 Hi, I'm Lieutenant Matt Murray with the Media Relations Unit and today we're with some of our homeless outreach officers. We're going to be asking them some questions on a snowy morning about some of the homeless issues in Denver. So I have with me Officer Vince Lombardi and Officer Stephanie Meadows. Officer Lombardi, what does your unit do? We are officers that go out basically and work with the homeless. So what does a typical day look like? Well, for myself and my partner Stephanie, we start at six o'clock in the morning. We're in charge of doing the wake-ups every day. So we go out anywhere throughout the city, primarily in District 6. We contact people that we find camping, sleeping that aren't in shelters, and we try to either get them help that they may need, try to get them hooked up with service providers so they can get housing or any other thing that they might need or just move them along. We have a camping ordinance in Denver now, so it's illegal to camp in the city. Okay. Officer Meadows, why is this important? Well, Denver has a pretty high homeless population right now. It's a large number of folks. It's important to get out there and find out who these people are, check on their welfare, make sure they know where they can go for the services that they need. Okay. Another question for you, Vince. How does bad weather affect the homeless? Well, that's a tricky question. You know, Denver's really stepped up to the plate since we passed the ordinance, and we've opened up a lot of extra shelter space for these people. And the ones that wanted to have gotten in there, the small population that we have on the streets during the bad weather are people that want to be outside. Does it affect them? Of course it does. It's harder on them. It's harder on us. It's harder for us to do our job. And it could be dangerous for them. Okay. Officer Meadows, recently your unit received an award from the mayor. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. Chris Conner with Denver Short Home submitted our team for the team award for the 50 to 81 that the city awards various city employees and departments or units. So there was a handful of other teams that got the award and ours was recognized for how we handled the camping ordinance when it came into effect. Congratulations. And so the last question for you, Austin and Marty, is what would you tell community members about when they see somebody on a street corner with a sign and giving cash? I personally would discourage it. I know you want to help, especially when you see somebody down on their luck that's going through hard times. And if you're at a position in your life where you can offer help, people want to give them money and they think that helps them. It really doesn't. They find all the help they need from places like Father Woody's and the other shelters that we have throughout the city. Even dropping off food can be bad. It's bad for the community. It causes problems. If somebody wants to give people money or food that are homeless endeavor, I always advise them to go to one of the service providers, give them the food because they have the facilities set up where they can feed these people and stop littering from going on, having community outrage about their feed lines during the week or during the weekends when we used to have a problem with that. If you give them money too, who knows where that's going? A lot of these guys are battling problems and money might not be the best thing to give them. They can find all the services they need, food, stuff like that. So find some charities to deal with homeless and that may be a better place to give your money. I think that's always a better option. Okay, great. Well, I want to thank the homeless outreach officers and thank you for watching. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for more information.