Letter to Loveland City Leadership

Dear Loveland City Leadership (except Tim Doran because I couldn’t find an email for him. Transparency, amirite?),

I filmed the attached video while hanging out at Camp Hope overnight this week, while I was waiting for the police to return to enforce the encampment ban. Whether it’s encampment ban tickets, or trespassing tickets, or obstruction tickets, these are all attempts on the part of the city to eradicate our homeless population.

I’ve been watching your ticketing cycles, which trap our most vulnerable in a web from which they cannot escape. They get bans from the LRC for made up offenses at thee whim of LRC staff. This leaves them exposed to our predatory police force.

The LPD has loads of wiggle room in how it chooses to enforce the law. LPD treatment of our unhoused since the close of the South Railroad Facility falls right in line with their history or preying on Loveland’s weakest.

They could extend understanding, and instead they hunt our homeless for sport.

Is this who we are?

Our City Manager is enacting eugenic policy. Is this who we are?

Alison Hade is so deep in doublespeak she can’t answer a coherent question (“Were there questions in there? I guess I should have been writing things down.”) She just rephrases the same inaction week after week, and comes to talk to the public about the situation without having any idea how things are being run at the LRC. Not a good look.

She was unaware that people were being banned for being inconvenient. She was unaware that the LRC are the ones calling the Police to come ticket, after banning people to leave them vulnerable.

Strangely, after being made aware, bans were lifted and people were permitted the protection of “shelter.”

Letter to Loveland City Leadership

If it’s not Alison’s job to know, then whose? Seriously.

I know washing your hands of responsibility is a knee-jerk reaction (as I’ve performed a critical discourse analysis of several of your emails), but given the purpose it really just looks like incompetence. This incompetence is a slap in the face to the Loveland community, and it will get people killed.

I understand that Alison doesn’t control the police, nor does she make decisions for the City Manager, but she knows the bidding she does and she still goes in to do it. If you have to do evil at work, you should quit.

Is this who we are?

How are you going to feel about the roles you played when it comes out where the money actually went? The big picture is becoming pretty clear, and we’ve only exposed the tip of the iceberg.

How can you face Loveland citizens knowing how badly you’ve failed, and how many times? How are any of you more comfortable looking residents in the eye to say “We’ve failed, and we are failing,” than doing anything to solve this? Solutions WILL NOT come from doing the absolute least possible. Period.

Are you ashamed, or are you looking forward to the blood on your hands? I’m asking in earnest, because people really want to believe that the city isn’t actively trying to kill off part of our community, but it’s becoming harder for them to ignore.

So, are you choosing to eradicate people by design? If not, prove it.

Prove it.

I look forward to hearing from you. I recommend watching the video. If you care you will.

I will continue to analyze and publish city communications, or lack thereof.

We’re Watching,
Jamie M. Jorgensen