Sacramento police can punish homeless people for sleeping with a blanket
The Sacramento Police Department released a document explaining when and how law enforcement officers should treat living outside as a crime.
In response to a small claims lawsuit brought by a homeless woman, Elizabeth Williams, the city submitted the Police Department’s “Unlawful Camping Enforcement Guidelines.” The Sacramento Bee is publishing the guidelines in full.
In the document, police outline which types of property should be stored and which types should be thrown away in the course of an encampment sweep. Life necessities — such as important identification documents, tents and blankets — as well as personal property with “objective value” must be safely stored by police, the guidelines say.
But the document further specifies in a flow chart that if all of a person’s belongings do not fit in a 55-gallon bag, a sergeant must weigh in on what to store and what to throw away. In the city of Sacramento, a standard medium-size municipal garbage bin is 64 gallons.
The document includes photos to illustrate what sleeping arrangements run afoul of Sacramento’s camping ordinance and what sleeping arrangements do not. If a person is sleeping outside with no “camping paraphernalia” — such as a tent, a sleeping bag, a pillow, a blanket or a tarp used as a blanket — then that person is not violating the city’s camping ordinance. A photo shows a person sleeping on a bench in their clothes without any blankets or coverings; the document says that no violation is occurring in the image.
One photo depicts a person curled up on a piece of cardboard, using a pillow and, as a makeshift blanket, a tarp. “The use of cardboard, a pillow, and a tarp make this a violation,” the document states.
The guidelines are dated Dec. 31, 2024. On that day, Sacramento temperatures dropped to 36 degrees. The document says that officers “may elect” to not enforce the city’s ordinance due to circumstances such as inclement weather.
In police bodycam footage also released in the lawsuit, an officer said that the city of Sacramento had adopted a “zero-tolerance” policy on homeless encampments.
Check out the Sacramento Police Department’s sweeps policy:
This story was originally published July 8, 2026 at 10:30 AM.
