AUBURN – Blue tarps, some shopping carts, blankets, trash and a full bottle of Listerine mouthwash are proof that many people have lived here.

But it’s abandoned now, a former squatter camp on private land between the Little Androscoggin River and Auburn’s Moulton Field. It was the site of the fatal stabbing of Casey Stanley on June 11.

Auburn police began a crackdown on the unauthorized camp at Moulton Field, and two other areas along the Androscoggin River, immediately after the stabbing last week.

Since then, police have issued about 36 written warnings, telling the campers that they’re trespassing. If caught in one of the camps a second time, police will issue a summons for criminal trespassing. They’ve issued two of those so far.

Anyone caught in one of the areas a third time will be arrested. That hasn’t happened yet.

“It looks like it’s working, here at least,” said officer Matt Elie, surveying the abandoned Moulton Field camp. It’s Wednesday afternoon, one hour after a good soaking rain, and Elie said it looks like the camp’s been empty for some time. Three sets of socks hung on a tree branch to dry days ago are sopping wet again.

“The officers that came by this morning said they haven’t run into anybody,” Elie said. But officers will keep coming back – as many as six times each day – for the rest of the summer, making sure the unauthorized camps are gone for good.

The camps have been there, in scattered spaces behind businesses and homes, for years. Sgt. Eric Audette remembers breaking up the camps 13 years ago when he joined the department.

“And I read on the Sun Journal’s own blogs, the commenters were saying this has been going on for 40 years,” he said. “So it’s not a new problem.”

The camp behind Moulton Field looks permanent. Some campers have carved elaborate designs in the trees – faces, names, dates and crosses. Someone even hung a battered basketball hoop and backboard from one of the trees.

Audette doubts the campers are homeless.

“I’d estimate that 98 percent are local people, who have an apartment here in the community,” he said. “They come down here to drink or whatever.”

Still, officers going to the impromptu camps are armed with brochures for Hope Haven Gospel Mission, the only emergency homeless shelter in the area.

Audette said officers have given out a few of those.

“But most people are drunk, and they do have some place to go,” he said. “But we’re prepared to help anyone that is truly homeless, not just chase them away to some place else. We’ll offer help if they’ll take it.”

Elie agrees, and it’s his main motivation for this detail.

“The people that use Moulton Field, those are kids, and they shouldn’t have to deal with people drinking so close by,” he said. “It’s not fair to them, and it’s not safe. And it’s a shame that places like this are going to waste.”

All three areas Elie visited Wednesday afternoon are green and peaceful. The area behind Moulton Field would make a nice picnic area, he said. And areas behind West Pitch Park and along the Androscoggin River east of North River Road are scenic and beautiful, a great place for people to fish.

“And maybe they can do that someday, work with local groups to turn these into recreation trails,” Elie said. That might be the only way to keep the squatters away permanently.

But as it stands now, police will evict everyone from those areas, whether they have a fishing pole in hand or not.

“They’re trespassing, and that’s it,” said. “That’s all the authority I need right now.”

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