The cops rode in like mounted cavalry, ravaging two long-standing homeless camps and pulling down makeshift huts with ropes. A couple of days later, Los Angeles police returned, using sledgehammers to break up the remaining hooches, then scattering transients' belongings in the dirt. That was the account that homeless residents and local church activists gave of last month's LAPD raids on two Sunland encampments inhabited by up to a dozen transients. 'It's sad,' said the Rev. Sam Graham, associate pastor of Chapel of the Hills Church, of Sunland, which ministers to the homeless. 'They just swept them out of there, destroying stuff. 'They received no warning, with no chance to remove their possessions.' But police and city officials counter that they broke up the camps only after receiving numerous complaints from the community about crime, trash and other problems. They also say they'd tried for months to help the homeless residents and had provided ample notice that their encampments were going to be destroyed. 'There have been extensive, extensive long-term efforts to get them out,' said City Councilman Paul Krekorian, who said he met with government, faith-based, social service and law enforcement agencies to brainstorm a long-term solution. 'They've gone in there many times and offered help.' Several years ago, the Los Angeles Police Department launched the Safer Cities Initiative that added dozens of officers to patrols on Skid Row and wound up pushing many residents of the nation's homeless capital into outlying areas. Now, some have questioned whether the recent raids on the decades-old camps in Big Tujunga Wash were meant to result in a similar homeless heave-ho across the San Fernando Valley. Police say there is no campaign to eliminate Valley homeless camps, but that a multi-agency task force has been set up to get rid of the ones in Big Tujunga. 'Residents are tired of the drugs, trash and crime,' said Officer Karen Rayner, a spokeswoman for the LAPD Valley Bureau, who said there had been evidence of heroin use in the wash. 'The response was because of numerous complaints and problems -- drugs, drinking, gangs, shootings. 'Apparently, that area is a big horse community and those knuckleheads were tying fish lines across the pathways to trip up the horses.' On July 21, more than a half-dozen officers from the LAPD's Equestrian Unit entered the Big Tujunga Wash and destroyed part of the encampment beneath the Foothill Boulevard and 210 Freeway bridges, just east of the Angeles National Golf Club. Three days later, officers marched in to finish the job, issuing citations for drugs and illegal camping, according to police. Homeless residents who had lived for more than a dozen years in tents and plywood-and-tarp hovels said police had previously tolerated their camps. Some transients say they were even told to return to the encampments by police they encountered on city streets. Christine Greenan said she and her boyfriend had left the encampment on July 21 to collect recyclables and returned to find their makeshift home flattened. 'None of us expected it,' said Greenan, whose account matched those of other residents. 'They did tell us to leave. They didn't say they would bust up our stuff. 'They'd pulled down shelves. Tossed clothes in the dirt. Scattered food, loaves of bread and canned vegetables ... my son's photograph. He was a sailor on the USS Eisenhower -- they tossed that in the dirt.' 'We're devastated,' added Lance Gentry, 40, who had lived under the bridge since the Station Fire burned his home in the Angeles National Forest. 'Everything we have is ruined. ... (even) my chessboard is broken. 'We're afraid to rebuild. We have nowhere else to go.' Advocates for the homeless say that when evicting homeless residents, the carrot must accompany the stick, that police should work in conjunction with those who provide housing and other help. 'If you're going to have, on one hand, the big stick of the law, you also have to have compassion and offer housing services,' said Joel John Roberts, executive director for PATH Partners, a homeless services agency in Los Angeles and a founder of a blog on poverty. 'Typically, the city acts in response to complaints.' A recent visit to both camps found the squalid remains of homeless huts, tents and mounds of tarps, clothes, broken bicycles, strollers, garbage and excrement. Cars on both concrete bridges rumbled 40 feet overhead. Residents appeared dazed as they struggled to rebuild their digs. They said they had done nothing wrong, that it was better to live under the bridge than to seek shelter on Skid Row. Duffy Perryman and his girlfriend, Jimi Rogers, sat on a mattress as they contemplated their next move. 'The bottom line is, I believe that the homeless people may cause a lot of problems, everywhere,' said Perryman, 42, an ex-con who has lived in the wash for three years. '(But) they could have allowed us to leave with our stuff, instead of tearing our things down and disrespecting us.' 'This place was a sanctuary for all these years,' said Rogers, 29, 'and all of a sudden it's not.' 