Bleeding hearts, that’s the term used to describe the typical liberal. They just feel so much, and are so compassionate, that their hearts bleed for those who are suffering.
Well, San Francisco has a surplus of bleeding hearts, which is why the city’s newest program, created to help the homeless, is perfectly named, the Homeless Engagement Assistance Response Team (HEART). HEART is the newest offering in the quagmire that is San Francisco’s homeless problem. HEART’s plan is to take non-emergency calls for service, which in theory, will help ease the burden on the very depleted San Francisco Police Department (SFPD).
While this new program may have a heart it certainly lacks a brain. Hasn’t San Francisco tried something like this before? What happened to CATs? MAP? The HOT Team? Or the SCRT? While these programs don’t have the catchy acronym of HEART they all collected plenty of city money to do a similar function. There are so many acronyms that cover this type of work, I’m struggling to recall the actual names of those programs.
Much like police work, homelessness happens 24/7. People live in tents on the sidewalk, sleep on cardboard laid out on the street, camp in parks, or hole up in the entryway of someone’s business or house. The police are called every day to go and “move along” homeless people. Regardless of the legality of “moving along” someone, the citizens demand the police “do something” about the homeless.
But why do the police continue to handle these calls? We are told these calls are “non-violent.” Or it’s just a person in crisis, a person experiencing homelessness, the unhoused, or whatever the new term du jour has become. But the police go to the call because the police are always available. When every other city service closes for the night, police and fire are really the only ones left to respond.
I know a chief complaint amongst police officers is these are community problems, not a law enforcement problem. We all believe in community policing, but we should not be handling complicated mental health, addiction, and homeless issues that are better suited for academics and trained professionals in that space. We would much rather be going after the “bad guys.” But all of these city services being created are never set up to handle the calls after hours, and so the police are still called to perform their missions as well.
The HEART program is another great example of this. Recently, SFPD cops at Northern Police Station were telling the mayor these other services, like HOT and SCRT, do not work and weren’t providing the services they claim to deliver. The mayor was upset by this and told the cops it would get fixed. Well instead of reforming the other programs, or breaking them up to provide 24-hour coverage, HEART was born.
“HEART will operate between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on weekdays, and 7 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. on weekends. HEART’s four teams include one supervisor overseeing four practitioners, replacing police responses to certain types of 911 calls, officials said.”
At this point couldn’t even one of these services take on an overnight shift? If one service cannot do 24/7 coverage, surely the second, third, or fourth service could be created to only do overnight shifts. It appears in San Francisco, homelessness is an issue, but only one that deserves attention during the hours of 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and of course, only 3:30 p.m. on weekends.
People tend to sleep at night. The addict on the street may not realize they don’t have a place to lay their head until after HEART and all the others have closed. What then?
Well, then they go walking into police stations to ask for services, of which we have none to offer. Or they end up camping in doorways, or in front of your neighborhood business, or more recently in front of many of the closed businesses, done in by the so-called “doom loop.”
I sincerely hope this program works and can ease the burden on San Francisco’s understaffed department. But without 24/7 coverage, HEART is already set to fail its own mission.
In San Francisco we may be able to have a HEART, but we still are waiting for the wizard to give us a brain.
