HUFFINGTON
08.19.12
TAMPA’S MAVERICK COP
on the side of the road and holding a sign asking for help. He saw
no reason why he should continue
looking for work when just a fraction of a panhandler’s income
covered the cost of ramen, beer,
tobacco and pills. So he claimed a
spot on Hillsborough Avenue, and
that’s where he was standing seven
years later, in 2010, when Steve
Donaldson pulled up in his squad
car and said, “If I could help you,
would you accept my help?”
Donaldson is a common sheriff’s deputy — “a slick-sleeve,” as
he likes to say, referring to the absence of stripes and badges on the
sleeves of his uniform. He works
for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department, the 10th largest
suburban law enforcement agency
in the country, with a staff of 900
deputies and hundreds of officers.
Sometime in late 2009, an order had come down from the upper
ranks: We need to do something
about the homeless problem. By the
most widely cited counts, Hillsborough County, Fla., has more homeless people per capita than any
other county or city in the United
States, with nearly 60 for every
10,000 residents. New York City,
by comparison, has 40. By the end
of 2009 the situation had gotten so
bad that panhandlers were lining
up three or four deep on the street
corners, taking shifts. A local bumper sticker expressed a popular sentiment: “Don’t feed the bums!!”
When a community pressures a
police force to do something about
its homeless people, the cops usually respond by ramping up arrests
for crimes like panhandling, drinking in public and camping without
a license. Donaldson had locked up
his share of loiterers and drunks,
but after his first few years on the
force he’d come to the conclusion
that the approach didn’t work. He’d
arrest someone on a Monday after-
After seven
years of
panhandling,
Swiger now
works as
a landscaper
five days
a week.