Delray adopts a more diplomatic approach toward homeless

Frank Cerabino

Don’t think of it as the Delray Beach Bum Patrol.

That sounds a little too mean. A more noble name is required to describe the effort of the city’s Downtown Development Authority in hiring security guards to scour the area every morning to get the sleeping homeless people to make themselves invisible.

Skedaddling the homeless requires a program name that suggests more compassion.

And Delray Beach hasn’t disappointed in that department.

It’s called “The Ambassador Program.” For the past four months, this pilot program about to expire in Delray Beach has employed yellow-shirted security guards — um, er, I mean “ambassadors” — to comb the downtown streets starting at 6 a.m. to wake up the homeless and get them to scoot.

The next step, I guess, will be to come up with a different name for the homeless.

I’m partial to “chronic outdoorsmen,” or maybe “the trans-residential.”

And perhaps the ambassadors can be part of something called the The CRUEL (Citizen Relocation Unit for Extreme Loungers) Squad.

I know some of you English-language sticklers out there might have an issue with the abuse of the word “ambassador” in this case.

Ambassadors are usually Read Frank Cerabino’s recent columns online at associated with high-ranking representatives of a country on a special diplomatic mission in a foreign land.

For example, Callista Gingrich, the current wife of Newt Gingrich, has been nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. I would be very surprised if her ambassador duties involved getting up at dawn to shoo the home- less from the public showers installed by Pope Francis near St. Peter’s Square.

There are other kinds of ambassadors, too. At Palm Beach International Airport, volunteers wearing teal sports coats are identified as “airport ambassadors” and are there to answer questions from passing travelers.

The PBI airport ambassadors will not bother you if you fall asleep in the concourse.

But language is a living thing. Maybe it’s time to start think-