No Place Like Curb

Tiger is addicted to heroin. She had lived in a tiny, unregistered camper, but it was towed, and she's been spiraling downward ever since. Swiatko is checking to see if she has gotten into the new methadone treatment program he told her about. She says she is planning to go. He asks if she's been back with the boyfriend who was beating her. She hasn't. Good, he tells her. She says she needs $5, and Swiatko gives it to her.

"Swiatko is a motherfucker, straight up. But I respect him," Tiger says. "He can be one hard-ass cop, but he's fair. He's had that talk with me more than a few times -- what am I doing with my life. He does care. Just don't get on his bad side."

Swiatko is worried about Tiger. He worries about a lot of his homeless friends. In his 13 years on the beat, he's lost seven of those friends. His attention is now on two elderly gentlemen in their late 70s who share a trailer. He doesn't expect them to survive the winter. He's trying to work with the Department of Social Services to get them into better housing.

"You can't not think of these people, when you see them every day. They become part of you," Swiatko says. "I'm out here working, but I'm in their world. I'm living with them."

And the ongoing cycle of homelessness wears him down.
"It's disheartening. It's overwhelming," he says. "I can't do it all; sometimes I don't feel like doing anything. I have a wife and two kids to go home to. I don't have all the answers."

What Swiatko does know is that the vehicular encampment idea is a bad one. His gut tells him that concentrating the problem in one spot will only cause more trouble. At the same time, he realizes -- better, perhaps, than anybody -- that the vehicle dwellers are here to stay, and there's nothing he can do but continue to chase them, futilely, around town.

"They are nomads by heart," Swiatko says. "Rent is expensive here. They'd rather live in a vehicle than a 12-by-12 room in a roach-infested hotel, and I don't blame them."

As he turns his patrol car around another corner, to face another row of trailers and vans lining the street, Swiatko shakes his head, more out of amazement than frustration. Some things are just bigger than guns and badges and the law he's trying to enforce.

"Everyone creates their own normal," he says. "They're people, like anyone else, using their right to choose how they want to live. And how can you fight that?