Homeless people in California were found living in caves along the Tuolumne River before they were cleared out by the Modesto Police Department and volunteers over the weekend.nVolunteers with Operation 9-2-99 and the Tuolumne River Trust worked with police to clear them out, removing some 7,600 pounds of garbage from the area, authorities said.
“This particular area has been plagued by vagrancy and illegal camps, which have raised concerns due to the fact that these camps were actually caves dug into the riverbanks,” the Modesto Police Department said in a statement.
The cleared debris filled two truckloads and a trailer, police added.
Volunteers with Operation 2-9-99 and the Modesto Police Department participated in a joint clean-up operation along the Tuolumne River in Modesto, California, on Jan. 23, 2024. (Modesto Police Department)
Ahead of the cleanup, individuals residing in the caves and nearby homeless camps were told about the operation and informed of services to assist them, the department said. The caves were about 20 feet below street level, and some were fully furnished, indicating that vagrants had been living there for some time. Items found inside included bedding, belongings, food, items on a makeshift mantel, drugs and weapons, local news station KOVR reported.
“We had a hard time figuring out how they got so much stuff down in there, considering how hard it was to get it up the hill and out,” Operation 2-9-99 coordinator Chris Guptill told KOVR.
Guptill was one of many volunteers who participated in the cleanup. He said his group found eight caves in total, and this was not the first time they were occupied.
Homeless people were found living in caves like this one pictured along the Tuolumne River in Modesto, California, on Jan. 23, 2024. (Modesto Police Department)
“We really don’t have a known solution on how to deal with it,” Guptill told KOVR.
Tracy Rojas, a Modesto resident who lives near the caves, said it is dangerous for people to take up residence underground.
“If one of these were to collapse, it would be devastating,” she told KOVR. “This whole thing would come down and go into the water.”
A tarp and trash belonging to homeless people encamped by the Tuolumne River in Modesto, California, on Jan. 23, 2024. (Modesto Police Department)
The city of Los Angeles, about 300 miles south of Modesto, recently began recruiting up to 6,000 volunteers to count homeless people.
The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority-led street tally helps the county government’s efforts to tackle a homeless crisis, which has crippled the city with tens of thousands of people living on the streets, living in cars, tents and makeshift street shelters. These temporary homes have proliferated on sidewalks, in parks and other community areas.
The so-called “point-in-time” count aims to estimate how many people are homeless and what financial or medical services they may require for potential mental health conditions or from drug addiction.
This count comes as California residents have grown increasingly frustrated over lawmakers’ failure to deter the surging homeless population. Since 2015, homelessness has increased by 70% in Los Angeles County and 80% in the city. In 2023, officials reported more than 75,500 people were homeless on any given night in LA County, a 9% rise from a year earlier, and about 46,200 within the city of Los Angeles.
“Homelessness is an emergency, and it will take all of us working together to confront this emergency,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement, calling the count “an important tool to confront the homelessness crisis.”
Fox News Digital’s Lawrence Richard contributed to this report.
Chris Pandolfo is a writer for Fox News Digital. Send tips to chris.pandolfo@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @ChrisCPandolfo.
After years of California taxpayers begging, Gavin Newsom has finally put his foot down and decided to clean up San Francisco of the Human Facies, needles, and the homeless, but not for the local communities’ benefit. He’s doing this to appease the communist dictator Xi of China.
It seems like it was only a few days ago Newsom was in China licking that genocidal regime’s boots. Oh wait, it was only a few days ago. They must have a lot in common in how to move forward in how to lead their countries.
As a Transplant from California, it breaks my heart to see what Governor Newsom and the Democrats have done to that beautiful state.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
EXCLUSIVE — Denver’s homeless problem is so bad that one resident resorted to dumping human excrement left by his office on the steps of City Hall to convey his frustration.
Mike Johnston, the Democratic mayor of Denver, may be on the other side of the aisle, but he understood where libertarian think tank owner Jon Caldara was coming from with his viral stunt.
“I’ve known Jon Caldara for a long time, so we’ve had more than our handful of discussions, but I think he and I share the same goal, which is what we want is be able to get people housed and be able to get back clean, safe public spaces that everyone can access,” Johnston told Fox News Digital. “We know one of the reasons that happens is when folks are living out in tents and encampments, they don’t have access to public bathrooms. They don’t have access to trash pick-up. And so often they have no place else to drop trash and no place else to go to the bathroom, and so that’s one of the reasons why we know it’s not the right solution. It’s inhumane, it’s not good for the city.”
While a Democrat, Johnston calls himself a nonpartisan mayor for Denver. The deep-blue city — President Biden took nearly 80% of the vote there in 2020 — is one of many throughout the country struggling with skyrocketing living costs and accompanying homelessness.
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston took office in July and declared a public emergency on the city’s homeless crisis. (Getty Images)
“One of the things I love about this job as a nonpartisan mayor and about this task is people from all ends of the spectrum care deeply about this and getting it done,” he said, calling his plan “so ambitious.” “We were able to bring together really diverse coalitions to work on this.”
According to the Annual Homelessness Assessment Report released late last year, Denver had the 10th-largest homeless population among American cities in 2022 at nearly 7,000, and was fourth-worst among cities outside California. Johnston said he hears constantly from city businesses that have lost foot traffic and revenues, and even had to close down, because their downtown locations were beset by the various consequences of homeless people. To illustrate, Caldara shared photos of used needles, human waste and broken glass around his think tank office.
