Fort Worth police say a focused effort to remove homeless encampments on East Lancaster Avenue has improved safety in the area, but some city council members are raising concerns. In a briefing to the Public Safety Committee this week, police explained that most of the city’s resources for thos e experiencing homelessness are clustered around East Lancaster, which attracts a lot of people. “This is not about, ‘If you’re homeless, you’ve got to get out of here.’ This is about, if you’re homeless, we want to make sure that the behaviors and conduct are lawful, and you’re using the resources and we’re helping you get to those resources,” Deputy Chief Buck Wheeler said during the meeting. Police said the area attracts a lot of crime. “To be a violent crime grid in the City of Fort Worth, you have to have led the City of Fort Worth in incidents of aggravated assault, aggravated robbery, or incidents of murder,” Chief Eddie Garcia told the committee. “When you run that data, the number one grid in the City of Fort Worth is one of those locations. The number 10 on that list is another one of those locations.” “It’s not so much of the homeless people, it’s the people that are coming down here and preying on them. We’re getting the people that are coming down here for prostitution, getting people coming down here to sell drugs,” explained Lt. Michael Brown with Fort Worth Police Department’s HOPE Unit. On January 23, several city departments started a focused effort on the area, spending over $157,000 to clean up 265 illegal homeless encampments and try to connect folks to resources. “We’re not criminalizing homeless people. We’ll give people warnings and tell them, ‘Hey, you need to move your tent up,'” Brown said. Police said it’s working; nearly all serious violent crime has been eliminated. “This was one of the city’s hot spots. And as of this week, this is not one of the city’s hot spots,” Brown said. But the cleanup comes with some concerns. “I guess 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 council member Mia Hall of District 6. “There are some visible changes in D6.” District 9 City Council member Elizabeth Beck said she’s seen changes in areas of her district, too, including West Seventh Street and Magnolia Avenue. “I was walking from one end to the other and it felt like I was literally stepping over homeless individuals as I walked down that street,” Beck said. “There’s typically a few on any given night, but you could definitely tell there was an uptick that evening.” Beck said she knows something needs to be done in the area. “I know from experience that many homeless people choose not to go seek services there because they don’t feel safe. So we definitely needed to do something on the Lancaster Corridor,” she said. But she wants to make sure it’s done fairly. “Making sure that they follow the laws, but also have some compassion and treat them with dignity,” Beck said. And she wants to make sure people are getting help and not just setting up camp elsewhere. Police said so far, they haven’t seen an increase in reports of illegal camps elsewhere, and they believe everyone who moved from the corridor is getting help. They and Beck agree that getting to the root of homelessness isn’t about policing, it’s about access to more resources. “We’re the Advil, we’re the Tylenol to reduce the fever. We’re not a cure to the illness. So, it’ll be an all-hands-on-deck approach,” Chief Garcia said. ...read more read less