What the fuck is wrong with you, Austin?

[royiv 9157]

1 minute ago, Deej said:

I'd didn't say that, but go ahead. The bleeding hearts think it's better to let them deal with their problems on their own than forcibly push them to mental health services. 

Hypothetically, where would you forcibly push these folks to? Where do these programs exist? Seriously, please tell me where these services exist. There's a huge need. We could even just start with the people who want them and work down from there.

[ztejas 43263]

Y'all need to keep in mind that a lot of these people don't want help. 

[royiv 9157]

Just now, ztejas said:

Y'all need to keep in mind that a lot of these people don't want help. 

That's a cop-out. Many do and can't get it. Let's start there and then figure out how to help those that don't want help. 

[Deej 76564]

Just now, royiv said:

Hypothetically, where would you forcibly push these folks to? Where do these programs exist? Seriously, please tell me where these services exist. There's a huge need. We could even just start with the people who want them and work down from there.

It doesn't matter. It's damn near impossible now to commit people against their will. 

I can point you to people I know who can't force mentally ill family members into help, if you'd like.

[YGIFS 19449]

I don't remember the details, but about 6 years ago...I was helping a friend at the UT School of Social Work get some traction with the City of Austin.  This was when the homelessness issue was really starting to take front and center with Council.  And the School of Social Work was one of a few finalists to get this challenge/matching grant from (and I'm probably getting it wrong) the Ford Foundation.  And it was like city puts up $1mm and Ford matches it of 1:2 or 2:1.  Anyway, it was a sizable grant for one of our smaller CSU's on campus.  

The idea was that they would pay for a few dozen social workers to canvas the city to basically census and triage the homeless population.  I think the city portion would have paid for them to have security or city-level professionals for protection.  Anyway, of the ~4k or so, who is temporarily homeless for financial reasons (just gone done couch surfing), who is moderately mentally ill/seriously mentally ill/dangerously mentally ill, addiction issues, and then who is and/or also a veteran.  So basically triage them into categories for purposes of treatments, resources, public safety threats, who just needs a place to crash, who will always be homeless by choice, etc.  

So they pitched Council or maybe it was just the Mayor's office and they said no.  At the time, I was just in shock.  But I now know in hindsight it was to help hide the grift.  But one thing I remember clear as day was a reason cited for not wanting these college students out in the field categorizing homeless was it may ostracize some vulnerable populations and prioritize others.  And they cited Veterans.  If Veterans were to get preferential treatment for their homelessness, it could be perceived as unfair.  And my friend at the SoSW was so infuriated.  The whole point of identifying actual veterans was to help the City of Austin help them BY NOTIFYING THE FUCKING VA and getting them the care they've been disconnected from.  But nope, a few nights in an old motel was apparently the smart move.  Fucking clownshow to this day.  Hundreds of millions down the drain with only more broken people to show for it.  

[royiv 9157]

4 minutes ago, Deej said:

It doesn't matter. It's damn near impossible now to commit people against their will. 

I can point you to people I know who can't force mentally ill family members into help, if you'd like.

Great. What about the people who do want help and can't get it? Can we start there? Please point me to where there is a glut of these services.

[MAUFRAIS 6573]

Maybe the people who wanted help got it and aren’t homeless anymore.

[Deej 76564]

11 minutes ago, royiv said:

Great. What about the people who do want help and can't get it? Can we start there? Please point me to where there is a glut of these services.

You know the majority of the homeless don't want mental health assistance. Stop with your bullshit. 

[Deej 76564]

14 minutes ago, royiv said:

Great. What about the people who do want help and can't get it? Can we start there? Please point me to where there is a glut of these services.

OK, Adler. 

[YGIFS 19449]

1 minute ago, Deej said:

You know the majority of the homeless don't want mental health assistance. Stop with your bullshit. 

