A three-judge panel from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of a federal court order requiring the City of Denver to provide at least 48 hours notice before conducting homeless encampment sweeps, even when there are public health or safety concerns.
The March 1 ruling comes a month after Judge William J. Martinez of the U.S. District Court of Colorado issued his decision on a motion for a preliminary injunction in the class-action suit filed last October by ten homeless individuals and Denver Homeless Out Loud regarding homeless sweeps during the pandemic. While Martinez did not grant the injunction and prohibit sweeps entirely, he did determine that advance notice of sweeps was required. The Denver City Attorney s Office promptly filed an emergency motion to block the order with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which the panel refused to do; the City of Denver has also appealed the ruling on a non-emergency basis, which means that attorneys representing the ci
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The City of Denver receives a few dozen phone calls every day from residents complaining about a homeless encampment or even just a tent near their home, their office or some other area they frequent. Even though these callers are not voicing concerns about criminal activity, such as drug dealing or prostitution, operators on the non-emergency line of the Denver Police Department typically wind up fielding the calls, either because the DPD was contacted directly or because the call was forwarded by 311 or another city agency. What we came to find out was that [Denver Police Department officers] were at a loss about what to do with the ones where a crime wasn t happening in that area, says Laura Dunwoody, director of 311 City Services. After receiving such a call, a Denver police commander would send out a patrol car to do an assessment of the encampment that was the subject of the complaint before deciding what, if anything, could be done.
In a January 25 ruling placing restrictions on the City of Denver s actions related to homeless encampments, Judge William J. Martinez of the U.S. District Court of Colorado used the words sweep and sweeps 42 times.
The City of Denver doesn t like the word sweep, and it didn t like judge s take on the case. On January 26, it filed an emergency motion in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals asking to block Martinez s ruling, saying that the requirements of his order placed unnecessarily onerous restrictions on city officials.
And in a footnote to that motion, lawyers with the Denver City Attorney s Office wrote that in its Order, the district court adopts Plaintiffs term, sweeps to describe Denver s conduct related to encampments. Throughout this Motion, Denver uses the term cleanups when [the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure] posts advance notice of areas which need to be cleaned or area restrictions when restrictions are issued by the [Denver Depar
Westword’s January 26 report that Mayor Michael Hancock has seen the newly dropped video “Message to the Mayor” by Kid Astronaut (Jon Shockness), Apostle (Jeff Campbell), Bumpy Chill (Adrean Jones), Kingdom (Jeffery McWhorter) and Mizta Sandman (Shannon Richardson), in collaboration with producer Mic Coates. The experience of this powerful new work exposes the continued deadly injustice of the City of Denver’s policies toward our houseless neighbors. These most vulnerable of our citizens, disproportionately people of color, veterans, those with mental and physical disabilities, queer and trans youth, and other members of marginalized communities, are regularly set upon by cops and staff from the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure and the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment in traumatic displacements that have come to be known by the white-washed term “sweeps.”
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