Pubdate: Sat, 08 Nov 2003 Source: Times-Picayune, The (LA) Copyright: 2003 The Times-Picayune Contact: http://www.nola.com/t-p/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/848 Author: Michael Perlstein, Staff Writer POLICE CHANGE POLICY ON HOMELESS Needy to Get Help Instead of Jail Time The last time Jessie Pullins visited the former Howard Johnson's hotel on Loyola Avenue, he went for dinner. He wasn't invited, though, and he didn't go through the front door. At the time, he was scrounging for food in the trash and dodging cops, a homeless crackhead caught in the alligator grip of addiction. On Wednesday, he arrived at the hotel, now a Holiday Inn, as an honored guest of the New Orleans Police Department. Immaculately groomed and sober for the past eight years, he told a group of more than 40 officers how he used to sleep on a piece of cardboard, gather up his entire life into a shopping cart, earn $60 in a day by collecting cans, then give $59 of it to his dope supplier. With Pullins' plaintive story, the New Orleans Police Department quietly set into motion a radical new policy in dealing with homeless people. If the program works, the days of mass round-ups and summary arrests for obstructing the sidewalk are over, Capt. Louis Dabdoub III said. "We're going to try to do something that's never been done before in the city," said Dabdoub, commander of the 8th Police District, which includes the French Quarter, Central Business District and the bulk of the city's homeless population. "What we've been doing with all the arrests has been a no-win situation, both for the homeless and for the police." After working behind the scenes on the program for nearly a year, Dabdoub used a special roll call of his supervisors and detectives to launch what could become the city's boldest initiative ever in dealing with people who have no place to stay: Instead of arresting them, Dabdoub said, officers will now call for a "homeless assistance unit" to direct the street dwellers to a shelter, hospital or substance abuse clinic. The unit, a specially outfitted $30,000 van donated by the private, nonprofit foundation Baptist Community Ministries, will be staffed by graduate students from local universities. The volunteers, most of them social work students, will steer the homeless to appropriate programs, Dabdoub said, eliminating the former policy of giving them one-way tickets to Orleans Parish Prison. "Going out and arresting them is not the right way to deal with the situation," Dabdoub said. "It might be the way we've been trained, but it's not the right way to resolve this problem." Arrests will be reserved only for homeless people who are violent or suspects in serious crimes, Dabdoub said. Ending the Cycle At the roll call, Martha Kegel, executive director of Unity for the Homeless, explained that arrests often help to keep a homeless person homeless. Many times, jailed homeless people will miss important doctor appointments or social service visits, won't get needed medication, will linger in prison because they can't make bail, and, frequently, will lose identification cards and other paperwork needed to get into shelters. Additionally, homeless people with jobs are likely to return to the ranks of the unemployed. "There's a misconception out there that putting a homeless person in jail is doing them a favor because they get a roof over their heads and three meals a day," Kegel said. "But in most cases, it's a real setback for everyone. If it's possible to avoid making an arrest, it really helps us do our jobs moving people out of homelessness." To accommodate the new program, Dabdoub has rallied assistance from the city and several other agencies. Dr. Dee Harper, a Loyola University criminology professor, will coordinate volunteers for the van. U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., secured a $249,000 federal appropriation to get the program rolling and lay groundwork for a new, state-of-the-art shelter, on the drawing board for construction within the next three years. City Council member Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson, whose district includes the French Quarter, helped shepherd the federal, city and private funding. Kegel said the new spirit of cooperation "is quite a sea change for the city and the Police Department. In the past, Parish Prison was treated like one big homeless shelter." Recent studies have pegged the chronically homeless population of New Orleans at about 1,400, she said, and many of them travel an endless circuit from prison to the street and back to prison. Dabdoub said that when the program kicks off later this month: - - The New Orleans Mission will have about 220 additional beds, most of them donated by Criminal Sheriff Charles Foti's office. - - Several shelters will expand their daytime hours. - - The Sheriff's Office will begin providing transportation from Parish Prison to homeless shelters for inmates who are released after midnight but have no place to go. - - The city will help subsidize shelter fees for homeless people who don't have money. - - A "homeless contact sheet" will be distributed to all police officers, listing all available shelters and programs. - - Homeless people and the formerly homeless, such as Pullins, will work as police liaisons. In getting the program off the ground, the liaisons will be introduced in three districts that have the lion's share of the homeless people: the 1st, 6th and 8th. Other districts may be added later, Dabdoub said. The idea is "to put a face on the homeless problem," he said, adding: "In order to start changing perspectives, you need to personalize the process." Fighting Misconceptions Pullins, 47, is scheduled to work with officers in the 6th District, which includes Central City and parts of Uptown. But first, he is slated to address several more groups of officers at police roll calls. "I think it's a great idea," said Pullins, who has been clean for about eight years and now works at a local hotel. "It's an opportunity to change the concept of a homeless person and bridge the gap between police and the street community." To most homeless people, Pullins said, police officers aren't the enemy. If anything, they are considered obstacles to be avoided in order to get sleep, food and, frequently, alcohol or drugs. "There is a misconception that homeless people want trouble, that they want to do damage," he told police supervisors at Wednesday's roll call. "But, really, all that most homeless people want is to just make it through the day." An Army veteran who worked as a mechanic before he got hooked on crack in the late 1980s, Pullins said he lifted himself from the street through a program at Ozanam Inn, one of the city's busiest shelters. After he stopped doing drugs, he landed a steady job and married a former homeless woman he met while handing out clothes at Ozanam. He honed his public speaking by giving testimonials at the shelter about his rehabilitation. One of the people he addressed at the shelter was Greg Winfield. Suffering from alcoholism and drug addiction, Winfield appeared to be one of those hopeless cases, but at some point, Pullins' words got through, and Winfield pulled his life together. Today, Winfield, 45, works as a food service manager at Ozanam Inn. Last week, he joined Pullins as a police liaison. "Homeless people don't want no trouble," he said. "All we want is somewhere to go." - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake