A man pulls a shopping cart full of clothes and other belongings along Main Street near Washington Avenue on Monday. Police on Wednesday seized eight shopping carts that homeless people were using to store their belongings just outside Jaycee Park. Photo by Ralph Fountain.

Dane Jensen was keeping an eye on the nearby shopping cart full of his belongings early Wednesday morning as he hung out with other homeless men at Jaycee Park.

The 64-year-old, who kept many of his clothes and blankets in the cart he says he found abandoned in a trash bin, had parked it neatly alongside six or seven others just outside the park's south entrance.

"Then Metro (police officers) came up. They said, 'These are all stolen. You can't remove anything from them. If you do, you'll be prosecuted,'" Jensen said.

Jensen and several other homeless people who spend their days at the park at Eastern and St. Louis avenues said a handful of police officers strung the carts together, then called the city's Rapid Response Team to pick them up, blankets, clothes and medications still inside.

"They took them away in a truck," Jensen said Monday while sitting with his friends behind a Burger King south of the park. He added that losing extra clothing and blankets was particularly hard during the cold season.

Several other homeless people said their belongings, too, were taken and police threatened to arrest them for theft if they claimed their possessions.

The incident was reminiscent of city sweeps conducted a few years ago during which shopping carts full of the belongings of homeless people were taken by police and city neighborhood services workers outside a local shelter.

Metropolitan Police Department Sgt. Damian Walburn confirmed that officers asked the Rapid Response Team to pick up eight carts on Wednesday, but denied that officers threatened the homeless or didn't allow them to retrieve their belongings.

"If a person is in possession of a shopping cart outside of a parking lot where a vendor would have a cart, then, yeah, it is theft," he said.

"If we run across a homeless person and they have a shopping cart, we tell them they can take their items out of the cart but cannot keep the cart. If they have anything like medication, prescription eyewear, they (the homeless) take that property."

Walburn said people are given "chance after chance after chance" to remove their items before the carts are taken.

The city's Rapid Response Team, part of the Neighborhood Services Department, is complaint-driven and works to address neighborhood problems including graffiti, garbage and litter violations.

The city tries to return seized shopping carts to their owners, such as markets and other retail stores, a city spokesman said. If it is unable to return them, the carts are recycled.

Local civil rights advocates were incensed by Wednesday's incident and said it amounts to harassment of homeless people.

"Clearly, when people are losing items such as food, medicine, clothing and blankets, the city is depriving them of the very tools they need to survive," said Lee Rowland, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada.

"Taking away the necessities of life isn't going to help anyone get on their feet."

Linda Lera-Randle El, director of the Straight from the Streets program that works with the homeless, said taking shopping carts away is a waste of time and that enforcement is selective.

"You aren't going to find some elderly lady pushing a shopping cart and someone (police) rolling up on them and taking their cart," she said. "I don't think homeless people should be given special privileges, but I don't think they should be harassed based on something as minor as a shopping cart."

City Manager Doug Selby ordered Huntridge Circle Park, a daytime hangout for the homeless, closed Nov. 27, citing safety concerns and the fatal stabbing of a homeless man in the park. Since then, several homeless people who used to hang out there instead spend their days at Jaycee Park.