A timely warning from John Farnam about homelessness and crime

We've met shooting and self-defense instructor John Farnam in these pages before.  He's just published a training note that I think is important for all of us who live in, or visit, major cities.  He begins by quoting a correspondent in Salt Lake City concerning its problems with the homeless.

‘We must separate drug dealers and other ‘real criminals’ from the homeless….,’ or so goes the party line.

Yet, when talking with local police officers, you’ll hear a completely different story! They’ll tell you about ‘the homeless’ breaking into parked cars and houses, urinating in public, defecating on front lawns, assaulting people in public places, stealing everything that isn’t nailed down, etc.

The ‘homeless’ are the ‘real criminals!’ They are just the bottom rung. Drug-dealers are slightly more enterprising!”

John comments:

Denver, LA, San Francisco, and a dozen other liberal-run metro areas all share this same manufactured “problem.”

Downtown areas have become so crime-ridden and dangerous that tourists now hesitate to go there. Cities then desperately fight to keep these areas “safe,” the only way they know how: a “wall-to-wall” police presence, particularly on weekends. That, of course, leaves no police for the rest of the city!

Some cities, like Detroit and Philadelphia, have given up! Once-lively downtown areas there are now mostly boarded-up.

It’s the trend!

“Catering to criminals,” a liberal linchpin, is rotting once-grand cities, from the inside out.

There's more at the link.  Highly recommended reading.

Of course, the homeless are often violent towards each other.  As one Fresno, CA activist pointed out earlier this year, "we are starting to see an increase in client violence because it is kind of like the street justice, they are taking care of their own out on the street".  This is, in turn, producing a backlash from residents of those cities.  Just yesterday, an as-yet-unidentified motorist deliberately ran over three sleeping vagrants in Tulsa, OK, killing one.  That's far from the only so-called "hate crime" directed against the homeless - and the problem isn't restricted to the USA, either.

One can argue ad nauseam about the causes of and solutions for homelessness.  The fact remains, it appears to generate or exacerbate a great many social ills, including crime and violence.  Those living within reach of the problem need to be aware of that risk, and conduct themselves accordingly.

Peter