From “Progressive” to Enforcement Obsessive

“Police have been coming at early hours of the morning and at 1 or 2 in the afternoon, grabbing our stuff, trashing it. They run our names, they’re honking their horns, they’re flashing their lights. He just wanted us all to wake up and start moving and when we didn’t start moving as quick as he wanted us to, he started flashing the lights on us. I know two people who didn’t even have warrants who were arrested for not moving fast enough. It’s gotten bad. We are not allowed anything under us or over us. [A year or two ago] we were allowed tents, we were allowed comfortability, we were allowed privacy, we were allowed stability at least a little bit. Now we are not allowed to have blankets underneath us or over us even to cover us at night.” – Woman staying on the streets near 22nd & Stout St

Compassionate campaigner?

Mike Johnston on the campaign trail in 2023 claimed to have a hopeful vision for the progressives who supported him – a commitment to houselessness and housing those in need. Time and time again, Housekeys Action Network Denver, alongside other community groups and members, has worked to make sure he heard the stories of those most impacted by his policies, yet when the opportunity to protect their peace, their health, and their hope for breaking the cycle of poverty presented itself, his actions showed us a different side. Now, two and a half years into his term, people on the streets suffer a new level of crippling enforcement that continues to endanger their lives. 

When HAND asked a panel of mayoral hopefuls in spring of 2023 if they would stop sweeping people from block to block with nowhere to go during freezing temperatures – an act that is not only cruel  and inhumane, but utterly ineffective – Johnston stood up to suggest he was on the right side of history. Yet when countless houseless neighbors shared the horrors they experienced under freezing sweeps, 45 organizations backed them up, and City Council made history by voting for and successfully passing a bill to Stop Freezing Sweeps, Johnston vetoed it. His reasoning? That people on the streets needed to be pushed to the brink of physical and mental exhaustion to accept shelter or housing. This goes directly against findings from our own survey of 828 houseless people in Denver, which showed that 93-99% of houseless people want some form of housing. The barriers lie in lack of access and dignity of available housing programs. 

“We are dying out here, we don’t want to be out here but we are. They [police] don’t find us no place to go, they just tell us we gotta go. They promise us resources but then they kick us out.”– Woman who was kicked out of Best Western shelter to the streets

Enforcement team(s)

Johnston’s vehicle to “end homelessness” became his “All-In Mile High” hotel shelters. These hotels, previously acquired and slated for non-congregate shelter use before he ever took office, became the justification to increase criminalization of anyone left out on the streets. He not only hired hundreds of new police recruits and sheriffs, and continues to do so as hundreds of City workers in other fields lose their jobs, but also created new enforcement teams entirely – spending over $1million annually on the SET team, which their internal logs have shown to exist entirely to harass houseless people; the yellow vests or “yellow jackets” as they’re known on the streets; and of course, permitting Business Improvement District-funded private security to police public spaces. These teams all actively profile and harass anyone who looks to be houseless to the point of trashing their private property without any formal notice ever provided.

“Yellow vest – they are another team that does their own sweeps. They ride around and they will literally take your stuff with no warning. Everything I had was literally on a pallet so I can put my skateboard under it and roll it away right like that – and they trashed it… My social security card, all my VA paperwork, I don’t have a signal thing of it now…”

Here, “Johnstonomics” refers to Mayor Mike Johnston’s belief and practice that spending millions on not just excessive enforcement against poor people, but also on amenities for the rich that cost money to enjoy (such as new sports stadiums and 16th Street Mall renovations), is how Denver will be able to generate enough revenue to support the needs of its more vulnerable. Meanwhile, the family shelter waitlist steadily increases to over 300 families waiting more than 3 months long, family houselessness has doubled in the last year, and individual houselessness continues to increase, this year by 12%. We know better than to believe in this trickle down theory. 

Analyzing police ticketing data

With numerous enforcement teams in place, placating police officers and questioning anyone sitting still in public for too long, Johnston then redefined sweeps so as to only count official 7-day posted sweeps of larger encampments and stop reporting on daily, incessant “move-along” orders or even ticketing. HAND was able to acquire data directly from the Denver Police Department on the enforcement of anti-houseless statutes that exist to criminalize poverty and push people out of public spaces. These statutes include (but are not limited to):

• DRMC § 38-86 – Obstruction of Streets or Other Public Passageways
• DRMC § 38-86.1 – Sitting of Lying Down in Public Right of Way
• DRMC § 38-86.2 – Unauthorized Camping
• DRMC § 38-100 – Panhandling
• DRMC § 38-115 – Trespass
• DRMC § 38-175 – Possession or Consumption of Marijuana
• DRMC § 39-3 – Curfews and Closures
• DRMC § 39-7 – Camping in Park
• DRMC § 39-10 – Alcoholic beverages, Marijuana and Smoking
• DRMC § 49 -246 – Order of Removal
• DRMC § 54-548 – Solicitation on or near street