Dude, I get your point.  I share your frustration.  But I don't think 51%+ of homeless don't want mental health assistance.  Particularly if you include addiction treatment in that umbrella.  A lot of them don't know they need help because they are that far gone.  Based on the very limited data set we got from City of Austin before we chimed in on the 2018 affordable housing/homeless bond issuances, was about 20-30% are of the "I don't fucking care, I wanna live in the streets and get fucked up forever."  So I'd hazard to guess the rest is 37% "I need help but don't know where to go" and 37% "I don't need help, I need a purple spaceship to the Moon" level of disconnected.  It's not surprising that one of our more vulnerable populations doesn't know it's vulnerable.  Go to a serious dementia care center, many of those Seniors don't even understand that they need care.  They'd drive off in the facility's van if you'd let 'em.  

Our health care system is the envy of the world until you get specific.  
"I have cancer and am off to America for treatment!"  

-Well done my friend, that's the best option.  You'll be better in no time

"I have serious mental health issues and am off to America for treatment!"

-Yeah, my friend.  That's not really their jam.  

[Deej 76564]

Most addicts are in denial. 

[YGIFS 19449]

But they can still be helped, brought off the street, and no longer remain a threat to others.  It's what Jesus taught me anyway.  Well, I mean not directly.  I'm kind of in like a correspondence class with him right now.  I don't think he does Zoom.  I mean, he can.  But I think he dislikes it as much as I do what with the hair has to look right in the shadow and all that.

[chainsaw 9838]

Have you all actually ever known someone who has become homeless? I knew some. Most (fortunately) found their way out but mainly their path was only feasible because they weren't ever suffering from severe paranoia illnesses.

The ones I knew got to homelessness because of a combination of bad financial conditions (sometimes their fault, usually not), bad interpersonal skills (usually their fault but also heavily influenced by untreated mental or emotional issues), and of course bad decisions (same deal, often drugs or alcohol are involved). A homeless person is a guy (or woman) who ran out of friends and family to look out for them.

That's not something that happens abruptly. One of the guys I knew was taken in by an old friend but got kicked out after he blew up over something completely stupid. Rinse and repeat. They wear out the patience of the few people in their lives who were willing to try to help them out of a rough patch until the grim reality sets in that it's not a "rough patch" the guy is spiraling and will drag you down with him if you let him.

So their calls get ignored, unreturned, and soon enough they have nowhere to turn but strangers and charities. If (and it's a HUGE if) they have the self-awareness to recognize that they have hit rock bottom they still have a long, difficult road ahead of them. If there's addiction involved, they need to get clean (unrealistic for most people without a support system). If there's mental illness whether it's aggressive schizophrenia or perhaps something more easily masked like bipolar disorder, they need medication, therapy, and competent care. Good luck finding that in Texas, or really anywhere in the US, if you're broke.

Until they can show with consistency and credibility that know how to behave, nobody is going to want to be around them. Fortunately for the people I knew, they were charismatic, smart, and resourceful. One quit drinking forever. Another was put in touch with a support group for his specific type of mental illness and got access to the medication he needed to quit being so volatile and downright terrifying. Took them years to slowly rebuild trust with their families, who eventually reduced their guardedness around them from a DEFCON 1 to a DEFCON 3. Just enough to convince them to help get them back on their feet. Showers, food, shelter. Then rides to job interviews and to jobs. Community college.

Another factor: bad influences. Those fucks can really fuck up a man's life. Drinking buddies, drug dealers, abusive exes, they all like clockwork would drag them back into their old habits when they were first trying to avoid fucking up their lives. The "real world" can be just brutal.

Anyway, I just want y'all to remember that behind almost every involuntarily homeless person you see is a trail of people that he or she have severely disappointed or fucked over to the point of having to kick them out and cut off all contact. People utterly unequipped to handle serious mental illness or to manage a crippling addiction.

There are also plenty of "voluntary" homeless people. I have my doubts about how sincere they are about that. Or more precisely, my doubts about how sound of mind they are as they claim to be homeless by choice.

A lot of proposed solutions are well-intentioned but ultimately the government's hands are tied because the only effective solutions require more power than the government has: the power to control and influence the behavior of a class of people who, almost by definition, are incapable of being controlled or influenced by typical means (otherwise they would abide by the laws and customs of the society in which they interact). That's a longwinded way of saying the government needs atypical control and influence that, for freedom and anti-tyranny purposes, the government doesn't (and shouldn't) have.

And so, the government can't really intervene with these people until after the firefighter has been stabbed.

