HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 In a first-of-its-kind event, the Hillsborough County Public Defender\u2019s Office offered free legal help and additional resources in Tampa.<\/p>\n
The initiative is called PD 13 Street Legal, which brought legal services directly to Tampa residents.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
PD 13 Street Legal brought legal services directly to Tampa residents
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The initiative was organized by the Hillsborough County Public Defender
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Wraparound services were also offered at the inaugural event
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The event will be held on the third Saturday of every month<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has been my area, my neighborhood, but I had never seen this right here,\u201d said Tampa resident Cornelius Trussell.<\/p>\n
Trussell has lived in the University area of Tampa his whole life. He stopped in PD 13 Street Legal looking for legal help for his wife. He has a part-time job but he\u2019s hoping to get assistance finding a full-time warehouse job.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m good with my hands, so I like doing stuff like that, and being active as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Public defender Lisa McLean said she felt that many clients have challenges when it comes to meeting with their attorney, so she wanted to bring their services to them. McLean said it\u2019s all about communication.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re not about, \u2018Hey, let’s move these people through the system. Let’s plead out as many cases. We can try the cases that we need to and just keep things moving.\u2019 That\u2019s not what we do here. We take a holistic approach to what we do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
At Saturday\u2019s event, that holistic approach included wraparound services. Community partners helped with different types of needs like food insecurity, public transportation, mental health, drug treatment and more.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re really hoping that not only can we provide these services to the clients that we currently represent, but if we have an opportunity to meet with people in the community before they get involved in the criminal justice system, it gives us the opportunity to make real change in the community,\u201d McLean said.<\/p>\n
Trussel was grateful for the support and said PD 13 Street Legal is a great event for the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing that can’t possibly get done with all these resources here. So that’s amazing,\u201d Trussell said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s help that Trussell hopes he can return one day.<\/p>\n
If you missed Saturday, there will be future events. It will be held on the third Saturday of every month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 In a first-of-its-kind event, the Hillsborough County Public Defender\u2019s Office offered free legal help…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[767,2967,274,770,276,2200,115,277,135,137,136,278,2032,1374,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-164912","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-app-community","9":"tag-app-public-safety","10":"tag-app-top-stories","11":"tag-community-news","12":"tag-hillsborough-county","13":"tag-instagram-bn9","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-public-safety","16":"tag-tampa","17":"tag-tampa-headlines","18":"tag-tampa-news","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-trending-topics","21":"tag-tyler-oneill","22":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}