“THIRD WORLD COUNTRY”: Wyoming town taken over by squatters

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Squatters have taken over a town in Wyoming, leaving behind $1 million worth of damage and 200 kilograms of human feces.

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Casper Mayor Bruce Knell detailed the destructive behavior of about 200 homeless people who not only vandalized a vacant motel but also created a “mayhem” in the city’s parks and streets.

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“They destroyed everything,” Knell said Cowboy State Daily. “It’s terrible.”

Casper, the state’s second-largest city, has a population of 60,000, but the situation has become more precarious since it was overrun by homeless people who took over an abandoned Econo Lodge motel that has not been in operation since November due to flooding abandoned properties.

The city had to condemn the motel and the bank that owns the building had to board it up to keep squatters out.

“It was livable and unsafe,” Knell said.

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The squatters broke into the building and left behind a disgusting cleanup in which they removed human feces for the city, not to mention drug paraphernalia and destruction of furnishings.

“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Knell told the outlet. “There’s some third world country stuff going on in Casper, Wyoming.”

The city government does not know how to effectively deal with the growing number of vagrancy, as fines and arrests have not changed this.

“We know full well we can’t litigate or make arrests out of the problem, but our police need some teeth to deal with the squatting,” Knell told the outlet.

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“They just cause so many problems,” he said. “In desperate times, people do desperate things, and unfortunately we are the ones who have to deal with it.”

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Knell noted that many homeless people struggle with substance abuse or mental illness and don’t want to follow rules or laws.

“There’s a certain portion of the homeless population, whether it’s substance abuse or mental illness, that makes them not want to follow society’s rules,” Knell said.

“If they do that, they are not allowed into the shelter, which means they are simply out in our community causing a disturbance.”

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