{"id":390904,"date":"2026-07-08T18:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T18:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/390904\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T18:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T18:20:08","slug":"internal-document-shows-how-sacramento-police-sweep-homeless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/390904\/","title":{"rendered":"Internal document shows how Sacramento police sweep homeless"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sacramento Police Department released a document explaining when and how law enforcement officers should treat living outside as a crime.<\/a><\/p>\n

In response to a small claims lawsuit brought by a homeless woman, Elizabeth Williams,<\/a> the city submitted the Police Department\u2019s \u201cUnlawful Camping Enforcement Guidelines.\u201d The Sacramento Bee is publishing the guidelines in full.<\/p>\n

In the document, police outline which types of property should be stored and which types should be thrown away in the course of an encampment sweep. Life necessities \u2014 such as important identification documents, tents and blankets \u2014 as well as personal property with \u201cobjective value\u201d must be safely stored by police, the guidelines say.<\/p>\n

But the document further specifies in a flow chart that if all of a person\u2019s belongings do not fit in a 55-gallon bag, a sergeant must weigh in on what to store and what to throw away. In the city of Sacramento, a standard medium-size municipal garbage bin is 64 gallons.<\/p>\n

The document includes photos to illustrate what sleeping arrangements run afoul of Sacramento\u2019s camping ordinance and what sleeping arrangements do not. If a person is sleeping outside with no \u201ccamping paraphernalia\u201d \u2014 such as a tent, a sleeping bag, a pillow, a blanket or a tarp used as a blanket \u2014 then that person is not violating the city\u2019s camping ordinance. A photo shows a person sleeping on a bench in their clothes without any blankets or coverings; the document says that no violation is occurring in the image.<\/p>\n

One photo depicts a person curled up on a piece of cardboard, using a pillow and, as a makeshift blanket, a tarp. \u201cThe use of cardboard, a pillow, and a tarp make this a violation,\u201d the document states.<\/p>\n

The guidelines are dated Dec. 31, 2024. On that day, Sacramento temperatures dropped to 36 degrees. The document says that officers \u201cmay elect\u201d to not enforce the city\u2019s ordinance due to circumstances such as inclement weather.<\/p>\n

In police bodycam footage also released in the lawsuit, an officer said that the city of Sacramento had adopted a \u201czero-tolerance\u201d policy on homeless encampments.<\/p>\n

Check out the Sacramento Police Department\u2019s sweeps policy:<\/p>\n

This story was originally published July 8, 2026 at 10:30 AM.<\/p>\n

Related Stories from Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n


\n \"Profile
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Ariane Lange<\/a><\/p>\n

The Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n

Ariane Lange is an investigative reporter at The Sacramento Bee. She was a USC Center for Health Journalism 2023 California Health Equity Fellow. Previously, she worked at BuzzFeed News, where she covered gender-based violence and sexual harassment.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sacramento Police Department released a document explaining when and how law enforcement officers should treat living outside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-390904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}