This morning the Memphis Daily News published plans about a pilot program the Center City Commission will run this year to combat panhandling.\u00a0 They are requesting proposals for private security companies to provide four private security officers to patrol the Main Street Mall and surrounding areas.\u00a0 Two will work an 8 AM to 4 PM shift, and two will work 4 PM to midnight.\u00a0 According to Larry Bloom, the CCC’s safety director, the officers will patrol Downtown looking for quality-of-life concerns such as illegal panhandling, harassment, public intoxication, public drinking, and other quality-of-life concerns.<\/p>\n
However, the officers’\u00a0mission will not be only\u00a0punitive in nature.\u00a0 The Center City Commission will identify agencies that can provide help to those on the street that need it.\u00a0 The officers will then make contact with those they see panhandling and loitering Downtown, and get appropriate social services for those who want help.<\/p>\n
Through the Handling-Panhandling forum, Larry told me about this program months ago, and I’m excited that it’s close enough to fruition that articles are starting to appear in the media.\u00a0 The CCC has been working for several years to redirect people’s generosity from panhandlers to social service agencies through their “Say No to Panhandling” program, but that alone has not been enough.\u00a0 This is a program that will address the needs of both the panhandlers and the community.\u00a0 Great job, Larry and the CCC!<\/p>\n
The Daily News article is available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This morning the Memphis Daily News published plans about a pilot program the Center City Commission will run this year to combat panhandling.\u00a0 They are requesting proposals for private security companies to provide four private security officers to patrol the Main Street Mall and surrounding areas.\u00a0 Two will work an 8 AM to 4 PM … Continue reading “Exciting news: Center City Commission to launch pilot program to combat panhandling”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}