This is the second article in a series on systemic harms plaguing homeless young adults based in Harvard Square
“Ever since I was three years old, I knew exactly who I was inside.”
Roxxanne says she likes my outfit. I say I like her tights.
She starts complaining about trans women being “batshit crazy,” quickly adding, “I can say that because I’m trans.”
Roxxanne is a 19-year-old Latina woman and comedian from Worcester who “has no filter.” She says that lack of restraint is her “proudest skill.” She’s lived on the streets and shelters of Cambridge and Boston for three years, dealing with trauma, mood disorders, and gender dysphoria.
Last spring, Roxxanne began hormone replacement therapy (HRT). She was so excited that she considered “swallowing the whole bottle” of estradiol pills at once to speedrun her transition. Sometimes, she can’t contain her elation about starting estrogen; other nights, Roxxanne complains about hormones giving her the “craziest mood swings” of her life.
Blue hormone tablets weren’t the only pills she was taking. On the evening of April 28, around Harvard Square, she was offered white pills that were potentially MDMA. Her friends, who’d seen others overdose and die before, became worried that the pills were laced, and called an ambulance.
A crowd of more than a dozen police officers, security guards, and EMTs converged on Roxxanne at Harvard’s Smith Campus Center. An ambulance soon took her to a nearby hospital, but not before Officer G (a Harvard police officer) asked for her legal name.
“I should not have told him my dead name,” she later said. “It’s because I was high.”
The arrest
Roxxanne returned to the Smith Center the following night, April 29. She was listening to music, “minding my own business,” when Officer G told her she was under arrest. She had two open warrants.
A bystander’s video shows what happened next. Stunned, Roxxanne asked for details. “You’re going to Cambridge,” Officer G said. “Police booking.”
“I had my headphones in,” she later recalled. “I was confused.”
The officer then told Roxxanne to put her hands behind her back. She calmly said, “No.” They ordered her again.
“No,” Roxxanne said, firmly, as three other cops circled.
After that, she told the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, “I don’t really know what happened. The situation escalates and they just slam me.”
The video shows three police officers pinning Roxxanne to the ground. Two cops held her arms as a third placed his knee into the small of her back. A fourth officer watched from a few feet away.
Roxxanne cried in distress as she was pressed down. Months later, she said she is still “scared the Harvard police are going to come by and fucking slam me again.”
“My body is literally transitioning from male to female—it hurt!” she said. “Last time they slammed my spine and then some dude put his foot on my back. Doesn’t he know he could have killed me?!”
After a night in Cambridge holding, she was taken to Worcester, where her warrant was issued. Roxxanne said that she asked to be jailed with other women, but police reportedly ignored the request and incarcerated her with men.
“I felt uncomfortable,” she said. “The men were like, Oh, fresh meat.”
Asked for comment on the situation, a spokesperson for the Worcester Police Department pointed us to their official policy which states that trans people should be placed in a cell “corresponding to his or her gender expression.” We were unable to reach Roxxanne for further clarification.
The surge
Roxxanne was one of three young adults experiencing homelessness arrested at the Smith Center in April. Two of the three were 19-year-old trans women of color. All were arrested by the same Harvard cop, Officer G. Despite being owned and operated by the private Harvard Corporation, the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) has exactly the same arrest and enforcement powers as public police agencies, their officers carrying standard-issue firearms just like any other cop. HUPD is one of about 700 police agencies in the US that are run by private universities, according to the Department of Justice.
I’ve been interviewing homeless people like Roxxanne in Harvard Square since March 2026, speaking with them about police violence and discrimination. In the first interview I recorded, five unhoused transgender people stated Officer G was targeting and “harrassing a lot of the trans women.” Twenty days later, he arrested one of those trans women.
The treatment of Roxxanne and others who spoke for this article is part of a broader surge. According to an analysis of HUPD’s public crime log, HUPD made 16 arrests last semester (spring 2026). That’s a relatively sharp increase compared to spring 2025 (11 arrests), and four times as many as in fall 2025.
Arrestees have been disproportionately unhoused, young, and transgender, and are subsequently incarcerated for nonviolent or administrative offenses such as “trespass” or “warrant service.” These charges are frequently accompanied by targeted policing and apparent criminalization of homelessness in public spaces, and frequently involve criminal property bans and warrant searches for offenses like sleeping or vaping.
