Counselors Help Deputies Deal With Homeless

Call it a kinder, gentler approach to police work.

Sheriff’s deputies in West Hollywood are using a new tactic to address the city’s homeless problem, pairing up with counselors who can provide transients with on-the-spot referrals to shelters and social service agencies.

The innovative program, called Operation Outreach, is aimed at giving a hand to those homeless people who want to leave the streets but do not know how. Organizers say it is unique in linking the concerns of homeless advocates, residents and law enforcement.

“Operation Outreach lets us enforce the spirit of the law,” said Sgt. Mike Parker, supervisor of the program. “Each person is treated as an individual. If a transient wants help, we are going out of our way to make social services available. It’s a long-term effort to improve their plight.”

In the course of three nights, workers from the West Hollywood Homeless Organization--a shelter on La Brea Avenue--offered help to more than 80 homeless men and women.

The operation, tried one night last year and repeated twice since February, places outreach workers with about half a dozen deputies in squad cars for patrols down busy Sunset Boulevard and around the city’s three parks.

The teams of deputies and shelter workers approach homeless people on the streets. Deputies run warrant checks on those transients found to be engaging in illegal activity--such as drinking in public or trespassing--and in some cases make arrests.

Every homeless person gets a chance to talk to an outreach worker, who offers assistance in finding shelter, food, medical care and other services available throughout the Westside and Hollywood.

The meeting usually lasts about 10 minutes, giving the outreach worker time to determine the person’s needs. The visitors give out bus tokens and condoms, and recommend substance abuse programs or offer help in getting veterans’ benefits.

Developed by West Hollywood sheriff’s deputies last year, the program allows the outreach workers to safely contact the homeless people who frequent the city at night. Those transients, who are rarely seen at shelters, are at risk of never hearing about the services that are available to them, shelter workers said.

“It opens up new areas that we wouldn’t be able to go into or didn’t know about,” said shelter worker Nancy Bae. “At first the clients are hesitant because we’re accompanied by police, but in the long run I think they understand.”

About half of the 80 homeless people contacted in Operation Outreach have accepted the shelter workers’ offers of help. Those men and women who refuse the aid sometimes seek out the shelter later, outreach workers say.

Operation Outreach is not simply a social service program, deputies said. It improves the safety of West Hollywood residents by cracking down on the homeless population who commit crimes to survive--a group dubbed “criminal transients” by deputies.

After three nights of Operation Outreach, approximately a third of the homeless people who were contacted--about 34--were arrested, figures show.

Deputies say the combination of immediate assistance and tough policing has sent a stern but fair message to the hundreds of homeless estimated to be living in the 1.9 square miles of West Hollywood.

“We don’t say get out of Dodge, but when we cite them for violating the law and send out the social workers to talk to them all the time, they are going to comply with the law, get help or leave,” Parker said.

The program--scheduled to be a monthly event in West Hollywood--is being studied for use in other sheriff’s stations, he said.