Denver homeless push back against street sweeps

Denver, Colo. (KUSA) — An attempt to cleanup a homeless camp in downtown Denver on Tuesday didn’t go quite as planned.

City crews had hoped to clear some of the most congested sidewalks, but at the end of the day, at least one stretch didn’t change much.

For several hours, cleanup crews swept sidewalks and packed containers with things belonging to the homeless, but some refused to move.

“We’re gonna try to stand here as long as we can and hold the cops off and the garbage people from coming in a taking all of our stuff,” Lattiah Fabre said.

The city’s Department of Human Services says police were there not to arrest the homeless, but to protect workers cleaning the sidewalks.

The homeless are fighting back and have filed a lawsuit challenging the city’s efforts to remove them from public sidewalks.

“So what the lawsuit says is stop doing this. Stop sweeping people out,” attorney Jason Flores-Williams said. “Stop taking their property and stop treating these people like trash.”