“We can’t have blankets or tents. We are literally sleeping on the railroad tracks. We can’t have nothing, we can’t even have a blanket. Every time we get a tent or a blanket, police take it.”– Woman who lives all over the streets but often near Doubletree shelter –never has been able to get into a hotel shelter

Now, with the data on these statutes available from the past few years until March of this year, we’re able to demonstrate the upwards trends of ticketing throughout Johnston’s term thus far. These findings are consistent with the sorts of things we’ve heard non-stop from folks on the streets. They are consistent with the millions of dollars in police spending that Johnston keeps insisting will keep Denver safer. They are, however, inconsistent with Johnston’s own message of police’s mere visual presence being enough to “deter crime” alone, as they are actively persecuting poor people more and more.

It is important to note that a high number of tickets for crimes of being houseless turn into FTA (failure to appear) warrants given the instability of life on the streets and inaccessibility of court. While the original ticket may sound innocent enough as “just a ticket”, the majority of these tickets for houseless people turn into arrests and jail time.

“We were in the alley not even two minutes, and the police passed by, and they gave us a ticket for just being right there. So I got to go to court, I’ve been twice and they didn’t hear the case, I have to go back again on June 15th.”

As this graph shows, a clear upward trend is taking place. Certain periods of time during Johnston’s term are especially prolific – these come at times when he has upped sweeps and enforcement, most significantly in January of 2024 when the initial ‘House 1000’ push ended. Again, this graph is illustrating police enforcement in the form of the number of tickets given for the anti-houseless, anti-poor people crimes of the statutes listed above. The assigned trendline starts at around 150 tickets in January 2022 only to approach nearly 350 tickets in March of 2025 – a 133% increase!!!

Tickets written for trespassing are unfortunately the most common form of ticketing against houseless people. The City uses trespass not just on private property, but even some public property. For example, a few years back the City posted “no trespass” signs under bridges along the rivers to fabricate another way to ticket houseless people without having to use the Camping Ban. There has been a continual increase in areas turned “private”, even if they are public, such that the City can turn to trespass as the law used against houseless people the majority of the time. A positive trendline from around 150 to 300 suggests a 100% increase in trespassing ticketing since 2022. 

“They won’t let us grab our stuff. They threw our stuff away: tents, bikes, clothes – threw it away – no written warning. Called it trespassing… I was under the bridge from Doubletree… It was raining…  They harass me all the time. I have asked myself, ‘why do they do this to us?’”

Public consumption laws are anti-houseless in that people living on the streets are not necessarily consuming substances more often, but they are doing so in full exposure of the world around them rather than the privacy of a home. This graph shows not just a positive increase, but several periods of spiking ticketing numbers and greater fluctuation throughout Johnston’s term than prior.  

“Everyday it gets harder and harder because we got no shelter to be around us so we could be at peace… Everyday they come around, like 6 o’clock, 7 o’clock, and they throw all our stuff away. They are throwing a lot of our stuff, goes in the trash. The City comes and there’s no more giving us warning, they just come by and sweep everything. Grocery cart, they are throwing it in the trash. The whole cart, and whatever you put in the cart, it’s going straight in the trash. It’s public property and they say ‘you gotta get off the sidewalk’, that ‘there is no way to walk through,’ but there’s a way to walk through the side, we make sure there is a path. It’s not like we are animals, but they treat us like we are animals. We go down to the bridge and they will follow us there. There is no protection from the elements. We can’t go to the hotel or security will come and tell us to get off the property, if it’s raining and we try to be there for 5 minutes, no. The way to keep these streets clean over here is to get us off the streets, but we can’t get in there.”- Man staying on the streets near Doubletree hotel shelter

Police data suggests that right after Mayor Johnston took office in July of 2023, enforcement at parks saw stark, record-breaking increases. His focus on those most visible, as opposed to those most vulnerable, meant that he was actively sweeping public spaces and right after applying higher levels of enforcement to keep people out of those areas. For now parks remain one of the very few places that are free to spend time in, and should be allowed to be accessible to all. Unfortunately this is becoming less and less the case.

“The yellow vests were rude. Came in and said, ‘get your stuff and move’. They brought the police with them. They said we can’t be in tents, but then we can’t be in parks, so I don’t know where to go.”

Once again, this graph shows an alarmingly high rate of enforcement in parks taking place right after Johnston became Mayor of Denver in July of 2023.

