CARE teams aim to help troubled on Strip

Clark County and Las Vegas police began dispatching teams of social workers and officers to the Strip to offer resources to those experiencing homelessness, mental illness or substance abuse.

Citing public safety, the county on Wednesday announced that it was hiring three CARE Teams, an acronym for Community Advocacy Resources and Engagement. One of the teams will operate from University Medical Center.

The social workers, who partner with Metropolitan Police Department officers, “connect residents in crisis with programs and services such as addiction and mental health treatment, counseling and housing assistance,” the county said in a news release.

In the interim, the county said, existing CARE Teams already are being deployed to the tourist corridor.

The county founded the program three years ago. The county said that it “oversaw an assessment” that showed there were 840 people experiencing homelessness on the Strip in late afternoons and early evenings and that an outreach event had served 65 of them.

“We have seen these teams work elsewhere in Clark County and believe they are part of the solution to ensuring public safety on the Strip and across our community,” Commissioner Jim Gibson said in the release. “The Las Vegas Strip is not an adequate place for those facing these types of issues to live, and in dedicating CARE Teams resources to the resort corridor we will help address the need while fostering an environment of safety for our visitors, residents, and the thousands of employees who work in the hotel properties. And most importantly, they will help these individuals to get the help they need.”

“(Metro) and our partners strive to establish non-traditional policing endeavors to identify solutions for significant social disorders that cannot be solved through enforcement, arrest, incarceration, and prosecution alone,” Capt. Roxanne Burke said in the release. “This team will provide a stronger focus on long-term solutions to many behavioral, societal, and mental concerns felt by our citizens. Together, they will meet with clients, conduct assessments, and provide treatment plans.”

The unhoused population at the tourist corridor was discussed in August when the Clark County Commission voted to change a “stay out” ordinance, which bars individuals convicted of a crime and ordered by courts to stay away from the Strip and its surrounding areas, a violation that can now lead to misdemeanor arrest.

Gibson questioned Deputy County Manager Kevin Schiller about a notion that the order was “another attempt to root out the homeless, displace the homeless, or hassle the homeless.”

Schiller said the goal of the CARE program was two-fold, and focuses on “housing first” and intervention.

He used an example of a CARE Team this summer responding alongside the FBI and the Secret Service following allegations that a veteran had made threats against President Joe Biden.

Schiller said that the person was “successfully placed” in services, and that recidivism among those provided housing is less than 15 percent.

Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @rickytwrites.