Police and sheriff agencies offer scant oversight of a fast-growing homeless encampment in Orange County, along the Santa Ana River, prompting people who work with the homeless to suggest that violence and drug dealing in the community soon could grow akin to Los Angeles’ notorious Skid Row.

Officials from the Anaheim Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff point to jurisdictional disputes, lack of money and a fear of lawsuits as some of the reasons why a cluster of tents and makeshift dwellings that house upwards of 100 people near the western bank of the Santa Ana River aren’t getting full-time patrols or routine criminal investigations. They also dispute any contention that the area – which is part of a broad homeless encampment along the river that includes several hundred people – is getting zero police coverage, saying they respond to 911 calls, investigate when possible and have full-time homeless officers who help with social services.

But officials also acknowledge that, beyond the bureaucratic headaches, policing the river is difficult.

The homeless encampment along the Santa Ana River just north of Katella Ave. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, Orange County Register/SCNG)

In the shadow of the Honda Center and Stadium Promenade, background, a homeless encampment exists along the Santa Ana River just north of Katella Ave. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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The view from Extended Stay Hotel in Anaheim. The homeless encampment along the Santa Ana River just north of Katella Ave. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Don’t expect to see police patrolling the homeless encampment along the Santa Ana River just north of Katella Avenue. Neither the sheriff’s department nor Anaheim police think it is their jurisdiction, leaving the area largely unmonitored. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, Orange County Register/SCNG)

In the shadow of the Honda Center, a homeless encampment exists along the Santa Ana River just north of Katella Ave. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, Orange County Register/SCNG)



Don’t expect to see police patrolling the homeless encampment along the Santa Ana River just north of Katella Avenue. Neither the sheriff’s department nor Anaheim police think it is their jurisdiction, leaving the area largely unmonitored. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Don’t expect to see police patrolling the homeless encampment along the Santa Ana River just north of Katella Avenue. Neither the sheriff’s department nor Anaheim police think it is their jurisdiction, leaving the area largely unmonitored. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, Orange County Register/SCNG)

A man runs from one homeless encampment to another through the dried up Santa Ana River bed just north of Katella Avenue. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Honda Center goers get a clear view of the homeless encampment along the Santa Ana River. The venue’s parking lot bumps up against it as does Stadium Promenade parking lot across the way, but with a more obscured view due to foliage growing on the wire fence. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, Orange County Register/SCNG)

It’s a community where potential victims and predators are in close, constant contact. There are no set addresses and the population is often on the move. It’s also a relatively new community that hasn’t been accounted for in long-term funding plans, meaning the river represents a diversion of already stretched resources. And police are wary of lawsuits that might result from working in the river.

But residents in the river and their advocates say those hurdles translate into few cops or deputies in the area. And they say the lack of patrols, combined with a “don’t snitch” attitude among residents, is turning parts of the river into a place where vigilante violence is the norm and drug dealers threaten locals with near impunity.

A man living in a green, two-person tent along the river, near the 57 underpass, said his girlfriend was raped about a month ago but didn’t file a police complaint, choosing instead to rely on what he described as “bad dudes” who would kill the perpetrator. Another woman happily recounted a story of an accused rapist being dragged into a nearby tunnel by a group of men, never to be heard from again. Police data – which officials admit is likely incomplete – did not support their claims.

Other residents, such as Mary Kay “Mama Big Red” Jablonski, 45, said they’re outraged by what they view as law enforcement’s indifference.

“What about our safety?” asked Jablonski, who has lived in the encampment for 11 months. “I’m out here by myself. The cops aren’t going to investigate (reported crimes). And they wonder why we do vigilante justice.”

Whose river is it?

There is little crime data for the river, in part because the people complaining about lack of police presence also are not inclined to call the police to report a crime.

What is clear is that law enforcement’s response to reports they do receive can be messy. Anaheim police, Orange police, and the O.C. Sheriff each view parts of the area as the other’s responsibility, an arrangement that officials say can see crime reports passed off from one agency to the other.

The disputed land – which runs less than 100 feet wide from just south of the 57 freeway to just north of Lincoln Avenue, and which is less populated than the “camp city” to the south – is owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It is maintained by Orange County Flood Control District through the County of Orange, which funds the sheriff’s department. And parts of it are within Anaheim, as the city border zigzags in and out of the river bank.

Sheriff officials say Anaheim should police the areas within city limits.

“It’s still their city, and I don’t know how you get away from that,” Sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Lane Lagaret said.

But Anaheim police say they never agreed to patrol the river, choosing not to sign a turn-of-the-century agreement that asked the city to monitor the area.

“How are they saying we should police it when their document says they have jurisdiction?” Anaheim police spokesman Sgt. Daron Wyatt asked. Wyatt also pointed to maps that show only small portions of the disputed area are within city limits.

