2 murders at same encampment prompts clearance by Bloomington mayor
Starting around 11 a.m. on Thursday (Jan. 25), staff from at least four city of Bloomington departments worked to clear a long-established encampment from a wooded stretch of city-owned property behind Wheeler Mission.
Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson was at the site on Thursday wearing work clothes. She spoke with some of the handful of camp residents who remained.
Thursday’s action was not a surprise. At Wednesday’s city council meeting, Thomson had announced that the encampment would be cleared the following day.
Addressing media at the site on Thursday, Thomson cited two recent murders that had been committed at the encampment, in the span of about a month, as a big consideration for the timing of the encampment clearance.
In early December last year, a man was found dead, with wounds that were consistent with a machete attack. In early January, a man was found shot dead in a tent.
Thomson said at the site on Thursday that she had talked to three of the residents. “One of them knows where he’s going. And the other two have been offered possibilities, but haven’t yet decided,” she said.
Kyle Halvorsen, who works with the Indiana Recovery Alliance, was onsite with outreach workers from other non-profits helping to sort belongings of campers onto clean tarps so that they would not be thrown away. Once items were flagged by camp residents as items they didn’t want to keep, city workers dumped them in a roll-off container.
Halvorsen told The B Square that there had been maybe seven or eight people living in the specific area the farthest north on the property off 3rd Street—but they had mostly left the area after the notice was posted. Those who were still there on Thursday were the last holdouts. As for the place where they would be sleeping Thursday night, Halvorsen indicated that some other campsite could be a possibility.
It’s the second encampment removal in the first month of Thomson’s administration. She was sworn into office as Bloomington’s mayor on Jan. 1. The first encampment to be cleared was located at Fairview Street and Patterson Drive.
The displacement of the Fairview and Patterson encampment had been planned before Thomson took office. On that occasion, safety was also a reason given for the removal of the encampment—specifically fires that burned up some of the tents.
Responding to a reporter’s question on Thursday about her approach to homelessness, Thomson said on Thursday: “My approach is dignity, compassion, and safety. Those are the three priorities.”
Thomson continued: “My vision is that we need to be at a place where we can say to everybody who is from Bloomington: We can offer you a place with a roof over your head, and services so that your health needs can be met.”
Thomson added that right now the city is not in a position to make that claim. “We’re not there. And that’s not going to be a tomorrow process,” she said.
Thomson said, “I’m working with the service providers. I’ve engaged the faith communities now.”
Thomson wrapped up by saying, “We will have an all-hands-on-deck, to get to dignity, compassion and safety for all Bloomington residents.”
City departments on the scene on Thursday included: the police department (including chief Mike Diekhoff); the public works department (including director Adam Wason); the parks department; and the community and family resources (CFRD) department.
At least two dump truck loads of gravel were hauled in and dumped on the approach to the northernmost campsite—as a countermeasure to the muddy bog that had developed after about 2.5 inches of rain fell in the last week.
A late 2020 clearance of a Seminary Park encampment, followed by an early 2021 clearance of an encampment at the same location, led to the city council’s consideration of an ordinance in early 2021 that offered certain protections to encampments. That ordinance, which failed to pass, proved to be bitterly divisive.
Later that year, a general police order on removing homeless encampments was issued. It included some variants of elements that had been written into the failed ordinance, but in a less robust way. The timeframe for the requirement that a notice be posted, for example, was 15 days in the proposed ordinance, not just 72 hours.
The general police order provides some current guidance for the city on how it handles homeless encampments.
On Thursday at the site, The B Square asked Thomson if she thinks that her priorities of “dignity, compassion, and safety” can be reconciled with some kind of sanctioned encampment, or what some have started calling a “safe space.”
Thomson replied, “So far, what I’ve seen is that it’s really not safe to live outside on a permanent basis. So no, I don’t see a way forward to a sanctioned camping site.”
Thomson continued, “I have talked to residents of these camps, I will continue to talk to them. I’m going out again on Monday to actually visit with people when we’re not moving a camp, and listen to them.”
Thomson talked with some of the encampment residents on Thursday.
About her conversations with camp residents on Thursday and at other locations, Thomson said, “What I’m hearing from people is: If there were a sanctioned place, I would not go to it—because I think I will be surveilled.” Thomson concluded, “So even if we thought that was a decent idea, the people who are actually living out here don’t.”
Asked by the B Square if she had heard anything in her conversations with encampment residents on Thursday that surprised her, Thomson said she had: “I hope I’m never a human being that fails to be surprised when somebody tells me they’ve been living outside for seven full years.”
The B Square spoke with some of the nonprofit workers who were helping to keep the belongings of camp residents safe. One said that the kind of work they were doing on Thursday is not their usual work, which is to “provide medical care directly to people where they stay,” as well as case management services like finding housing.
The encampment removal is a disruption to their work, one worker said: “We have a very busy job, to provide direct services, and this is a huge challenge, barrier, distraction—all of the above.”
Based on remarks from some Bloomington city councilmembers last fall, who returned from a Local Progress conference in St. Louis over the summer, 2024 could see an effort to re-introduce some kind of legislation that would provide protections for homeless encampments.
At Wednesday’s city council meeting, Thomson said that the city’s downtown resource officers had been working with encampment residents for months doing outreach work. The actual legal notice of trespass was posted on Jan. 19. The notice—which was printed on orange paper, soggy with recent rain, but still stapled to a tree on Thursday—warned that anyone remaining after 72 hours (3 days) would be arrested. The notice also warned that personal property would be seized.
The city could have acted a couple of days earlier to remove the encampment, but Thomson said the rainy weather led to a decision to delay, so that the move would not have to take place during the rain.
Thursday’s encampment removal coincided with the point-in-time (PIT) count, which is a statewise attempt to count the number people experiencing homelessness on one specific night, usually in the last 10 days of January.
Asked by The B Square if any consideration was given to delaying the encampment removal a bit longer to avoid the conflict with the PIT count, Thomson pointed to the urgency of the situation, given the two murders that had been committed at the site.
There’s a local coordinator for every county’s PIT count. For Monroe County, the PIT count coordinator this year is Jennifer Jenkins, who is the housing choice program manager for the South Central Community Action Program (SCCAP).
Beacon, Inc. executive director Forrest Gilmore has coordinated the local PIT count effort in the past. Gilmore told The B Square that the numbers likely won’t be available until the summer. There’s work to be done to eliminate duplicates.
Last year’s PIT count tally for Monroe County, which is part of Region 10, was a total of 339 people. [Shared Google Sheet of 2023 PIT Count]
