Chico homeowners call out police for lack of action as homeless people evade enforcement

CHICO, Calif. — From enforcement to evasion: some of those evicted from Chico homeless encampments that are not heading into city shelters are moving to other camps while homeowners nearby believe law enforcement is not doing enough to stop it.

That’s the case for homeless encampments, like Windchime Park along Humboldt Avenue, that have seen increased populations since the city cleared out its largest encampment, Comanche Creek, earlier this week. Curt Jones lives directly across the street from the park and estimates 50 new people have moved in since.

"The quality of life here is not good at all,” says Jones outside his home. “They come right into your lawn and steal your stuff from you. They take yard tools and things like that.”

Though he’s lived next to the camp since its formation years ago, he says violence, theft and calls for emergency services are at an all-time high. But his calls to police to remove those who have moved in recently have gone largely unaddressed, he says.

“They were supposed to arrest the people that were camp jumping like that and they're not doing that. They're not even walking over there and checking on them or seeing who is here,” says Jones. “They barely even drive by here anymore.

Other neighbors, like Heather Cardwell, a few doors down from Jones, are more sympathetic to the growing camp. She says not enough resources are readily available for the camp’s occupants, such as low-income affordable housing, but that the constant nuisances are growing tiresome for her and her three-year-old son.

“One night I had a woman bang on my bedroom window at about three in the morning and then she came and banged on the door, sat on my front step, woke my son up, he was crying, she did not leave until I threatened to call the police,” says Cardwell on her front lawn overlooking the encampment. “There’s many fights that break out that’s not healthy. They’re just not healthy for my son to hear or be around.”

KRCR took these concerns to the Chico Police Department which says there are only minimal actions officers can take outside the confines of the Warren v. Chico settlement agreement, which details how the city can legally clear out a homeless encampment on city-owned property.

Captain Greg Keeney says quality of life calls, such as the ones mentioned by Jones and Cardwell, take a backseat to priority calls involving in-progress crime and violence. He ensures police respond to a vast majority of calls, however, whether via drive-by, stake out or contact with a subject.

In the meantime, these camps are legally protected from enforcement until the city proceeds through the nearly month-long process of clearing them out.

“I think the frustrating thing for people is that (enforcement) takes so long to do. It takes so long because those are the terms of the settlement agreement that we have to abide by,” says Keeney during a phone interview. “I know it can be frustrating. I know it would be frustrating for me if I lived in that neighborhood. But we are going to do everything we can to eliminate the nuisances and the quality-of-life crimes happening in that neighborhood.”

He also confirms that those moving into camps that have yet to see enforcement from a previously enforced-upon camp are doing so illegally. Response to this, however, has been recently put on pause as the department’s TARGET Team and Code Enforcement focused on clearing out Comanche Creek.

“If somebody gets assessed to go into a shelter and they decide not to and then go ahead and go occupy some other encampment in the city, they are citable under our camping rules. As you can imagine, that’s a pretty long process for us to go in, contact everybody, figure out who they are, issue them cites and ask them to leave. That process is going to happen,” says Keeney. “We have a TARGET team that’s only staffed right now with three people and a sergeant. So, they’re pretty packed, especially when we have an operation like Comanche Creek going.”

With the city’s once-largest homeless encampment fully cleared, he says focus will pivot to this kind of enforcement come next week. This is additionally the timeframe that Chico City Manager Mark Sorensen tells KRCR will be when the next camp or camps to be cleared out will be decided. At this time, the city has cataloged 37 different encampments.

Sorensen adds that 153 tons of garbage, two 40-yard dumpsters of recyclable metal and multiple propane bottles, 12-volt automotive batteries, used motor oil, used antifreeze and gasoline cans were removed from Comanche Creek as of Tuesday.

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