To better understand the context and consequences of this policing, I interviewed 12 young adults experiencing homelessness, including three arrested by HUPD last semester, about police violence and other challenges. I then triangulated those accounts with an analysis of more than 3,200 incident reports spanning almost two years, from fall 2024 through the end of the spring 2026 semester. These HUPD crime logs include times, places, and narrative details concerning responses to alleged criminal activity. The data provides a unique window into a private law enforcement agency with essentially the same powers as a public one, but without similar transparency or reporting requirements.
Together, these interviews reflect the rarely heard views of people on the receiving end of this escalated policing. They live at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities that Harvard liberals claim to support—POC, queer, the unhoused—while facing increasingly violent treatment from university police, all in the midst of nationwide crackdowns on both trans and homeless people. This wave of arrests only highlights the yawning gap between Harvard’s ultrawealthy gown and unhoused town.
Police vs. the homeless
A surge in Harvard police activity has been largely driven by the arrests of unhoused people at the Smith Center on “trespass” and/or “warrant service” charges. Nearly half of last semester’s arrests, seven out of 16, fit all three parts of that description.
Thirteen of those 16 arrests, or 81%, were of unhoused people. To put that in perspective, somewhere between .31 and .56% of Cambridge is homeless, based on annual point-in-time counts of 411 to 747 unhoused individuals in a city of 120,000 people. If those numbers are roughly correct, unhoused people are arrested by Harvard police at a rate of more than a hundred times their proportion of the city’s population. This appears to be the trend; in the preceding three semesters, fall 2024 through fall 2025, nine out of 25, or 36% of HUPD arrests were of homeless people.
Ten of the arrests last spring were at the Smith Center, where many of the city’s unhoused access bathrooms, water, power outlets, and other essential amenities. Crucially, the building on Mass Ave is close to public transit and open from early in the morning to late evening, accommodating 8am check-outs and 10:45pm check-in times at local shelters.
According to Cambridge City Councilor Marc McGovern, spaces like the Smith Center function as day shelters due to a lack of public alternatives. “We all need places to go,” he said. “You have to physically be somewhere, but we don’t really offer enough safe, supportive, and welcoming places for unhoused people to go in the city. So what do you do? … If it’s too cold, you go to the Smith Center, a city park, wherever … You’ve got to create alternatives for people.”
The Smith Center is part of “Common Spaces,” a Harvard initiative designed to bring university affiliates into community with the public. But the reliability of these spaces has rapidly diminished, at least according to the unhoused people who depend on them. They report being selectively policed and arrested for petty misconduct like sleeping or yelling, and facing punitive punishments and criminal property bans.
Their claims are backed by public police records: per my analysis, “Visitor Conduct” accounted for 38% of Smith Center incidents, more than double the rate elsewhere on campus (17%). In spring 2026, HUPD arrested 10 people at the Smith Center, more than in the previous three semesters combined, and more than on the rest of campus combined.
Police stops often result in HUPD running names for open criminal warrants. They can additionally result in indefinite criminal bans from all Harvard University property, also known as no-trespass orders.
One unhoused person called the involuntary exodus of homeless people from the Smith Center “gentrification under a microscope.”
The ivory tower
Hierarchy dominates the Smith Center, spatially and socially. The first floor has concrete benches and bright orange outdoor patio-style metal chairs. Visible through glass walls directly above are Harvard-restricted study spaces with couches and lounge cushions. The Harvard-only 10th floor lounge has foosball, a piano, plush seating, and few noticeable security cameras.
“Ugh, I want to live there so bad.” Jake, a pregnant transgender man, peers up from the ground floor’s rigid metal seats. “You cannot enjoy the Smith Center if you’re not cisgender or not someone with money … they will always stare at you expecting you to fuck up so they can yell at you.” I asked what police harass them for. Jake summarizes: “Vaping. Being homeless. Literally just sitting there.”
Many unhoused people who have spent time at the Smith Center report hostility from HUPD and Securitas, Harvard’s private security firm. Securitas guards don’t have full police powers or training and can’t make arrests, but they work closely with HUPD to patrol the Smith Center and are seen as an extension of Harvard’s police. One woman explains, “Most of the cops see homeless people and they’re like, Ew, I fucking hate you.” She elaborates, “Guards will be extra rude to me because I don’t look like a typical Harvard student. … I don’t have a brand new Macbook or an expensive backpack.”
The same unhoused woman adds that when she is “trying to sit down, eat food, and leave, they want to make it a huge deal, like I have a bomb strapped to my chest.” Another man says, “If you look more put together, they don’t yell at you … but if you have a ton of bags with you, or you don’t look presentable, then they’ll crucify you.”
