Elected officials in Derby Tuesday asked for information about homeless people camping in the woods between Pershing Drive and the Derby Greenway.
“It has been reported to several Aldermen that there is a vagrant problem, of people living in that location,” Aldermen Art Gerckens said at a subcommittee meeting.
Alderman Carmen DiCenso said a local pastor offered some of the men places to stay locally, but was rebuffed.
DiCenso also noted there have been several burglaries along Pershing Drive, including at the Duchess restaurant in Ansonia and the Italian Pavilion in Derby.
“We don’t know who’s doing it, but we do have vagrants,” DiCenso said. “I don’t think with our walkway going right under a bridge, I don’t think it’s a safe environment for women and children using the walkway.”
Derby Deputy Police Chief Scott Todd said the issue is ongoing.
“We’ve worked with the Department of Public Works in the past when these ‘tent cities,’ if you will, come up,” Todd said. “We’re more than willing to go down again and remove them again. We do it quite frequently.”
Anthony DeFala, Derby Public Works Director, said his employees remove tents whenever they are spotted.
“If we see them, we take them down.” DeFala said.
Alderman Ron Sill worried about what could happen if a DPW employee encounters a person using the tent as shelter.
“They’re never there,” DeFala said. “We never see them there.”
The people using the tents go in late at night and are gone before the sun comes up, DeFala said.
“They are there late and out early,” he said. “At this point they know it is being watched by the police department, and so are we.”
Gerckens requested the Community Relations Subcommittee of the Board of Aldermen receive data showing how often the city responded to the area and any actions taken.
The Spooner House operates a shelter for people without homes in Shelton.
DiCenso also asked the city’s building official to look at numerous abandoned trailers and other junk on a property behind BJ’s Wholesale, and to consider whether the property is blighted.