[TKthunder2 4980]

This is an easy solution.

Step 1: Buy more overpriced hotels
Step 2: Let them sit vacant for years
Step 3: Pay me my consultants fees to find out Step 3
Step 4: Homelessness solved

[texasdago 7553]

So, I was thinking about this on Monday when we went over to Radio Coffee and noticed the tents starting to show up again under the overpass at Ben White/Manchaca... I haven't heard our new mayor say squat or do anything about the homelessness issues or camping issue lately.  Like, not much of anything at all.  Am I missing something?  Say what you will about Adler but at least he was communicating with people.  Is Watson just getting sloshed at Cisco's?  What gives...

[Samson's Wig 3180]

On 5/29/2023 at 9:42 AM, royiv said:

Mental health, drug rehab, comprehensive counseling you say? That all sounds great, but you do realize what country you live in, right? Those things don't exist except for the wealthy. There's a reason a lot of those people, many of them veterans who served our country, are on the streets.

And that reason?  The ACLU.

[YGIFS 19449]

You’re right.  People will blame ‘defund the police’ or some shit.  But they are more visibly dense camps on roadsides again.  And Watson, who got a lot of private sector support to help finally improve this issue, has been awfully quiet as of late.  
 

always pleasant this time of year since the group shit sites start to stink in the  heat as well.  

[Wally Pryor 5244]

The camps aren't going anywhere. And they're going to continue to grow and grow. Accept it and know that's there not a thing that you can do about it. 

But what you can do to save a life and some misery for yourself is to shut it down to about 30 on any Ben White access road between Lamar and 35. The homeless dudes just come out of nowhere and walk across the road, vehicles be damned. Another guy got mowed down on Banister and Ben White last week. It happens about every three months. Be mindful of how you drive in that area or you could be part of the next fatality.  

[sidis 9748]

2 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

And that reason?  The ACLU.

https://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ronald_reagans_shameful_legacy_violence_the_homeless_mental_illness/

https://www.aging.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/reports/rpt681.pdf

 

[YGIFS 19449]

Just got the Watson Wire newsletter.  stuff about the train, austin energy, and the leg session.  Nothing on homeless, not even the severely injured fireman.   This is fucking weird, even for Austin.  If you don't follow him on LinkedIn, I know it sounds lame...but the newsletter is usually pretty insightful.  between that and Austin Monitor, it's much more insightful than statesman/nextdoor/chronicle combo.  But you assholes put this bug in my brain so now I gotta wonder why the fuck he's so quiet on such an issue he was, in significant part, elected to handle better.  

[Samson's Wig 3180]

49 minutes ago, sidis said:

https://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ronald_reagans_shameful_legacy_violence_the_homeless_mental_illness/

https://www.aging.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/reports/rpt681.pdf

 

No doubt Reagan and the congressional R's are responsible for gutting crucial funding, which remains a major issue to this day, and they deserve all the heat for that.  State politicians deserve their fair share as well.  Here in Texas the waitlist for the state hospitals is atrocious, all while we sit on a giant rainy day fund.  It's stupid.   However, the ACLU is responsible for making involuntary commitment damn near impossible.  While well-intentioned, their actions have as much or more to do with the volume of mentally ill people on the streets today than the lack of funding.  You can't force these folks to get help, and without that stick, many won't get it.  Then you have cities like Austin, where the complicated scales of justice and fairness rarely tip towards reason, and you have a DA who refuses to prosecute these individuals just about anyone, perhaps with good reason due to mental health issues, but is just fine releasing them back on the streets to attack another innocent bystander rather than have them wait for a hospital bed in a jail cell, which sucks for them but is better for society.  There has to be a way to force someone like that into treatment or otherwise get them out of society where they are clearly incapable of functioning and pose a threat to others.  The abuses of the past don't mean we can't find a humane way of dealing with sick people today.

