(Sorry if this is not obvious sarcasm. To be sure, I think a city where residents try not to make eye-contact with the man possibly dying in the street is a failed city, it seems the solutions on the other end of the spectrum are tragic as well. Is the middle-solution going back to pre-Reagan mental hospitals?)
I convinced there are economic benfits (not just moral ones) of helping these people. The problem is that cities that work to help end up having the economic benefits stolen by cities that offload thier people in need on others. There is a sort of "prisoners dilema” game theory problem here that I think can only be solved at the national level.
The moral question of giving them a chance to recover even though it is unlikely to succeed still remains.
If you think drugs aren't available in jails, I have a bridge to sell you. The effectiveness of jail time on drug cessation is marginal at best. We need better options.
> Economically speaking, most of these people will never be productive members of society again no matter how many resources we throw at them.
This is an incredibly strong statement for which I know no evidence exists because we have never tried. Additionally, the bar for productive member of society is fairly low and is not the only goal. Simply getting some people into a stable, semi-functional state can improve their lives and reduce the long term state costs.
> Fentanyl destroys your mind fairly quickly.
I know an individual with significant brain damage resulting in severely impaired mental functioning who is a productive member of society. He does require ongoing support from the state and can't live independently, but does have a job and does contribute some back to society.
I doubt we will see 100% recovery rates in our lifetimes, but don't be so quick to write people off before we even try.
Practically speaking, drug use and living on the street form a vicious cycle. Each increases the likelihood and severity of the other.
They are available, just much harder to get.
> This is an incredibly strong statement for which I know no evidence exists because we have never tried.
This is from my own heartbreaking experiences. Once you get down that path, your chances of coming back are very slim even with lots of help. "Productive" means able to get a job at McDonalds or a grocery store, both of which are desperate for people but neither of which would consider the guy at the homeless encampment next door. It just isn't going to end well.
> I know an individual with significant brain damage resulting in severely impaired mental functioning who is a productive member of society. He does require ongoing support from the state and can't live independently, but does have a job and does contribute some back to society.
Not the same thing at all. If the individual you know is coasting down Highway 99 on a shopping cart while having a very bad Fentanyl trip, then I guess they are similar? These people are gone in a way that someone with brain damage isn't.
> I doubt we will see 100% recovery rates in our lifetimes, but don't be so quick to write people off before we even try.
We are trying it right now. We have a whole homelessness industrial complex that has sprung up to collect and spend massive amounts of resources on trying to help these people ($100k/year/person is actually an underestimate). They aren't making progress, perhaps intentionally (so they can continue collecting the money) but probably because progress can't be had here. It might be better just to cut our losses and focus on making sure people don't fall into the homeless/drug abuse trap at all, because once there coming back is really really hard.
> Practically speaking, drug use and living on the street form a vicious cycle. Each increases the likelihood and severity of the other.
Yes.
Which seems like a huge part of the problem to me. We need better reintegration paths that make the climb back easier.
> These people are gone in a way that someone with brain damage isn't.
I don't know what you mean. It's harder to be gone than severe brain damage. It took several dedicated foster families and ongoing support from social workers to get him to the point he is at. He has a job, but he can't function independently and didn't find it on his own.
Severe drug addiction does have different challenges, but the possibility of reaching a stable, productive place is always possible.
> It might be better just to cut our losses and focus on making sure people don't fall into the homeless/drug abuse trap at all, because once there coming back is really really hard.
You are absolutely correct about the second part. Providing support for those on the edge is the most effective way to reduce homelessness. The longer you are on the street and the worse conditions you are living in, the harder it is to climb back out.
However, I think that writing off people is a mistake in the long run. If you let the problem fester, it gets worse and costs more to deal with.
> We have a whole homelessness industrial complex that has sprung up to collect and spend massive amounts of resources on trying to help these people ($100k/year/person is actually an underestimate). They aren't making progress, perhaps intentionally (so they can continue collecting the money)
There is a problem here, but I'd also be cautious to paint the whole industry with such broad a strokes as there are some very dedicated, selfless people working in that field. Unfortunately, I think those are the people who are more likely to burn out and leave when they see poor results (I've known a several who have gone this route.) This leaves the less scrupulous / caring to lead the industry.
I think those poor results there are due to structural problems around housing access, affordability, the path back to employability and the mental health system that we need to solve on a much larger scale. Only the can we start seeing significant progress at the smaller scales that these organizations work at.
I guess we’ll find out.
