Metro reaching out to homeless

Jace Radke

Thursday, Sept. 2, 1999 | 9:47 a.m.

The key to Metro Police's first community outreach substation is to remember to treat the people it serves as a community, police say.

The substation, in M.A.S.H. Village, 1581 N. Main St., is designed to serve the homeless in and around downtown.

"The homeless people are a community to themselves and that's the approach we take," Officer Eric Fricker said. "We don't have any crime statistics or trends for these people in this area, so we are out making the rounds.

"We go to all the shelters and camps and we take representatives of the Salvation Army, M.A.S.H. and other service providers with us to bring the services to them."

The goal is to bring aid to the homeless that would be hard for them to find otherwise, Fricker said.

One of those services is a central location for robbery reports to be filed.

"That's a big problem, and it's hard for these people to get transportation to one of our regular substations to file a robbery report," Fricker said. "Many times everything these people own is in a backpack, so we have to try to make that backpack as safe as a home in other neighborhoods.

"It may not seem like a big deal to have a locker broken into, but it is when everything you own is in it."

An officer will be at the station from 1 to 3 p.m. every day. The substation also will be staffed by Metro volunteers.

Fricker is one of two officers permanently stationed at the substation, and he says the recognition that position is generating with the homeless in the area has been invaluable.

"The amazing thing is the friendliness we are getting when we approach people," Fricker said. "It hasn't always been that way, but now people see us in the neighborhood. So instead of wondering what the police are doing there they know we are there to help."