HUFFINGTON
08.19.12
TAMPA’S MAVERICK COP
department enlisted Donaldson to
train one of its officers.
Several other police departments around the country have
adopted unconventional strategies for dealing with homelessness, too, and in many cases these
methods have proved popular
with taxpayers and the police.
“I USED TO THINK
LIKE A COP. I USED
TO KEEP THEM IN
THE BACKSEAT. ONE
DAY I MOVED THEM
TO THE FRONT SEAT
... THINGS CHANGED.
THIS IS WHEN I HAVE
AN OPPORTUNITY
TO COUNSEL THEM …
YOU CAN’T GET
OUT OF THE CAR WITH
ME AT 45 MILES
PER HOUR. YOU HAVE
TO LISTEN.”
In Portland, a four-year-old police
program has placed 87 homeless
drug users and chronic offenders
into housing, and has reduced their
recidivism rate by 43 percent.
With his frequent references
to “the tipping point,” Donaldson isn’t shy about expressing his
hopes for success on a national
scale, and he’s especially passionate about his home-improvement
endeavor, a scheme that may owe
something to his abiding love for
Trump. But to see his ideas spread
beyond Tampa, he’ll need to convince many other Americans of
what he himself had such a hard
time believing at first – that society’s most isolated, damaged people can change. And that won’t just
mean convincing the taxpayers and
the cops. A day after his meeting
with Donaldson at the McDonald’s,
Glassmyer sat with his son in a
gas-station parking lot and offered
a gloomy assessment of his situation. “Sometimes you just don’t
see to the end of it,” he said.
He seemed to be losing hope, but
Donaldson didn’t feel sorry for him.
“He’s behaving like a victim,” he said
the following day. “But he doesn’t
talk that way when I’m
around. I won’t let him.”