Assuming that there are legitimate grounds for arrest, this is what it means for police not to do their jobs. AFAIK, there is no "aw, what's the use, anyway?" exception.
‘Keep the streets safe!’ ‘Stop scaring people away by standing around all the time when there is no trouble!’ ‘Enforce the law!’ ‘Don’t arrest grandma because she was driving drunk, you’re scaring the old people’
They pragmatically have to pick and choose what to do based on what actually works. If the DA won’t prosecute something, arresting someone for it is just a bunch of paperwork, time, and effort that doesn’t accomplish anything most of the time, so will get deprioritized.
If the police were refusing to do their jobs, ultimately it would be the city council held to account, and you’d see rather different types of political pressure being applied.
It seems instead that folks want a different DA.
How we got there and whatever finger pointing was happening and if it was justified is of course part of the debate we’re having.
It’s called discretion. It’s also used to not arrest someone who may technically have committed a crime, but for when it would be a injustice/unfair/politically untenable to arrest them for it.
It’s not supposed to be abused of course, but people are people. It would be impossible and undesirable for them to no have it however, in real life. You’d end up with the worst of Barney fife type behavior at the best.
Did they quit? If they are still recieving a paycheck then it is quite literally still their job.
Instead of doing their job, the police decided to try to do the DA’s job, which is deciding which cases should be prosecuted.
But if they are doing the rest of their job, but not arresting people for crimes the DA won't charge, that is doing their full job.
Yet the stats tell a different story as prosecution rates don't back that up.
So what actually happened is that the cops aggressively campaigned against this DA and then threw a hissy fit when the DA won and decided to stop doing their jobs and blame the DA for it.
A friend of mine recently (lives in SF) had a mentally ill, homeless man try to set his dog on fire. Literally took out a lighter and tried to light him on fire while they were standing at a bus stop.
When called, the police did the right procedural things, but noted that since the animal had not been killed, it was unlikely any charges would likely be persued by the DA. They offered to call animal control however if he wanted, which they did.
The animal control officer related a recent situation where a mentally ill homeless man had picked up a small dog being walked by it’s owner, and had smashed it into a wall repeatedly. The dog needed to be euthanized. The DAs office declined to prosecute.
Theft and property damage has skyrocketed in SF recently as well. So that prosecutions stay flat doesn’t tell the proper story.
The DA in SF has always in recent memory been this way - it isn’t JUST Chesea, but boy does he seem to be a good example.
That said, don't give the police a pass here. They have been actively hostile to the DA and spent a lot of money opposing this election. Their attempts to pass the buck to the DA for their failure to make arrests is a talking point that is part of their opposition to the DA. While the DA shares some blame for the rising property crime rates, the police share some blame for the lowered prosecution and conviction rates since the DA is dependent on the police to bring them strong, winnable cases.
In reality, I think that both the DA and the police should be held to account for letting politics interfere with their ability to work together to solve issues that are their joint responsibility and require cooperation. Unfortunately, it is harder to hold the police accountable than the DA.
> When called, the police did the right procedural things, but noted that since the animal had not been killed, it was unlikely any charges would likely be persued by the DA.
Did they arrest the attacker, gather sufficient evidence and refer the case to a prosecutor? Or did they assume the case wouldn't be prosecuted because that assumption made their job easier?
So instead of doing their job, they tried to do the DA's job instead. If they had still made the effort, but warned you it was likely to go nowhere, that would be entirely reasonable. They had justification to arrest the individual and try to get them connected with mental health services even if the DA declined to prosecute.
Instead, the police showed up and blamed someone else for why they wouldn't do their jobs.
None of this is to defend the choices the DA made about prosecution, but those choices don't absolve the police of the responsibility to do their jobs.
But they don’t do that, because maybe they really are lazy assholes.
It's the same thing they do everywhere else. Here in Austin the police do absolutely nothing even when you have hard evidence of someone committing a crime, partially because the police union's realized they could use 'doing nothing' as a bargaining chip for larger budgets. It's maddening that you can simply not do the job you're paid to do and use that as a way to get paid more.
Why are we taking the police narrative at face value? It’s usually not correct.
The officers choosing to do nothing are guaranteeing a given outcome with inaction.
This happens all the time. If you're an alcoholic no doctor is going to give you a liver transplant.
I personally know several dentists who will not work with meth addicts because they feel it's unethical to take money to fix someone's teeth when they know full well that person is just going to destroy them in short order.
And the new DA should likewise be judged. District Attorney is at its core a political job, and being able to win over/beat an antagonistic bureaucracy is one of the requirements.