Police homeless program being cut in half

Friday, April 25, 2003 | 11:04 a.m.

An award-winning Metro Police program to help the homeless is being cut in half to save money and to help compensate for a recent loss of cops on the beat, Capt. Ted Moody, of the downtown substation, said Thursday.

The program, called the Metro HELP team, is being cut from four to two officers in the downtown area. The officers will be reassigned to street patrol.

The move comes as Metro is looking at a proposed 2003-2004 budget that would give the agency 12 percent less than it originally sought.

It also follows a recent national report that ranks Las Vegas as the second-most dangerous city for the homeless in the nation, based on homicides and other violent crimes.

"The bottom line is that patrol is critically short right now and we're heading for some lean years," Moody said.

Those who work with the homeless say the loss will be keenly felt, since many of the Las Vegas Valley's estimated 8,000 to 10,000 homeless men and women come to seek services from the so-called homeless corridor downtown.

But Metro officials said that needs in the homeless population can be met by the reduced staff and other programs and are outweighed by greater needs in the general population.

Linda Lera-Randle El, director of Straight from the Streets, a nonprofit group that reaches out to the homeless, disagrees.

"They're cutting back in the area most populated by the homeless and in need of services," she said. "It's not fair to those of us who work with the homeless, area businesses who complain about the homeless and the homeless themselves."

But Sgt. Eric Fricker, who oversees the team, said some of the homeless-related crimes and other problems downtown have subsided in recent months -- "despite what the study that came out said."

The study, released April 10 by the Washington-based National Coalition for the Homeless, ranked Las Vegas as the second most dangerous city in the nation after Denver, based on statistics from 1999 to 2002.

But Fricker said the study was "tainted" and didn't look at the larger picture of crimes against the homeless. Sheriff Bill Young said at least two-thirds of the homicides in the homeless population are committed by the homeless themselves, a statistic overlooked by the study.

Maurice Silva, a social worker for Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services, a state agency, said the Metro HELP team has made his work on the streets of the valley go smoother.

Just yesterday Silva worked his last case with Francois Obasi, one of the two officers who will be taken off the team.

The case involved a motel downtown that had been closed due to code violations. All of the tenants had left save for one woman who refused to go, saying she had been homeless in Los Angeles and had nowhere else to turn.

Obasi called Silva to help. The two calmed the woman down, helped her find a place to store her possessions and got her a bed at the Salvation Army shelter downtown.

"This was an example of how well we worked together," Silva said.

"Us putting our heads together gave her a more humane solution ... than going to jail or being sent to the hospital as a mental health patient," he said.

The team spent much of their time linking the homeless to services throughout the valley, as in yesterday's case. That work got the HELP program an award from an international association of police chiefs in 2000, Fricker said.

It also had former Sheriff Jerry Keller talking of expanding the program less than a year ago, he said. Two officers to help the homeless were placed in Southwest Area Command and two more were placed in Bolden Area Command. The four officers will not be reassigned for now, Fricker said.

Moody said a program that is training five patrol officers in the downtown area to deal with mentally ill people will compensate for the loss of the HELP team officers.

"In times of abundance, we tend to specialize," he said. "When times are lean, we go back to basics."

Metro asked for a total budget of $400 million in February, a 25 percent increase over last year's budget. The agency then trimmed the request to $364 million in late March, a 14 percent increase.

Elaine Sanchez, spokeswoman for Las Vegas, said the city and county are proposing a budget of $352 million.

The tightened budget together with the loss of officers to the military in recent months made cutting the program necessary, Moody said.

Lera Randle-El said the officers will be missed.

"They provided safety for the homeless men and women to have someone to go to and talk about their problems," she said.

"But you learn not to depend on these programs because they come and go."