Denver cops may start carrying food for people in need

[JustPassinThru]

When you find a man who shits on your street...he's not a man and doesn't deserve being treated like a man.

You bind his limbs and haul him off to a cage. And if he doesn't learn, you again lock him up, longer. And if you're clever, you make it painful enough that he figures out he'd rather be shitting on streets elsewhere.

[someguy]

In view of this and so much more that has come to pass, who has given permission to the homeless, and the gender confused, and the illegal aliens to change the social contract that I've agreed to for the last 60 years?
I've accepted the terms that I understood to be fair, both to society and to me as a viable member.
I do not accept terms that excuse others of their duties.
When I see someone asking for help, I size them up to see if they are sincere in their intent to get back on their feet. If they are, I help. If not, I recall a passage from the Bhagavad Gita:
"Grieve not for the living or the dead".

[Kris P Bacon]

In view of this and so much more that has come to pass, who has given permission to the homeless, and the gender confused, and the illegal aliens to change the social contract that I've agreed to for the last 60 years?
I've accepted the terms that I understood to be fair, both to society and to me as a viable member.
I do not accept terms that excuse others of their duties.
When I see someone asking for help, I size them up to see if they are sincere in their intent to get back on their feet. If they are, I help. If not, I recall a passage from the Bhagavad Gita:
"Grieve not for the living or the dead".

Or as Sweety Brown might so eloquently put it...

[Retiredat50]

I don't know. You have a few different types of homeless. The alcohol and drug dependent are definitely the majority, closely followed by the mentally unstable (these two might be reversed or in a lot of cases interchangeable) and the last is the economically challenged, or down on their luck.

The only group you can truly help are economically challenged. The other two groups are almost hopeless. Sad, but true.

So if the police carry around a case or two of peanut butter crackers and some bottled water, what does that hurt? It is not like they will be serving the homeless steak and lobster. The cost is minimal, and the possibility of really helping someone that needs the help would seem to be worth it.

I think that instead of having classes to teach people what is and is not sexual, racial, or whatever harassment, they should send the police through classes to help them determine if a homeless person is homeless for economic reasons, and they can remove those people from the street and into a program to give them access to showers, clothes and career help with resumes and internet connectivity.

You have to identify what is fixable and what is not. Then work at fixing the fixable. It is a terrible situation, with no apparent solution, but you have to start somewhere.

[JustPassinThru]

It's the job of police to arrest people who are sleeping in others' doorways; defecating in gutters; or who are publicly intoxicated.

There are plenty of places they could get peanut butter and crackers. City missions, run by the Sally and even non-religious homeless groups. All these people need to avail themselves of peanut butter and crackers and a place to sleep, is not be drunk, impaired, disorderly or grossly inconsiderate.

If that's too much to ask...these "homeless" belong in an institution anyway.

[patrickt]

Why do you have a problem with this idea?

I would have no problem with this if the federal government hadn't intentionally created the "homeless" problem. When I became a police officer in 1966, we had vouchers for a night in a motel and vouchers for a meal in an 24-hour cafe. But, the people we dealt with weren't bums who were being supported by the government. They were working people heading to a job or heading to family for help. If we had a family they'd get fed at the cafe and put in the hotel for the night. Single men who were going to work would get a meal and a bunk in the jail. The department would fill their tank with gas at the city pump and I knew more than one police officer who sometimes kicked in a little extra.

When the federal government made being "homeless" a profession it all fell apart.

I am so old I can remember when people used to go to where the jobs were. I did. Now, they sit on welfare and wait for the jobs to come back. I respect poor people who are working--on of off the books--and have no respect for bums who would work if they could only find one of those really good jobs that would hire a high school dropout with a lengthy rap sheet.