The rock-throwing homeless piece of shit is back at it in the NW Hills area after having done countless amounts of damage to vehicles and injuring numerous people.  He's been arrested numerous times, only to be sent right back out there to harm people.  All you have to do is stop showering and act a bit nuts, and you too can get away with attempted murder in this town.  The end result of these policies is that he's going to kill someone, and/or he'll piss off the wrong driver and they'll kill him (which obviously isn't exactly helpful for this mentally ill man).   Doing nothing just encourages citizens to take matters into their own hands, which none of us should want.  These are wholly failed approaches that result in a worse situation for the sick individual and for the rest of society.  The answer to getting homeless people housed and cared for is involuntary commitment and treatment (not in all cases, obviously, just when medically necessary - which is extremely common in that community. Otherwise, we can all just continue volunteering at shelters and donating money to well-intentioned nonprofits, which will undoubtedly do some good for those few who seek help, and meanwhile the mentally ill homeless will continue to lead miserable lives and cause harm to our communities and never improve their situations.  It's all fucked and makes me angry just thinking about how screwed up it all is with little that can be done.  

[Guest]

Yeah, one reason I voted for Watson was for a sane approach to homelessness. His term is what, a quarter over now? Haven't heard much of anything.

Meanwhile, my wife has played rec-league volleyball for two decades at the rec center near House Park and finally said she isn't sure how much more she is going to do it because the issues going on in the parking lot after dark.

[Bozo_Casanova 26279]

Let's imagine for a moment that we had a huge, well funded city department with a charter to enforce the law, and yet that well funded city department wasn't enforcing the law.

Would you blame:
1) The person who chairs meetings of a council the department does not report directly to or
2) The department and its management

[Samson's Wig 3180]

18 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

No doubt Reagan and the congressional R's are responsible for gutting crucial funding, which remains a major issue to this day, and they deserve all the heat for that.  State politicians deserve their fair share as well.  Here in Texas the waitlist for the state hospitals is atrocious, all while we sit on a giant rainy day fund.  It's stupid.   However, the ACLU is responsible for making involuntary commitment damn near impossible.  While well-intentioned, their actions have as much or more to do with the volume of mentally ill people on the streets today than the lack of funding.  You can't force these folks to get help, and without that stick, many won't get it.  Then you have cities like Austin, where the complicated scales of justice and fairness rarely tip towards reason, and you have a DA who refuses to prosecute these individuals just about anyone, perhaps with good reason due to mental health issues, but is just fine releasing them back on the streets to attack another innocent bystander rather than have them wait for a hospital bed in a jail cell, which sucks for them but is better for society.  There has to be a way to force someone like that into treatment or otherwise get them out of society where they are clearly incapable of functioning and pose a threat to others.  The abuses of the past don't mean we can't find a humane way of dealing with sick people today.

The rock-throwing homeless piece of shit is back at it in the NW Hills area after having done countless amounts of damage to vehicles and injuring numerous people.  He's been arrested numerous times, only to be sent right back out there to harm people.  All you have to do is stop showering and act a bit nuts, and you too can get away with attempted murder in this town.  The end result of these policies is that he's going to kill someone, and/or he'll piss off the wrong driver and they'll kill him (which obviously isn't exactly helpful for this mentally ill man).   Doing nothing just encourages citizens to take matters into their own hands, which none of us should want.  These are wholly failed approaches that result in a worse situation for the sick individual and for the rest of society.  The answer to getting homeless people housed and cared for is involuntary commitment and treatment (not in all cases, obviously, just when medically necessary - which is extremely common in that community. Otherwise, we can all just continue volunteering at shelters and donating money to well-intentioned nonprofits, which will undoubtedly do some good for those few who seek help, and meanwhile the mentally ill homeless will continue to lead miserable lives and cause harm to our communities and never improve their situations.  It's all fucked and makes me angry just thinking about how screwed up it all is with little that can be done.  

'Too late to edit, but I should have credited JFK with the Community Mental Health Centers Act in the early sixties.  That's what emptied all of the government-funded hospitals.  Add on the lawsuits that made it extremely difficult to commit someone involuntarily, and the gutting of funding from the feds on down, and you get what we have today.

We prioritize autonomy above all else in America.  In general, I support this.  It's who we are and how we got here.  But sometimes, things like beneficence, justice, or just plain old ethics dictate that autonomy should take a backseat.  The homeless/mental health crisis is one of these times.