Johnston, who took office in July, immediately declared homelessness a public emergency and released a $50 million plan to get 1,000 people into transitional or semi-permanent housing by year’s end, according to CBS Denver. He then hopes to keep homeless encampments that have marred city streets closed for good.
“We now have one of the highest commercial vacancy rates of any city in America,” Johnston said. “We’re tied with San Francisco, which also has a very significant homeless population. So we know this is one of the major drivers that changes how people feel about their downtown. It affects visitors, affects tourists, affects who wants to work downtown, affects who wants to keep their businesses downtown.”
Johnston said the city has seen a 300% increase in homelessness in just the past five years, accompanied by more deaths of residents on the streets, and called it the top issue for voters and for his administration.
“We view that as a crisis on all fronts,” he said. “That also means more encampments. It means more businesses who have people living or sleeping in front of their business, or in front of their home, or in their public parks.”
Jon Caldara dumps human excrement on the steps of Denver’s City Hall in protest of the city’s homelessness policies. (Tracie Smith / Independence Institute)
Johnston acknowledged drug use, particularly from the fentanyl epidemic gripping the country, and mental health issues were contributing factors to homelessness, but said primarily the issue was the high cost of living in Denver.
“We believe you stabilize people in the same way that they got destabilized,” he said. “We first got them back into housing. We provide wraparound services on mental health, addiction treatment, workforce training and these are meant to be transitional units. So what we’re doing is bringing on hotels we’ve converted into micro units. We have open half-acre, acre vacant lots where we put up tiny home villages… The goal is these are transitional spots where people will come three, six months, get their lives back together, get a job, get some savings, be able to move into their own place, so they can pay rent and get back up on their feet.‘
“If we can get all those folks that are currently unsheltered into housing and can close those encampments and keep them closed and reactivate the city, we will have done what most other cities have struggled to do, which is actually to get people into housing and to get back vibrant, joyful, safe downtowns and no longer have encampments in them,” Johnston added.
He hopes Denver can be a model for the rest of the country in that regard.
Homeless people gather belongings as crews work to clean up a homeless camp in the RiNo neighborhood near the Platte River in Denver on May 17, 2022. (RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images))
Reached for comment on Johnston’s approach, Caldara scoffed.
“Another ‘housing first’ plan throwing $ at the homeless,” he wrote in a text message, suggesting instead, “Enforce the camping ban. Arrest people. Clean up streets.”
Caldara shared a column he wrote about how Denver should look to Colorado Springs, the second-largest city in the state after the capital, as a model on how to deal with the issue. He derided Johnston’s approach as “adorable” and said the housing units were effectively a safe place for the homeless “to lay down their heads at the end of a responsibility-free day of criminal activity.”
Colorado Springs, Caldara said, enforces its laws against drug use, theft, assault and public defecation in a way Denver fails to do.
“People should be able to walk around and go to work without stepping over bottles, puddles of urine and vomit. And human feces,” he told Fox News Digital last month.
Asked to respond to claims Denver doesn’t enforce the law, Johnston spokeswoman Jordan Fuja said he was committed to enforcing the law for everyone.
“But we know that law enforcement doesn’t have the capacity to respond to the city’s volume of 911 calls. That’s why his 2024 budget includes funding for the largest police recruit class since 2005, which will put us on the path to meet the full authorized strength of the police department,” she said in a statement.
Democratic San Francisco Mayor London Breed raised eyebrows among some progressives with a plan requiring anyone receiving welfare to submit to mandatory drug testing and treatment programs, but Johnston’s office said there would be no such requirements to live in one of the “micro-communities.”
“There will not be sobriety requirements to enter one of the micro-communities. Each community will be operated by service providers who create and maintain community rules that must be followed by those living in the community,” Fuja said.
For more Culture, Media, Education, Opinion and channel coverage, visit foxnews.com/media
David Rutz is a senior editor at Fox News. Follow him on Twitter at @davidrutz.
If the veteran who restrained the homeless man is prosecuted, it will establish a right to terrorize subway passengers and help revive the ‘anti-racist’ assault on justice.
Daniel Penny is not going quietly to the slaughter. The 24-year-old Marine Corps veteran who took action when fellow subway passengers were being threatened by a maniacal homeless person has lawyered up and will need all the legal help he can get if he hopes to avoid spending decades in prison.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has assigned Joshua Steinglass, a veteran prosecutor who led the trial team in the case that prosecuted former President Donald Trump’s family business, to conduct the probe that will determine whether Penny will be put on trial for killing Jordan Neely. But the decision won’t be made in a vacuum. The liberal commentariat is already damning Penny as the civilian version of Derek Chauvin. Leftist politicians such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., are accusing him of having committed a “murder” and Democrat and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is saying Penny’s actions were unjustified and demanding that “justice” be given Neely’s family.
Neely, the 30-year-old homeless person who died during an incident on a New York City subway train on May 1, had a record of mental illness. He had been arrested 44 times for criminal conduct and had an outstanding warrant for felony assault. On an F train stopped at the Broadway-Lafayette Street subway station in Manhattan, he allegedly began acting in a threatening manner to other passengers. It was at that point that Penny restrained him and put him in what appears on a cell phone video of part of the incident to be a chokehold.
In doing so, it could well be argued that he prevented Neely from committing another crime against a fellow passenger. Video released Sunday also seems to show Penny put Neely in a recovery position after Neely was subdued and appeared to be OK.