While enforcement through ticketing specifically for the Camping Ban was less common towards the beginning of Johnston’s term, it did see renewed use not only towards the end of 2023, but again around March through June of 2024, likely due to the impacts of the Grants Pass v. Supreme Court decision. This legislation held the fate of many houseless and poor folks in their hands by suggesting it no longer defined people being criminalized for being poor and having nowhere else to go as cruel and unusual punishment. A decree from the top has had a trickle down effect on not just Denver, but cities across the nation, who have since upped their enforcement of Camping Ban laws. 

Still, this particular graph is misleading in that it suggests low rates of enforcement compared to other statutes. The vast majority of Camping Ban enforcement, though, is carried out through move-on orders by police or SET, not through tickets. This keeps tracking low so as to not appear to be enforcing as much, and also is used to argue that they are not criminalizing houselessness since they are barely ticketing. As for the effect on houseless people, being forced to move along under the law is essentially the same as being ticketed – you still are in constant movement, no protection from the elements, and suffering in hiding.  

“This morning, we were woken to Denver’s finest, Denver Police Department, talking about they weren’t sure whose property we were on but because I have an umbrella up I was violating the camping ban – which allowed them to run me and my wife’s names. They proceeded to tell me I had a warrant for a fight out of Lakewood 5 years ago… and they arrested my wife on an paraphernalia charge from years ago… They put me in the car, 45 minutes later they let me go because there was not a warrant out for me. They proceeded to take a few of the tents because there was ‘hazardous material’ found in the area – a package of unused needles – trashed everything, tents and all.The people whose property it was were already arrested. It was nothing but harassment.”– Victim of police raid at 4th & Lipan

Street checks & GO reports

After receiving this data from the police department, city attorneys informed us that the police department had not been consistently tracking Camping Ban enforcement of move-on orders and warnings until last year “due to the direction being given that the ordinance was not being enforced (meaning they were not typically citing or arresting for violations).” This is problematic on many levels. We know for a fact from personal experience, statements from city officials, and even the police data that camping ban was being enforced during this time (since the pandemic). Instead of relying on the ticketing information provided, we had to request separate data to begin to create a more realistic picture of the sort of enforcement being conducted around survival camping. We have learned that the police department continued to record enforcement of this statute originally, in-part, through what are called “street checks for unauthorized camping”, and then through General Offense (GO) reports beginning in March 2022. Therefore, to begin to understand the scope of Survival Ban enforcement, we combined the data for street checks and GO reports into the graph you see below. 

As you can see, Camping Ban enforcement has not gone down since the pandemic, and in fact there was a sharp increase in people being told to move-on related to camping at around the time that Mayor Johnston ended his House 1000 initiative. This period of time was brutal for those on the streets who did not receive the promise of shelter and were instead continuously shuffled from block to block. 

“This one cop didn’t say anything, just started shaking the tent, then went in there and he drags my tent, he drags it to the pavement from where I had it in the grass, he just takes the top off and started taking the poles and everything. My homegirl walked up and said, ‘you can’t do that, you are supposed to give a person 48 hours and not even go through their property.’ And he was just saying ‘I don’t care, y’all not supposed to have a tent here, y’all not supposed to be in City limits.’ So he just took my tent. We had nowhere to sleep that night in the cold with emergency blankets.” – Man staying on the streets near the RiNo district

 

When we asked about the difference in data provided for the number of “people contacted” through street checks and GO reports and the number of people given verbal or written warnings, we received the following reply:

“The difference between contacts and GO reports for verbal advisement it is simply that when officers receive a 311 or complainant of camping or encampments from 911, they respond to investigate the claim. In some cases, there is no camping that is occurring therefore they do not give a verbal advisement on the camping ban. Whereas if there is any violation of the camping ordinance then the verbal advisement is given which then constitutes it being documented on a GO and or street check. To summarize there is not always a verbal advisement given on the mere complaint of camping only if officers find evidence of such violation.”

This graph, then, is not necessarily depicting the number of interactions that occurred with people who were ultimately found in violation of the camping ban, but rather it shows the frequency of which the police have responded to complaints of camping, whether substantiated or not. Still, it is interesting to note the high frequency of which officers are receiving and responding to such complaints. 

“Constantly, daily, every 25 minutes – ‘what are you doing here, you can’t be here, you can’t lay here on the grass, you are not allowed to have a blanket on the grass, it’s camping’ – I mean any excuse they can make up. Two years ago you had the freedom to walk around and congregate with your friends, four or five. It’s insane – we no longer have freedom, all of our rights have been subdued,if not taken away completely.” – Woman who stays on the streets near City Hall downtown area

This graph, on the other hand, includes only GO reports (since verbal warnings were not provided for street check data) which were only documented to be occurring as of March of 2023. It shows a very steady increase in verbal warnings and especially peaks during the ending of the House 1000 initiative and then later on in May of 2024. 