Frequent “visitor conduct” infractions used to ban the unhoused from Harvard’s campus are related to cannabis and nicotine. Across the nearly two years of available data, more than 30 HUPD incident reports concerned smoking or vaping. Some of these resulted in criminal bans—in February 2026, individuals observed “vaping in the [Smith Center]” were “issued a trespass warning for all Harvard University property.” Another individual was no-trespassed for “smoking marijuana” in front of the Smith Center on the evening of May 16, 2026.
The incidents documented by Harvard police represent just a fraction of the times that unhoused people have been made to leave Harvard grounds. When Securitas jettisons those labeled trespassers, there is no paper trail.
In May, I was sitting outside the Smith Center with about six unhoused people smoking a tequila bottle bong they nicknamed “el Jimador.” While interviewing one about Smith Center policies, a Securitas guard came by and banned us from the building for the rest of the day.
The offense of sleeping
“LET’S GO! LET’S GO!”
Officer G barks at Kayla in front of her friends on the Smith Center patio. I’m enjoying the spring weather and chatting with them until the Harvard cop approaches to enforce Kayla’s no-trespass order.
“Are you fucking serious?” she mutters, stepping two feet off the open patio onto the public sidewalk.
A bystander quietly remarks, “It’s kinda weird that they do this to her.” Kayla interjecting, “All over me sleeping months ago.”
“How the fuck am I trespassed for that shit!? Make it make sense!”
Between September 2024 and May 2026, there were 118 incident reports in which officers were dispatched to approach individuals “sleeping” or “lying down.”
Kayla was banned from all Harvard property after dozing off in the Smith Center. A 19-year-old trans woman from Lynn, she had difficulty in her shelter where petty theft was common. “When I was in there I could not sleep. Even if I was in my bed pod, I would not sleep.”
When the sleeplessness grew overwhelming, Kayla would walk to the Smith Center and “take a timed two-hour nap, and get up when I was told to.” Harvard students make tongue-in-cheek jokes about crashing in the building’s “stay awake” space. But for the visibly unhoused, getting caught napping in the Smith Center—or anywhere at Harvard—can have dire consequences.
During one of her naps, Kayla said, she “woke up to three different security guards and two paramedics standing in front of me thinking I just fucking died.” She recalled that two Harvard police officers were present and told her to leave, saying Kayla was indefinitely banned from all Harvard property.
According to their incident reports, HUPD issued 118 no-trespass orders between September 2024 and May 2026, evicting more than 113 of those people from all university property. No-trespass orders reached a two-year peak last semester with 34 bans in spring 2026. An increasing fraction of those bans were issued from the Smith Center, where the number of people banned per semester steadily increased from three in fall 2024 to 17 in spring 2026.
‘Targeting’ trans people
When Officer G saw Kayla in the Smith Center, he “looked pissed and stormed over” while she sat with her back turned.
In spite of her ban, Kayla was relaxing there on April 4 with Jake, Mason, Kiernan, and two others. According to their recollections, the Harvard cop began yanking Kayla’s arms up from behind to restrain her. At least one of Kayla’s friends pleaded with Officer G to use less force tightening her handcuffs.
“Why are you doing this?” Kayla asked. “I’ve done nothing.”
Officer G responded, “You guys know I’m your number one supporter here.” He “stopped halfway through cuffing her,” but with his hands “gripped tight” on her wrists, continued to say things like, “I would do anything for you guys, but you have to abide by the rules.”
Mason said the officer was on a “power-trip,” “making it seem like [Kayla] did something to deserve to be arrested.” He remembers thinking, “What is this tiny ass girl going to do to you?“
Because Officer G arrested Kayla on a Saturday, she wouldn’t be able to see a judge until Monday. Despite having no criminal record or means to pay, her bail was set at $250 prior to her arraignment.
Kayla said Officer G targets trans people. In an interview recorded weeks before Roxxanne’s and her arrests, five young unhoused transgender people I met at the Smith Center (including Kayla) had similar stories. One of them, Jake, described the same cop as someone who “loves harassing all the young trans women.” “He just bothers them and is very atrocious and rude.”
Regarding the arrest in April, Kayla said Officer G “wanted me to do something for him to be able to make me suffer. … I think he was expecting me to just be, like, ready to fight him.”
According to another unhoused trans man, Mason, “[Officer G] misgenders everyone that’s trans. He calls me [Deadname]. He’ll yell my legal name in public, like, [Deadname], hey! He sits here and says he’s a supporter, he’s an ally, but then he does shit like that. So who are you an ally to?”
