Anoka adds resources to its crackdown on homeless, panhandling

Strict new panhandling and overnight camping laws, combined with more security, have failed to eliminate an uptick in homeless people in downtown Anoka and nearby parks.

So city leaders vow to throw more resources at a problem that Council Member Jeff Weaver called a "cancer that has grabbed ahold of downtown."

The City Council has authorized the Police Department to hire two additional full-time security officers, doubling the number to four. The added security downtown and along park trails means that the enforcement presence will be nearly round-the-clock.

The cost of the two new security officers: $102,000.

City leaders also are poised to pass an ordinance making it illegal to possess drug paraphernalia — another tool that police can use to push out loiterers.

Weaver said the initial crackdown on homeless encampments and aggressive panhandling that passed in 2015, when an additional police officer was hired to patrol downtown, has helped. He voiced his support for further get-tough actions that could stamp out the problem.

"It's like being diagnosed with an illness," he said. "You want to go after it right away. You want to go after it aggressively to get a handle on it before it gets out in the neighborhoods, because it will."

And residents have said they feel uneasy as homeless people, often with mental illness and addictions, approach them.

Several encounters this summer have rattled residents, Weaver said at a City Council meeting this month. In one of them, a man attempted to rob a woman, poking his finger into her back and claiming it was a gun. She resisted, and police tracked down the suspect with the help of video surveillance.

Anoka Mayor Phil Rice said that residents, while sympathetic to the plight of folks down on their luck, back the city's get-tough approach in moving along people causing trouble. Last year, Anoka spent $20,000 to clean up homeless encampments along the Rum River.

"The feedback from the public has been very positive," Rice said. "We work so hard as a City Council and community to have a place that invites people here, that is welcoming and safe. … One person with a shopping cart full of stuff destroys the charm."

Added Weaver: "People won't tell you they are disgusted by what they see. They just won't come back."

The city of Anoka long has been home to the only homeless shelter in Anoka County. A drop-in center for homeless youths opened there in recent years.

The city is the county seat, so people often arrive seeking social services.

In addition, Anoka is one of the few suburban cities in the county with a historic downtown surrounded by ample parkland, which offers inviting places to linger.

The number of poor in the suburbs is now greater than those living in the urban core, according to the Metropolitan Council.

"People have a right to choose to be homeless. They have their right to their own pursuit of happiness," Rice said. "When it starts to alienate others' rights to happiness or destroy their business, we have to be concerned with that."