serve homeless residents long term, Brookie said.<\/p>\n

The camp near Greenmount was set up as a temporary, emergency area for homeless residents after the 416 Fire when an evacuation shelter at Escalante Middle School closed. The Greenmount camp is scheduled to close Aug. 25.<\/p>\n

While Brookie opposes establishing a camp for the homeless in the city, he supports a nonprofit establishing housing that would provide homeless residents with social services on city property.<\/p>\n

The city has also asked the Colorado Department of Local Affairs for assistance with setting up a shelter that wouldn\u2019t require residents to be sober, he said. Such a shelter would be run by a nonprofit, not the city, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking at the bigger, long-term picture,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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

Noncompliant residents forced out of temporary site<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":98618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[1020,611,51],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-98617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-durango-city-council","tag-homelessness","tag-police"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98617","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=98617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98617"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=98617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}