Wyatt said Anaheim police respond to 911 calls from the area and would investigate any homicides. But in the case of a rape or assault or robbery, Anaheim police would refer it to the sheriff’s department for investigation. Wyatt didn’t know if any cases have been passed along in recent years.

Lagaret said his department would investigate a rape if Anaheim police stated they wouldn’t.

“We’re not just going to leave someone out there,” Lagaret said. “It’s not being neglected.”

Yet, Anaheim and the sheriff have no crime reports from the river homeless encampment for the past five-and-a-half years.

Lagaret speculated that there were no police records because no crimes had been reported due to the encampment’s “don’t snitch” code. He also noted that area in question had become more densely populated only in the past six months, providing a small sample that could change in the future.

In contrast, the City of Orange’s police department said it patrols and investigates all crime reports along its more populated portion of the river. Orange, which chose to sign the agreement with the county in 2000 to provide law enforcement services, reported 12 aggravated assaults in 2016 and two rapes over the past 18 months.

Unreported crimes

By all accounts, the data from Orange Police reflect only a fraction of the crime in the area, but they do demonstrate that at least some victims in homeless encampments will report crimes when given the chance.

The Register was unable to identify any crime that was reported to police or sheriff’s deputies that went uninvestigated – a search made difficult by the lack of police records.

“You can’t point to anything that’s happened in city limits that we haven’t handled,” Anaheim Police spokesman Wyatt noted.

Yet homeless advocates say they have heard of violent crime sprees occurring inside the disputed jurisdiction.

“We know that other rapes go unreported,” said Paul Leon, founder and president of the Illumination Foundation, a nonprofit that provides health services to the homeless.

Leon said nurses connected to his organization heard of at least four sexual assaults against homeless women last year in the river area north of Katella Avenue. One of those women eventually reported the crime, he said, but he didn’t know which department fielded that call.

But Leon said that the makeup of people near the river has changed recently, making it harder for police to work the area. Over the past year, Leon said, non-homeless drug dealers have moved into the territory to sell their product, a change that has made it tougher for anyone who calls law enforcement.

“They’ll threaten people, saying, ‘If I see a cop around here, I’m not going to get you any more drugs’ or ‘I’ll beat you up,’” Leon said. “And even if (a crime) gets reported, it’s hard because the people aren’t tethered; they don’t have a house with a number. So police have a hard time getting ahold of you and might be too busy to try.”

Ashley West, 24, who has lived in the encampment for two years with her fiancé, said she wouldn’t call police if she were sexually assaulted. Instead, like many in the river, she said she would urge friends to retaliate.

On one hand, she said she doesn’t fault police for their lax presence in the area. She said she has seen too many “boy-crying-wolf, hyped-up domestic disputes” where one party called 911 and made false claims in an attempt to get the other arrested, only to recant the story once cops arrived. She thinks those situations make it difficult for police to sort out what’s true and discourage them from taking other reports seriously.

On the other hand, West believes law enforcement does little to build trust in the community, saying probation officers and sheriff’s deputies spend their time in the area “harassing” residents.

“We don’t trust the cops to do anything,” West said.

Eve Garrow, homelessness policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Orange County office, said people living along the river complain that law enforcement agents come to the area mostly to enforce nuisance ordinances and anti-camping laws. Garrow said many of the camp’s residents tell her that they were directed by police in other Orange County cities to relocate to the riverbed to avoid being hassled, only to find more of the same once they moved.

“People don’t feel the police are on their side or there to protect them,” Garrow said.

Officials from Anaheim police and the county sheriff dispute that, saying they have officers who work full-time in the area to help social service providers and serve as liaisons to the homeless community. And the Anaheim police say they’ve worked with a nonprofit to help 780 homeless people either reunite with family or find some kind of shelter.

A money issue

Soon, the police situation at the river could change.

On June 6, Orange County supervisors asked the sheriff’s department to develop a plan for round-the-clock policing of the river banks, which supervisors concede have lacked law enforcement oversight. The direction came as the board approved a $750,000 pilot program to hire social service contractors to help the encampment’s people find shelter.

It’s unclear how much the county might spend to put more deputies by the river.

“If they’ll fund it like another contract city, we’ll be there,” said Lagaret, the sheriff’s spokesman.

However, Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said her department will continue to seek cooperation from river-adjacent cities rather than take on total responsibility for the area.

“The best approach would be to work together collaboratively on this,” Hutchens said at a June 13 budget hearing.

Following the board’s vote, Wyatt said supervisors’ direction was evidence that the sheriff was responsible for policing along the river.

“If it’s not their jurisdiction, how can the county Board of Supervisors come up with a plan to police it?” Wyatt asked.

Sher Stuckman isn’t worried about whose jurisdiction she’s living in. The former physician’s administrative assistant, 59, said she’d been living at the river just two days, but she already knew a key rule:

“Don’t call the cops,” Stuckman said. “We handle it ourselves.”