When the Reno police officer showed up at Pickett Park on Friday morning with a couple of pickup trucks and a cleaning crew, Shelley Bellamy crawled out of her makeshift home on the exercise court.

She excused herself to go get cleaned up before the crew started deconstructing her home. In the park bathroom, she applied some mascara around her brilliant blue eyes, dressed in some clean slacks and a couple layers of dress coats and buckled on some brown leather Mary Janes.

"I know I have to find a new place," she said. "The citizens want their park back."

Bellamy's eyes teared up as she tried to avoid thinking about just how she'll do that. She's been in the "downward spiral of poverty and homelessness" for 11 years now. She's squatted in an empty storage shed and an abandoned house.

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For awhile she had a room at one of the motels bought by Jacobs Entertainment. But she was late on the rent and got kicked out.

She's been living in Pickett Park for about three months. She gets $800 a month in disability but can't find a place cheap enough to rent. In those three months, her home has grown to take up an entire corner of the exercise court. She has a full dresser, an ottoman, bags of hangers, stuff for her cat.

"I have a bad habit of rummaging," she said to explain her collection of things, which includes a vacuum cleaner.

"People laugh at me and say I don't need a vacuum," she said. "But I do! I'm in a living space!"

Calls to conduct 'citizen arrests' of homeless

Standing by, patiently leaning against a sign that explains how to do forearm exercises, was Officer Keith Pleich. He explains he is at the park on his own volition, not at the request of the "city of Reno."

He can't figure out anything else to do.

"This isn't a clean-up," he said. "I'm here to defuse a problem."

The problem he was referring to was a plan by recently arrived activist Paul White, who wanted to recruit volunteers to flood Pickett Park on Saturday and conduct "citizen arrests" on the homeless people staying there. White doesn't believe the city has been aggressive enough in forcing homeless people out of parks and away from the Truckee River.

“The only option open to you as a citizen is … make a citizen’s arrest in the hope that, in the short-term, the ones that get cited have to go to court,” White said.

Since his arrival in Reno from Ventura, Calif., two years ago, White has been trying to influence local elections and public policy through provocative events. He ran RenoElections.org and founded QOL-Reno.org.

But White called off his protest after seeing Pleich's work in the park.

Defusing the problem

Pleich didn't want there to be anyone at the park for White and his group to arrest.

"The best way I can think of to defuse the problem is to get everybody out of the park," Pleich said.

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Pleich and the crew of parks department workers he recruited have spent the past couple days at the park. On Friday morning, they had filled the bed of a pickup truck with belongings abandoned by people who had already left the park.

He then set about trying to talk Bellamy into thinning out some of her belongings so it would be easier for her to move. Her phone was charging in his truck while she decided what to keep and what to toss.

Bellamy tries to keep a neat space. Her things were neatly piled into a square perimeter formed by her dresser, some crates and a grocery cart.

"I try not to be seen," she said. "I have shame. I haven't done anything wrong, but I feel shame. I have a lot of despair."

Bellamy said she worked as a nurse before she became ill and then disabled.

"I know the community doesn't want me here," she said.

Pleich sounded frustrated. He said he's the only Reno police officer assigned to homeless outreach. He works to connect people with services and with housing, but it's difficult. He feels caught in the middle between White's group and other activists who oppose what White is doing.

"I'm stuck in the middle here," he said. "This isn't a police problem, but the police have to come up with a solution."

Pleich said he's visited the park multiple times with outreach counselors. He said he isn't writing citations or making arrests for violating park hours.