When it comes to written warnings, we were able to combine data regarding street checks and GO reports into one graph. Again, this continues to show enforcement that in practice results in our houseless friends needing to uproot their entire lives and move-on to nowhere under the threat of law enforcement retaliation. Enforcement for the camping ban has taken on many names, but tragically the impact remains the same. 

While we are provided this data as it applies to survival camping, these sort of interactions can happen under the name of any other statute – and, as we’ve seen, even enforcing statutes that don’t exist. For example, HAND just this summer was connecting with folks on the streets and filmed a police officer attempting to enforce “loitering”on a public sidewalk , which is not a law and has been found unconstitutional for some time now. It is essential to remember that while this data continuously shows increasing rates of ticketing and enforcement, there are countless  more instances that still uproot lives but never get recorded.

This graph shows very clear spikes in ticketing of a very specifically houseless statute – solicitation on/near streets. When many undocumented migrants with families were attempting to survive given their inability to legally work under undocumented status, this ticket was often given. “Solicitation” or sign waving or flagging is common, especially when disabilities intersect with being houseless. Indeed, many people on the streets – though not all – do have debilitating disabilities that prevent them from being able to sustain regular employment. Houseless people do still have bills to pay, such as phone bills in order to stay in touch with case managers and not miss calls regarding housing opportunities. The notable uptick in enforcement  under Johnston for this method of survival is perhaps one of the clearest indications of increased criminalization and persecution of the houseless community. And remember – for every ticket tracked, there are also countless people who are being forced to move/stop by police without getting a ticket. 

Conclusion

Data from Denver’s own police department confirms the sorts of complaints and cries of suffering that have been echoing on the streets of Denver for years: enforcement against houseless people simply for being visible has undeniably increased under Mayor Mike Johnston’s reign. In particular, it spiked right after he took office, and again at the end of his ‘House 1000′ initiative – today remaining higher than ever. 

These police records only reveal the tracked aspect of enforcement ticketing, but the large majority of enforcement takes place untracked – through officers ordering people to move along with no ticket, and sometimes, under no actual law. Enforcement under Johnston has been perpetuated by millions of dollars of City funding going towards:

• 168 new police recruits this year
• 60 new sheriff deputies this year
• $100million towards police officer bonuses over the next 3 years – which other City workers will be exempt from receiving
• $4.7million towards the ShotSpotter gunfire detection system – which is disproportionately deployed in communities of color, leading to over-policing without proven impact on reducing gun violence
• Flock camera system – which has been protested for sharing data with ICE, and which Mayor Johnston renewed a contract with at just under the $500,000 threshold needed to evade City Council after City Council rejected the $666,000 proposal

This makes Denver overall less safe, especially communities of color, undocumented migrants, poor and houseless people. The effects of this enforcement against the houseless? We go into hiding in areas where one is less safe, and without proper protection from the elements, making one suffer irreparable damage in extreme cold and heat. 

When first coming into office, Mayor Johnston promised to not sweep houseless people to nowhere (except for in extreme circumstances), but as can be seen here, he is sweeping houseless people to nowhere everyday in countless ways. This terror on houseless people must stop. Denver must choose to treat people as human, deserving of the most rudimentary, basic rights: to sit down, lay down, use a blanket to stay warm, or a tent to stay dry.

“They take our stuff like everyday. They rip our tents. They break the poles. There is this one time they came with the trash truck and they would not let me take any of my things, I barely got away with my backpack. They took my blankets… They took my medical bag. I go all over the place, it doesn’t matter where you are. They’ve got my anxiety so bad. I’ve been having worse panic attacks. They separate me and my partner so we are losing all our time together. They say ‘you can’t have carts,’ and then crush them in front of us. My last bike, they ran over it with a trash truck. They destroyed it. They say to get out of Denver. If we have a tent and can leave it up, my hands that have the frostbite can do better. I almost lost my ear, my hand, and my life to frostbite. Now if my hand gets too cold, it will turn black and purple and hurt really bad. Having a tent I can stay warmer, not deal with the wind. It gets so bad that I like hyperventilate and get all dizzy like I am going to pass out, and I have passed out several times from it getting too cold. So I have to try and cover up. It would be really good to be able to have the tent up, or at least a tarp. – Woman who stays by Doubletree hotel shelter and suffers from frostbite aftereffectsafter not being allowed a tent