Homeless Camp

By Cheryl Jahn

Homeless Camps

Homeless camps concerning

Sep 27, 2019 | 3:57 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Prince George’s drug challenges are not isolated to the downtown. The City recently created a Bylaw Enforcement Unit. That unit starts each day cleaning up the rubbish in the downtown. Everything from discarded blankets and suitcases to, as of this morning, a wheelbarrow. In fact, since the team began, they have taken 31,000 pounds of rubbish to the landfill, costing the City $1,500 in tipping fees alone.

But once the downtown is cleaned up, the crew may be called on to dismantle a camp, often located in one of the city’s numerous green spaces. Since last May, the City has dealt with 1,500 camps, some nothing more than a few blankets tucked into an alcove while others are very elaborate.

“Oh yes. Fences, gates. The one that was over the hill [in Carrie Jane Gray Park], they had built a platform and some bags set up and a garden hose for a shower. They dug underneath and put some plastic so they didn’t have to stand on the dirt while they’re in the shower,” explains Patrick, one of the Bylaw Enforcement Officers. “They had recovered a toilet from one of the parks and set that up inside a tent, so they had a private bathroom facility, couches, full walls to prevent people from seeing when they had their fires lit at night.”

He says one camp had a generator put into a hole so the noise it produced wouldn’t travel through the neighbourhood and, in winter, white tarps were put over the tents to mask the camp’s location. But, they’re also dangerous.

“Drug paraphernalia is there. Sadly, a lot of them have a criminal history. Some violent, things like that. They get protective of the stuff as well,” explains Denton, also a Bylaw Enforcement Officer. Both Denton and Patrick are former Corrections officers. “These people use intimidation a lot, too, to keep people away because most people are intimidated by them. Their first line of defence is intimidation. There are some not-so-great people amongst these groups.”

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“We usually try to contact the RCMP to attend with us and other bylaw officers so we go a little bit en masse,” says Patrick. “And we try to identify everybody. The RCMP are there to identify anything that’s stolen or is stuff that should be there. And that rationale for the creating the team has been justified many times over.

“Since May of last year, the number of incidents related to camps, squatters in people’s vestibules, in our parkades and needle pick-ups represents just under 35 per cent of our total calls for service,” says Fred Crittenden, Manager for Bylaw Services.

And they often can identify the camp residents, as the camps move from location to location. In some ways, the Bylaw Enforcement officers feel like they’re chasing their tails.

“We kind of refer to it as shovelling water sometimes. It’s the same people, same locations, same types of things.”