 

Edited May 31, 2023 by Samson's Wig

[Samson's Wig 3180]

Just now, Bozo_Casanova said:

Let's imagine for a moment that we had a huge, well funded city department with a charter to enforce the law, and yet that well funded city department wasn't enforcing the law.

Would you blame:
1) The person who chairs meetings of a council the department does not report directly to or
2) The department and its management

 

 

[demos 2992]

Is Watson just getting sloshed at Cisco's?

If you were mayor of this town, wouldn’t you?

(Personally I’d probably be looking for shrooms or acid).

[Bevo 13527]

5 hours ago, YGIFS said:

And Watson, who got a lot of private sector support to help finally improve this issue, has been awfully quiet as of late.  

Emma?

[YGIFS 19449]

No, Randy.  Randy Watson.  You'd probably know him better as Joe the Policeman from the "What's Going Down" episode of "That's my Momma"   But then the police, and the show, got defunded.  

Also, dibs on getting to pin the Rainey Street deaths on "the Sexual Chocolate Killer"  

boy's good 'n terrible.

[Bevo 13527]

4 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

No, Randy.  Randy Watson.  You'd probably know him better as Joe the Policeman from the "What's Going Down" episode of "That's my Momma"   But then the police, and the show, got defunded.  

Also, dibs on getting to pin the Rainey Street deaths on "the Sexual Chocolate Killer"  

boy's good 'n terrible.

I remember Coming to America but that's a weird reference: It's like referencing Silver Streak.

[YGIFS 19449]

Well I don't know a lot of Watsons, okay.  We were raised Amish.  

[ztejas 43263]

Which one of you assholes is walking on my neighbor's curing driveway sealant? 

[MissingInAction 24815]

If a mass shooter was gonna do any good...

[ChickenSandwich 9798]

5 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

No doubt Reagan and the congressional R's are responsible for gutting crucial funding, which remains a major issue to this day, and they deserve all the heat for that.  State politicians deserve their fair share as well.  Here in Texas the waitlist for the state hospitals is atrocious, all while we sit on a giant rainy day fund.  It's stupid.   However, the ACLU is responsible for making involuntary commitment damn near impossible.  While well-intentioned, their actions have as much or more to do with the volume of mentally ill people on the streets today than the lack of funding.  You can't force these folks to get help, and without that stick, many won't get it.  Then you have cities like Austin, where the complicated scales of justice and fairness rarely tip towards reason, and you have a DA who refuses to prosecute these individuals just about anyone, perhaps with good reason due to mental health issues, but is just fine releasing them back on the streets to attack another innocent bystander rather than have them wait for a hospital bed in a jail cell, which sucks for them but is better for society.  There has to be a way to force someone like that into treatment or otherwise get them out of society where they are clearly incapable of functioning and pose a threat to others.  The abuses of the past don't mean we can't find a humane way of dealing with sick people today.

The rock-throwing homeless piece of shit is back at it in the NW Hills area after having done countless amounts of damage to vehicles and injuring numerous people.  He's been arrested numerous times, only to be sent right back out there to harm people.  All you have to do is stop showering and act a bit nuts, and you too can get away with attempted murder in this town.  The end result of these policies is that he's going to kill someone, and/or he'll piss off the wrong driver and they'll kill him (which obviously isn't exactly helpful for this mentally ill man).   Doing nothing just encourages citizens to take matters into their own hands, which none of us should want.  These are wholly failed approaches that result in a worse situation for the sick individual and for the rest of society.  The answer to getting homeless people housed and cared for is involuntary commitment and treatment (not in all cases, obviously, just when medically necessary - which is extremely common in that community. Otherwise, we can all just continue volunteering at shelters and donating money to well-intentioned nonprofits, which will undoubtedly do some good for those few who seek help, and meanwhile the mentally ill homeless will continue to lead miserable lives and cause harm to our communities and never improve their situations.  It's all fucked and makes me angry just thinking about how screwed up it all is with little that can be done.  

This is wild. 
 

Just need to accept and accommodate. 
 

Key tenants of “harm reduction”

 

“Facilitate and champion autonomy of people who use drugs”

Edited June 1, 2023 by ChickenSandwich

[Armybrat 40736]

4 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

'Too late to edit, but I should have credited JFK with the Community Mental Health Centers Act in the early sixties.  That's what emptied all of the government-funded hospitals.  Add on the lawsuits that made it extremely difficult to commit someone involuntarily, and the gutting of funding from the feds on down, and you get what we have today.

