Officers, counselors connect with New Smyrna Beach homeless community

It’s the first arrangement of its kind in the state, according to the New Smyrna Beach Police Department: A department pairing an officer with a counselor to go into the woods and visit the homeless regularly, even daily. The clinician, however, is an employee of the police department, not a contractor. New Smyrna Beach Police Chief Eric Feldman called it “unheard of from a police perspective.”