Miami-Dade Police (USA) hopes to conclude this week the eviction of a camp raised in an industrial area of the city and made up of about 250 people with a history of sexual assault, spokesmen said today.
In the last two days, the tens of tents installed in this part of the northwest of the city have been disappearing after a judicial ruling issued last Thursday and that gave the green light to the eviction, the same one that has been done without incident, as The Miami-Dade Police spokesman, Álvaro Zabaleta, told local media NBC6.
This colony had raised complaints from neighbors and the authorities’ concern for posing a health risk in the presence of rodents in the area, although also organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) regretted the judicial decision.
This camp of people with a history and registered as “sex offenders and predators” is a consequence of a 2005 ordinance in this county that prohibits these people from residing at 2,500 feet (760 meters) away from schools, kindergartens and bus stops.
With the eviction, however, the only thing that is achieved is that the inhabitants of the camp “move to another corner”, due to the “difficulty they have in finding housing” that complies with the regulations, as the ACLU has denounced.
“New camps will appear and this cycle will continue,” Jeffrey Hearne, one of the ACLU’s leading attorneys, said in a statement sent to Efe.
According to the images shown by the NBC6 media, the place woke up today with a dozen tents, whose inhabitants were keeping their belongings before the surveillance of police officers, after which they will proceed to clean the place.
According to Zabaleta, those who resided in this camp must inform the registry office of their new address, which will notify them if they comply with the legal requirements.
Last week, neighbors of West Kendall, in the southwest of the city, took to the streets to protest after the possible relocation in this area of some of these inhabitants, for whom there is no space in any shelter in the county.