According to Kayla, HUPD’s nominal commitment to community policing and acceptance rings hollow. “At the end of the day, which communities are you accepting? It’s not the homeless community. And it’s sure as hell not the trans community.”
HUPD did not respond to a request for comment.
In the HUPD incident report for Kayla’s arrest, her name was checked for “wants and warrants with negative results.” This means the department ran her deadname through a database of individuals with open warrants, and didn’t find any.
The day after Kayla was cuffed, another woman who appeared to be unhoused was arrested at the Smith Center. According to HUPD logs, a Harvard cop approached her because she “may have a trespass warning for the building.” Like they did with Kayla, HUPD ran the woman’s name through the system. Unlike Kayla, though, she was wanted and therefore arrested for “warrant service.”
Fishing in Harvard Square
According to HUPD logs, warrant searches conducted at the Smith Center increased dramatically last semester, rising from three in spring 2025 to 18 in spring 2026. The activity spurred a surge in detentions—half of last semester’s arrests, including Roxxanne’s, were for “warrant service” instead of any active crimes. Roxxanne’s warrant, for instance, was for failing to attend a hearing in Worcester several months prior.
Often called “warrant fishing” by critics of the practice, the actions of Harvard police in many of these cases appears to involve cops asking individuals for names during voluntary stops, then later running them through databases full of open warrants. Officers do not need reasonable suspicion to ask for someone’s name, provided that the stop is consensual and the individual is free to leave. Civil liberties as well as privacy rights advocates question the use of such tactics to target already overpoliced populations like the homeless for criminalization.
Critics also contend that warrant fishing actively undermines community policing programs meant to build public trust in law enforcement. Similarly, such behavior by cops can discourage overpoliced populations from utilizing social services or hospitals they need. Roxxanne, for instance, gave her deadname to Officer G while seeking medical care. I’ve observed Harvard police approach unhoused people and ask for their names (“just checking in,” one officer told me) while passing out a list of community resources like shelters and foodbanks.
Several homeless people said that campus cops give literature to banned unhoused people to absolve themselves of guilt. “They don’t know how ineffective so many of those resources are,” one woman said. “They’ll tell you to go to this shelter, but the shelter … is completely full at max capacity. And has been for a couple months. It’s not up to date and they don’t really care to update it.”
For those who are permitted to remain on campus, watchful eyes abound. Many of the unhoused I spoke with noted Harvard’s omnipresent camera network, which is used to monitor for “visitor conduct” violations. On one occasion, guards approached Mason and me to say they “have us on camera vaping.”
“I’m scared of HUPD because of cameras,” Roxxanne said after her arrest. “They said they’ll be checking their cameras [for me]. I have to be on alert now. I’m on a high alert. My paranoia is going crazy because I’m scared of the Harvard police.”
Kayla suspects cameras were used to catch her napping in the Smith Center, and said Officer G took “actual pictures” of her twice to document suspected violations of her no-trespass order. “He’d do it so sassily too … he smiled the first time he took a picture.”
In losing access to the Smith Center, Kayla was excluded from the hub of her social life, as well as critical amenities. A necessity for anyone, bathrooms are particularly critical for transgender people to manage their dysphoria and avoid scrutiny in an increasingly transphobic nation.
“People that are fully transitioned can live around the world a little easier,” Kayla said, “if you can pass.”
She continued, “I’d go and do my makeup, my hair, my wig, everything in the Smith Center bathroom.” The process helped her feel like herself and avoid discrimination. “If you don’t look like a woman, no one gives a fuck. … They know what you are [transgender]. They don’t care what you are.”
When people still give her “dirty-ass looks,” or tell her she’s not a real woman, Kayla isn’t fussed. “I’m just used to it and say the same shit every time. I’m like, Girl, I don’t want to be a real woman. Y’all stay where you are… I’m not trying to be a woman that you guys feel is a woman—I’m trying to be the woman I see myself as, what I see in the mirror.”
With students returning to campus for the fall semester and the cold weather creeping in soon after, the temporary daytime shelter situation around Cambridge will likely worsen. Last year, HUPD’s escalation in policing homeless people overlapped with a brutally cold winter—one person described “surviving the blizzard days” after they were banned from the Smith Center.
In one incident recorded by HUPD, on Jan. 27, 2025, someone “stole two cake pops” from a Smith Center concession, and was no-trespassed from the property. That afternoon, temperatures dropped below 20 degrees.
