Tragedy leads to no camping at Cottonwood, AZ Walmart

That sucks. There's a pretty big difference between 9 derelicts living in a Suburban and abusing the store's facilities and someone rolling up in a MH for a night. But, unfortunately this will cause WalMart and towns to crack down. My local WalMart has "No Overnight Parking" signs all over the lot, but trucks and MHs stay there routinely. As long as there's no trouble, the police look the other way.

cpd520 wrote:
News from my home town. No camping/overnight parking

We seldom park at Walmart etc... over night, but I do hate to see the opportunity to do so disappear.

X 2 Here again a select few will probably ruin it for everyone else that obeys the law and quietly camps overnight.

Can't imagine why the local vagrancy laws did not apply to this squatter, much sooner.

Homer wrote:
Can't imagine why the local vagrancy laws did not apply to this squatter, much sooner.

We had a guy living out of his van, with a dog and a generator running non-stop for months. I never could understand why they didn't make him move on. I struck up a conversation with him one day. Said he was a veteran, had heart trouble but couldn't afford medical care, lost his job and was living in his van on donations. I gave him $20 and he immediately bought scratch-off lottery tickets with it. Lesson learned.

turbojimmy wrote:
That sucks. There's a pretty big difference between 9 derelicts living in a Suburban and abusing the store's facilities and someone rolling up in a MH for a night. But, unfortunately this will cause WalMart and towns to crack down. My local WalMart has "No Overnight Parking" signs all over the lot, but trucks and MHs stay there routinely. As long as there's no trouble, the police look the other way.

X2. That crew would have caused problems anywhere they 'camped.'

That would have been a bad place to be camped for the night. Bullet holes in the RV are a real bummer.

I posted a comment to the article. For those with the time and inclination, why not take a moment to post a positive comment asking for a more reasoned response. If we can generate enough positive interest maybe we can cause a positive change.

We've never stayed at a Walmart, but we've overnighted at some very nice casinos. They have a safer feel and better security. Casinocamper.com has some great info.

For the volume of traffic Walmart is probably one of the safest places on earth. Walmart is a family friendly and RV friendly retail.

swamprat 01 wrote:

cpd520 wrote:
News from my home town. No camping/overnight parking

We seldom park at Walmart etc... over night, but I do hate to see the opportunity to do so disappear.

X 2 Here again a select few will probably ruin it for everyone else that obeys the law and quietly camps overnight.

Exactly. The military calls it mission creep. A quick overnight while traveling was fine with just about everyone, the RVer, the neighbors, Walmart and yes, even the local RV parks. Then, staying a day to see the sights became more and more common. Not quite so fine with Walmart, the neighbors and the local parks. Next was staying for multiple days and, apparently, weeks. Not really fine at all with the neighbors or the local parks and Walmart is then in a bit of a pickle. They could start evicting people, but that creates bad press every time they do it. They could just turn a blind eye, but that eventually leads to what happened. Or they can just put out the "no overnight" sign and problem is solved.