But the reason this case is already a cause Celebre, leading to leftist demonstrations in the subways and an endless stream of articles in corporate media, is that Neely’s fate is blamed on the supposed indifference of the public to the lives of the homeless.
Broader Racial Ramifications
Penny’s fate will, as Peachy Keenan wrote in The Federalist, be a test of whether young American men should dare to act courageously when others are in peril. But there’s even more at stake in this case. With Neely being anointed as the new George Floyd, the questions of whether Penny was right to restrain Neely or if he used inappropriate force to do so are merely sidebars to a broader narrative about American racism.
Floyd’s death became a metaphor for a myth about systemic police racism. Floyd’s actions the night of his death, his criminal record, and the fact that his body was full of what might have been a lethal dose of fentanyl were dismissed as irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was that he was a black man and that the cop who had, in an act of undoubted callous brutality, snuffed out his life was white. In the name of a belief, however mistaken, that Floyd’s death was just one of countless incidents in which blacks were being slaughtered with impunity, millions took to the streets in “mostly peaceful” riots that shook the nation.
More than that, it set off a moral panic in virtually every sector of American life that elevated the woke catechism of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to a new secular religion — since accepted by the Biden administration as mandatory for every government agency and department — that treats color-blind policies and even the goal of equal opportunity as forms of racism that must be eradicated.
Parallels to 1984 Case
Penny’s actions might, for those with a long memory of controversial New York subway criminal controversies, have more in common with those of Bernhard Goetz than of Chauvin. In 1984, Goetz opened fire on four black teenagers he said were trying to mug him on a No. 2 train. In an era of rampant crime, Goetz was largely supported by public opinion and acquitted of attempted murder, though he was fined and sentenced to six months in prison for illegal weapons possession. One of the people he shot, who was paralyzed in the incident, later won a $43 million civil judgment against Goetz that, as late as 2017, still hadn’t been paid.
As racially charged as that incident was, nearly 40 years later, we are living in a very different post-Black Lives Matter world. Any New Yorker who rides the subways knows how dangerous they have been made by authorities’ willingness to tolerate the presence of threatening people. But someone who isn’t a “person of color” is always going to be assumed to be in the wrong in any violent confrontation today, when the claim that America is an irredeemably racist nation is treated as inarguable by the chattering classes.
The prosecutor in the Kyle Rittenhouse case told him that “everybody takes a beating sometimes” and that he had no right to defend himself against lethal threats from armed BLM rioters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Penny’s chances of winning a trial in a New York City courtroom in 2023 are immeasurably lower than were Goetz’s.
Leftist Campaign Against Justice
As such, and regardless of the facts of the case, the campaign against Penny must be viewed as merely the next stage in a long-running leftist campaign against the justice system in which pro-criminal prosecutors like Bragg, elected with the help of leftist billionaire George Soros, are in the forefront. The sympathy for Neely, which is framed as compassion for the homeless, is akin to the so-called decarceration movement that takes it as a given that too many nonwhite people are being jailed for crimes and calls to defund the police.
The prosecution of the ex-Marine will not just establish a precedent that there is a “right” of a deranged, drug-addicted person to terrorize others with impunity. It will also, like Floyd’s death or that of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, or a dozen other equally dubious cases, be routinely cited from now on as proof of American racism and a reason for doubling down on woke policies that will further divide and racialize the nation.
Talk about our indifference to the lives of the homeless is gaslighting, since it is the policies of the political left that have allowed such persons to camp out on streets or in subway cars rather than be taken by police to shelters and hospitals. The freedom for the homeless that has been established in New York — where the “broken windows” policing of the administrations of Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg has been abandoned — means the rights of other citizens to a livable city are abrogated. When people like Neely can harass people into buying their safety with donations in honor of performances like his Michael Jackson imitations or violent rants, then the rule of law is dead.
Leftists believe that, like Floyd, Neely died for our sins as a racist nation. That is why he is now being elevated to the status of secular saint regardless of or perhaps even because of his dysfunction and willingness to threaten others. The Floyd case led to de-policing throughout the country as cops, the only defense minority communities have against the black-on-black crime that afflicts their neighborhoods, have backed down in the face of prosecutions and demonization.
Penny’s prosecution will now pump new life into the BLM movement and ensure that public discourse about race and crime will continue to ignore the facts in favor of ideological myths that will send America’s cities into even greater squalor, violence, and racial conflict.
Jonathan S. Tobin is a senior contributor to The Federalist, editor in chief of JNS.org, and a columnist for Newsweek. Follow him on Twitter at @jonathans_tobin.
From some of the world’s most iconic views to offering poop maps, San Francisco now disappoints on a Herculean level.
Check out San Francisco now.
Arguably the most beautiful big city in America looks more and more like a ghost town as San Francisco learns yet another painful real estate lesson.
The Wall Street Journal reported on a “fire sale” on the 22-story office tower known as Union Bank. The retail cost of this building should be around $300 million. However, the building will likely sell for about one-fifth; as little as $60 million.
Tenant vacancies have caused the commercial real-estate triage in the City by the Bay. But there is more to the story.
This particular building located at 350 California is 75 percent vacant. Moreover, renovation costs could exceed $50 million. Still a bargain if you could get occupants. Sadly, San Francisco’s government is pushing tenants away rather than attracting them.
“We’re all really on the edge of our seats to see the first office trade in San Francisco,” real estate services executive J.D. Lumpkin told the WSJ. A real estate lawyer warned the paper that the 350 California fire sale could prove “a bellwether for the value destruction in the urban office market nationally,” and not just for San Francisco’s (formerly?) ritzy Financial District.
