WTOC, Savannah, Georgia, news, weather and sports | Savannah-Chatham police to sweep homeless camps

Savannah-Chatham police to sweep homeless camps

By Don Logana - bio | email

SAVANNAH, GA (WTOC) - There are small cities of homeless within the City of Savannah and now some may have to look for a new home. Savannah-Chatham police are cracking down on homeless camps.

The plan is being finalized. By the end of the month, police will be sweeping through these homeless camps and hopefully moving the homeless living in them to shelters.

There have been six areas across the city which have been targeted as homeless camp sites. There are as many as 15 camps in any given location, with as many as 20 homeless people living in them.

By February 1, they will be evicted. Police have been tracking homeless camps for years.

"You can't just set up a tent or card board box and call it home," one police officer told WTOC.

Now, they want the camps gone for good.

"They know what is coming down. A lot have moved out already," Star Cpl. Eddie Grant told WTOC.

Grant says not only will wiping out homeless camps clean up the areas, but will get the homeless help and cut into downtown Savannah's panhandling problem.

"There are a lot of transients who come through. Then there are ones who are constant campers and stay there all the time. Those are the ones who come out and panhandle," Grant said. "Once we get them out of those camps, they don't have a place to roost downtown where they can actively go from one camp and panhandle then back to camp. It will hopefully deter it a lot."

One of the camp sites is under the overpass at Louisville Road and Boundary Streets. There are 15 camps and as many as three people per camp. They will all be out by the end of January.

The Louisville-Boundary Street underpass is just one of six locations police are targeting. The most popular of the bunch is under the Truman Parkway at Presidents Street. Multiple camps have been set up on the north and south ends of the Truman, plus smaller camps at West Bay and Warner Street, West Oglethorpe Avenue and the West Boundary-Gwinnett Street overpasses.

"It almost becomes like a little city inside there," Grant said.

A city which presents many homeless on homeless crimes, making it tough for police to patrol. Grant expects some will resist the move.

"You always have ones who lead a destructive lifestyle and are going to want to stay in the camps," Grant said.

However, once they are out, police want to make sure no one comes back.

"We're going to try and make it so there is no where for them to go to re-camp out," he said. "We're pretty sure it's going to work."

Next week, police will go into the camps for one last time and give final warnings. The last week of January, the clean up begins.

They hope the people who are displaced will get help and will be set up with outreach programs and shelters as well as get contact information and ultimately get jobs and a safe home.

Meanwhile the downtown precinct has begun their anti-panhandling campaign. If you get caught, you will get a citation and be arrested.