HUFFINGTON
08.19.12
TAMPA’S MAVERICK COP
Other leaders, including those
at the National Alliance, blame the
bad economy and the missteps of
local community groups. Yet homelessness persists even in places
where social-service providers have
won accolades for their work.
Donaldson agrees with Donovan’s diagnosis, but he dismisses
his prescription (more money) as
a liberal fantasy. “There will never
be enough money,” he said. What
Tampa needs, he believes, is better
policing, and he suspects he’s one
of the few people in the country
who knows how to provide that.
One day this summer, Don-
NO, HOMELESS
PEOPLE DON’T
USUALLY WANT
TO BE HOMELESS.
NO, MOST OF THEM
AREN’T SCREWED-UP
BEYOND REDEMPTION.
YES, ALL BUT A TINY
PERCENTAGE ARE
CAPABLE OF CHANGE.
aldson sat in the lounge area of a
Tampa McDonalds, helping two
men muddle through a morass of
paperwork. Donaldson approaches
pretty much every moment of his
work with missionary fervor, but
he was particularly excited about
this meeting. “My first father and
son pair!” he said proudly.
The father, Gerald Glassmyer,
was in his 60s, and he was tall
and thin with a hunched body
and a cane, the result of a deteriorated disk in his lower back. His
son was 40 years younger, and he
blinked emphatically, as if fighting
off sleep. Donaldson was dressed
in the crisp white and grey attire
of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department, and everything
about him, from his boot-camp
physique to the narrow, tense line
of his upper lip, seemed to speak
to his infatuation with discipline,
efficiency and neatness.
One trait stood in contrast with
his rigid appearance, however.
As one of his supervisors put it,
“Man that boy can talk.” Today,
aided by several tall cups of coffee,
he was talking disability benefits
and housing subsidies, a task that
he sees as one of the more mundane aspects of his job.
Homeless people are often eligible for help from dozens of government agencies: The Department of
Veterans Affairs, the Department