Thieves & Vandals!!!Nov 07 '09 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line But for God's grace, there we go. We are a paycheck away from homelessness -- and "we" includes those very cowardly, unheroic bullies posing as cops! I read an article about how poorly "relocation" of the homeless was handled in a city park in St. Louis, Mo, and you can find my longer response to this below. My shorter response is here: "Who votes to have these hoity-toity cops arrested for theft and vandalism -- and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law? If the situation had been reversed and these homeless people had come on their property and did something like this, they would be put under the jail!!! Perhaps, cut them some slack this time and give them one week and four weekends in jail plus three years probation. If they do it again, though, they would be looking at serious jailtime!!!" The following is a link to the news article that inspired it (This had to be adapted to Epinions' site bots. To find where it leads, just run it together with no spaces.): http:// www. stltoday. com/ stltoday/ news/ stories. nsf/ law order/ story/ DD69 2C1C 2355 FC61 8625 766 60013 E8EB? Open Document Thank you for reading this... I think it has to do with respect of others. It might make certain business owners "uncomfortable" to be able to see a campground for homeless in a near-by park (perhaps, feeling guilty about these people needing homes when some might feel more at home right where they are, but the business people don't know it, and it might be a reminder to them of something they feel guilty about not contributing more money to change), and -- just as is so with people who have homes -- some homeless people do actually steal things. Most, though, seem to survive on using what others have thrown away (e.g. food, clothing, etc. found in dumpsters) or going to places where people will voluntarily serve them food and / or give them used clothing / blankets / etc. Some survive by doing work in exchange for money or food. Some of the work is acceptable mainstream work such as shoveling the snow from people's walks. At other times, the work is less acceptable (e.g. selling their bodies). Some sell their blood plasma. There was no respect shown to the homeless in the park. They were told that it would be no problem if they set up camp there. One day, they return to their makeshift homes to find their camp being torn apart and personal possessions being crushed in a dumpster. An alternative to this -- though even this wouldn't be quite fair -- would be for the possessions to be taken to a common place to be claimed by the people who owned them. But, no, they had to be sadistic and destroy those things! Some things that were destroyed were necessary things -- as in personal ID, medicine, etc. I'm sure that there were other things that were keepsakes such as family pictures, stuffed toys. etc. How about war medals? Some of the homeless fought for our country. Some volunteered -- and some (due to the draft during the Vietnam War) didn't have that choice left up to them (but they were there instead of taking off to Canada or having a rich relative to buy them out of having to go to war). Either way, they played the part of heroes. Some of them might have gotten wounded while saving the lives of other soldiers. If those soldiers hadn't been saved, it's very possible that there might be some people who never would have had the chance to be born because their future dads would have died without the help of these medal-winning Vietnam Veterans who have now become part of the homeless population who make people so uncomfortable! Could it be that at least one of those hoity-toity park cops who came to crush their personal possessions as some kind of act of revenge on their daring to be homeless in full view -- possessions that, no doubt, contained some war medals -- might have never been born had not one of those "useless waste of space" saved his dad's life some 40 years ago? Could one of those cops have also been seen dancing at his daughter's wedding a few years ago -- so happy that she had married such a wonderful young man -- and now spoiling the grandkids rotten and showing their pictures to everybody will look at them? Yes! He's the one in the front row of the school auditorium using his cell-phone to shoot a movie of his five year old granddaughter dressed like a strawberry and singing a cute, little song! That little granddaughter would never never been there on stage that night had her future dad died in Operation Desert Storm instead of being rescued by the raggedy-looking man (suffering too much post-traumatic stress syndrome from that same war to hold down a regular job -- or even stay sober) whose Purple Heart medal has just become history with its remains being taken to be dumped into a landfill. In the landfill might be a "Happy Birthday, Mommy!" card made by a child who signed his name to it with some of the letters made backwards -- typical of a little boy who was only in first grade...a little boy who would be forever seven years old after losing his battle with leukemia. His single mom -- someone with no living relatives -- had tried so hard to save his life, but she was a barely making it working as a store clerk. The hospital bills ended up causing her to lose her home. The store where she had once worked had also gone out of business. She had been just a paycheck away from being homeless, and, now, she was. Fortunately, she had taken her wallet with her, so she still had a few of his pictures. However -- when she went to look for things such as the baby book where she had recorded things like his first words, pressed the first lock of hair removed from his head when he had his first haircut, and even had found a place for the two baby teeth he had lost -- she found that they (along with a loving letter written to her by her late mother) had also gone into the dumpster to be crushed. What if the shoe had been on the other foot? What if these homeless people -- perhaps, angry with society for not understanding them -- had gone on a rampage to the homes of these authority figures to vandalize their property, destroy their keepsakes, and flush their medications down the toilet? They would be seeing jail time, and people would be expressing self-righteous outrage through pursed lips re: how "these people" ought to all be locked up with no possibility for parole. Although I don't condone stealing, I'm sure that, if these homeless people swiped a loaf of bread here and a can of beans there, it had to do with survival. But what did the random stealing and vandalism have to do with that was waged on them by those out-of-line park cops!?! It definitely has to do with respect of others, and there was no respect shown to these marginalized members of our society. Should we, in return, expect them to respect us (especially, the part of "us" who go out of their way to make life difficult for them)!?! Think about it...  |
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