Fort Worth police recently streamed resources to reduce crime along the East Lancaster corridor where there are many services for those who are homeless.
While police officials said the initiative is successful, some council members worry that the stepped up efforts to make the corridor safer are prompting homeless camps in other parts of Fort Worth.
The focus on the corridor — about 1 mile southeast of downtown — started Jan. 23 and is ongoing. On Tuesday, officials detailed their efforts to the City Council’s public safety committee.
The East Lancaster corridor, a two-block area surrounding the intersection of East Presidio and Cypress streets, holds many of the city’s food distribution and night shelters with constant lines of people waiting and napping along the sidewalks nearby.
In January, the police department relocated much of its homeless outreach program, or HOPE, team to the area to address a spike in violent crime, camping, narcotics activities, assaults, prostitution and city ordinance violations, Deputy Chief Buck Wheeler told council members.
“While the initiative may be short-term, we are finding some ways to make this lasting,” Wheeler said. “We anticipate and hope that the shift and culture down there sets the tone, so when these issues arise, if they do later, we’ll be in a better position to address them and knock them out.”
Police Chief Eddie García told council members the corridor stands out as one of Fort Worth’s top 10 hot spots for violent crime when breaking the city into about 95,000 different sectors.
As he works with criminologists to develop a citywide, data-driven approach to preventing crime — an approach he promised to use during his hiring process last summer — the corridor will be a perfect location to employ an “all-hands-on-deck” strategy backed by “science and data.”
The HOPE team, working with patrols and neighborhood police officers, issued 74 citations and 735 warnings across the East Lancaster corridor between Jan. 23 and Feb. 17.
In that timeframe, the police department’s efforts cost an estimated $157,480, or about $6,300 a day, Cmdr. Robert Stewart told council members. That means police initiatives’ price tag could exceed $250,000 if those same daily rates continued through March 5, according to the Report’s estimates.
Officers cleaned up 265 campsites as of Feb. 17, Stewart said. Teams continue sweeping the corridor daily to prevent camps from cropping back up. Of the 74 citations issued, 28 were for illegal camping.
To make the efforts’ effects more lasting, Wheeler said police expanded the HOPE team’s schedule to seven days a week, instead of only Monday through Friday. The city’s environmental services department also expanded its cleanup efforts in the area to seven days a week.
Between Jan. 22 and Feb. 10, environmental services cleaned up an additional 92 camps for a cost of about $20,000, said Wyndie Turpen, assistant environmental services director.
City staff worked with crews from UpSpire, a local organization that employs individuals experiencing homelessness or unemployment, offering them community cleanup, janitorial and landscaping jobs.
Turpen said her department worked with the city’s homeless strategies division and East Lancaster nonprofits to create a “charity redirection” plan that encourages people to give out food and resources at set locations that don’t unlawfully block streets.
Ideally, after being approached by police, homeless individuals would clean up their camps and stay in one of the corridor’s many shelters, Stewart said.
However, some council members questioned whether the efforts were criminalizing homelessness and inconveniencing the individuals more than helping them.
“The narcotics, the prostitution, the violent offenses, those are definitely crimes that we need to go after,” council member Elizabeth Beck said. “But obstructing sidewalks, littering ... are we making it harder for our homeless population to exist and potentially get help in the future?”
Stewart said the cleanup enforcements were necessary to target the more serious felons in the area, such as drug dealers who take advantage of the homeless. He said citations were only issued to such people with serious offenses or to homeless people who refused to comply with police warnings.
Homeless individuals who are issued citations can be referred to Fort Worth’s community court program, which aims to provide them with aid and ways to have a citation dismissed.
Council member Charles Lauersdorf, who chairs the public safety committee, said he wants to explore stricter repercussions for those who target the homeless with drug dealing and prostitution in “hot-spot” areas.
Where are the encampments, crime going?
Beck and council member Mia Hall expressed concern about where homeless people were going after being told to clean up their tents.
“My question is about the ripple effect — the implications of so much targeted focus in the Lancaster area and how that may be displacing our unhoused neighbors into other portions of the city,” said Hall, who represents much of southwest Fort Worth.
Citywide reports of new camps did increase in the first weeks of their efforts on East Lancaster, Wheeler said, but these have since been addressed and lowered to normal rates.
Beck, who represents much of Fort Worth’s downtown and southside, pushed back, saying she has seen a noticeable increase in homeless activity across her district in areas such as Magnolia Avenue and West 7th Street.
“I’ve seen an uptick in areas that we have been working really hard to see that decrease in,” Beck said. “I can’t say that it doesn’t feel like we’re displacing people around the city.”
Hall said that while she appreciates the police efforts, she’s also noticed a potential uptick in homeless activity across her district. Hall said she’d like to hear an update on how the police department’s efforts are being pushed into the greater city.
Stewart said his teams are keeping track of where homeless individuals — and the people taking advantage of them — could be relocating. He repeated that they have not seen an increase in camping reports across the city.
“This is not going to be a displacement initiative. We’re not looking to move anybody out. We’re looking to make it safer,” Stewart said. “I want to give it the appearance of being safer, and I want to reduce crime.”
The focus on East Lancaster comes as City Hall holds broader discussions about how to address the city’s rising homeless population.
As of December, an estimated 2,702 homeless people resided in Fort Worth, Homeless Strategies manager Tara Perez said during a Feb. 3 presentation to the public safety committee. Of those, nearly 800 were labeled as “chronically homeless.”
Police presence is the “Advil to reduce the fever. We’re not a cure to the illness,” Chief García said.
Drew Shaw is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at drew.shaw@fortworthreport.org or @shawlings601.
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