8 JUNE 8-14, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Public Safety, Sanchez formed a committee with other people from the DPD, the Denver Sheriff Department and additional city offi cials to brainstorm ideas for that “third option.” Based on the concerns of Sanchez’s offi cers in District 6, they decided that the city needed a space where all of the existing homelessness services could congregate. That way, a police officer could bring the person suspected of committing a “crime of need” straight to that spot, to be connected with any and every necessary service all at once. When Saldate was appointed director of the Department of Public Safety in February 2022, the concept of such a one-stop shop was fast-tracked, and the Assessment, Intake, and Diversion (AID) Center was created. Because the AID Center was meant to coordinate the city’s existing services rather than provide new ones, Saldate says he was looking for a director who would be best suited to building those relationships with service providers throughout the city. After Saldate’s chief of staff, Jeff Holliday, had narrowed the candidate pool for that position down to three people, Saldate came in to make the fi nal decision. “We had two very highly qualifi ed candidates. One was another national candidate that was doing this work back east. She was very impres- sive — went to an Ivy League school,” recalls Saldate. A second candidate was local, and just as impressive. “Wow, this is going to be really hard,” Sal- date recalls telling Holliday, who responded, “Well, wait until you meet the third candidate.” Manuel found the job posting for the AID Center on LinkedIn after his fi ancée started making plans to move. After getting his job in the L.A. mayor’s offi ce, Manuel had continued working with nonprofi ts, helping provide supportive ser- vices for homeless veterans through People Assisting the Homeless and working in get- ting involved with community colleges in the California state system. But his fi ancée was planning to move to Denver, so he started looking for jobs in the area. He found the AID Center post on Linke- dIn and applied. He was the third candidate Saldate in- terviewed. “This is going to be really easy,” Saldate told Holliday after meeting Manuel. “Not only was he equipped with the skills that we wanted around knowing clinical best practice and practice around trauma- informed care, but what I really liked about him was just the ability that he had to engage with me and [Holliday], two high-level ex- ecutives in the Department of Safety, in such a personal way,” Saldate says. “I think Carlon’s story in particular is helpful to understand the intentionality that the Department of Safety put in...and how his hire has taken us to a good place where we’re growing and people are buying in,” he adds. “It’s funny, because when they told me I got the job, they said, ‘When can you move?’ I was like, ‘Next week,’” recalls Manuel. But when he showed up in Denver for his fi rst day last August, the space at 1370 Elati Street that was supposed to become the AID Center was far from fi nished. “The walls were still being done,” he remembers, and Hol- liday and Saldate “were like, ‘Okay, here you go. Here’s a canvas.’” “You know, just trying to open up any kind of new entity, it’s hard in government,” Saldate explains. “So, obviously, we were acting with urgency because it’s such a need for the community. We were at a community event, and [Manuel] met the mayor, and the mayor asked him, ‘Hey, well, when is it going to be open?’ and [Manuel] regrettably said, ‘Well, it’s going to be open in November.’ Well, we hadn’t committed to a date yet, because we had a lot of balls in the air, and me and [Holliday] said, ‘You should have never said that, because the mayor’s going to hold you to that.’ “It did put on pressure to get it open,” he adds. The challenge was “trying to get everyone committed to an idea,” Saldate says. “You’re having to ask people to have faith in the idea and that people will come.” But Manuel met that challenge, he adds: “He proved himself almost right off the bat around his ability to engage with folks.” In fact, Manuel was indeed able to launch the center in November, though the offi cial opening came a few months later. “I call him our version of Coach Prime,” Saldate says of Manuel, referring to Deion Sanders, the University of Colorado Boulder’s new football coach. “He’s basically done what Coach Prime is doing in Boulder with recruit- ing and getting folks involved and motivated about being part of the AID Center — and these are service [providers] that we normally didn’t have good relationships with or any kind of established relationship with.” But Manuel put a lot of thought into making the place work. “You will see that everything is designed to focus on folks walking in the door,” he says. “All the service providers are facing the door. The furniture itself...is facing the door. So we’re not creating any barriers. If we had the service providers turned the other way, you’d see someone’s back and shoulders; we wanted you to see a face when you walk in the door.” Those faces at the AID Center belong to representatives of organiza- tions like WellPower, which provides community behavioral health care; CommunityWorks, which offers employment services; Volunteers of America Veterans’ Services; and many more. A full schedule of the services available each week can be found online at the denvergov.org website. The number and variety of ser- vices available in one place at one time is what makes the AID Center effective, according to Manuel. “We may have folks who are coming in just to get a bus pass sometimes, and then from that conversation during the intake, we fi nd out that that person is looking for employment,” he says. “So they’re traveling all over the city looking for employment — we’re like, ‘Hey, we have three employers here, why don’t you try to check them out? Go on back with CommunityWorks or [Community Employ- ment Opportunities], and the other folks that we have here.’” Since asking for help often makes people feel vulnerable, the more you can do for them in that moment, the better, he adds. The idea behind the AID Center is to create an “ecosys- tem of services,” he says. “People that come in the door that have any type of need that we can help support, we try to support them.” Since it opened offi cially four months ago, the AID Center has served nearly 500 people, according to Kelly Jacobs, communications and strategy director for the Department of Safety. Most of those have been walk-ins; Divi- sion Chief Sanchez says that the DPD has only brought eighteen individuals to the AID Center. But many of those who have walked in for services are people who might have committed more low-level crimes of need if they hadn’t gotten help, he adds. Still, the center faces challenges. Many of the non-violent crimes of need that might warrant a trip to the AID Center take place at night, when it’s closed, Sanchez notes. And even if the center is open, for legal purposes a crime must have occurred in order for an offi cer to justify detaining someone for the duration of the trip from the crime scene to the AID Center. But after a police offi cer drops someone off there, that person is free to go, notes Sanchez. Whether individuals choose to receive services is up to them. “Once at the AID Center, there are no charges,” Sanchez adds. “There is no paper- work; there is nothing held over the head of the individual. Once the offi cer brings someone to the AID Center, the case is closed from the perspective of the Denver Police Department.” Sanchez would like to see the center’s hours extended. But even with the program’s limitations, “in my opinion, it’s been very suc- cessful,” he says, adding that the high number of walk-ins refl ects a growing awareness about the center among people who need it. Manuel, meanwhile, says he’s running out of space. “Every room in here is dual- purpose,” he says of the center. Jacobs says the eventual goal of the safety department is to open AID Centers at mul- tiple locations throughout the city. Cari Ladd, program manager for Well- Power’s Therapy Direct service, speaks glow- ingly of the AID Center as “a mall for social services.” Therapy Direct pro- vides virtual mental health urgent care, and also sends a representative to the AID Center each Thursday. Ladd describes this on-site pres- ence as an opportunity to “talk with the other community providers about the program and how to connect people to services,” including the online options with Therapy Direct. The AID Center even has com- puters available to access that pro- gram. “We’re kind of able to be at the AID Center without having to staff it all the time,” says Ladd. Service providers aren’t the only ones on board. In a city where crime and homelessness have long been top concerns for residents and leaders alike — and poten- tial solutions for these issues have created deep political divides — everybody seems to like the AID Center and the work that Carlon Manuel is doing. Whether it’s the mayor, a police offi cer, a service provider or a person in need, ac- cording to Safety communications director Jacobs, “everyone agrees this is the right approach.” Emai the author at [email protected]. News continued from page 7 The AID Center opened last August. Armando Saldate hired Carlon Manuel for the AID job. DENVER.GOV BENJAMIN NEUFELD
