Dealing with the Homeless

(photos not original to the article.)

"L.A. Investigating Alleged Patient Dumping," by Greg Risling, AP
March 24, 2006

Authorities are examining a surveillance tape that shows an elderly woman wandering Skid Row in a hospital gown and slippers as they investigate the practice of hospitals and police agencies dumping homeless people downtown.

Carol Ann Reyes, 63, of Gardena, was taken from a Kaiser Permanente hospital in Bellflower on Monday to the downtown area known as Skid Row, authorities said.

A surveillance camera outside the Union Rescue Mission showed Reyes walking from the direction of a taxi that had just driven away. She wandered the street for about three minutes before a mission staff member brought her inside.

City officials have been looking into the alleged dumping of homeless people in Skid Row, a ramshackle area downtown.

Several hospitals have acknowledged that they put some discharged indigent patients with nowhere else to go into taxicabs headed to the area because it offers a chance for getting services and shelter. Los Angeles police also are investigating whether other law enforcement agencies dump people without anywhere else to go downtown.

"We have been looking into homeless dumping for some time, and this (tape) gives us another example of what has been going on," said Frank Mateljan, a spokesman for the city attorney's office.

Diana Bonta, vice president of public affairs for Kaiser Southern California, said the hospital attempted to find a shelter for Reyes, but when that failed, it was determined that she would be taken to the Union Rescue Mission. Hospital officials are trying to find out why Reyes, who was in the hospital after suffering a bad fall, was left on the street still wearing her hospital gown and slippers.

The incident violated hospital policy and will not occur again, she said.

"We have a policy of treating our patients with compassion and care," Bonta said. "This should not have happened."

Andy Bales, president the Union Rescue Mission, where Reyes remained, said the incident was the third in the past week in which security cameras caught taxis dropping people in the area. The problem will continue until a coordinated discharge plan between hospitals and shelters is created, he said.

"We just can't drop people off like baggage," he said. "We can't have a society where these people have nowhere to turn when they need care."

State Sen. Gil Cedillo of Los Angeles, a Democrat, has introduced a bill that would prohibit any arresting agency from taking people who need drug treatment, mental health services or shelter outside their jurisdiction.

Los Angeles County officials are also considering establishing five regional homeless centers in an attempt to reduce dumping, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

The regional homeless centers plan would spread the responsibility of caring for the homeless to suburbs instead of concentrating it downtown, the newspaper said. Each 30-bed center would operate 24- hours a day and would accept people from hospitals, police and care providers. The goal would be to find the resident permanent housing and services such as mental health and substance abuse treatment, officials said.
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Okay, there's the front end. And now for the rest of the story.

I have a simple question: Why aren't these shitheads in custody? If they are engaging in criminal behavior, such as vagrancy or loitering, urinating/defecating in public places, illegal occupation of dwellings (squatting), trespass, weapons or drug violations, assault, illegal panhandling, why aren't they in handcuffs in the local jail awaiting booking, arraignment, trial, and disposition? There are laws to deal with these shiftless bums, so why aren't they being enforced?

If they are drug addicts, why aren't they involuntarily incarcerated for mandatory treatment, that is, after they've been arrested for possession or possession with intent to distribute. That would give them plenty of time to kick in jail.

If they are mentally incompetent, why aren't they in the care of their lawful guardians (and the legal guardians being made to execute the duties for which they are designated, or being forced to relinquish custody), or made wards of the state and then dealt with appropriately? If you're homeless and insane, then you need involuntary committal, disposition to a public treatment facility, where you are no longer a danger to yourself and/or others, where you can receive the care that is best for you, and that is in the express interest of the state to provide to you.

The problem here, and everywhere in the USofA these days is that it's okay to be homeless. It's okay to be a reeking panhandling bum, intimidating people on the street into giving up their money because you don't have the goddamn personal discipline to go out and get your own. The personal freedom that makes America so goddamn great has progressed to the ridiculous point where now it's okay to be a drug-addicted, alcoholic, mentally unstable, filthy, aggressive, angry loner who refuses to live by the basic rules society was founded upon. Now it's okay to be an undue burden on society, publicly.


Hey, if you want to live on your own, then go off and live on your own. Just don't ask me or anyone else for money. Eat your dinner out of the dumpster, if you want to live under the overpass. Get your clothes from the charities. And if you're a drunk or a drug addict, then you get everything that's coming to you for engaging in that kind of behavior, addiction, sickness, problems with the law, and problems with the criminals who prey upon people like you.

I pay taxes so that this kind of thing should not be taking place. Sure, I don't really like giving the government my money, but I consider it a civic duty, everyone's public duty for living in the society in which we live, to pay taxes. And I expect my taxes will go to something positive, like schools and hospitals and police and firefighters--and taking care of the goddamn homeless bums. Whether they're arrested, chased off, or committed, they should be taken care of. Get rid of 'em.

If a homeless person--let's be semantially accurate here, the proper word is "bum"--can stand at the downtown stoplight and harrass motorists for 7 hours a day for spare change, then he can put his ass to work at the car wash, or at the liquor store moving boxes, or delivering papers, sweeping the street, anything. But no, he doesn't want to be tied to someone else or answerable to anyone or anything. He wants his wine- and crank-fueled freedom, and society has just gotten used to having bums like him around. They're just another part of the urban landscape, like the streetlights and the bad public art. It's just the way it is, to have filthy, deranged shitheads clogging the city streets and sidewalks, with their grime-crusted hands out.

Go off and live in the woods if you want to be alone and free of society, taxes, bosses, whatever it is that has set you off. If you don't want to be alone, then clean yourself up and find some self-respect. Make your way in the world, like the vast majority of us do, every single day. Earn some money legitimately, respectfully, and don't you ever, don't you ever fucking give me the slightest bit of attitude about my eternal refusal to give you as much as a penny to further enable your irresponsible, non-contributory lifestyle. If you're a bum, you are absolutely worthless, utterly without any merit as a human whatsoever. No benefit, no value-added, nothing positive about you being on the planet whatsoever. You are a scavenger, a human buzzard picking at what everyone else has left. If you can't be bothered to contributed, then neither can I. I contribute to charities and causes, but I'll never contribute to self-centered shitheads who feel entitled, who are stupid enough to rant about their right to have a place as totally free urban urchins.