It's unsurprising. NYC elected a cop as mayor, and his only idea for solving the city's problems is more policing. It hasn't worked in the past, and it won't work now, but the media and real estate classes here keep demanding it anyway.
Why not just give these people free housing with assisted care on location? If we can survive on the street we can surly survive in a residential setting.
What will happen is they they will pump us full of drugs to sedate us and just keep sucking money out of the state and federal government so that these hospital owners can buy another house in Bermuda.
surely giving anti-psychotic drugs isn't tantamount to abuse in severe cases.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/07/tent-fires-are-o...
For these people who have severe mental illness, free housing with assisted care on location looks a lot like a mental institution. Without oversight they are liable to walk out of care and be back on the street. For some homeless, that's how they are on the street today. They might have gotten a delusion that leads them from disappearing from their families, and sometimes they find them years later living on the streets in a state of complete dissociation with reality, other times they never find them.
The agony induced by haloperidol was used by the Soviets to help their dissidents realize the gulags were much better places than the psycho prisons.
Houses.
> many homeless (not all) that menace pedestrians and businesses on a daily basis?
Houses.
You see, the answer is simple but there is just no will to do it because people do not care about the mentally ill. We scare people for no reason but their own ignorance. I would say 90% of the mentally ill would have a great remission of their symptoms if they had stable housing.
I am homeless, all I need is a simple fcking studio but even making a lot of money from disability I cannot afford one anymore and I get shut down by people who do not want to rent to me because I am on diability.
Poor people who are not mentally ill often do exactly that. Even some drug addicts can sometimes get together to rent a place to crash. But we're talking about the severely mentally ill here. They are unable to band together. I imagine that this is sort of by definition... those who's mental illness illness is mild enough that they can help themselves by working together... just do it. The remaining are on the streets.
Can we agree that different people have different urgent needs? I agree with you that you need a house. A mentally unstable person who can’t take care of themselves needs mental help. A person with hard drug addiction destroying them needs physical and mental help. Not all problems can be solved with free housing, just like not all problems can be solved with involuntary hospitalization.
That is unfair, as it implying that throwing houses at the problem will magically fix it. Houses would help, for some (many) cases, but it's a lot more complicated than that. Nor is it simple to supply those houses, and lack of doing so isn't just "not caring". It's hard. It's really hard.
The trope about "the Mayor is a former cop" makes for good political talking points but it's meaningless otherwise. In what way has NYC become any different since Adams took the helm?
We could force the state to put these people in front of a judge or jury if you prefer. California does--and my experience is that these people seem to get reasonable aggressive representation from the state.
It unfortunately won't change much.
There aren't enough beds--that's the simple truth. So, this isn't going to put even a dent into the situation.
Same with healthcare or housing or any other population wide benefit policy where benefit recipients can migrate in and net payers into the system can migrate out.
This is begging the question. You have to explain why you think that's bad, not merely describe what's happening.
Obviously you're assuming a shared sense that it's illegitimate to intern someone without a trial, but the whole point here is that some people think an exception should be made in this particular case. You're just reiterating the controversy.
I don't notice much difference with him compared to de Blasio, except de Blasio was universally not liked. Adams is better but surprisingly by not much.
> It hasn't worked in the past
Considering the 70s were a complete mess & a generation afterwards it didn't feel like that, whatever happened in-between seems to have improved things. And that improvement definitely did come from police to some degree.
Crime was at a historic low until recently with the advent of "defund."
By the way, "defund" was also about using some paramilitary police funding to fund social services and mental health calls like the ones that may be dealing with the people in this discussion.
Finally, recall that "defund" kicked off at the same time as a global pandemic and major economic shock, an affordable housing shortage, a wage shortage and a drug epidemic.
so are you pro-worker or not (I suspect you are pro-worker), cause it sounds like you're hashing out anti-worker rhetoric against your enemies
I hear this all the time from ppl, it's this automatic talking point that cops don't do their job, so we should just push dangerous slogans like defund - when cops are desperately needed in actually dangerous neighborhoods. It's a very privileged sentiment.
If the rail workers threatening a strike had a history of disabling crossing guards on railroad crossings to hit cars without warning, and their union didn't want conductors to get fired for that, I'd be against the railroad union, too.
Again, "defund", this scary slogan, attempted to wrap a lot of ideas up, most of which did not directly mean "eliminate the role of law enforcement". And, like I said and you failed to refute, substantial police budget cuts are quite sparse. So what's dangerous besides something that hasn't happened? What's dangerous other than cops quiet quitting to protest things that haven't happened?
Public sector employees are represented by the public in voting. The idea that they should bargain with the public is ridiculous when they are the public elected by the public. Any additional "protection" will dangerously insulate them from reform & accountability to the will of the public.
Public sector unions are fundamentally anti-democratic.
With a union, they're able to hold other citizens hostage. It's disgraceful and exactly why they're able to get humongous budgets for doing nothing, as you seem to admit.
Mind you this happens with teachers and other public sector employees. Pretty much inevitably.
Of course, the people who get up-in-arms about police never extend their logic to their own sacred cows.
We should probably nationalize our railroads, too, but that's a different discussion.
We've gone off the rails (!) but we might agree more than disagree. My stances:
Homelessness: housing needs to be more affordable, income inequality should be reduced through progressively higher taxes, and funding for mental healthcare and public safety should be increased.
Cops: major reforms required but they are a necessity in society.
Unions: reasonable for private sector, debatable for public sector, dangerous in the case of law enforcement.
Oh, and the root of our failures in government is the two party system which lowers morale for the public, promotes political extremism and encourages fear-based politicking instead of solution -based politicking.