This week, the Davis City Council made homelessness a top priority—at least in rhetoric. But when it came to action, the decision that drew the most immediate support was not expanding outreach or services. Instead, the council chose to move forward with hiring a dedicated downtown police officer—a beat cop tasked with addressing homelessness-related concerns in the city’s core.
It’s a decision that feels out of step with both the nature of the problem and the solutions that experts, advocates, and even some councilmembers acknowledge are more effective.
It also represents a remarkable shift in policy over a few years ago when the council explicitly attempted to move away from law enforcement as first-line responders to homelessness.
Let me be clear: I understand the political pressures here.
Downtown business owners have been vocal, some residents feel uncomfortable, and, in this climate, it’s hard for a councilmember to stand up and vote “no” on adding police presence downtown.
Picking battles is necessary in politics. But this one seems to me one that needs to be picked, because it speaks to the fundamental question: Do we treat homelessness as a criminal issue or a public health crisis?
It’s not that police have no role. There are times when their presence is necessary to de-escalate situations or protect safety. But what police cannot do is solve homelessness.
And by inserting law enforcement as the face of the city’s response to visible poverty, we risk making things worse—alienating the very people we need to build trust with and pushing those experiencing homelessness further into the shadows.
Contrast that decision with the far more thoughtful—but still uncertain—proposal for a Community Navigator Program. Mayor Vaitla made a passionate case: “There’s no policy or budget allocation I believe in more… Navigators change lives, communities, and cities.”
And he’s right. If Davis wants to shift the paradigm—to stop cycling people through our streets, jails, hospitals, and shelters—we need trained people on the ground whose job is to build relationships, connect people to services, and navigate the complex web of housing, healthcare, and mental health systems.
We’ve had that before. Ryan Collins served as the city’s homeless outreach coordinator until he left.
If you talk with anyone who worked with him—he knew the people on the street, understood their stories, and had the credibility to actually help. Rebuilding that capacity makes far more sense than adding another uniform to walk a downtown beat.
There’s also a hard truth here that’s getting lost in the council’s discussion: the biggest advocates for hiring this officer aren’t people who understand homelessness as a public health crisis—they’re the same voices who have long sought to criminalize homelessness downtown.
For over a decade, local figures have pushed narratives designed to cast unhoused people as dangerous, aggressive, and criminal. Their goal has always been to drive these people out of the public eye—not to solve the underlying problems of untreated mental illness, addiction, or economic displacement.
This new beat cop is the latest victory in that campaign.
And while some councilmembers may see this as a battle not worth fighting, it’s worth asking—what happens when this pattern repeats itself? What message does it send when the most privileged voices in our community continue to dictate policy, while real solutions get delayed or watered down?
I walk downtown often, including in the predawn hours. I hear the stories from people who feel unsafe or who’ve had uncomfortable encounters. But my lived experience is different: most of the unhoused folks downtown are polite. They respond to kindness and basic human respect. Yes, there are some who struggle—who yell or act out—but that’s often untreated mental illness, not criminal behavior.
And yet, what we’re seeing is a city ready to invest in law enforcement rather than trained outreach workers. That’s not just a missed opportunity—it’s an abdication of responsibility.
Even the council discussion hinted at the contradictions.
Councilmember Gloria Partida argued for the downtown officer as a “broader community” need but also admitted the city’s own programs are fragmented and poorly coordinated.
Councilmember Josh Chapman stressed the toll on staff dealing with encampments, but didn’t connect that to the lack of real outreach infrastructure. Everyone agrees the problem is growing. Few seem ready to fund the solutions that actually work.
Here’s the reality: Homelessness is not a law enforcement issue. It is a public health crisis, a mental health crisis, and a housing affordability crisis. But the easiest thing for a city to do—especially under pressure from business groups—is to hire a cop. It’s visible. It feels responsive. But it does nothing to solve the problem.
We should be hiring someone like Ryan Collins. Someone trained in trauma-informed care, who knows how to build relationships with people who have every reason to distrust systems that have failed them over and over again. That’s how you create safety—not by putting another badge on the street, but by meeting people where they are and helping them move forward.
