Police interact with the unhoused. A new guide could improve those encounters.

The Illinois State Police released a guidebook late last year for officers interacting with unhoused individuals. The goal is to offer up-to-date resources and to bring dignity and humanity to those encounters for “the new face of homelessness,” according to Rev. Dwight Ford, the director of Project Now, a community action organization that helped develop the guidebook.

“The new face of homelessness is a woman that works everyday, with a good cell phone and a nice SUV, but those are the paraphernalia of a life once lived,” Ford said. “They’re actually sleeping in that SUV in a Walmart parking lot, and taking their kids to a Casey’s bathroom to wash up at a gas station and go to school.”

In this episode, Ford explains what needs to change in these police interactions and how he wants us all to work toward bringing homelessness to “functional zero: rare, brief and non-reoccuring.”