![]() It argues the city cannot arrest itself out of the opioid crisis. This proposal has been rejected by the Harm Reduction Action Center, a nonprofit that works with drug users. He has advocated to state lawmakers, who are weighing a new bill to address fentanyl, that Colorado impose stiffer penalties for possession and distribution of the drug. Hancock said the issue Union Station is facing is not unique to Denver but part of a nationwide synthetic-opioid crisis. People have been charged with trespassing and violent crimes.ĭespite the assertion that what’s going on in Union Station is about the rise of the synthetic opioid fentanyl, only around a third of the arrests, 233, have been for drug-related crimes. Since November, there have been 101 arrests for violations of “area restrictions,” or people breaking rules of the terminal, including those RTD approved in January like no eating or drinking, no lying or sitting on the floor. Since the beginning of the year, Denver Police Department has arrested more than 700 people at Union Station, focusing its efforts on RTD’s bus concourse. Beaty/Denverite The mayor plans to address safety issues at Union Station with what he calls “firm compassion.” That translates to a muscular police response coupled with offers of social services. Yet drug users spending their days and nights around Union Station have told Denverite that without their basic needs, like shelter, met, they struggle to even imagine seeking treatment.įive people sleep together on a mattress on the floor of RTD's Union Station bus terminal. This is about the sale and use of deadly illegal drugs.” “What we are seeing here is not homelessness. “This is not about housing or homelessness,” he told a group of reporters. The bus concourse is a safe place to rest.īut when the mayor looks around, he doesn’t see it that way. Many unhoused people moved to Union Station and the surrounding neighborhood, Kam Donda, who is unhoused, told Denverite in December. Since the City shuttered Civic Center Park, where many unhoused people were camping, and closed the Central Denver Public Library for renovations, people who had been spending their time in those public spaces moved to other parts of the city. RTD drivers’ union has demanded action as have residents of nearby buildings like The Coloradan. Union Station’s bus concourse has seen a spike in crime over the past year. It’s “boundaries” - limits set by the law that would push them toward treatment. The city, he said, has offered these people housing, and they have refused it. Others, wearing dirty clothes, were doused in cologne.Īs Hancock looked around, he said he saw people risking their lives using fentanyl and other dangerous drugs. He passed people shrouded in blankets, nodding off on benches and carting luggage. Ahead of a press conference, Mayor Michael Hancock spent Wednesday morning touring Union Station, the adjoining underground bus concourse and the neighborhood to see how the city’s response to crime in the area is going (or, rather, to show reporters how it’s going).
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