Instead, we’re falling back into old patterns. We’ll hear from people who argue that it’s the only way to “clean up” downtown. We’ll see data manipulated to suggest that visible homelessness equals crime. And we’ll watch as the city spends more on police while services and outreach remain underfunded.
Meanwhile, the folks pushing hardest for this cop—the ones loudly banging the drum about safety—are the same ones who have opposed every serious effort to address homelessness as anything other than a nuisance.
What’s missing from this conversation is accountability. Where is the demand for a comprehensive mental health strategy? Where is the push to expand services at Paul’s Place beyond shelter beds? Why aren’t we talking about upstream solutions—about building more affordable housing, funding treatment programs, or creating pathways off the streets?
The answers are political. It’s easier to fund cops than services. It’s easier to appease wealthy donors and downtown business interests than to stand up and say: This is wrong. This won’t work. We need better.
I don’t blame the council for picking their battles. But this is one they needed to fight.
Hiring a beat cop downtown is not a solution. It is a signal—a signal that the city is more interested in appearances than in change. It tells our unhoused neighbors that their existence is the problem. It tells the community that safety means policing, not connection.
We can do better. We must do better.
Davis has the chance to lead—to show what it looks like when a community responds to homelessness with compassion, resources, and a commitment to solving root causes. That starts by investing in people like Ryan Collins—not in more police.
The Community Navigator Program could be that investment. But it needs more than words. It needs funding. It needs councilmembers willing to say: This is where we put our money. This is who we choose to be.
Anything less is just another missed opportunity—and another step down a path that leads nowhere.
People have been threatened or assaulted. It only takes a few incidences before people say enough.
You may feel safe as do I but you are a big guy.
My friend Heather has recently had her life threatened twice in her store. I talked to a young woman who had her to deal with the effects of so-called homeless persons so many times that she she felt unsafe and decided to quit her job downtown. Another new shop downtown had the owner’s life threatened twice recently by a *different* so-called homeless person. I could go on and on and I have, but you don’t seem to listen or care.
“Why Is the Council Prioritizing a Beat Cop Downtown over Homeless Service Coordinators?”
The lives and safety of our residents, our business owners and our visitors are more important than the lives of criminals and the majority of addicts who can’t or won’t get clean. That’s why.
Those of you who want to take the money for the beat cop and put it up against even more ‘homeless services’ and flush it down a rathole to ‘help’ those that can’t/won’t be helped are delusional and sick sick sick. Further, I heard criticism of prioritizing cleaning the encampments after they are cleared — so you would let the remnants float garbage and human poop down our waterways and remain as an eyesore that will attract* more homeless back? *(they are attracted to garbage – a former meth head told me that and I see it everyday which is why we clean up what they leave regularly). Has the far left lost it’s mind completely and abandoned decent/safe cities, a clean environment, clean waterways and people not living in filth?
“Let me be clear: I understand the political pressures here.”
It’s not political pressure, it’s actual criminal acts.
“Downtown business owners have been vocal”,
Because of crime.
“some residents feel uncomfortable”
FEEL, you say. Dismissive. Again, uncomfortable because of crime.
“and, in this climate”
Of crime.
“it’s hard for a councilmember to stand up and vote “no” on adding police presence downtown.”
Or maybe they recognize that the reason that people are uncomfortable and vocal is because of actual crimes committed against them. But you far-left progressives are still trying to gaslight us into believing that what we are experiencing and seeing is not real — because of evidence-based evidence.
You’ve lost. Go away.
“Do we treat homelessness as a criminal issue or a public health crisis?”
We treat crime as a criminal issue. Don’t even have to treat homelessness that way. Plenty of crime.
But again, manipulating your words and gaslighting. What you are really saying is if people cause problems in the community and commit crimes they shouldn’t be punished because they are homeless so they get a free pass because society caused this, not the individual — and so the rest of us who are vulnerable are just supposed to take it.