To blame are high-cost structures based on pre-pandemic valuations, the local tech industry’s embrace of remote work, and what some people euphemistically call “quality-of-life issues.” That’s what honest people call “aggressive panhandlers, violent crime, and open-air drug sales and abuse.” Oh, and sidewalks festooned with poop and dirty syringes.
As I mention on my radio show from time to time, the last time I was in San Francisco, I had about $1000 worth of equipment stolen from my car along with a leather jacket I purchased earlier that day. When I went to the police station to file a report, the officer said “What do you expect me to do? Look for a well-dressed bum taking pictures?!”
I couldn’t help but laugh. But I made that chump fill out my report. I would be damned if they didn’t log the crime against me.
While admittedly the scamdemic caused some problems in commercial real-estate, this bubble burst was expected long before work-from-home hit.
The article continues,
According to the Journal, nearly “$80 billion worth of loans backed by U.S. office buildings come due this year,” and “most will need to be refinanced, at a time of higher interest rates and lower occupancy, threatening lenders with losses.”
City governments have been driving corporations out for decades. Homeless and drug addicts swarm formerly iconic downtowns. There was a time when city leaders kept the riff-raff from these areas. Now they condone it.
Corporate America responded.
Many corporations either have abandoned these cities or they plan to. And who could blame them? Clearly, a state without respect for law and order is no place for corporations to plant their valuable investments, i.e.. headquarters. As we see in San Francisco and elsewhere, when corporations leave, cities begin their death spiral.
Add these corporate losses to the loss of private citizens and it’s a one-two punch that could stop Gavin Newsom’s presidential run before it even gets started.
Remember, I recently predicted Newsom plans to run in 2024? Which is why he’s suddenly vested in the fate of San Francisco.
Operation De-Leftization
Things are so far-gone in SF, Newsom deployed the National Guard to assist in the policing and cleanup efforts.
Newsom unveiled the unprecedented collaboration between the California Highway Patrol (CHP), California National Guard (CalGuard), San Francisco Police Department (SFPD), and the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office (SFDA) to combat the escalating fentanyl crisis in the city. This move comes as a dramatic response to the severity of the situation, highlighting the urgency with which the state government is addressing the issue.
Newsom said his administration will focus on “dismantling fentanyl trafficking and disrupting the supply of the deadly drug in the city by holding the operators of large-scale drug trafficking operations accountable.”
“Two truths can coexist at the same time: San Francisco’s violent crime rate is below comparably sized cities like Jacksonville and Fort Worth—and there is also more we must do to address public safety concerns, especially the fentanyl crisis,” Newsom said.
“We’re taking action. Through this new collaborative partnership, we are providing more law enforcement resources and personnel to crack down on crime linked to the fentanyl crisis, holding the poison peddlers accountable, and increasing law enforcement presence to improve public safety and public confidence in San Francisco,” he added.
Newsom understands that Leftist Democrats look bad, particularly on drugs and crime.
“The San Francisco Police Department has been working hard to stop drug trafficking by making countless arrests and narcotics seizures,” said San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott.
“Despite our ongoing work and close collaboration with the District Attorney, the fentanyl crisis has contributed to hundreds of drug overdose-related deaths.
“We welcome the support of our state partners because when we work together we can make a significant difference to make our city safer.”
“The CalGuard is seeing significant success supporting multiagency task forces interdicting fentanyl across our state,” said Major General Matthew P. Beevers of the California National Guard.
“We expect to achieve the same success working with our partners in San Francisco,” he added.
Currently, the carnage of San Francisco rests squarely on the shoulders of Democrats. However, one or two more conservative-like initiatives and Newsom will be ready to throw his rainbow hat into the ring, If nothing else, reviving the city will give Newsom an actual accomplishment, something Joe Biden STILL doesn’t have. Of course, if Newsom fails, his campaign will be a “no go” at launch.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
After six of the most trying months in modern city history, nearly half of New Yorkers say the Big Apple is heading in the wrong direction — with worries about the economy and crime listed as top concerns. The new survey from the Manhattan Institute found that residents of the five boroughs are evenly split on the city’s trajectory — with 46 percent saying it’s heading the right way, while 42 percent say it’s off on the wrong track. Twenty-two percent of Gothamites surveyed by the conservative-leaning think tank’s pollsters named the city’s economy as their biggest worry, closely followed by 21 percent who said they were worried most about public safety. Another 12 percent named race relations as the biggest issue facing the city, while 11 percent said health care, two of the issues that have been at the forefront of city politics in recent months.
The survey comes as New York officials slowly reopen the city’s economy, which was shut down in a desperate bid to stanch the spread of COVID-19, a contagion that has killed more than 180,000 people across the country. The poll found that Manhattanites are the most satisfied with where they live and are the least likely to be looking to leave New York — with 48 percent saying they’re happy in their current neighborhood when asked where they’d live if they could live anywhere. Another 14 percent said they would pick another spot in the city.
However, it was a different story with respondents in The Bronx, where just 23 percent said they were happy in their current neighborhood and only another 17 percent said they wanted to live in another part of New York City.
Out on Staten Island, 26 percent told the pollsters they would move “somewhere far away from New York City” if they could pick anywhere to live — the highest percentage of any borough to say they would hope to abandon the metro area entirely.
