ORLANDO, Fla. – A University of Central Florida researcher claims the homeless population in downtown Orlando already faced a rising number of arrests ahead of a new state law that will ban sleeping on public property.
HB 1365 takes effect on Oct. 1, and it will make public camping a criminal offense.
Eric Gray, executive director of the Christian Service Center in downtown Orlando, said he heard from some of his homeless clients that they were being arrested for minor violations starting in October of 2023.
He said this started happening after a change in city policy that ordered homeless camps to be dismantled.
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Dr. Andrew Sullivan, with UCF’s School of Public Administration, said he started pulling arrest reports to see if what they were claiming was true.
He pulled reports from the last six years for every person who listed themselves as “transient” on their arrest report.
“We found that starting in about last fall, there was a big increase in citations of people overall, but especially people experiencing homelessness,” he said.
When he compared October of 2022 to the same month one year later, Sullivan found the number of panhandling violations that resulted in arrests went up 200%.
Violations for urinating in public went up 175%.
Violations of public camping went up 375%.
He said the arrests can have a damaging effect on a person who might be trying to get their life on track.
He said a criminal record can disqualify people from affordable housing programs and employment programs.
“It can make them less likely to trust law enforcement or other people -- service workers, outreach workers -- who maybe go out and say, ‘Can we help you?’” Sullivan said. “Now, they’re being pushed to different places where they’re less likely to get access to services.”
“We’re not out there to arrest people. We’re out there actually to give services, give help to people,” said Orlando Police Chief Eric Smith.
Smith agreed to speak with News 6 on-camera because he felt strongly that his officers had good intentions.
He also said his statistics do not match what Sullivan has found.
Smith said OPD’s new Homeless Intervention Unit has made contact with a little more than 18,000 people in 2024, so far.
Out of that, officers have made about 320 arrests.
That amounts to 1.78%.
“(Arrests are) very last resort, especially for this unit – the very last resort,” Smith said. “Sometimes you get people – like anybody in life – having a bad day. Those are the people we end up having to arrest.”
Smith said his attorneys are still reviewing the new state law that takes effect on Oct. 1 to see what – if anything – will change.
“Now, we have to be complaint-driven,” he said. “If you see somebody under I-4, you call in and say, ‘Hey, there’s people under I-4,’ we have to respond. We have to move people along. But the question is — where do they go? There’s 100 people sleeping under I-4 right now, and my officers on the midnight shift move them along, they’re going to parks, neighborhoods — where are they going to go? That’s sort of the issue we’re running into.”
Sullivan said his work documenting the number of homeless arrests is not over.
His doctoral students have now joined his project.
They are pulling arrest reports and finding out more about the people going to jail.
“It’s also very heartbreaking, because, we can see how many people are arrested, and they already experienced difficulties,” said Doctoral student Kyungmin Lee. “They got more troubles and difficulties on top of what they have experienced already.”
Sullivan’s team is constantly updating its data, and it can be found on their website here.
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