Police across the Phoenix area have increasingly pivoted to trespassing citations as a tool to address the growing challenge of homelessness.
Those rulings “pretty much quashed everything” for police, Mitterbauer said.
Jim Neal, a Prescott resident who owns a strip of properties on Van Buren Street in Goodyear, first requested a trespass authorization for that land in October 2014, at a time when he said the problems associated with people experiencing homelessness began to spike in the area. “We step up the patrol activity at my property and that drives them off for a while,” he said. “And they go to someone else’s property and then start enforcing it there and then they come back to mine.”
Most people don’t come back after they receive a trespassing notice, Mitterbauer said, so he hasn’t had to issue citations to many people. But although punishments are usually “progressive,” he said officers have broad discretion in how to handle these situations. “I've told a lot of them, ‘If you're in the front of a business where everyone can see you, people are going to call,’” he said. “That's just how it is.”
She knows unsheltered people who have received trespass notices just for leaning against a building, she said. And some people have received multiple citations, which has made it more difficult for them to obtain housing or secure a job.
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