New Yorkers give Mayor Bill de Blasio anemic marks, with just 45 percent saying they approve of the job he’s doing while 46 percent of voters say they disapprove. That compares to the largely stellar reviews offered for Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who got high marks from 73 percent of those polled. And despite weeks of protests and calls to defund the NYPD, 53 percent of New Yorkers say they approve of the police department, with 40 percent disapproving.
Distance also apparently made Gothamites’ hearts grow fonder for the oft-maligned MTA, which scored an astonishing 73 percent approval rating from New Yorkers despite ultra-low ridership numbers for the subways and commuter rails following the coronavirus outbreak.
Surveyors interviewed 1,485 New Yorkers selected by randomly dialing phone numbers. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 25: A view of a moving truck during the coronavirus pandemic on May 25, 2020 in the Queens borough of New York City. Government guidelines encourage wearing a mask in public with strong social distancing in effect as all 50 states in the USA …Cindy Ord/Getty Images
A string of moving trucks was spotted in Manhattan’s Upper West Side on Saturday, according to Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa.
“The mass evacuation of Upper West Siders from NYC is in full effect,” he told the New York Post.
Sliwa blamed the city’s decision to house hundreds of homeless people in the neighborhood’s hotels for the exodus.
“The moment I walked out on my block, near Central Park West, there was a moving truck. I asked where you going, and they said, ‘Virginia.’ They told me, ‘Curtis, first the pandemic hit us and now the quality of life is so bad,’” he recalled.
Sliwa spoke to others moving to places such as New Hampshire and Tennessee, and one young family told him they were headed to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
“They said in the last month, there have been so many disturbed people in the streets, aggressively panhandling, defecating, urinating — they leave the hotels and have no bathrooms to use,” he explained.
Following complaints from residents, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) promised August 17 to start removing homeless people from the city’s hotels and get them back into shelter facilities.
However, he did not give a timeline as to when that process would begin, according to Breitbart News.
Safety was more a motivating factor for people leaving U.S. cities than the coronavirus pandemic, global investor Barry Sternlicht said Tuesday during an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box.
“There’s hundreds of thousands of people looking for suburban homes, and I would say it’s not as driven by the Covid situation as it is safety and law and order, and that is now pervasive across the big cities of the United States, sadly,” he stated.
Six people were shot and two killed Tuesday into Wednesday across New York City, Breitbart News reported.
“The fatal and non-fatal shootings Tuesday-Wednesday follow a Monday on which seven shootings left 11 victims. And they follow a weekend which witnessed over 40 shot, five fatally, in de Blasio’s NYC,” the report said.
Sliwa explained Saturday that the people who lived in the area were those who elected de Blasio as mayor.
“It’s a progressive, liberal neighborhood. And now there’s a visceral hate here for him — the feeling that he has virtually singlehandedly destroyed this city,” he concluded.
You want to know what tyranny looks like here in the United States? I’ve got an example for you.
Tyranny looks like homeless people coming onto your property, putting up a tent, drinking and having sex out there and all without your permission. Then when you want to go out and tell them to leave, the police show up and arrest you. That is tyranny.
This isn’t something I’m just arbitrarily making up something either. This is actually what’s going on in America.
Right now, three states – California, Ohio, and Oregon are all going through a time where bills are being pushed that would force private property owners to relinquish their land rights and be forced to permit homeless people to camp out on their property as long as they want.
Then if they try to do something about it, it would be against the law and they could then be arrested. This is just absurd!
Two recent court decisions surrounding homelessness may have a big impact on people sleeping on city streets. While the U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to hear a case about criminalizing homelessness, an appeals court ruled encampments are allowed on private property.
Kevin Finn has worked to end homelessness in Cincinnati for 21 years. He cautiously applauds the two recent court rulings that address the criminalization of sleeping on the streets.
“I don’t think there’s anything helpful about making it a criminal act for people to be sleeping outside if ultimately what we want is for people to get into housing,” said Finn.
The Supreme Court will not hear a case on a ban against homeless people sleeping in public spaces. That now means there’s a constitutional right to camp in public.
“Filing charges, making things they’re doing illegal, making their police history longer is not helpful for the long-term goal,” said Finn.
Ohio’s First District Court of Appeals says governments cannot ban homeless encampments from private property — like Hamilton County did at the New Prospect Baptist Church in 2018.
“I don’t think it’s ever a good move to ever try to criminalize people sleeping outside,” said Finn. “But at the same time, a homeless person is three times more likely to die sleeping outside on the streets, so we need to find a balance where we’re not encouraging people to sleep outside in camps either.”
EXPLICIT WARNING ⚠️:
Look at the homeless epidemic in Los Angeles due to failed liberal policies, high taxes, and high crime.
Police are now demanding citizens allow homeless people to camp on their private property, threatening this man with arrest if he moves them. pic.twitter.com/2uBHBCZVuj
California officials are getting pretty worried that the coronavirus could hit the homeless camps in California. A homeless carrier would present peculiar problems for doctors trying to get the disease under control. The homeless lives in tight quarters and do not have easy access to good hygiene They also have a tendency to move around and thus could spread the disease much further than the typical person.
With the huge number of rats in the camps, it makes it even more likely that the disease could spread far and fast. And in cities the size of LA and San Francisco, a huge number of people could be affected.
Peter Beilenson, director of health services for Sacramento County said:
“I was thinking about it when I was in the … shower [on Thursday] morning, literally. We’ve been checking on the schools and on the nursing homes and on healthcare facilities, etc., and so I was thinking, ‘What about the homeless?’”
