CRANSTON, RI (WLNE) — Cranston Mayor Ken Hopkins has issued an executive order allowing police to work with public service employees to break up homeless encampments in the community.

According to the order, obtained by ABC6, Cranston police have the authority to coordinate with the City of Cranston Building Department to clear any encampments or shelters, “but this shall not occur without first contacting and working with necessary social services to ensure relocation and provision of temporary housing for any violators of this order.”

If a person refuses to cooperate with the services, the camp or dwelling will be cleared by the DPW and the person in question will be issued a restraining order preventing him or her from returning to the property, the order states.

According to a statement provided to ABC6, the decision to sign this executive order was made after Hopkins heard “recent concerns about possible homeless encampments in close proximity to school facilities.”

“Public safety is my top priority. Please be assured that this order is designed to protect the public and all camp residents and requires our officers to contact and work with social services to relocate and temporarily house any violator,” he said.

“I decided to pass this ordinance to ensure the safety of our students ahead of the upcoming school year. The City Council had the opportunity to put this matter on the docket during the City Council Ordinance Committee meeting on August 15, but they delayed the issue for three months,” he continued.

At the August 15 meeting, dozens of people from across the state gathered Thursday to voice their opposition to Cranston council members.

The order was issued after the Supreme Court overturned lower court rulings that had called it cruel and unusual to punish people for sleeping outdoors and having nowhere else to go.

In a statement, members of the ACLU of Rhode Island called the order “cruel, misguided and ineffective.”

“Although it is supposedly about ‘engaging with social services’ before relocating people, the implementing regulation contains no indication of how this will work in practice or whether social services are even able to provide the necessary support,” they explained.

The statement continues:

Furthermore, the immediate seizure of the property of an individual who refuses to cooperate with “any” services offered, no matter how inadequate, unhelpful, or unsafe those services may be, raises further serious concerns about the state’s homeless rights. The Mayor’s unilateral issuance of this order relies on provisions of the City Charter that include his duty to enforce the laws, not to make them himself. His attempt to bypass the City Council process entirely is a dangerous abuse of executive power. We will examine what actions concerned individuals and groups can take to remedy this extremely disturbing overreach of executive power and inhumane response to the plight of the homeless.

A representative of the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness said homelessness is increasing in every city and town in Rhode Island and across the country.

“Not enough shelters and homeless shelters are being created to keep up with demand, and as a result, more and more people are having to sleep outside. Here at the Coalition, we campaigned for the passage of the Homeless Bill of Rights in 2012 to support people who have no choice but to stay on public land,” they said.

“We believe it provides protections for those affected by these recent actions. We are proud to be the first state in the country to enact such protections and hope that all Rhode Islanders will respect these rights,” they continued.

The organization further stated that it commends the efforts of all cities and municipalities that want to work together and address the needs of people living outside the city.

“We believe there are far less drastic ways to take action against the camps than such injunctions,” they said.

City Councilman Robert Ferri also commented on the order and echoed the ACLU’s statements.

Ferri said all city councilors agreed that Cranston’s homeless encampment problem needed a positive solution, and punishing “these people (which is what the ordinance in its current form calls for) would not improve the situation at all.”

“Clearly passing the regulation was not the solution. It was decided at the meeting that we would bring in experts and possibly rewrite the regulation to protect everyone involved,” he said.

Ferri went on to say that the challenge is that currently in Rhode Island “many homeless people have no place to go.”

“The state is about 700 shelters short of meeting the needs of Rhode Island’s homeless. If we dismantle an encampment and move people out of one place, they’re just going to show up in another place, probably Cranston, because there’s no place for many of these people to go right now,” he said.

The statement continues:

“Based on my conversations with homeless experts, we need to provide them with services and find them a place to go. Most people who are homeless don’t choose to do that. They are often people who have the hardest time succeeding (e.g. poverty, mental health issues, etc.). They need help and services. Cranston can no longer leave the problem to someone else. We are the second largest city in Rhode Island and we need to do our part. In Cranston, we haven’t built a single affordable housing unit in over 13 years. I believe that instead of passing a law to displace the homeless, we should bring experts to the table and work with them to address this problem in a way that could actually solve it. Let’s not abandon the people who have the least while they are down.”