Usually yeah.
Yeah I have no doubt the cops suck horribly in all of this.
But when the DA says heâs not going to prosecute any shoplifting or drug crimes, you get people just openly shoplifting like âwhat are you going to do?â, and people shooting up and smoking crack on the street in broad daylight. And youâre the jerk if you feel like youâd rather not have those things going on where you live.
Dallas is a terrible city I would never want to live in. But the people who move there and places like it from CA, usually cite this stuff as at least one thing that they donât have to deal with anymore. People can see that itâs not an unsolvable problem.
If you think this is chill: âShe keeps the wound, which smells rancid and oozes pus, wrapped in dirty bandages.â, and stealing from Target to support it is fine, and we should actively support her lifestyle, then we just have very different values.
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I mean for someone mentally ill enough to not go to the hospital with an oozing wound who lives in a country like america sheâs probably near the top of her range of possible outcomes. I donât think thereâs a world where sheâs a suburban mom with a pool or whatever. If only we gave her some tough love.
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The nature of the homeless and drug issues, imo, are such that there is no âniceâ local solution. If everywhere else harasses and incarcerates drug users and the homeless, and one community is more tolerant, whoâs going to have more homeless? Why do you think a place like Dallas has fewer homeless?
So, locally, there are two options: tolerate the homeless situation, or tolerate the homeless being rounded up, jailed, and harassed until they find another place to move on to, presumably a place with fewer resources to harass them, not more resources to help them. Faced with those options, turns out most people, even those who consider themselves progressive, would rather bring on the jackboots.
Something else I believe is that most people arenât actually personally impacted by the homeless situation, they just donât like looking at it.
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They arenât impacted by it in the sense that the person yelling at them most likely isnât actually going to harm them but nobody likes being threatened and for good reason.
Imo there can be a line somewhere between rounding up and running off the homeless, and actively attracting drug addicts to your city with perks.
Iâm not personally impacted by the homeless situation, just like Iâm not personally impacted by the war in Ukraine. But I still get emotionally invested in it. I care about the drug addicts. But I donât believe that just endlessly enabling them is the answer.
I also care about the people who live in these neighborhoods that have to deal with this every day. It seems like they just get dismissed out of hand by people who have no idea what life is actually like on the ground. Youâre a NIMBY if you donât want people shooting up on your doorstep.
That would make you a NOMDS
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I used to work on a corner that for some reason seemed to attract the most mentally ill of the homeless. My theory is that the non-mentally ill homeless guys in nearby Veterans Park would run off the true crazies for causing trouble in the park - so they wound up in our area somehow.
Iâve seen a dude pissing on the sidewalk, a guy jerking off, a guy menacingly playing with a knife while eyeing a nearby woman (I stuck around to make sure nothing happened to her), had a guy punching the air next to my face, and been harassed by a white guy calling me the N-word. This is Wilshire and Westwood, a major intersection with skyscrapers on every corner. I truly do not miss walking through that corner several times a day.
I donât know what the solution is to that. Iâm not arguing for anything because I donât know what to do with the mentally ill. But I am pointing out that itâs not fun to have to deal with, and for me it was only a tiny taste of what life must be like living in a neighborhood with major problems. At least with the drug users I feel like there are things you can do other than just let make life easier for them to run wild in the streets.
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Most of your arguments itt literally boil down to calling anyone who lives in SF and doesnât like the current situation a NIMBY.
Or deciding SF isnât true lefties anymore because you did a survey of the people you came into contact with while you lived there or something.
Or any other number of abstract thought experiments, like you always do where you pick the side you want to be on and then work backwards to justify it.
Lol ok, how would you characterize âitâs overreaching leftism which is a boogeyman that feels like home for rich liberalsâ then? Using ârich liberalâ as a pejorative isnât an attack on the character of anyone who voted to recall the DA? It isnât dismissing out of hand any real concerns that people who actually still live in the city might have?
I knew this would go exactly like this and I knew it would be mostly goofy Iâd be arguing with. And Iâm ok with that. I felt like it was important to say.
But now Iâm going to mute the thread for a few days, at least.
Iâm definitely impacted by it and itâs been a fkn god damn living nightmare the last 3 months
TLDR i live near one of the worst motel drug/prostitution dens (plus several other neighboring ones) in the heart of a downtown area. my street connects two major ones - the south entrance has the bad motel, the north entrance on the other major street has another bad one.
when I first moved in - it was fine, upscale condos were under construction on the south entrance and it became a cul-de-sac with 24/7 armed security. sweet. then a few months ago some nutjob reopened that entrance and we have a constant flow of riffraff shuttling between the two motels all day and all night. someone beat down my entire fence a few months ago and ripped off all my screens. my screens go away as fast as I can replace them. i gave up on one part of my fence, it keeps getting kicked in. carâs been broken into twice now. my mail is stolen so often I just gave up and now have a PO box.
it SUCKS. I dont think many people here can appreciate not feeling safe in your home. it isnât comfortable.
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I mean everyone likely agrees that it sucks to have drug addicts and homeless people around but capitalism needs those people to provide the visible stick to the carrot of wages so they are always going to exist. They are there to prevent the workers on the edge from getting too uppity. So the question is given were always going to have these people around they are a supporting pillar of modern capitalism are we going to treat them like utter dogshit or just treat them quite badly but slightly like actual people.
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Eh, letting them do both shoplifting and crack in public doesnât seem to be helping anyone.
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It helps the people who need crack and donât have the money to pay for it. What are you gonna do put them in drug treatment programs lol. That socialism.
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Locally here itâs meth/fentanyl.
So goofy posted about security. I dont know how simular it is to Canada, but it seems pretty similar from whatâs been posted. Here, retail companies contract everything out to security companies. The people working security are just basically all entry level jobs and nearly everyone Iâve seen is a recent immigrant as it has a low barrier to entry. They are not trained much. Like every other entry level job, some are good hard workers, others are slackers. Now, the entry level security guards are basically not allowed to do much. To be able to physically confront anyone they need to take LPO courses. These people become shift supervisors quickly as there is large turnover.
Most of the retail theft we see is from addicts who canât pay for their stuff anymore so the dealers send them in to steal as much product as possible to resell on the same corners theyre selling product. It sucks for everyone! If youâre working retail you donât want to be watching out for thieves all night. You donât want to be naturally suspicious of people. But that guy who has $800 worth of steaks, lobster and baby formula in their cart? Yeah, thatâs not being paid for.
Wanting to detain someone and actually doing so are two different things though. Iâve seen security guards get maced in the face before. If they are there because they are addicted to drugs and you are what is stopping them from accessing more drugs, they might be violent. Few security guards, never mind normal store owners/workers will want to put themselves in a possibly violent situation. And my only experience is Canada where guns are very rare compared to the USA as a whole.
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Serious question, how much is shoplifting baked into the price of retail goods in San Francisco? Inflation is at 8.6 percent right now, so that sucks as a baseline. Are we talking about literally pennies on hundreds of dollars worth of goods, or something more substantial? I can see it sucking if youâre struggling to make ends meet and you think that the person shoplifting is making your shit more expensive.
Sheâs a one trick pony as the patron saint of cancelation so she lives or dies based on if someone can scrounge up someone that could be considered canceled. Greenwaldâs more versatile.