Beilenson and others said homeless people present unique risks and challenges for outbreaks of infectious diseases. Though the number of coronavirus cases remains at only a few dozen in the United States, homeless people, in particular, for multiple reasons could be vulnerable to both a quick spread of the illness and to more severe cases.
People living outdoors often do so in close quarters and lack the ability to maintain basic hygiene, including precautions such as hand washing. They may also face more danger from serious infection because of existing illnesses or frequent use of drugs or alcohol — factors with the potential to make a case of COVID-19 more severe.
Some homeless people also move often, making them both hard to reach for treatment and potentially increasing the spread of the virus if they are carriers.
“Unfortunately, we know that people living in crowded, unsanitary conditions are at increased risk for a variety of infectious diseases,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, professor of medicine and public health at UCLA. “This is definitely a population … with other chronic medical conditions, so should they acquire coronavirus, they are potentially at risk for more serious complications.”
Thank you open borders Democrats. Between 100 and 200 cases of leprosy have been recorded over the last year. A USC study discovered that most of the 187 patients with leprosy who were treated at its clinic between 1973 to 2018 came from Mexico where the disease is widespread. The disease is also found in Central and South America. The disease was unknown in the United States but is now making a comeback and it seems to be hitting the homeless in Los Angeles particularly hard.
Dr. Marc Siegel, a professor of medicine and medical director at Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Health is warning about the spread of disease as it comes across the American border undetected.
Siegel said:
“Given that, there is certainly the possibility of sporadic cases of leprosy continuing to be brought across our southern border undetected.”
The occurrence lead Dr. Siegel to issue a warning that the contagious disease that is spread by respiratory secretions and nasal droplets in close proximities will soon affect nearly 60,000 homeless people, 75 percent of whom lack temporary shelter or enough hygiene and medical care, in Los Angeles.
The Daily Mail reported that leprosy or also known as Hansen’s disease, affecting 250,000 people worldwide yearly, is caused by the bacteria called Mycobacterium leprae. It attacks the nerves in the body, thus results to the ‘peeling’ characteristic of the skin as per the CDC.
If the disease is left untreated, it could progress to paralysis of the hands and feet.
“I am much more concerned about the permanent disabilities that come with leprosy — given that 2 million to 3 million people are affected worldwide — than I am with the associated stigma,” Dr. Siegel said.
Leprosy occurring among the homeless in L.A. is a certain formula for instant public panic, he added.
Yet another epidemic transpired with the spiraling homeless problem in Los Angeles – typhus.
A report in June by the Los Angeles Times noted that the CatsUSA Pest Control surveyed areas outside of the City Hall and nearby buildings and cautioned that homeless people are creating “harborage for rodents.”
Maybe all of those celebs should look at what’s going on in their own backyard before lecturing folks in Alabama and Georgia.
Hollywood celebrities and a few production companies have decided that they are going to try to apply pressure to governments in states that pass pro-life laws by depriving them of their esteemed presence.
Really celebs?
Ok, then. Maybe y’all can step just outside of Tinseltown and hang back in Los Angeles with the ballooning homeless problem, feces on the streets, rats, and medieval diseases.
Seems like a fair trade.
The shocking conditions in downtown Los Angeles reveal just how much of a sh*thole the place has become, all because of “compassionate” leftist policies.
A decision made by the city council to not cap the total amount of property that homeless people could keep on Skid Row was announced last Wednesday. Some city officials saw the move as wrongheaded and that it would “only perpetuate the public health crisis that already exists” on there.
The streets of Skid Row have become home to around 4200 people in tents and shantytowns spread across 50 blocks.
…councilmen Joe Buscaino slammed the decision, saying: ‘The settlement will only perpetuate the public health crisis that already exists in Skid Row and will set a precedent for the rest of the city that will normalize encampments.
‘The city is sending a clear signal that we are turning the sidewalks in Skid Row into free, unlimited public storage, doing a disservice to the residents of Los Angeles, especially to those living on the streets.’
Images from the downtown area show trash piling up as workers struggle to keep the area sanitized. They are pictured wearing face masks among the dirt and grime.
Recently, a Los Angeles police detective was diagnosed with typhoid fever, a disease that was all but eliminated in the United States in the last hundred years. Most people that contract typhoid fever do so in underdeveloped nations where contamination of the water supply can occur. Several other officers that work in the same Central Division station are showing symptoms of typhoid fever as well. The Central Division polices downtown Los Angeles, including the increasingly filthy Skid Row area.
Dustin DeRollo, a union spokesman, said officers who patrol Skid Row ‘walk through the feces, urine and trash’ – conditions that ‘should alarm everyone and must be addressed.’
…
The police union has demanded better protective equipment for officers and called for the station to be regularly sanitized.
The Police Department said exposed areas of the Central Division were being disinfected and officials were reviewing the state’s ‘concerning’ report that found health violations at the station.
The building lacked an effective extermination program and had ‘rats/rodents, fleas, roaches, flies, gnats, mosquitoes and grasshoppers,’ according to the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health’s May 14 report.
There is also a growing rat problem, and those rats carry fleas that carry disease. Los Angeles has no plan to control the exploding rat population………..
