Vets group plans to sue over homeless sweep

A veterans advocacy group Tuesday blasted a city-sponsored effort to clean up homeless camps in Colorado Springs, alleging the monthly sweeps involve improper searches and that personal belongings are routinely tossed out with the trash.

"Homeless veterans have had VA paperwork, medications, photographs, identification and service medals taken from their possession," said Rick Duncan of Colorado Veterans Alliance.

The group, which advocates for post-Sept. 11, 2001, veterans in Colorado, plans to file a federal lawsuit in Denver today alleging civil rights abuses by the city's contractor for the cleanups, Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful.

The lawsuit will seek not money, but an end to illegal practices, said Duncan, a retired Marine captain who was wounded during his third tour in Iraq.

Deborah Cunningham, executive director of Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful, denied the group had anything to do with illegal searches or the destruction of personal property.
"We are not a group that targets people" she said. "We clean up trash."

City code makes it illegal for homeless people to settle on public or undeveloped lands.

Under the nonprofit's cleanup program, police scout ahead of workers and identify areas to be cleaned. The officers ask anyone inhabiting a camp to leave and give them an hour or so to vacate, Cunningham said.

"When they do that, what's left behind is trash, general trash," she said.

Spoiled food, beer and liquor bottles and buckets of waste are bagged, collected and thrown away, as well as drug paraphernalia and the occasional weapon, she said.

Bedding is taken only if it has obviously been abandoned, after the group makes what she calls "a cooperative decision" with police.

Police decide which personal effects should be preserved and place them in storage, she said. The belongings may be reclaimed by their owners at the nearest police station, she said.

Cunningham denied that anyone in her program had removed military paperwork or service medals.

Contacted late Tuesday afternoon, police spokesman Lt. David Whitlock said he had to research the department's policies.

Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful received $45,000 in public money from City Council last year. Grants, donations and corporate underwriting provide additional funding.

The group spends the majority of its time patrolling streets for litter, Cunningham said.

Cleaning up after the homeless accounts for only 3 percent of its activities.

Plans for the lawsuit were announced Tuesday during a news conference at City Hall.

Duncan showed a videotape taken at a recent sweep of a homeless camp that appears to show a police officer rummaging through two suitcases - proof, Duncan said, that belongings were being illegally searched.

(Click here to view video)

The videographer, Robert Moran of the Street Church, said the officer's conduct supports complaints he's received from some of the 150 people who attend a weekly meal and church service at Antler's Park. "Nobody is opposed to cleaning up trash, but the homeless, for whatever reason they're homeless, need to be able to survive," Moran said.

The city will respond to questions about the sweeps at a meeting at 3 p.m. Thursday, with a news conference to follow at the Gold Hill police substation, said Councilman Jerry Heimlicher, who was at Tuesday's news conference.

"We're in the process of looking into this," Heimlicher said, adding that the city is concerned about the rights of the homeless. "We have the city attorney looking into the legal side of it, we have the police chief looking into what's being done, and we'll have answers on Thursday."