PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. (CBS12) — The CBS12 News I-Team is pushing for accountability in Palm Beach County as three recent crime stories (two in Palm Beach Gardens and one from North Carolina) have brought into focus the mental health crisis impacting the homeless population.
Homelessness is a problem in virtually every community in America at the moment, but are officials thinking about it as threat to public safety? Should they be?
A teen boy and two women have been taken in deadly violence at the hands of mentally disturbed homeless suspects. Those suspects fatally stabbed total strangers: Innocent people going about their lives.
Palm Beach Gardens teenager Ryan Rogers loved soccer and his family.
65-year-old Rita Loncharich was a warm-hearted, hard-working wife and mother.
Both became victims of random violence when they were killed in brutal knife attacks– by homeless drifters suffering from mental health problems. Ryan Rogers was out on his bike, Rita Loncharich was Christmas shopping in a bookstore.
Iryna Zarutska’s death, though not a Florida case, raises the same concerns. Zarutska was a Ukrainian refugee living in Charlotte. She escaped from her war-torn country, then was killed on a commuter train by a wanderer.
Citing these three tragedies, for the past few weeks, The I-Team has been pressing officials about possible solutions.
‘It needs to be a conversation’
“It needs to be a conversation, a deep conversation with elected officials and law enforcement practitioners throughout the state of Florida on how we’re going to deal with individuals like that,” Riviera Beach Police Chief Michael Coleman said.
Coleman has just been sworn in as the President of the Palm Beach County Association of Police Chiefs. He told the I-Team about his department’s Homeless Task Force and Critical Incident Teams. Many of the departments in the county have them. So if a homeless person is acting erratically, perhaps in the middle of the psychotic episode—you can dial 9-1-1.
“If a civilian sees that individual suffering, call us right away, don’t wait, call us and we’ll deal with it accordingly,” Coleman said.
That kind of communication from the public and a focused police response has helped at the Viking Yacht Service Center.
At that location, in a sharp contrast with the boats and privilege, a group of homeless men were sleeping on the perimeter every night.
Dan Mueller, the general manager, says he saw drug-deals and there was murder crime scene involving the homeless just beyond the gates. He says that changed five years ago when police patrols in the marina area increased.
“They have been doing a great job communicating with us, I have been communicating with them; if I see something out of the ordinary, its nice to know I have someone coming in — in a timely manner who can take care of it or look into it and investigate and see what’s going on,” Mueller said.
New law, new controversies
In 2025, a new Florida law went into effect. It bans the homeless from sleeping out in the public. It requires local governments to move people to shelters or create specific campsites for the homeless. And it enables people to file lawsuits against non-compliant cities. It’s controversial.
Opponents say it vilifies the homeless. Chief Coleman says it’s been good for law enforcement and his city.
“It was great for us in Riviera Beach, to get help for those individuals – because if we offer them assistance and they turn it down, they get no more protection to sleep in the park, sleep on benches, and we can remove them from our city. I think it was a tremendous bill created by the governor and its working for us,” Coleman said.
Palm Beach County Commissioner Bobby Powell disagrees.
“In whole or in part, I believe that law created more problems than it did solutions,” Powell said.
Powell was serving in Tallahassee as a state senator when the law was being debated on the floor. He voted against it. Powell says he does not support the idea of cities and counties creating homeless encampments.
“We have to look at this from a humanity perspective and provide the proper funding, the proper professionals, to work with people experiencing mental health issues as well as homelessness.”
Powell went on to say the county lost a major asset in this fight when the Jerome Golden Center closed.
“There hasn’t been a particular organization that has really filled that void,” Powell said.
County focuses on temporary, affordable housing
The county’s efforts to address homelessness and the mental health crisis among that population fall under the umbrella of Community Services.
Dr. James Green is the Director of that department. Green explains the county commissioners are not moving towards creating a camp, rather they are focused on creating temporary housing and affordable housing.
“The commissioners have invested in a 42-bed facility in Pahokee, they have invested in a 6-bed intake facility in the Belle Glade area, they have invested in two homeless shelters; one in the Lake Worth area and the Lewis Center and a homeless shelter for families, Program Reach.” Green said. “What the research shows us, is that leaving a chronically homeless person on the street can cost taxpayers up to 35 or 40 thousand dollars a year because they are constantly interfacing with our emergency rooms, with our criminal justice system, and we see a significant decrease in those numbers of interfaces when people are stably housed.”
The I-Team contacted Ryan Rogers father and asked if he would like to comment for this story.
Brian Rogers declined to go on camera, but he told us something about his son.
“Ryan loved the mission of a place called Mrs. Rinas House of Blessings in Stuart,” Rogers explained. “Its for people experiencing homelessness. The year before Ryan was killed – Ryan helped Mrs. Rina and talked about wanting to do more. He was only 13 at the time, but he always had such a huge heart and he cared so much about people. He wanted to help the homeless. It’s ironic this is how he lost his life.”
At last count, there were 770,000 homeless people on the streets of the United States.