ClashDaily’s Associate Editor since August 2016. Self-described political junkie, anti-Third Wave Feminist, and a nightmare to the ‘intersectional’ crowd. Mrs. Walker has taken a stand against ‘white privilege’ education in public schools. She’s also an amateur Playwright, occasional Drama teacher, and staunch defender of the Oxford comma. Follow her humble musings on Twitter: @TheMrsKnowItAll
Diseases once linked to the squalor of medieval living are back with a vengeance in California and other states with experts linking the diseases’ rise to an increase in the homeless population.
“In major cities in the U.S., we hear about increasing numbers of encampments and people living in squalor,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, according to the Los Angeles Times.“Those conditions are ideal for increase in vermin like rats.”
Fleas on rats are key to the spread of typhus. A typhus outbreak recently led to the closing of City Hall in Los Angeles amid concerns of rats in the building, the Atlantic reported.
“With increased rat density, diseases like typhus are very likely to occur,” said Dr. Lee W. Riley, an infectious disease researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.
Typhus cases in Los Angeles have risen from 13 in 2008 to 167from January 1, 2018, through February 1, 2019. Meanwhile, as reported by The Western Journal, homelessness has also been on the rise.
The danger is not limited to typhus. Washington state has been dealing with a rare diarrheal disease called shigella, spread by feces, and with trench fever, spread by body lice.
“It’s a public-health disaster,” said Jeffrey Duchin, health officer for Seattle.
Squalid conditions are cited as the root causes of disease outbreaks.
“You have constant activity that serves as a breeding ground for rats,”Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Association, near Skid Row in Los Angeles, told NBC.
She said “illegally dumping, food being discarded, accumulation of blankets and pillows, and human waste” is creating “Third World conditions.”
One expert said that the more streets are laden with garbage, the more rats thrive.
“Homeless populations increase and the amount of garbage that’s available on the street is increasing — the ability to transmit all this other stuff also increases,”said Stuart Cohen, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at UC Davis.
But as the homeless population swells, containing the garbage piles becomes difficult. The Los Angeles Daily News recently reported that city officials lost a round in court in their efforts to clean out homeless encampments.
“The hygiene situation is just horrendous”for people living on the streets, says Glenn Lopez, a physician with St. John’s Well Child & Family Center. “It becomes just like a Third World environment, where their human feces contaminate the areas where they are eating and sleeping.”
Lopez said the danger is not only to the homeless populations, but anyone in the vicinity.
“Even someone who believes they are protected from these infections (is) not,”he said.
Jack Davis is a free-lance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.
A combination of discarded needles and piles of feces on the streets of San Francisco has caused least one expert to say that the city’s slums are comparable to those in developing countries. Reporters with KNTV investigated what they referred to as the “diseased streets”of the city, and found that each of the 153 downtown blocks they surveyed — an area that encompasses playgrounds, hotels and government buildings — is littered with garbage. Included in this trash were at least 100 drug needles and 300 piles of feces.
Dr. Lee Riley, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, Berkeley, warned that not only do the needles cause viral diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis, but dried fecal matter can release airborne viruses like the rotavirus.
Advertisement – story continues below
“If you happen to inhale that, it can also go into your intestine,” he said, leading to potentially fatal results.
Riley, who has researched and written about conditions in slums across the world, believes that some parts of San Francisco may be worse than the world’s dirtiest slums.
“The contamination is … much greater than communities in Brazil or Kenya or India,” he said, while pointing out that in those countries, slums often serve as long-term housing, and thus, their residents work to maintain them.
But in San Francisco, he suggested that the homeless do not make an effort to keep the streets clean because they are forced to move around frequently.
Advertisement – story continues below
The situation on the streets of San Francisco is particularly dangerous for children.
“We see poop, we see pee, we see needles, and we see trash,” said Adelita Orellana, a preschool teacher. “Sometimes they ask what is it, and that’s a conversation that’s a little difficult to have with a 2-year old, but we just let them know that those things are full of germs, that they are dangerous, and they should never be touched.”
A’Nylah Reed, a 3-year-old preschooler, explained that “the floor is dirty,” making her walk to school difficult.
“There is poop in there,” she said. “That makes me angry.” Reed’s mother, meanwhile, noted that she often has to physically intervene to ensure that her daughter doesn’t step on needles or human feces.
Advertisement – story continues below
Some city officials are convinced that the solution is to provide short-term housing for the city’s homeless population.
“Unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable,” said city Supervisor Hillary Ronen. “We’re losing tourists. We’re losing conventions in San Francisco. All of this is happening because we aren’t addressing the root cause, which is we need more temporary beds for street homelessness.”
The city currently has about 2,000 temporary beds, but Rosen believes about 1,000 more are needed, KNTV reported. This would likely cost roughly $25 million.
“We need to find a source of revenue,” she said. “Whether that’s putting something on the ballot to raise business taxes or taking a look at our general fund and re-allocating money towards that purpose and taking it away from something else in the city.”
Advertisement – story continues below
Regardless, Ronen said the situation in San Francisco is a human “tragedy.”
“We’re not going to make a huge dent in this problem unless we deal with some underlying major social problems and issues,” she stated. “There’s a human tragedy happening in San Francisco.”
Until a permanent solution is decided upon, all the city can do is remove feces and needles from the streets, an effort that cost about $30 million in the 2016-2017 fiscal year,according to Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru.
Removing just one pile of human waste takes a half an hour, Nuru said.
Advertisement – story continues below
“The steamer has to come. He has to park the steamer. He’s got to come out with his steamer, disinfect, steam clean, roll up and go,” he explained.
