As the City of Oakland proceeds with an aggressive effort to clear dozens of homeless encampments that have sprung up around the city, police and cleanup crews made a grim discovery on Monday afternoon.

A cleanup process began in earnest last week at one of the largest encampments in Oakland, along East 12th Street near International Boulevard, about two blocks from the Fruitvale BART station. And on Monday, cleanup crews and police on the scene discovered an unresponsive person among the encampment's structures, as the Chronicle first reported.

A statement from the Oakland Police Department said that officers on a "special enforcement assignment" made the discovery around 12:45 pm on Monday, on the 2800 block of East 12th Street. Paramedics subsequently declared the person dead at the scene.

On May 7, the city posted signs around the encampment giving people seven days notice that a sweep would be occurring. As KPIX reported, the city gave an official number of residents in the encampment of 79, but homeless advocates suggest the number is closer to 189.

The city performed a similar cleanup at another encampment — or an extension of this same encampment — on the 2200 block of East 12th Street in January, shortly after a homicide occurred there.

"It is home," said one man living in the encampment, speaking to KPIX two weeks ago. "It is the same thing, really, just a little smaller."

That same man, who didn't give his name, told the station that he was continuously being shuffled around. "It's not the first time. I just moved over here because they did that down to us on 66th by San Leandro about six months ago."

Leajay Harper, an advocate with the group Wood Street Commons, which is made up of formerly homeless individuals, made a complaint familiar to homeless advocates in San Francisco about this game of Whac-a-Mole and intermittent camp clearings.

"What they're doing is they're sweeping people and they're sweeping people and then they're having to move and they're sweeping them again," Harper told KPIX.

After completing a major sweep in 2023 of the city's formerly largest encampment along Wood Street in West Oakland, encampments large and small have continued to proliferate throughout the city. As the Chronicle reported earlier this month, the city logged 63 separate encampments as of February, which was the highest number in any month during the last four years. The high number suggests that after dismantling an encampment like Wood Street, which was home to at least 300 people at its peak, unhoused individuals have simply set up camp elsewhere, in smaller groups.

The Wood Street encampment was the site of dozens of fires between 2020 and 2023, several of them resulting in deaths, as well as several reported instances of violence.

Police have not discussed the cause of death in Monday's case, and anyone with information is asked to contact Oakland police at 510-238-3821.