Chief Andy Mills walks through PalCo Marsh, formerly a homeless campground known as "The Devil's Playground"
EUREKA, HUMBOLDT COUNTY ​- ​When Andy Mills first arrived in Eureka, the soon-to-be chief of police and his wife noticed a traffic disturbance on the highway ahead.
But Mills soon realized that street-corner panhandlers were just the most visible tip of Eureka's homeless population.
A massive illegal campsite had sprouted in PalCo Marsh, a greenbelt area tucked behind the city's biggest shopping mall. Bisected by rail lines, the marsh served as a hobo jungle for decades. But in recent years new arrivals transformed the shoreline into a tent city that locals called the Devil's Playground - a garbage-strewn shantytown sheltering hundreds of people and a multitude of dogs.
The marsh-dwellers included indigent drug addicts and the mentally ill, families with children, and scores of "trimmigrants" – adventurers from around the world who increasingly flood into Humboldt County, hoping to work as trimmers for cannabis growers.
A series of drone flyovers published by the North Coast Outpost blog captures the sprawl of the Devil's Playground, though not the scale of human misery it represented.
"I recall going out there at night for an enforcement visit - it was otherworldly," Mills said. "There were flickering campfires scattered throughout the darkness and the trees, and voices screaming and lamenting, voices of anguish. My officer asked, "hey Chief, you scared?". " Mills nodded his head at the memory, "yes I was," he said.
Today, four years after Mills' introduction to Eureka, the panhandlers are gone from highway medians. The shopping carts have mostly returned to grocery store parking lots, and the Devil's Playground has been exorcized. The annual count of unhoused homeless people in Eureka dropped from 513 in 2015 to 206 in 2017, with many of the formerly homeless moved into homes and shelters or reunited with families.
Mills is credited with crafting the community effort that slashed homelessness on Eureka's streets. But the success that made him beloved by Eureka residents is also the reason he recently resigned – recruited away to take command of the Santa Cruz Police Department, a job that starts July 31.
The move makes sense for Mills, who takes the helm of a larger, better-funded department located much closer to San Diego, where his grandchildren are a burgeoning tribe. But Eurekans are dismayed at the loss of their approachable chief, who walked downtown daily and formed close bonds with people from every walk of life.
The path from Mills' office at the Eureka PD to Ramone's coffee shop, during his last week on the job, felt like the receiving line at a funeral. Every few steps were interrupted by sorrowful handshakes, accolades to the dearly departed, regrets and best wishes. There were even a few tears.
A older couple approached Mills for handshakes and a plea to reconsider, "Did you get your cookies?" the woman asked.
Sitting at a café table outside of Ramone's, Mills recognized a slight young man, weather-beaten but clear-eyed, blond hair tucked under a baseball cap and hoodie.
Eureka's success story didn't happen overnight. Before Mills could craft a homeless strategy, there were issues within the police department that needed attention. The EPD had drifted for years with temporary leadership, and several police-involved shootings left a reputation for brutality the department had not managed to shake.
"I did a ton of research before I came to Eureka (from San Diego)," Mills said. "I talked to all kinds of local people, and lots of them - even doctors, lawyers, professionals – said "we hate the EPD", and felt the police had a reputation of being brutal and violent. I think it was by and large a misrepresentation, but it was encouraged by an attitude that we wanted people to fear us.
The next priority was gathering data. Mills advocates Problem Oriented Policing, an analysis-first approach that figures out the context of problems to arrive at logical, long-term solutions.
Ultimately, the PalCo marsh had to be cleared, but Mills held off enforcement until shelter could be offered. The police teamed up with social services, businesses, non-profits and community volunteers, and went into the Devil's Playground with a short- and a long-term plan.
More than 100 tons of trash were hauled from the marsh, along with drug debris and dozens of machetes. Parents arrived to pick up children, and other campers dispersed to apartments, shelters, the rescue mission, transitional housing and a temporary campsite set up on private land. Over the next few weeks, dozens re-connected with family and accepted bus tickets home, but only if a "receiver" was identified at the other end of the journey. Some campers refused all assistance, and scattered to the streets.
Thirty-nine former campers and 32 dogs now live at the Blue Angel shelter, a gated, bare-bones village built from a clutch of metal shipping containers. The shelter is a collaboration between local businesses, which donated the containers, local government, which owns the land, and homeless advocate Betty Kwan Chinn, who runs a tight ship.
For thirty years, Chinn has fearlessly entered remote encampments and hostile city council meetings, offering help to the desperate and demanding action from the powerful. But when asked about the departure of Chief Mills, Chinn loses her fierceness.
Blue Angel village is comprised of five shipping containers divided into 20 cubicles with just enough room for two twin beds and a nightstand. An average person might balk at the tight quarters, but Chinn's guests need to work up to sleeping inside.
Mills built a career at the San Diego Police Department, climbing to the rank of Captain and responsible for a district with 150,000 residents – five times the population of Eureka. But Eureka's small-town setting offered the opportunity for full command, and freedom to innovate.
Mills will miss the friendships built in Eureka, and the gorgeous natural beauty. He digs out his phone and pulls up a photo of a huge black bear strolling through his back yard.
Santa Cruz and Eureka share some issues, including troubling levels of homelessness and street drugs, and the sense of being a regional dumping ground for other communities' social problems. Both cities have trouble with officer retention, though officer pay in Eureka tops out at $61,000 per year, compared to more than $100,000 in Santa Cruz. The biggest differences are economic, with home prices in Santa Cruz triple those in Eureka, and rents soaring out of reach of average earners.
Mills and his wife have relocated to Santa Cruz, where he is already showing up at community meetings and getting acquainted. There is no fixed template for action, he said – any plan for Santa Cruz will have to be thoroughly researched and acceptable to the community.