The dirty streets in San Francisco haven’t stopped it from being ranked among the most beautiful in the world. But the city is also one of the most expensive in the U.S., with Fox News noting that this accentuates a large “gap between the haves and have-nots.”
New York State Democrat Assemblywoman Pamela Harris was arrested Tuesday for allegedly defrauding the federal and state governments out of $60,000, including $25,000 in FEMA funds that were allocated for residents left homeless in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
But officials say Harris — who represents parts of Brooklyn in the state assembly — was not among the homeless. Instead, her Coney Island residence was still intact following the devastating 2012 storm, according to the New York Daily News.
The 57-year-old remained in her home after the storm but allegedly filed fake paperwork to prove she was paying rent for a residence in Staten Island. FEMA then compensated her with money that was set aside for “temporary housing assistance,” officials said.
In an effort to cover up what she had done, Harris is accused of telling witnesses they should lie to the FBI.
“Harris was busy brewing a storm of her own — one that resulted in her receiving significant payouts by the very federal agency charged with helping those truly in need,” said William Sweeney Jr., the head of the bureau field office in New York.
Prior to her 2015 election to the state assembly, Harris ran a non-profit training and mentoring organization. But she allegedly pocketed $34,000 that the city council had given to her group to pay for rent. Officials believe Harris used $10,000 to pay for vacations — including one on a cruise ship. She also allegedly used stolen money to shop for lingerie from Victoria’s Secret, as well as pay off bills she had accumulated from Kohls and the mortgage on her Coney Island home.
For her alleged crimes — which authorities say took place between 2012 and 2016 — Harris was charged with wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, making false statements, bankruptcy fraud, witness tampering and conspiracy to obstruct justice, according to the Daily News. Harris pleaded not guilty and was released on $150,000 bond.
“Ms. Harris has been an invaluable community organizer and a well-regarded legislator,” her attorneys said in a statement. “Especially given her background, we are disappointed that Ms. Harris was indicted.”
“She has pleaded not guilty, and we look forward to her day in court and an opportunity there to present the full facts.”
The Democrat assemblywoman’s arrest came the same week New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a lawsuit against the five largest oil companies in the nation, claiming Sandy’s destruction was amplified due to the climate change those companies contributed to. The storm struck the city in October 2012, leaving more than 40 New Yorkers dead and causing tens of billions of dollars in damage.
“After Sandy, it became clear that climate change was an active threat to our lives. It may have happened five years ago, but we are still dealing every day with the destruction it caused,” de Blasio tweeted Wednesday.
“It’s time for Big Oil to pay for that damage.”
De Blasio also noted that New York is “the first major American city to take this action against fossil fuel companies.”
New York’s road to recovery has been a long one, with multiple resiliency projects being carried out in order to prevent future natural disasters from affecting the city in a similar manner, according to Politico.
“The city seeks to shift the costs of protecting the city from climate change impacts back onto the companies that have done nearly all they could to create this existential threat,” the lawsuit reads, as reported by the New York Post.
Moreover, de Blasio wants the city’s pensions to divest from oil companies. But according to the National Association of Manufacturers — an industry trade group — this move will come with a high price tag, as it could cost city employees $2.8 billion over 20 years.
“Divestment won’t do anything to cut greenhouse gas emissions. All it does is pass stocks from one shareholder to another,” NAM Vice President Chris Netram said Wednesday.
Ava Faulk said her son Josiah Duncan, 5, wouldn’t stop asking her questions when he spotted a disheveled man holding a bag with his bike outside the restaurant in Prattville. When Faulk explained the man was homeless, little Josiah asked ‘What does that mean?’ Faulk told Josiah that it meant he didn’t have a home, to which her son responded, ‘Where is his house? Where is his family? Where does he keep his groceries?’
But Josiah was most concerned that the stranger didn’t have any food, and he begged his mother to buy the man a meal at the restaurant, she told WSFA 12 News. The mother agreed, but when the man sat down at the restaurant and ‘nobody really waited on him’, Josiah decided to take matters into his own hands.
He ‘jumped up’ and asked the man if he needed a menu, telling him ‘you can’t order without one’, Faulk said. When the man insisted he would be fine with a simple cheeseburger, Faulk made sure he knew he could have anything he wanted. The mother remembers that, when he asked if he could have bacon, she told him ‘get as much bacon as you want’.
And before the man could dig in, Josiah said he wanted to ‘say the blessing with him’, singing loud enough for the other 11 customers in the restaurant to hear. ‘God our Father, God our Father, we thank you, we thank you,’ he sang. ‘For our many blessings, for our many blessings, Amen, Amen.’
Faulk said everyone, including the man, teared up.
It’s a moment the mother said she will never forget. ‘Watching my son touch the 11 people in that Waffle House tonight will be forever one of the greatest accomplishments as a parent I’ll ever get to witness.’
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
NEWSMAX
News, Opinion, Interviews, Research and discussion
Opinion
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
You Version
Bible Translations, Devotional Tools and Plans, BLOG, free mobile application; notes and more
Political
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
NEWSMAX
News, Opinion, Interviews, Research and discussion
Spiritual
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
Bible Gateway
The Bible Gateway is a tool for reading and researching scripture online — all in the language or translation of your choice! It provides advanced searching capabilities, which allow readers to find and compare particular passages in scripture based on
By Chris Pandolfo Fox News | Published January 25, 2024 11:51am EST
De Blasio also noted that New York is 
What Did You Say? 
You must be logged in to post a comment.