A fellow I know from downtown, a busker, had a camp by a bridge. He disappeared for a week, and I got concerned. Met him again in a coffee shop. The local enforcers had cleaned out under the bridges and taken it all to the dump, leaving him truly homeless.

They had 'put up signs' - small, on a wall a block away, down by the sidewalk. So as to make sure folks like him didn't see them, so they could terrorize them by destroying their camps.

He had gone to the police station to request his valuables back - everything had been neatly filed in boxes - and they made him sit outside on the ground for an hour and ignored him. He never got anything back.

His pictures of his grandmother, his guitar, his skateboard, his camp stove - all destroyed.

So yeah, people get beat down, and its systematic.