It is human nature to want to help somebody, but the police department is encouraging people to donate to charities rather than panhandlers.

Police Chief John Luse said he wants residents to see giving smart as a way to help those in need and encourage those in need to find better help than panhandling on street corners.

“We want individual people to think about giving smart as ‘I can talk to this person, I can figure out whether or not I should just give to them or not,’” Luse said. “We want their needs to be met, that they ought not be hungry, and they ought not be without a place to sleep, but the street corners aren’t the place to facilitate that.”

According to Luse, a panhandler is somebody who is in a public area, communicating to people who are going by on foot or in cars that they’re asking to be given money.

Panhandlers typically display a message of needing help through a sign.

Luse said he thinks there isn’t a specific homeless shelter or food shelf to donate for anybody in any community can donate, but suggested places such as St. Stephens and STEP.

“We put some ideas on our website of some homeless shelters for people who didn’t know where to give and wanted to give that they could give to, but it’s not exclusive, in your community you could give to a different place for the same reason,” Luse said.

Freshman Britney Villanueva said she believes it’s good to raise awareness of how to donate to those in need.

“When you give money to STEP or a charity, you’re helping something instead of someone that could be lying to you,” Villanueva said. “You’re actually doing it for a good cause.”

According to Luse, giving smart in the park is a way to help those in need with compassion rather than banning them from the street corners.

“The important thing about the program was we were trying to get people off of street corners and medians, but not convey to this community that there was not compassion about what we were doing because there is.”

According to Luse, giving smart just means the city wants to target the money to help people in need. Then we wanted to get those who were panhandling for other reasons off the street corners.

By standing on street corners, panhandlers distract drivers and create confusion, according to Luse.