ST. LOUIS, MO ( KPLR )—
St. Louis Park Rangers confiscate clothing and even medicine from two homeless men, then proceeding to throw them away. The mayor is apologizing, and homeless providers are asking questions. Lately, a group of homeless people have been camping at the Interco Park, a small piece of ground in the city between the Post Dispatch and the St. Patrick's Center. The problem is that it's illegal.Thursday morning, the park police came to evict them, which is routine practice. However, this time around, the park police confiscated the possessions of two men and threw them away. That is definitely not routine.
The City's Director of Human Services, Bill Siedhoff, is apologizing and says this is not how St. Louis treats its homeless.
"It is was very disturbing to me that arbitrarily individuals would do act to do that when in fact we have done this beforeÂ… this is not the first time and we had a plan in place that does this in a humane way and a preferable way so this is very disheartening," Siedhoff said.
Dan Buck from the St. Patrick's Center said "I think it communicated a very wrong message. Especially, when you have a mayor who is fighting like heck to try to change the way which we deal with homelessness and coming up with some permanent solutions and when then parks department goes out of bounds it creates a conflict."
On Friday night, Mayor Francis Slay apologized through his blog. He called it a low point in the city's hospitality. The city has since replaced the men's possessions, and found permanent housing for one. The other man was put in a motel until housing can be found for him as well.
Even though this has never happened before, the City said it wants to make sure it never happens again.
