Green Homeless Encampment Dismantled

Police made seven arrests of activists for the unhoused and removed four tents on the Upper Green Monday after a weekend of negotiations over the city’s latest homeless encampment.

The takedown and arrests began around 11 a.m. The seven were charged with trespassing, disorderly conduct, and interfering with an officer, according to top Downtown cop Lt. Brendan Borer.

For hours before that, officials and cops spoke with activists and homeless people who had set up camp behind the United Church on the Green.

Dozens of people have been sleeping there since the Wednesday before last, some mostly in sleeping bags. The city had asked the group not to erect tents.

On Saturday morning, when a parks crew came to clean that area of the Green, police asked people to clear tables, and other equipment from the area. Campers removed tables and bins and propane tanks, which they were asked not to use for safety concerns, Mayor Justin Elicker said, but then returned with them. ​“There was a lot of human waste on site that parks cleaned up” as well, he said. Crews power-washed feces and urine off the church wall.

Police returned Monday morning and again asked people to remove their belongings. With the permission of United Church, they piled their belongings against the back outer wall. Outreach crews from the city and the COMPASS non-police emergency team visited with the campers Saturday and Monday to help them find shelter; 13 agreed to stay at a city shelter on Grand Avenue, and a couple with pets went to a city facility on Route 80.

Meanwhile four tents went up. Organizers with U‑ACT (Unhoused Activists Community Team) stayed inside.

Officers under the direction of Lt. Borer and Sgt. Justin Cole approached each of the activists one by one, asking them in a calm tone to move. Meanwhile, two dozens activists holding signs reading ​“Stop The Sweeps” and ​“Compass=Cops” chanted ​“From New Haven to Palestine / Displacement is a Crime!” and called for defunding the police.

“I need you to move,” Sgt. Cole told Alexis Terry, who had been calmly smoking a joint waiting for her turn.

Like the other activists, Terry said she would be arrested instead.

Cole asked her to walk along with him to a waiting cop car. Terry said she didn’t want to walk, that her back hurt. She asked for a stretcher; officers brought a bag, sat Terry inside, then carried her to one of the cruisers waiting nearer to College Street.

“You’re not the enemy, bro,” Terry told the officers en route. ​“My back is fucked up, feet fucked up … There are people out here with cancer …”

In a conversation before the arrest, Terry, who is 39, said she has been homeless on and off for eight years. She has family in New Haven with whom she has religious and political differences, she said. She stopped staying in shelters after bad experiences with the staff at Columbus House, she said; she praised the warming shelters the city and nonprofit partners set up in the winter, when people can come and go at will. 

“We’re trying to keep it as orderly as possible,” she said of U‑ACT’s encampment. ​“We have clean-up committees.”

Terry said she was supposed to be at work at Walmart in West Haven Monday morning, but chose to stay with the group on the Green.

“I’m going to be arrested,” and then ​“I’m coming back down here after I get out,” she said.

Other arrestees said they have housing, and were camping out and getting arrested in solidarity. They criticized the city for not providing more housing instead of clearing encampments. They also criticized COMPASS for working alongside police.

In a conversation afterwards with the Independent, Mayor Elicker accused the arrested organizers of ​“doing a real disservice to people experiencing homelessness in the city. We had to expend a lot of resources on Saturday and Monday that we should be spending helping people out.”

As the arrests unfolded, Richard (pictured below), 66, sat in a red foldout lawn chair a few feet away from the semi-circle of chanting protesters. Since he didn’t stay in a tent, he wasn’t arrested.

He said he and his girlfriend slept on the Green last night, and, despite the police’s clearing of the encampment Monday, they plan on sleeping outdoors on the Green tonight as well.

“It is what it is,” he said about the folding up of tents and arrests of protesters. He praised the Yale students for sticking up for the homeless; he expressed frustration at not being able to find housing he can afford in town.

Ideally, Richard said, he and his girlfriend would be able to get a spot at the Amistad House encampment on Rosette Street. But, until space opens up there, ​“I’m gonna stay” on the Green.

He then gestured towards the mounds of black plastic garbage bags piled against the back of the United Church on the Green. All of his clothing and other personal belongings are over there, he said. ​“I got all my stuff here.” How can he just pick up and leave without taking his stuff somewhere else?