“But what police cannot do is solve homelessness.”
True, but no one asked them to. We asked for a beat cop to help protect the public from crimes.
“And by inserting law enforcement as the face of the city’s response to visible poverty, we risk making things worse—alienating the very people we need to build trust with and pushing those experiencing homelessness further into the shadows.”
I may say that you’re a dreamer, but I’m not the only one, who thinks your thinking is delusional, and the homed and homeless will never live as one.
“Ryan Collins served as the city’s homeless outreach coordinator until he left. If you talk with anyone who worked with him—he knew the people on the street, understood their stories, and had the credibility to actually help. Rebuilding that capacity makes far more sense than adding another uniform to walk a downtown beat.”
I know people who worked with him who wouldn’t say that – I’ll leave it at that as I don’t like taking this personal, but I can’t let that comment slide. I heard him speak at City Council meetings and he spoke like you do, DG, and the one time I talked to him on the streets he seemed to care more about the homeless and so not much about the effect they were having on us in the neighborhood.
“There’s also a hard truth here that’s getting lost in the council’s discussion: the biggest advocates for hiring this officer aren’t people who understand homelessness as a public health crisis—they’re the same voices who have long sought to criminalize homelessness downtown.”
You are actually p*ssing me off now, DG. You’re words are lies. You state these things like they are truths, and those are the worst lies. You can define with words what ‘homelessness’ is to you, but that’s just political. No one is trying to criminalize homelessness, we are working to have criminals caught and as appropriate to the the crime, taken off the streets for their crimes. Not for ‘being homeless’. And those who are loudest are those who have been victims. And you don’t seem to give a flying F* about anyone who isn’t homeless or a criminal, or even the biggest victims — the homeless who are victims of the criminal homeless. As long as you get your political message across and unseat Reisig someday (good luck).
“For over a decade, local figures have pushed narratives designed to cast unhoused people as dangerous, aggressive, and criminal.”
Because some of them are.
And I’m one of those local figures.
“Their goal has always been to drive these people out of the public eye—“
That has never been my goal. My goal is to deter the effects of the persons who are criminals or causing issues such as encampments where it is not clean/safe and the garbage, oh Lord the garbage!
“not to solve the underlying problems of untreated mental illness, addiction, or economic displacement.”
Those problems are deeper than Davis, and you are welcome to take those on. Crime in Davis, on the other hand, is a local issue, which is why I support the beat cop. I also happen to believe your methods actually make the problem worse and that’s why it’s getting worse in places like California that have adopted your methods. And exactly why throwing more money at these methods are the wrong approach.
“This new beat cop is the latest victory in that campaign.”
Unless your minions and the other deluded so-called ‘homeless advocates’ derail the beat cop, but I doubt you will.
“—what happens when this pattern repeats itself?”
You mean like when the person who threatened and assaulted people in 2015, 2016 and 2017, etc. is the same person today who is threatening my friends life in her store downtown, you *****? What happens when crime repeats itself? You may want to go back 30 years and *cure* whatever broke this criminal, but it’s too late. They need to be removed from the streets where they can’t threaten people anymore.
“What message does it send when the most privileged voices in our community continue to dictate policy”
The privileged who have been victims of crime? How is that privileged?
“I walk downtown often, including in the predawn hours. I hear the stories from people who feel unsafe or who’ve had uncomfortable encounters. But my lived experience is different: most of the unhoused folks downtown are polite.”
Talk about privileged, you ***** hypocrite. You’re like a young-ish large-ish male-ish person. And you, like that insufferable college student who called into comments, aren’t listening to those who are actually victims of the crime. You are twisting the narrative, saying ‘most are polite’. That’s like saying most of the George Floyd protests were peaceful. Yes, on both counts. But that doesn’t at all deter from the fact that the criminals and the crimes are real, and that’s who we are talking about, not the ‘nice polite’ people. They probably aren’t the criminals, and no one wants to criminalize homelessness, despite the fact I’ve even heard city councilmembers use that phrase. We want the not nice, not polite, criminals criminalized. You gaslighter.
