Cranston Mayor Hopkins issues executive order allowing police to crack down on encampments

Police will coordinate with the City of Cranston Department of Public Works to remove any such encampment or housing...

Mayor Hopkins at the 2024 Gaspee Day Parade

Cranston Mayor Kenneth Hopkins today issued an executive order granting immediate authority the the Cranston Police Department to enter and clear the encampments of unhoused people. This comes less than a week after the Cranston City Council Ordinance Committee declined to pass his ordinance that would have granted the police such powers.

Under the executive order, police can enter and inspect encampments on public property, issue a no-trespass order to campers, and have all their personal effects thrown into the trash by DPW or a contractor, with the caveat that these steps cannot be taken before “before contacting and cooperating with any social services necessary to relocate and provide temporary housing for any violator of this executive order.” This will be difficult because there is no shelter, permanent or temporary, for hundreds of Rhode Islanders living outside.

The original ordinance contained a $50 fine as well as the issuance of no-trespass orders and the trashing of personal belongings. The executive order omits this.

See: Cranston City Councils considers ordinance that will determine how the unhoused are treated

Last week 14 people, including Cranston residents as well as advocates and experts on homelessness from across testified against the ordinance. [During that meeting Cranston Police Chief Michael Winquist speculated that those in favor of the ordinance “chose not to be here because speaking for this ordinance may not be the popular thing.”] The City Council decided not to pass the ordinance, but to develop a compassionate response to the issue over the next three months.

Asked for comment, Mayor Hopkins’ Chief of Staff Anthony Moretti replied, “Please be informed that the executive order was issued for all the reasons articulated by myself, Colonel Winquist, and Captain Dutra at the city council ordinance committee meeting that you attended last week. Please be assured that the intention of this order is to protect the general public as well as all encampment occupants. As to timing, there was no consideration relating to an election. It was felt that conditions currently pose a risk to public health and safety.

“Thank you for your inquiry.”

The ACLU of Rhode Island issued the following press release in response:

ACLU OF RI STATEMENT ON CRANSTON MAYOR’S EXECUTIVE ORDER TO REMOVE ENCAMPMENTS

“Just like the anti-homeless ordinance the Mayor recently proposed, and that members of the public uniformly condemned at the last City Council Ordinance Committee meeting last week, the power this executive order gives the police department to remove encampments is cruel, misguided, and ineffective.

“Though it purports to rely on ‘contacting social services’ before relocating people, the executive order makes no note of how this would work in practice or whether social service agencies are even in a position to provide necessary assistance. In addition, the immediate removal of a person’s property if they refuse to cooperate with “any” offered services, no matter how insufficient, unhelpful, or unsafe those services may be, raises additional serious concerns under the State’s Homeless Bill of Rights.

“Further, the Mayor’s unilateral issuance of this executive order relies on City Charter provisions that involve his duty to enforce the laws, not enact them on his own. His attempt to completely bypass the City Council process is a dangerous misuse of executive authority. We will be examining what actions affected individuals and groups may be able to take to address this extremely troubling overstepping of executive powers and inhumane response to the plight of people experiencing homelessness.”

[I’ve reached out to experts in the field of homelessness and civil rights, as well as all members of the Cranston City Council, for further comment. I will update as I receive replies.]

Hopkins, a Republican, faces a primary challenge for Mayor of Cranston from State Representative Barbara Ann Fenton-Fung. The winner of that primary will face Democrat Robert Ferri in November’s General Election. In a debate held by Bill Bartholomew, [See: Bill Bartholomew moderates contentious Cranston Mayoral Republican Primary debate] the candidates briefly discussed homelessness:

Bill Bartholomew: Let's talk unhoused. There are untold numbers of people who don't have anywhere to live. The numbers we're seeing, based on anecdotal conversations, appear to be an undercount. Specifically in Cranston, you seem to have a unique situation with folks who were institutionalized and have recently been released or are drawn to Cranston because of services at the Pastore Center. It's almost a two-lane conversation. But in general, how do you solve, or at least begin to solve, the crisis of the unhoused in Cranston? Are you willing to fly in the face of those in neighborhoods that do not want unhoused people there, to take care of Cranston residents who don't have anywhere to live?

Representative Fenton-Fung: I'm not sure everybody is aware of what you're talking about. I think you're talking about Harrington Hall, which is in my state rep district. What you're alluding to there is that Harrington Hall is the shelter of last resort. We have a lot of people who have served time for sex offenses and have to register as sex offenders and [upon release] start at Harrington Hall. As a state rep, we've been able to reduce the number of people living at Harrington Hall because programs through Crossroads have gotten them appropriate housing elsewhere so it's not just District 15, which used to be called the home of the sex offenders. That's no longer the case. We've done a really good job working with Crossroads on that. When we're talking about people who are near homelessness or experiencing homelessness right now, we have to make sure that they're not setting up these unsafe structures on public land. That's not doing them any good...

Bill Bartholomew: Camps and things of this sort?

Representative Fenton-Fung: I was walking with some community leaders in Ward 3 and there's a human touch to this. You can clear out the encampments, yes, but you're also looking these families in the eye. At the state level, we're working on more housing initiatives to try to get them safe housing, that has a shower and some dignity for them, but we have to continue to make sure that our housing is more affordable and that we're not transitioning from being housed to unhoused. And there's a lot more we could do at the city level.

Bill Bartholomew: Yes or no. Would you be open to a pallet shelter, which is these shed-like small houses that are being deployed in cities around the country? Would you be open to the deployment of a pallet shelter community in the city of Cranston?

Representative Fenton-Fung: No.

