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City Claims 4 a.m. Move on Homeless Camp Was ‘Outreach’ Written by DOYLE MURPHY

People living in a homeless camp in downtown St. Louis say they woke at 4 a.m. last 7hursday to a police officer rattling through their pop-up community, telling them to clear out.

“She just shook everybody’s tents,” Tamadj Shakespeare, 23, says. “It was very disturbing.” %ehind the police officers, a crew of city parks employees stood alongside a work truck, apparently ready to haul away any tents left behind.

“They thought that we were just going to leave, and they were going to take our tents,” Marcus Hunt, 29, says.

Instead, Hunt and Shakespeare say they referred officers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines that not only advise against disbanding camps during the pandemic but recommend supporting them with toilets and facilities where people can wash their hands.

Outreach workers and volunteer observers, who’d heard rumors a raid was coming, kept an eye on the camps through the night. :hen a pair of police officers and eight or nine parks workers arrived in the morning darkness, they began to record the scene on their phones.

“[Police] were going around, rousing people, telling them it was time to go,” says Steven Hoffman, a Saint Louis University law student who filmed that morning.

Once the phones came out and people in the camp pushed back, the tenor of the interaction changed, witnesses say. “It appeared they did not want to be filmed doing this,ȋ +offman says.

Tamadj Shakespeare, le, and Marcus Hunt say police tried and failed to clear a tent camp downtown. | DOYLE MURPHY

A police sergeant who responded to the scene shortly after the first two officers told the group police were just there to stand by, not throw anyone out. Ultimately, the officers and parNs crew left. -acob Long, a spokesman for Mayor Lyda Krewson, says they weren’t planning a forced removal, but the city has tried to persuade those staying in the camp to move into shelters, including a temporary facility at the former Little Sisters of the Poor campus at 3225 North Florissant Road on the edge of the Old North neighborhood.

The temporary shelter currently has 26 beds but can expand to serve more than 100 people, Long says. So far, only three people had been persuaded to move from the camp as of last week, he adds. Long insists the 4 a.m. operation was an “extension of our outreach” and not a failed mission to remove people by force.

The city, he says, has followed the CDC guidelines against disbanding camps when it comes to more established tent cities by the river. But he says the one downtown is in violation of a city curfew, and it formed recently.

“We can’t just allow these to continue to pop up in places that have curfews,” Long says. “It’s a public safety issue. It’s a public health issue, first and foremost.ȋ

About 35 people have been staying in the park near 14th and Market streets, with a smaller camp just to the east, across Market from City Hall. An outdoor handwashing station left by the city didn’t have any water, residents say, so they filled it with water they bought or that was donated.

Hunt says the people living there have created their own governing structure with a shared fund for supplies. He’s the community coordinator. Shakespeare is the community liaison. For the most part, the two say the community has insulated itself, which they see as protection against the virus. They don’t believe anyone in the camp is sick. “If one of us was sick, all of us would be sick,” Hunt says.

It’s not a bulletproof strategy. COVID-19 has proven to be hard to spot, often for ten days or more, before it hits. Still, the CDC warns that busting up camps can make it harder for service providers to find people while potentially scattering those infected in all directions.

Shakespeare and Hunt worry most about outsiders bringing the coronavirus into the camp. 7he police officers who arriYed last Thursday morning were not wearing gloves or masks, they say.

Similarly, they worry about going to the city’s new shelter, because they’re not certain what awaits them, if they’re even admitted. Long says a variety of services, everything from meals to help with resume writing are being offered. People in the camp are skeptical they’ll be treated well.

In the days leading up to the early morning visit, police were driving by recording and photographing them, they say. As Hunt and Shakespeare spoke to the Riverfront Times, state troopers in a Missouri State Highway Patrol pickup truck slowed down in front, one of them lowering his window and pointing what appeared to be a recorder toward the group.

Such surveillance does not give the people in the camp confidence that those in government are looking out for their best interests. “I’m pretty sure they’re going to come back,” Shakespeare says. “But we know how to stand our ground, legally.” n