i don't want to engage them too much they've nothing to lose
That's the big issue.
My in laws are really caring, helpful people and they have a few low income families they help out a bunch in the town they grew up in. One of theses families invited some tweakers to come live in their woodshed. Fast forward a few years and the house needs to be cleaned and sold, but the tweakers won't leave.
The plan my in laws came up with was to file elder abuse charges against the tweakers then immediately following for a bunch of us to show up early AM wearing visible handguns and drive an excavator right over the shed and put it in the dump trailer and haul it off before the tweakers could get the cops there.
The plan mostly worked, but the tweakers did manage to shove a 10 year old kid into another shed on the property and lock it from the inside. The cops hands were tied and we couldn't get the kid out that day, but that shed was way too small to live in so they finally left after a few days.
The tweakers tried to use the law and the courts to get anyone in trouble they could, but they didn't have the means and it didn't work.
Myself, I was willing to be a part of it, but I wasn't willing to drive my vehicle or identify myself to them in any way. This was a few hours drive from where I live and I wanted nothing to do with the retaliation potential. Wasn't worth it to me.
On a seperate occasion, about 20 years ago, a friend was the caretaker of a nice recreation property. A tweaker setup a meth lab in a singlewide on the property. property owner and my friend fought for years to get the shitbag out of there and nothing worked. He was evicted and criminal trespassed, but he'd just disappear when the cops showed up to arrest him. I was having a few beers with my friend down there and we saw the tweaker run into the woods as we approached the singlewide. Somehow that trailer exploded in flames and the fucker was incinerated in about 2 hours. The fire dept showed up and we asked them to let it burn and they they just watched it with us. Nothing was left but a pair of melted I-beams. Problem solved.
That tweaker moved into a farm down the road owned by a younger gal who'd just been widowed. I kinda knew the family, I'd done some work on their equipment and it was terribly sad to watch that lady throw her life away and fall apart. The cops watched the place for years until they finally had enough evidence to bust all those involved. When they did the big bust they got a handful of guys, but I'm sure they just got right back out again and setup shop somewhere else. On a side note, one of tweakers took off in an old Ford highboy from the farm that I'd built the 390 engine for a few years prior. There was a news helicopter above as that tweaker tried to cross a wide river about 4' deep in that truck. It was great. You could hear that engine screaming wide open on the newscast from the chopper. The truck made it across eventually and I got a bunch of local business doing engine work for a time after that.