HUFFINGTON
08.19.12
TAMPA’S MAVERICK COP
redemption. Yes, all but a tiny percentage are capable of change.
“I used to think like a cop, actually,” he said, sounding almost
apologetic as he criss-crossed the
city in his squad car. “ I used to
keep them in the backseat. One
day I moved them to the front
seat. Things changed. The mentality changed. This is when I have
an opportunity to counsel them—
“IF YOU WANT PEOPLE
TO DO BETTER, PUT
THEM WITH PEOPLE
WHO ARE DOING
BETTER THAN
THEM. DON’T STICK
THEM ALL TOGETHER
IN A WAREHOUSE,
WHERE THEY’RE JUST
REINFORCING THE
BEHAVIORS THAT MADE
THEM HOMELESS IN
THE FIRST PLACE.”
talk to them, rehabilitate them,
the one-on-one conversation,
mano y mano. You can’t get out
of the car with me at 45 miles per
hour. You have to listen.”
Donaldson’s “front-seat therapy”, as he calls it, is the flipside
of his disciplinarian approach. By
combining the two, he hopes to
carrot-and-stick homeless people
into believing that they can do better. He calls this “coupling.”
One day in July, he applied the
gentler side of this technique to
a man named Mark who lived
in the woods on the outskirts of
town. So far Mark had declined
Donaldson’s offers of help, and it
wasn’t hard to see why. He and
two friends had what one of them
claimed was the “best homeless
camp in Tampa.” Donaldson concurred. “They’re like the Swiss
Family Robinson,” he said.
Throughout the country, but
especially in the warmer states,
people find shelter amid the trees
and weeds of neglected lots, in
camps that can range from a plastic sheet on the ground to a small
village of three- and four-person
tents equipped with generators,
refrigerators and televisions. Mark
and his friends had set up tents