“but also admitted the city’s own programs are fragmented and poorly coordinated.”
Then coordinate them.
“Here’s the reality: Homelessness is not a law enforcement issue.”
Not as such. The effects of it on the residents and people of Davis can be.
“It is a public health crisis, a mental health crisis, and a housing affordability crisis.”
Note how he left out addiction.
“But the easiest thing for a city to do—especially under pressure from business groups—is to hire a cop. It’s visible. It feels responsive. But it does nothing to solve the problem.”
It’s not meant to solve homelessness, and you know it. It’s meant to solve the criminal effects of homelessness on the community, and you know it. You are bending our words by trying to call your ‘problem’ (homelessness) our ‘problem’ (crime). It’s a cheap and transparent rhetorical trick, and I call you on it, we all see what you are doing.
And this isn’t ‘business groups’, it’s business people who have experienced the crime personally. You talk as if business people aren’t people, and you try to cut them down as ‘privileged’. If anyone should know the struggles that businesses have, it should be you. But I guess you’re special.
“We should be hiring someone like Ryan Collins.”
Um, no. Is Ryan Collins going to be your new Rob White? You are going to be still lamenting his loss 10 years after he is gone?
I knew someone who also knew all the persons on the street — officer John the bike cop (R.I.P.). That guy knew and cared about the other side of the coin — he knew their names and their rap sheets, and he’d rattle off all the crimes they committed from memory (once pointing to four so-called ‘homeless’ sitting a few hundred feet from my house. “Don’t let people tell you they are good people, they’re not” he told me.
Who we need back is Officer John, and I hope the City hires someone like him for the new beat cop position.
“That’s how you create safety—not by putting another badge on the street, but by meeting people where they are and helping them move forward.”
I may say that you’re a dreamer . . .
“We’ll see data manipulated to suggest that visible homelessness equals crime.”
And we’ll see data manipulated by the Vanguard, and it will be evidence-based evidence!
“Where is the demand for a comprehensive mental health strategy? Where is the push to expand services at Paul’s Place beyond shelter beds? Why aren’t we talking about upstream solutions—about building more affordable housing, funding treatment programs, or creating pathways off the streets?”
yeah, Davis is doing so little, we must spend every F-ing cent on these things! And we must double our local sales tax again to fund it!
“I don’t blame the council for picking their battles. But this is one they needed to fight.”
I don’t think you’re reading the room. From where I stood, 4/5 wanted the beat cop. You can say it was political, I say it’s because they recognize the crime reality.
“ Hiring a beat cop downtown is not a solution. It is a signal—a signal that the city is more interested in appearances than in change.”
No, it’s a signal that they care about public safety downtown and recognize the issue.
“It tells the community that safety means policing, not connection.”
For the public, safety means policing.
“We can do better. We must do better.”
We agree there . . . just not on what that means.
“Davis has the chance to lead—to show what it looks like when a community responds to homelessness with compassion, resources, and a commitment to solving root causes. That starts by investing in people like Ryan Collins—not in more police.”
Wow, a third Ryan Collins. He really is going to be your new Rob White. ‘Ohhhhhh! If only we had Ryan Collins back! Ohhhhhhh! Ohhhhhh! #wail!# #cry!”
This commentary is highly offensive.
Why? And which parts? Please elaborate.
Which commentary, the article or the comments?
The article.
Seems to me that you’ve had similar concerns, Don.
No one commenting here is offering a real solution. One more police officer is not going to get the homeless out of downtown, and probably will have a minimal effect on crime. The empirical evidence is pretty strong–increased punishment and enforcement does little to reduce crime. The only effective solution is to improve the conditions of the community where the crime is created.
If we really want to solve this problem, we need to set aside other community priorities in the near term such as better roads or cleaner parks and figure out how to house and treat this population. We are not going to let them die on the side of the road-even if that was somehow effective, we would never tolerate politically. Time to talk about workable solutions, not fantasies.
