Posted on 02/17/2020 4:09:32 AM PST by karpov
...
Skid Row is the epicenter of L.A.’s addiction crisis. More than 12,000 homeless meth and heroin addicts pass through here each year, with thousands living in the vast network of tent encampments that line the sidewalks. For decades, L.A. has centralized public services in this tiny city-within-a-city. The result: it’s become an iron cage of the social state, with the highest concentration of homelessness, addiction, and overdose deaths in Los Angeles County. Fire Station 9, which covers Skid Row, is now the busiest firehouse in America, responding to 35,518 calls for service last year, including a record-high number of overdoses and mental-health crises.
The scale of the crisis is astonishing: 40,000 homeless men and women in Los Angeles County suffer from addiction, mental illness, or both. More than 1,000 will die on the streets this year. As I survey the human wreckage along Skid Row, my fear is that the city government is creating a new class of “untouchables,” permanently disconnected from the institutions of society. For the past decade, political leaders have relied on two major policies to address the crisis—“harm reduction” and “housing first”—but despite $619 million in spending in 2018, more people are on the streets than ever. The reality is that Los Angeles has adopted a policy of containment: construct enough “supportive housing” to placate the appetites of the social-services bureaucracy, distribute enough needles to prevent an outbreak of plague, and herd enough men and women into places like Skid Row, where they will not disrupt the political fiction that everything is okay.
The LAPD’s Central Police Station is a windowless fortress, surrounded by a narrow strip of dirt and a sagging chain-link fence. Last year, after rats established a system of tunnels underneath the station
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
Done on purpose by the new oligarchy called the democrats so they can continue to extract tax money from the rest of us to try to solve the problem that the democrats caused.
This is how they work, folks. They purposely create problems using government and then they demand that everyone fund government to fix those problems.
JoMa
A Libertarian’s dream. Vending machine narcotics. Open borders. Homos running wild. “Liberty” for all.
It’s not about “harm reduction”.
It’s about job security for bureaucrats.
The left openly loves having a servant class....that is why they want open borders so there are people to do the menial tasks liberals need to have done.
Isn’t that their argument?
We already have a 2-tiered justice system....why not everything else?
That’s their customer base for government services.
Any good corporation will try to grow their customer base.
The genius invention of big government was to not have worry about the price side of the curve.
Then launder their cut of the money back to themselves, their relatives, cronies. I think there’s a lot of stealing by the political class going on all over.
Ping to this thread, per a recent exchange you and I had about LA.
NJ is doing this same thing statewide, trafficking illegals here who have no hope of providing for themselves.
The “unaccompanied minors” episodes along the border showed the true intent; to provide clients for public education in particular.
And they are very service-intensive (ESL, free lunch, latchkey, legal/regulatory, behavior, remediation, etc.)
It is a whole industry unto itself - something never even dreamed of when this country was founded. Here in NJ, it devours at least 2/3 of our highest-in-the-nation property taxes.
There is a reason Republicans wanted the SALT limits in the new tax code; socialist areas were basically subsidizing their programs with potential federal income tax dollars. That is also why the left was enraged by the limits.
Yep the activists who reversed the progress Bratton et al made got their wish for housing for the skid row denizens...at 690,000.00 a pop. Someone made a boatload of cash.
Rat controlled states and cities purposely flushing them down the toilet
The coronavirus will spread in the U.S. from the streets of LA, San Francisco, and other major cities that have allowed vermin to take over their sidewalks.
A very good and sad article. It is a spiritual crisis...but not among the users, addicts and lunatics, but among the elites that create policy. The elite float along with the idea of a life without rules, without a moral code, without any forbidden behavior or prohibition, and without any positive objective. They generally have the money and enough remnants of stability to protect the themselves from the consequences, but these sad wrecks do not.
And what is worse, not only do the elites encourage their anarchic and degrading view of human life and morality by refusing to impose social laws, they insist that society itself fund this antisocial behavior and resign itself to enduring the consequences.
Imposing external standards - the fundamental meaning of the broken windows policy - is the only thing that works. And the policy has to be imposed and enforced: the article points out that under Bratton, crime and rates of addiction dropped. This can only be done through enforcing laws on public behavior, with consequences for violation such as involuntary in-patient treatment for the mentally ill, involuntary long-term commitment to drug treatment facilities, And severe penalties for drug sales and use. It also requires a true war against the gangs and cartels.
>>A Libertarian’s dream. Vending machine narcotics. Open borders. Homos running wild. “Liberty” for all.
Almost.. except for the massive amounts of taxpayer-funded “free” medical care that shield these idiots from the consequences of their behavior....
Happened to be driving through Perth Amboy a few months ago. I remember back in the day it was thriving with working people. Now its teeming with government largesse recipients.
I imagine the same is true most NJ cities, gentrifications aside.
It will.
Rudy Giuliani was on Lou Dobbs program last month. He lamented the horrible state of our cities, from New York, to Los Angeles, to San Francisco.
He stated, quite correctly, that we are going to get an outbreak of plague and disease in our cities. People defecating in the streets has been a cause of outbreaks for thousands of years.
Combine that with a pestilence like Coronavirus, and we are headed for a disaster.
More like those with property are barricading themselves in to protect themselves. With the transition of the populace to alien in nature, far more than it was 30 years ago and a different type of alien, at any given time there are over 3000 illegals in the LA county jail for different crimes.
In the latest survey I could find done by The Social Contact, the most common charge for deportable aliens was drug selling/ possession (27% of total). The next highest was driving under the influence (16%); burglary (5%), and spousal assault (4%). Fifty-eight percent of the aliens were charged with commission of felonies, 40% with misdemeanors and 2% with other less serious violations. As with criminals the world over, all but 8% of the deportable aliens were under 40 years of age.
But the most disturbing part of the study is the recidivism rates. Since the release of the rated group, Los Angeles County tracked 346 criminal aliens. The overall recidivism rate is 75%. And two-thirds of the subsequent contacts were felony arrests.
LA County refuses to release these stats to the general public. Pretty obvious why. But as Jefferson said,, “We hold these truths to be self evident...” And as these people were not made financially or morally equal, they need to be put where they are. And not at our people’s expense.
rwood
Correct. Gov Murphy has been a disaster.
And people used to complain about Chris Christie.
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