The Dallas County Sheriff's Office is partnering with the group Trusted World to provide food, clothing and other basic needs to people that Sheriff's Deputies encounter while they're responding to calls.
"The whole idea is to respond to calls, but see what the needs are behind the calls - and how is it that we can help people in the community," said Dallas County Sheriff Marion Brown.
"Trusted World provides resources - clothing, food and toiletries - to police, school counselors and other non-profits. We have over 740 partners, and we enable them to actually help the person that's in front of them without that organization having to have a clothes closet of a food pantry," said Trusted World CEO Michael Garrett.
Deputies will have access to technology from Trusted World that tracks the inventory of supplies offered by non-profit groups across north Texas.
"They would ask questions like 'what size do you wear? do you need pants or shirts?' They put that information in, they hit 'submit' and it comes to Trusted world. We fulfill that order, we bring it back to the police department and the police go back to the families," Garrett said.
Sheriff Brown says the process will add about six minutes to calls where it is needed, but deputies are ready to reach out to those in need.
"We took officers to the Trusted World facility to let them see for themselves first-hand, and then after they had a chance to look around...the bought into it. That's another reason we are excited about this - we have the buy-in of the officers," Sheriff Brown said. "It will indeed help us help the citizens that we serve, and it's not just something that's in one specific area. It is throughout Dallas County that we will be providing this service."
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