Yesterday, Thursday, November 14, San Bernardino city employees, accompanied by police officers and employees of the Burrtec trssh company. began forcefully eviicting the remnants of the homeless population living in the city Perris Hill Park off-and-on for years.
The action comes in the aftermath of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June allowing public parks and property to be cleared of “campers” disobeying loitering ordinances, Governor Gavin Newsom’s signal the same month that he would no longer advocate for the homeless not housed in shelters and the American Civil Liberties Union’s settlement in September of a lawsuit it brought against the city over its eviction of homeless residents from Perris Hill and Meadowbrook Park in 2023.
In October San Bernardino Mayor Helen Tran said the city would initiate the removal of homeless individuals from the city’s parks as soon as it had two new homeless shelters in place. Those shelters have yet to materialize, but officials impatient with the situation in the city’s parks began yesterday’s effort despite that.
“Where are these people going to go?” the Sentinel asked one of the police officers on hand to “keep the peace” and intimidate or arrest any of the homeless who resisted the effort to move them out.
“I don’t know,” the officer responded. “That’s up to them.”