“We are not going to let them die on the side of the road-“
There was an overdose fatality in the parking lot next to us. It is likely that my staff and I were the last to see him alive. I have no idea whether he could have been persuaded to enter a residential facility. I don’t know if a navigator would have been walking through a dark parking lot after hours to check things out. I do think that a police officer assigned to patrol in the area might have cruised through the parking lot and found him in time to save his life.
“No one commenting here is offering a real solution.”
The reality check is that there is no “real solution.” Recovery programs have very low efficacy. The crime that is adjacent to the presence of people using drugs is what needs to be dealt with by more policing.
Anyone who has dealt with substance abuse in their families or among their friends knows that some people cannot be helped. That doesn’t mean you don’t try if you can, but sometimes you can’t.
If the council is comfortable with funding a new navigator program, or other programs that have come to their attention, and/or expanding the existing resources, I support that. I suggest that they require performance metrics, and if it is a new program it should sunset automatically so that it is an actual, not putative, pilot program.
But that doesn’t mean it’s the city’s only budget priority, even with increased revenues from the sales tax increase that is about to take effect.
The city doesn’t have the resources to build housing for residential programs. Private non-profits that are focused on mental health can be in residential settings; we have a history of that in Davis. But transitional housing for substance abuse really doesn’t belong in a residential neighborhood, and a respite center certainly doesn’t. And that still leaves some percentage of the unhoused who simply refuse services and won’t be helped. It seems that some people just don’t want to believe that’s the case.
:-0 ——- The Earth has spun completely off it’s access and is hurtling through space. I swear that several years ago I disagreed profoundly with DS on this issue, in this blog space. Now I’m agreeing with most everything he says. Did I hallucinate that? Who am I asking?
I am OK with the *concept* of ‘navigators’ (I think), but I don’t see the need for a new program, unless someone can convince me of the need, as there are already people on the street who work with street persons and give them information on services. Also, I’m not convinced that there is a huge need, as while street people often have ‘issues’, they usual know what is available and where because they communicate with each other. I remember riding a freight train into Klamath Falls back in the 80’s, and the hobos in my car had information on all the services available when we got there, including where to find a warm place for the night and a meal. That was WAY before the internet or cell phones, just word of mouth. Too, most street persons in this town had cell phones before I got one and there’s a lot of ‘information’ available on those things, so I’ve heard
DS say: “The reality check is that there is no “real solution.” Recovery programs have very low efficacy. The crime that is adjacent to the presence of people using drugs is what needs to be dealt with by more policing.”
Wait, what . . . did I write that? 100% on all three sentences.
DS say: “Anyone who has dealt with substance abuse in their families or among their friends knows that some people cannot be helped.”
And even in themselves. And yes, I’ve dealt with it in all of those. And yes, not only some, but *most* can’t be helped. Thankfully, a few can —- when they have truly, fully and completely had enough. And the sad truth is many have that realization only after they are dead or just about to die and it’s too late.
DS say: “That doesn’t mean you don’t try if you can, but sometimes you can’t.”
The best tactic is to be there when people are ready, and never waste your time on those that aren’t (even if wasted and they say they are); but addicts are so cunning that even with that I’ve been duped a few times by addicts who faked being ready in order to get something from me. And all of this applies not only to individuals, but to society and social programs. The worst thing you can do for an addict and for societal resources is to make the practicing addict more comfortable in using — lest society aide them in slowly killing themselves.
RMcC say: “The only effective solution is to improve the conditions of the community where the crime is created.”
What if the ‘conditions of the community where the crime is created’ was in the criminal’s community in the Bay Area back in the 1990’s? You can’t go back and fix that now, and the crime is happening now.
“The empirical evidence is pretty strong–increased punishment and enforcement does little to reduce crime.”
It does if you lock the people up so they can’t commit more crimes. My friend who’s had her life threatened twice would not have been the victim of those threats if the person who threatened her had been locked up like he should have back in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, etc. when he was committing similar crimes. Our system is broken, and our citizens deluded by false fantasy philosophies supported by fake evidence.