Homeless arrests, citations spiked in Sacramento. Graphics tell the story
The city of Sacramento began citing and arresting far more homeless people during interactions with its homelessness “Incident Management Team” in January 2025 — six months after a Supreme Court decision ruled municipalities could punish residents for living outside, even if they had nowhere else to go.
The Incident Management Team, or IMT, is an interdisciplinary team overseen by the Department of Community Response, which focuses on services for homeless people. The IMT includes personnel from multiple departments and offices, including the Sacramento Police Department and Code Enforcement. The team largely responds to 311 calls about encampments.
In response to a Public Records Act request, Sacramento released the data that informs its IMT “dashboard,” where the city publishes weekly updates of how workers respond to homelessness. The records analyzed by The Sacramento Bee span 129 weeks, from Sept. 25, 2023 through the week of March 9 this year.
Criminalization of homelessness went up in January 2025
During the entire timeframe of nearly two and a half years, the IMT recorded an average of 21 citations or arrests per week. However, a noticeable shift occurred between December 2024 and January 2025. Between Sept. 25, 2023 and Jan. 5, 2025, the IMT was involved with an average of just six citations or arrests each week. From Jan. 6, 2025 through the week of March 9, 2026, that number increased sixfold to an average of 37 citations or arrests each week.
The data from the city did not distinguish between arrests and citations, and it did not specify how many people were jailed.
Unsheltered homeless stats down, camping offenses, trash up
The Sacramento Police Department can enforce multiple anti-camping ordinances in the city. The ordinances prohibit activity such as blocking sidewalks, storing personal property in public and “camping.” Written guidelines from the department show that a violation of the camping ordinance would involve someone using “camping paraphernalia,” which could be a tent but could also be a pillow, a blanket, bedding or makeshift versions of those items.
Even as enforcement rose in the city, homelessness has remained high countywide. The federally mandated “Point-in-Time” count in January 2026 showed that at least 7,458 people were homeless in Sacramento County, an increase of 13% from the previous count in 2024. Most of the increase was among sheltered homeless people, though unsheltered homelessness also rose 7%.
However, between 2024 and 2026, unsheltered homelessness fell within Sacramento city limits, according to the count. Between those counts, the numbers of camping violations that the IMT logged in the city rose. In the summer of 2025, the city also started noting and responding to far more trash-related homelessness reports.
Although the Point-in-Time count found that unsheltered homelessness fell in the city between 2024 and 2026, during that period, unsheltered homelessness doubled in nearby unincorporated suburbs.
‘A zero-tolerance policy on camping’
These IMT-related arrests and citations make up relatively small proportion of the total number of homeless people being cited in Sacramento County. Data recently released by the county show that one-third of people being booked into the jail system are homeless, or about 800 to 900 people each month.
A sergeant with the Sacramento Police Department referenced this increase in bodycam footage of a homeless encampment sweep obtained by The Bee. In a video recorded on Feb. 24, 2025, Sergeant Scott Hall — part of the department’s “IMPACT” team, which responds to homeless encampments — agrees with another officer that a homeless woman, Elizabeth Williams, had become “too comfortable” in her encampment because police had been lax about enforcing anti-camping ordinances in the past.
“She thinks it’s par for the course, and she’s just gonna move back in as soon as we go and make a couple false promises that she’s calling family and do it all over again,” Hall says in the video. “You know? Same s---. But this is IMPACT 2025, and things don’t quite go that way anymore.”
In footage from a sweep on June 5, 2025, a police officer tells a woman, “They’ve taken a zero-tolerance on camping and anything associated with it in Sacramento.” That officer specifically cites the Supreme Court decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which came down in June 2024 and allowed homeless people to be punished for living outdoors.
