Have 1,200 arrests, citations changed anything?
Police officers from the Regional Transportation District walked slowly through Union Station’s underground bus terminal at 8:30 a.m. Thursday, rousing people from sleep. The air smelled of weed and chemicals. The fluorescent lights cast a blue hue on the people inside.
The officers gently shook people sleeping slumped on benches or on the floor, one man with a red lighter in his hand. Another man slept sitting upright on a bench designed to deter sleeping, a square of foil in his hand. An officer woke up a man curled in a bike trailer, only his shoes poking out from under the blankets.
“Hello?” Officer Stephen Johnson said. “Are you OK?”
Eventually, the men stood up, gathered their things and walked away.
It’s a scene that plays out daily in Denver’s largest transit hub, where police have made more than 1,200 arrests and citations in the past six months in a concerted effort to curb drug use and stop people without housing from using the public space as a shelter.
The arrests followed demands late last year by transportation workers — who called Union Station a “lawless hellhole” — and people who lived near the transit hub that city leaders do something. Those in power listened. The mayor ordered Denver police to step up patrols. RTD leaders crafted new ways to restrict non-passengers from the area.
Police, city leaders and people who live in the area say they know they can’t arrest their way out of unmet housing, substanceuse treatment and mental health needs. Nonetheless, Denver police made 828 arrests and issued 390 tickets in the vicinity of Union Station in the six-month period between Nov. 1 and April 30.
Despite stated goals of focusing on violent crimes and drug dealing, Denver police arrest data shows that the majority of arrests were for outstanding warrants, possession of drug paraphernalia, drug possession and trespassing. The data also shows that many people are being arrested and ticketed multiple times at Union Station — nearly a quarter of the 798 individual adults who were arrested or ticketed, were taken into custody or received a citation at least twice.
The focused enforcement has improved the situation, police and residents said. Drug use and calls for police services at Union Station have decreased, from a high of 2,669 calls in December to 1,634 in April, RTD data shows. Some of the people who use Union Station as a shelter and gathering space have left the immediate vicinity.
“It’s a lot better,” said Jerry Orten, president of the Lower Downtown Neighborhood Association. “There are still issues in Union Station and in Lower Downtown, but they are not anything like they were in the prior year and, particularly, last fall.”
But defense attorneys, advocates for people experiencing homelessness and even some police question the long-term effectiveness of the arrests, which are pushing people away from Union Station and into other areas.
The arrests at Union Station disproportionately targeted Denver’s poorest and most vulnerable, said Tristan Gorman, policy coordinator for the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar. Fining someone or sending them to jail for minor crimes does not fix the underlying problems, she said. The arrested people still come back out onto the streets eventually, this time with a longer criminal record and owing fines and fees.
“In our society, it’s very expensive to be poor,” she said. “It’s also criminalized to be unhoused, to have a substance-use disorder.”
About an hour after officers told him to leave the bus concourse, the man with the red lighter sat just outside the concourse’s entrance near Chestnut Street. Jess Odom said he’s spent many days and nights in and near Union Station since he became homeless three years ago. He said he understands why police asked him to leave, as they have done many times before.
“I really do think the community is doing the best it can,” he said. “Nobody wants to see this. But we’re here.”
Odom feels trapped. He’s not allowed to stay on the streets. He feels that he can’t stay in the shelters, many of which require some level of sobriety. But it’s nearly impossible to kick an addiction while living on the streets.
So he sticks around the Union Station area, where he feels relatively safe, even though he’s been temporarily banned from RTD property for prior arrests.
“It’s just a big game of catand-mouse,” he said. “We’re not allowed to be anywhere.” homicide occurred in southwest Denver, and have recovered at least 17 guns that were possessed illegally.
Probable cause statements for some of the arrestees show they were arrested for small amounts of drugs, like single fentanyl pills, or for possessing pipes and foil, which can be used to smoke drugs.
Officers contacted one man because he had a piece of foil in his hand and detained him. When they searched him, they found pipes and a piece of foil with remnants of suspected fentanyl. Warrants also show Denver police conducted several undercover buys of meth and fentanyl, which led to the later arrests of the sellers.
Denver police Cmdr. Kimberly Bowser, whose police district includes Union Station, said she thinks the arrests — even for petty offenses — work as a deterrent. She pointed to a drop in calls for service in the area as proof. Arrests, too, have decreased.
The average number of daily arrests and citations in the Union Station area peaked in late February with arrests averaging around 15 a day. Denver police made an average of three arrests a day in the last week of April, which is similar to the average number in early November.
“We’ve been able to step back just a hair because we are seeing success,” she said.
Bowser and RTD police Interim Chief Steven Martingano also credited some of the change at Union Station to a number of factors besides arrests: increased social services outreach; the return of workers and tourists who were absent downtown earlier in the pandemic; and the seasonal shift to warmer weather, when people without homes rely less on public indoor spaces for shelter and warmth.
“Arrests are not the only answer, obviously with these really complex issues it requires a multi-pronged approach,” Bowser said. “That’s why I like talking about enforcement and outreach.”
Denver police are not tracking how many people have been referred to social services by officers, Bowser said.