The Pierce County Sheriff’s Office recently took a proactive approach to clear homeless encampments.
Deputies offered to pay homeless campers to clean up their own mess — the campers did not accept.
Pierce County Sheriff’s Office detective and spokesman Ed Troyer told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson that a group of adults created a large encampment in the woods near Canyon Road and State Route 512, just south of Tacoma.
“They were self-proclaimed campers; they even put up signs in the woods,” Troyer explained. He said that the campers all have cell phones and have set up their own social networks to know where to go to get free goods and services.
A cleanup of the encampment revealed 30 tons of waste. It was waste that included not only human excrement and drug paraphernalia but also kids’ toys and “enough carts to start their own grocery store,” according to Troyer. There were no children living in the encampment, so all of the toys, Troyer said, were stolen.
To clean up the area and give the campers employment, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office offered the squatters a job cleaning up their own encampment. Troyer said nobody took them up on the offer.
“They wouldn’t even clean up their own site if we paid them to clean up their own site,” he said.
They're bums, and undeserving of sympathy. But providing "services" to bums has become a burgeoning bleeding-heart industry here in the Pacific Northwest. They're holding a "walk" to raise money to provide more bum services here in the Willamette Valley this very weekend, for those who have nothing better to do with their time.
