Thread by @KtownforAll

Our members have been calling @MitchOFarrell's office and asking important questions about the upcoming sweeps at Echo Park. We've learned that CD13 shelters are currently at capacity. Police are about to remove dozens of people from the area with no plan as to where they'll go.

When members spoke to staffers, they gave confusing and contradictory information about where to direct people. Suggested shelters were far away and inaccessible to people in the Echo Park area.

In just the past few weeks we've seen a major uptick in anti-homeless enforcement actions, and extreme confusion among the city employees doing the enforcement. The city is pushing practices that make unhoused people's lives more difficult, and they're doing it incompetently.

What this has meant for unhoused people: perceptions of cruel and arbitrary treatment by the city and growing distrust of local outreach efforts.

Enforcement-first homeless policy has failed in the past, and it will fail again.

Finally: rather than note the concerns of constituents and move on, @MitchOFarrell's staff has been instructed to "correct" people who say "sweeps," insisting they are "service days."

We all saw the Sanitation report focused on "visual cleanliness." This isn't about services.

At Echo Park police are threatening citations and potential arrests tonight for sleeping in a park, defended by a councilman who has no available shelter beds in his district. That is not a "service day." It's a sweep.

A @MitchOFarrell staffer told one of our members that "they're not allowed to take away tents."

That is false information. If the council office doesn't understand these issues, they shouldn't be fighting to give themselves more control over sweep deployments.

@MitchOFarrell staff directed people to a council deputy for the area who "is not in today," before telling people this wasn't urgent.

Police are coming TONIGHT to raid the encampment. We know @MitchOFarrell supports this, but it's basically the definition of urgent.