By Kelsey Walker
City of Bartlesville
Bartlesville Police Department hosted a community forum last week which brought together representatives of several local organizations who primarily work with the unsheltered population in Bartlesville.
The forum was part of the City’s goal to work with community partners to address homelessness in Bartlesville, as outlined in the City’s organizational strategic plan, Bartlesville NEXT.
Bartlesville Police Chief Kevin Ickleberry said the goal of the forum aimed to offer a better understanding of the issues being dealt with every day by community organizations helping the underserved.
“Once somebody comes into our community, they become our citizen … they become our person,” Ickleberry said. “Our job is to take care of them until they move on.”
BPD is in the process of adding two additional police officers to patrol city parks and the 17 miles of Pathfinder Parkway. With the addition of the two officers, the BPD will have two teams designated to cover the parks and Pathfinder.
Another one of the initiatives of the BPD is the newly formed Crisis Intervention Response Team, which pairs a BPD officer with a social worker from Grand Mental Health. The department currently has two officers and two social workers in place on two teams.
Those teams responded to 1,317 calls from December 2022 through September 2023, according to Cori Bryson, care coordinator with Grand Mental Health and one of the CIRT members. Of those calls, only 50 resulted in emergency detention and/or hospital admission and 152 calls avoided arrest or hospitalization. The teams provided 889 preventative follow-up and care coordination calls, 486 homeless outreach and support contacts, and provided de-escalation and assistance at 186 crisis response calls.
In addition to forming specialized teams, BPD is collaborating with organizations in the community to provide resources for the homeless and unsheltered. BPD officers are also patrolling areas of concern within the community to reduce fear and provide a safe environment for all citizens.
“Together, we feel like those four officers, along with the Crisis Intervention team, will help even better serve our homeless population on the path and in the parks,” Ickleberry said. “We want to make sure we’re doing our best to take care of these folks.”
Retired BPD Sgt. Jim Warring, now law enforcement engagement director for Grand Mental Health, also spoke about the increase in the homeless population he observed over his 25-year career.
“When I first started as a police officer, I never in my wildest dreams ever thought we would be sitting in a room like this … when I was a young rookie officer, I was there to catch bad guys,” Warring said. “About year 15 in my career, I started seeing things change.”
Even as he observed the rising homeless populations in larger cities across the U.S., Warring never thought the issue would come to Bartlesville. But it has, and Warring reminded the community not to lose sight of their shared humanity.
“Every one of these individuals that we see that’s homeless is somebody’s mom, somebody’s dad, somebody’s brother, somebody’s sister … These people are our people,” he said. “When we’re trying to come up with options and solutions, we cannot lose our compassion. … We’ve all got to work together.”
Bartlesville Public School District — encompassing nine school sites and nearly 6,500 students — is another organization which serves the homeless population. BPSD’s Sarah Rowe, homeless liaison, said the district uses an annual residency questionnaire to help identify homeless students.
“Every year, it gets harder and harder to find our students that are homeless,” she said.
Her voice broke as she described the sheer number of students facing homelessness in its varying forms. During the 2018-19 school year, for example, BPSD identified 321 children (ages birth to 18) as homeless. Of those, 267 were “doubled up” or living with another family, while 18 were living in hotels and 33 more resided in shelters.
That number fluctuated in the years following, Rowe said, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a change in BPSD’s enrollment processes. However, so far this year, the district has already identified 92 children who are homeless and Rowe expects that number to keep growing.
Rowe says the school provides many services to homeless students, including transportation, ACT/SAT fees, graduation caps and gowns, school meals, school supplies, clothing, shoes, tutoring and more.
“Anything we can do to help these kids succeed and be productive citizens, and help their families during this rough time, we try to do this,” Rowe said.
Sherri Smith, executive director of Agape Mission, has also seen an increase in clientele at the five-day-a-week soup kitchen on Bartlesville’s west side. In the month of October, Agape fed 6,031 meals to nearly 800 individuals — 90 of whom were homeless.
“The homeless issue is a growing issue,” Smith said. “We do our best to try to help those individuals as much as we can. Sometimes we can’t do anything, sometimes we can only do a little. … Everybody can be involved in helping in some way, you just have to want to.”
Other agencies in the community noted the increase in the homeless population, including Errol Hada, director of Lighthouse Outreach Center, who said the homeless shelter’s capacity of 75 residents has been at its maximum for nearly two years. A new homeless mission, B the Light, founded by Keith and Christy McPhail, will soon open its doors to help serve the homeless “one person at a time” in the community.
The Bartlesville Police Department will next host a Neighborhood Watch Forum from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Jan. 18, 2024. Follow City Beat and City of Bartlesville GOV for details and updates.