We prioritize autonomy above all else in America.  In general, I support this.  It's who we are and how we got here.  But sometimes, things like beneficence, justice, or just plain old ethics dictate that autonomy should take a backseat.  The homeless/mental health crisis is one of these times.

 

I seem to remember something about the psychiatry profession claiming most of these mentally ill behaviors could be treated with the new “wonder drugs” without the patients having to be involuntarily  institutionalized. 
That gave the politicians their main impetus to empty out the state mental institutions.

[Armybrat 40736]

15 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

This is wild. 
 

Just need to accept and accommodate. 
 

 

Interesting comment in that thread:

Quote

Deanna Hodson

@deanna_hodson

May 24

Autonomy! We try to prevent people from jumping off roofs to commit suicide but allow people "autonomy" to publicly use drugs and collapse on the side walks. I just don't understand.

 

[Texas Jeff 1932]

Watson has had five months to begin to repair the city after eight years of Cabo Steve. It’s going to take a while.

[chainsaw 9838]

1 hour ago, ChickenSandwich said:

 

 

“Facilitate and champion autonomy of people who use drugs”

What's wrong with that, though? After a certain point, wouldn't you agree it's futile to get them to stop doing drugs and the focus should shift to incentivizing them to do so safely and in ways that won't divert EMS, ER, and other first responder resources?

[hayden_horn 11360]

11 hours ago, Texas Jeff said:

Watson has had five months to begin to repair the city after eight years of Cabo Steve. It’s going to take a while.

lol at watson doing anything but being austin's old white father

[dcar00 14035]

18 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

 

 

yes, considering a certain city council chairperson ran partly on this issue.  Maybe his campaign ads should have said "vote for me, I can't do anything about the homeless situation, my hands will be tied"

[ztejas 43263]

11 hours ago, chainsaw said:

What's wrong with that, though? After a certain point, wouldn't you agree it's futile to get them to stop doing drugs and the focus should shift to incentivizing them to do so safely and in ways that won't divert EMS, ER, and other first responder resources?

I agree in principle. But is there a safe way to do crack and meth?

It's almost impossible to find actual heroin anymore. All of it has fent in it unless it's scrip opioid pills (which I don't think is the doc of these people).

[dcar00 14035]

13 hours ago, ChickenSandwich said:

This is wild. 
 

Just need to accept and accommodate. 
 

Key tenants of “harm reduction”

 

“Facilitate and champion autonomy of people who use drugs”

"Drugs are cool dad.  you just have to know how to get the good stuff and not that trash the homeless people use."

[Bozo_Casanova 26279]

7 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

yes, considering a certain city council chairperson ran partly on this issue.  Maybe his campaign ads should have said "vote for me, I can't do anything about the homeless situation, my hands will be tied"

His hands aren't tied and I'm sure he's doing various things. But fundamentally this is a law enforcement issue and I have no idea why the very people who are the most worked up about homeless camps are the same ones giving the best paid police in the state and their union a pass for walking right past them and doing nothing. 

Edited June 1, 2023 by Bozo_Casanova

[Brisketexan 104601]

10 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

I have no idea why the very people who are the most worked up about homeless camps are the same ones giving the best paid police in the state and their union a pass for walking right past them and doing nothing. 

Ding ding ding.

Rewarding the police for functionally "going on strike" and refusing to do their job to blackmail the citizens and city to give them even more....well, f them.

[Samson's Wig 3180]

Completely agree regarding the police failing to do their job.  They're only one part of the system, though.  When the other parts will do absolutely nothing at all, there is plenty of blame to go around.  The police can arrest every homeless person in town over and over and over but it doesn't solve anything and doesn't get those folks the help they need.   Despite a couple of attempts to paint this with a partisan brush, it's possible to think the police in Austin are useless and sandbagging while at the same time lamenting the failings of the criminal justice system and mental health resources available to address things as well.  Our DA sucks, our police department sucks, and our city council sucks. All of this can be true without political sides coming into play.  Austin is a failed city on many levels, and the blame for that can be spread around widely, including up to the fuckery of the state government and its influence here.  But locally we're a complete and utter embarrassment of a shitshow.  Admitting as much shouldn't be shameful if you don't let politics get in your way.

