agency can implement within your organization to help you reduce homelessness and i'm going to be frank with you there's no way you're ever going to be able to eliminate homelessness in your community but what you can do is help reduce homelessness and help individuals want to time get into resources in programming to help them get off the streets this is good for your police officers it's good for your community it's good for your elected officials because what it does is it takes homeless individuals with police officers engaging with them and helps pair them up with social services to help them get out of homelessness on the street and into the help that they need whether it's addictions mental health or economic reasons as to why they're out on the street we found with our program that individuals are out on the street for many different reasons they're out there not just because they don't have the money for a house so you really have to deal with each individual one at a time to find out where their needs are when i first came here as the chief in the sarasota police department i found homelessness was one of the number one issues facing our community at first i thought that's not a police department issue except for that we were getting the complaints because we responded to those nine one one calls and those complaints for service that citizens were calling us about an individual that was asleep on a bench or didn't smell very well or or was acting strangely out in the community and the community and our elected officials at our government they expected us to do something about it so what we did is we did our homework and research i sent one of my best captains out on the road to take a look at what these best practices were that other jurisdictions were using and he came back with this program the homeless outreach team using the three e s educate encourage and in force and we were able to pair up our police officers w civilian caseworkers to go out into the street and gauge individuals help them get into the resources whether it was a salvation army or harvest house or the resurrection house and the multitude of other organizations throughout our community that could actually get people the help to eventually get them off the street and into permanent housing very proud of this program i think you are going to zation can very easily implemented this it doesn't cost a whole lot of money it does take some resources we  very proud of this award winning program and we hope that you enjoy our our presentation that part out because that's not going to be in there by anything else i should add there's a lot of cut and paste in the can be done when i first got here i realized what a generous community that we lived in although we were deemed the meanest city what i found was that most people within our community both our visitors and residents were so giving they were giving out money i would talk to different individuals out on the street that were panhandling they said people would hand them a hundred dollar bills and we found through our research that ninety three cents out of every dollar that a homeless person got was being spent on drugs alcohol or prostitutes so we realized we needed to change people's mentality so we educated the public is to stop giving money to homeless individuals stop giving them things and actually put that money into our social organizations that are actually doing productive things to help the homeless and that's why we were able to use that education to get people to donate to other programs and not to give to the individual that was standing out with the sign that has helped us significantly to reduce the problems associated with the panhandling not only is it dangerous for people to stand out in the middle of the median but it's also money being used for ill gotten gains as opposed to being put into positive programs within our community so our homeless outreach team was able to educate the businesses and educate the citizens to help people realize what the economic benefits is to send your money in a different direction as to individually handing it to a homeless person good i said a bunch of different ways in that you can cut it because i'm saying a whole lot because i figure just cut and paste the crime that's being committed or the issue with the individual but what our police department does and what this program does as we look at individuals one at a time and we look at what are the underlying conditions that have caused this individual to be homeless and when we go out and talk to people each individual has their own unique story and their own unique needs and our homeless outreach team is then able to look at those needs on that one on one basis and then help that individual get to the resource they're needed whether it's the home or bound program which we help that individual connect with a loved one to reunite with their family you know some people are saying oh you're just giving them a bus ticket out of town quite to the contrary we make sure that the individual has a family member or a loved one at the end other end of the bus that there are also social services resources at the other end to help them get the help they need and often when people reunite with their families is when they can get their life back on track we believe in our police department that we deal with lives an individual one at a time and if we help one person get their life back into the right direction and help cultivate that individual that actually impacts a whole society because that's one whole world that one person at a time philosophy it's so important to us and i'm so proud of our homeless outreach team they have worked so hard and southwesterly to go out and engage people where they are in the camps which are sometimes not the most clean in and welcoming areas but they are so caring and so heartfelt connection with the individuals there and all the people that are in these different camps and the different homeless they know are police officers by names they have nicknames for them and they have such a positive relationship with our police department and our officers and that's so important to building up relationships and trust which is part of the community policing philosophy that law enforcement espouses this homeless outreach team does just that it's helping individuals one at a time get the help that they need good  yes you want to add or ye