Vancouver police officers are spending more time in homeless encampments under a new partnership between the department and the city’s Homeless Assistance and Resource Team. Officials said the partnership, formed in December, marks a key step in their effort to address homelessness more effectively. This collaboration, about a year in the making, emerged from the city’s Homeless Emergency Action Plan, which pairs patrol officers with outreach workers, said Jamie Spinelli, the city’s homeless response manager. Last year, outreach workers provided training to law enforcement about working with homeless residents, and now, the partnership is taking that training into the field, Spinelli said. Officers are gaining hands-on experience by engaging directly with encampments and receiving feedback from outreach team members.

“It’s been very intentional. They go out with my team and watch it in action … get input so that they can feel confident themselves when they are in a situation with a single individual and need to know what it looks like to cite somebody to community court or knowing what resources to supply people,” Spinelli said. “No one wants to be out there intentionally and causing more harm to people who are clearly already suffering.” How it works Spinelli said police officers have been joining the Homeless Assistance and Resource Team’s regularly scheduled cleanups at some of the city’s larger encampments. Officers don’t target people just because they’re homeless, Spinelli said. They focus on people who haven’t complied with prior notices about the cleanup or those who have been linked with more serious crimes or lingering warrants. In a Dec. 12 Facebook post, the Vancouver Police Department wrote: “During yesterday’s operation, 22 citations were issued and 4 people were arrested and booked into jail. Three of the people had multiple misdemeanor warrant arrests and one was an active domestic violence order violation (that also included possession of a controlled substance).”

In January, another police department Facebook post touted a “clean-up operation that led to two felony arrests and 13 citations for community court.” Vancouver police spokeswoman Kim Kapp said enhanced enforcement gives patrol officers a chance to support the city’s outreach and resource efforts for the unhoused. “With more officers, it allows HART to issue more citations into Community Court, because there are only two VPD Police Officers assigned to the HART team so they can only do so much of the enforcement piece during these larger scale clean up efforts,” Kapp wrote in an email to The Columbian. Community court connects those cited with substance-use disorder treatment, housing, therapy, employment and more. If those who receive citations do not attend community court, a warrant is issued for their arrest, and they will go through the traditional criminal justice system.

Spinelli said previous large-scale cleanups of locations with 100 or more campers stretched her team’s capacity. Extensive paperwork for citations or arrests limited outreach efforts. Now, with added enforcement, more individuals can be cited to give them a pathway to housing and services, she said. Spinelli said the partnership took time to get to this point but said she is excited about the progress, highlighting the collaborative approach taken by the mixed team. “I think that we’ve reached a good place that will continue to get better over time,” Spinelli said.

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