[ztejas 43263]

52 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

But fundamentally this is a law enforcement issue

It really isn't. It's mainly a prosecution issue. I see cops all the time interacting with homeless. I mean that's probably most of what I see police doing in this city. 

The violent crime and property crime stuff is more of a law enforcement issue, imo.

[chainsaw 9838]

42 minutes ago, ztejas said:

I agree in principle. But is there a safe way to do crack and meth?

It's almost impossible to find actual heroin anymore. All of it has fent in it unless it's scrip opioid pills (which I don't think is the doc of these people).

"Safe" is not the same thing as "harm reduced."

When it comes to meth, while I don't think there's anything like narcan you can administer there are harm reduction steps you can take such as keeping them in a controlled environment to prevent them from hurting bystanders and then as far as medical care goes they use charcoal and laxatives, and sedatives where appropriate.

Crack overdoses I believe are also treated with sedatives. The goal is to avoid or minimize the impact of heart attacks, strokes, that kind of thing.

Heroin and fentanyl are treated with narcan.

Obviously, none of these drugs are "safe" except when they are prescribed by a responsible physician and it is not "safe" for people to buy them on the streets. But safe injection sites, methadone clinics, easy access to narcan, etc, they all help reduce harm and tend to have a much higher ROI than the "tough on crime" policies that result in criminal backlogs, increased overtime payments for cops (who don't fix or help shit anyway), and spreading EMS and hospital resources more thin.

The flipside of course is that when the cop unions don't get their way they throw little tantrums and try to orchestrate conditions that adversely affect the community and then point the finger not at their own sabotage but instead the policies they are childishly protesting. Couple that with underfunding the harm reduction programs and it's easy to end up with tent cities or sidewalks covered in heroin needles somewhere like San Francisco or Seattle and have a viral video of that used as propaganda that "tough on crime" is the only way to fix these problems even though we know that's not true and is simply a shakedown of the taxpayer by cop unions.

[Brisketexan 104601]

14 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

it's possible to think the police in Austin are useless and sandbagging while at the same time lamenting the failings of the criminal justice system and mental health resources available to address things as well. 

No disagreement with this summary.

[Bozo_Casanova 26279]

15 minutes ago, ztejas said:

It really isn't. It's mainly a prosecution issue. I see cops all the time interacting with homeless. I mean that's probably most of what I see police doing in this city. 

No offense but that excuse doesn't hang. They weren't prosecuting the homeless before the camping ban was rescinded, either (because what would be the point?), and now that the voters reinstated it we are right back where we were. What has changed is that the police are no longer telling folks to move along from high traffic and/or high visibility areas.  They are interacting, sort of, when there's a mental health distress call, agreed.

Edited June 1, 2023 by Bozo_Casanova

[Bozo_Casanova 26279]

27 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

Completely agree regarding the police failing to do their job.  They're only one part of the system, though.  When the other parts will do absolutely nothing at all, there is plenty of blame to go around.  The police can arrest every homeless person in town over and over and over but it doesn't solve anything and doesn't get those folks the help they need.   Despite a couple of attempts to paint this with a partisan brush, it's possible to think the police in Austin are useless and sandbagging while at the same time lamenting the failings of the criminal justice system and mental health resources available to address things as well.  Our DA sucks, our police department sucks, and our city council sucks. All of this can be true without political sides coming into play.  Austin is a failed city on many levels, and the blame for that can be spread around widely, including up to the fuckery of the state government and its influence here.  But locally we're a complete and utter embarrassment of a shitshow.  Admitting as much shouldn't be shameful if you don't let politics get in your way.

Agree with 100% of this, well said. 

[dcar00 14035]

21 minutes ago, ztejas said:

It really isn't. It's mainly a prosecution issue. I see cops all the time interacting with homeless. I mean that's probably most of what I see police doing in this city. 

The violent crime and property crime stuff is more of a law enforcement issue, imo.

you can also thank Uncle Geraldo...