Bill Bartholomew: Mayor Hopkins, you've been vocal on radio that you don't want to see more unhoused people brought to Cranston. That's a simplified way of putting what I've heard you say over the last year or so on the radio. But you have people in Cranston who don't have anywhere to live. How do you solve this and what have you done so far, as mayor, to address this crisis?

Mayor Hopkins: There's a process we have in place. We don't kick out people that are homeless. What we do is we go into an area where people are living in tents and we try to encourage them by bringing in police. We bring in social workers, we bring in advocates for the homeless and we talk to these people and try to get them moved into housing. Unfortunately, many of them don't want housing. The ones that do, we've accommodated them. We've looked at different parts of the city that have affordable housing. I put a family into an apartment directly across the street from Bane Middle School. They were homeless. It was the holiday season, the week before Christmas. I personally, with my family, found an apartment for that particular family, moved them in, and put Christmas toys in the closets for all the kids.

That's what we do. That's family, faith, and friends. That's getting your bootstraps pulled up and doing the work. Unfortunately, last week a picture appeared - from my opponent - about an area where homeless people lived. Unfortunately, they weren't just homeless. There was drug addiction, there were needles everywhere. There's prostitution. We have constant police perusing the area to try to help, and we've had our public works department go in, offer them housing that they didn't want, and we went in and cleaned it up. And you have to remember that in the surrounding area, there are neighborhoods with little kids that see this. I don't want an unsafe area for the rest of our people to live in. There are distinctions here between homelessness and helping them, and those that are violating the law - that's what I'm against.

Bill Bartholomew: Are you open to a pallet shelter failure in Cranston?

Mayor Hopkins: Honestly Bill, Cranston does its share. We don't get enough in PILOT [Payment On Lieu Of Taxes] money from the State House which I could use for the Harrington Hall homeless people that we have. To put a pallet shelter over there, all I'm going to tell you is this - Look at what happened in Providence when they built pallet shelters. There's still nobody in it. That was a state-mandated shelter funded by the State House, which Representative Fung was a part of. She helped pay for that and over a year later, it's still not being used.

Bill Bartholomew: Of course, there was remediation required on the soil, and so forth. I think

Representative Fenton-Fung: I think they're still stuck in zoning. [To be clear] the picture that appeared in one of our online ads is from after what the mayor said he cleaned up. Unfortunately, there are still needles everywhere. There's trash everywhere, there are still tents. The community leaders in that area wouldn't have brought me down if they didn't feel as though the mayor hadn't been responding to their needs for years. All of a sudden, right around election time, we have action coming out of the third floor. He's a day late, a dollar short, and two steps behind and the community leaders in each of these wards know it.

Mayor Hopkins: I didn't lie about it. It was the Spanish contingent that lives in that area that reached out to me. I then reached out to the governor because the picture that [Rep Fenton-Fung] showed [in her ad] is state land located in the City of Cranston. We addressed it immediately.

Representative Fenton-Fung: You didn't [address it]. That's why they were frustrated and took other people there.

Bill Bartholomew: Alright, let's move on...

Mayor Hopkins: We are correct in the assertion that it is state property. It's not the City of Cranston

Representative Fenton-Fung: That it's a triangle of city, state, and Amtrak property? Yes.

Bill Bartholomew: I can't fact-check that specifically in terms of the triangulation.

Mayor Hopkins: It's right next to our police department.

Representative Fenton-Fung: Literally.

Here’s the text of the Executive Order:

Prevention of camping and illegal use of city-owned property in the City of Cranston

• WHEREAS, the City of Cranston owns and maintains numerous properties, such as parks and playgrounds, in the City for the quiet enjoyment of all the residents and taxpayers of the City of Cranston; and 

• WHEREAS, these properties have increasingly been occupied by individuals for the sole purpose of erecting both permanent and temporary housing for the sole purpose of occupying said properties for their use and for the sole purpose of private housing; and 

• WHEREAS, the residents and taxpayers of the City of Cranston cannot quietly enjoy and use the properties of the City for their enjoyment, and these properties are being littered by such inhabitants with human waste, trash, drug paraphernalia, and other refuse which are all preventing the use of these properties by the residents of the City, 

• WHEREAS, these properties are located in various areas throughout the City, including public parks and public schools, and primarily in areas where the general public wishes to enjoy said properties but cannot due to the presence of said permanent and temporary housing; and 

• WHEREAS, the Mayor of the City of Cranston has previously submitted an ordinance to the City Council which, if it had been voted upon and passed, would have regulated the unsanitary, illegal, and dangerous use of public property for temporary and permanent housing; and 

• WHEREAS, the City Council had on its Ordinance Committee agenda the above-said ordinance, which on August 15, 2024, the Council chose to continue for three months to study this issue; so

NOW THEREFORE, I, KENNETH J. HOPKINS, pursuant to the powers vested in me under Charter Provision 5.01 and 5.02, to enforce the laws and ordinances of Cranston and to preserve the peace, health, and safety of all of its inhabitants, do hereby issue this Order: 

1. I hereby declare that the Cranston Police Department (CPD) shall have the immediate authority to enter any city-owned property to inspect any such housing or encampment, and shall have the authority to coordinate with the City of Cranston Department of Public Works (DPW) to remove any such encampment or housing, however, not before contacting and cooperating with any social services necessary to relocate and provide temporary housing for any violator of this executive order. If any individual refuses to cooperate with any offered services, their encampment or housing shall be removed by the DPW forthwith and they shall be issued a no-trespass warning not to return to the immediate property. 

2. This Order shall take effect immediately upon signature. 

ORDERED this the 21st day of August 2024.