Tag: homelessness

“Gary Is Just Making Up Random #s” – San Francisco Homeless Officials Caught Lying About Fabricated Data

The operator of San Francisco’s supervised drug use site fabricated the number of people who the site allegedly served, according to a San Francisco Department of Public Health executive, whose emails were released as part of California’s Public Records Act.

“I think Gary is just making up random #s,” wrote Dr. Rob Hoffman, Special Project Manager with the San Francisco Department of Health, in a February 8 email to other city employees including ones with the Department of Emergency Management and city homeless service agencies.

Gina McDonald, co-founder of Mothers Against Drug Deaths, filed the public records request, and was the first to report that of the 23,367 drug users who have visited the Tenderloin Linkage Center, just 18 have received drug treatment. 

The Gary in question is Gary McCoy, an employee of city contractor HealthRight360, which is one of the private sector operators of the Tenderloin Linkage Center, which San Francisco Mayor London Breed created last December as part of her proposed crackdown on the open drug market in United Nations Plaza in downtown San Francisco.

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LA Spends Billions to House a Fraction of Homeless Population

According to watchdog group Open the Books, the city of Los Angeles dedicated $1.2 billion in 2016 to try and fight homelessness through building affordable housing units. 

Since the program was approved, about 1,200 units have been completed – with some units costing taxpayers over $700,000 each, according to a city audit. One project currently underway is estimated to cost almost $837,000 per unit.

“The plan was to get the homeless people in Los Angeles into permanent housing to get them off the street and make no mistake, Los Angeles has a big problem when it comes to the homeless,” said Open The Books’ Adam Andrzejewski to The National Desk’s Jan Jeffcoat. “In 2016, that $1.2 billion ordinance passed. It was a bond proposal for permanent housing for the homeless. And today, there are more people that are unhoused than ever before in the city of Los Angeles.”

While the homelessness crisis continues, Andrzejewski said a “bureaucratic culture” sprung up in the city.

“In city government, there are about 750 employees dedicated to housing and community development, and the top employee in that department makes more than a White House cabinet official,” said Andrzejewski.

According to polling by The Los Angeles Times and the L.A. Business Council Institute, nearly 40% of voters in the city feel “signi​ficantly unsafe”due to homelessness in their neighborhoods.

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Rep. Maxine Waters warns reporter over LA homeless story: ‘You’ll hurt yourself’

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) tried to stop the publication of a news story about Los Angeles’ homeless crisis this week, reportedly telling a Los Angeles Times scribe: “You’ll hurt yourself and the community trying to put this together.”

The Wednesday story by investigative reporter Connor Sheets detailed a March 25 incident in South Los Angeles, where hundreds of homeless people tried to obtain Section 8 housing vouchers after being misled by social media rumors.

The would-be applicants crashed an event held by nonprofit advocacy group Fathers and Mothers Who Care, which had been meant to help the unhoused obtain emergency shelter. 

The confusion reportedly overwhelmed the non-profit as well as Los Angeles Housing Services Authority (LAHSA) workers who told the unexpected arrivals that they would only be able to provide their information and enter an emergency housing database.

At one point, Waters told the crowd: “I want everybody to go home,” triggering an angry response.

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Suspect in deadly shooting spree of DC, NYC homeless people arrested

A suspect in the serial killing and shooting of homeless people in the Big Apple and Washington, DC, was arrested early Tuesday in the capital, police announced.

The gunman – identified by a high-ranking police official as Gerald Brevard III, 30 – was busted when investigators showed up at his home in the southeastern section of the capital, law enforcement sources said.  

“ARRESTED: Early this AM, law enforcement arrested the suspect in Washington, DC,” the DC Police Department announced at 5:40 a.m.

“He is currently being interviewed at our Homicide Branch. Additional information will be forthcoming. Thanks to the community for all your tips.”

The arrest came just hours after the force released clear facial photos of the prime suspect who has been tied to two murders and three attempted homicides targeting homeless men in both cities.

The same man was linked to both cities after chilling video footage caught the cold-blooded slaying of one of two homeless people shot in Soho on Saturday. 

A Metropolitan Police Department homicide captain — who used to live in the Big Apple — saw surveillance photos and realized they looked like the man his department was also chasing.

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SERIAL KILLER ON THE LOOSE? Cops Investigate Connection Between Deadly Attacks On Homeless In New York City, Washington D.C.

NYPD Police Commissioner Keechant L. Sewell and D.C. Chief of Police Robert J. Contee, III of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) in Washington, DC, announce that several shootings that occurred in the District of Columbia and New York City have been committed by the same suspect. Both departments are investigating these offenses jointly with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

Between the two cities, there have been five shootings, including two homicides. In each offense, the victims were experiencing homelessness.

The most recent shootings occurred in New York City in the early morning hours of March 12. Both incidents involve homeless men who were sleeping on the street and were shot, without provocation, by a male suspect.

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Miami cops arrest ‘serial killer’ estate agent, 25, accused of murdering two homeless men and injuring a third in drive-by shootings: Police believe there may be other victims

Miami police suspect a 25-year-old, Cuban-born real estate agent of being a ‘serial killer’ after he was arrested in the killings of two homeless men and for critically wounding a third in a series of drive-by shootings from his Dodge Charger.

Willy Suarez Maceo allegedly shot a homeless man in the head near downtown Miami at 400 SW 2nd Avenue around 8 pm on Tuesday then pulled up alongside Jerome Antonio Price, 56,  two hours later and shot him dead as he slept on the sidewalk at Miami Avenue and 21st Street in Wynwood. The first victim survived.

He’s also suspected in the unsolved murder of another homeless man, 59-year-old Manuel Perez, at 27 SE 1st Street on October 16. 

A man pictured in surveillance footage at the scene closely resembles Maceo, and the vehicle seen driving away matches a black Dodge Charger caught in surveillance footage of the Tuesday shootings, police said. 

Maceo was arrested Thursday after he refused to drive away from an area with visible ‘no trespassing’ signs at 445 Northwest 4th Street, according to police reports. 

A rapid ballistics test of the firearm in his vehicle, which he had a permit to carry and conceal, linked him to Tuesday’s shootings, police said.

Miami Police Interim Chief Manuel A. Morales called Maceo a ‘ruthless killer’ who ‘brutally targeted’ the homeless in a press conference and suspects that ‘there may be other victims that suffered at the hands of this ruthless individual.’ 

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Seattle won’t remove homeless encampment from school grounds before students return to campus

Six weeks after Seattle Public Schools hosted a public meeting to address a dangerous homeless encampment on a public school property, pinning their hopes on one-man organization with an extensive criminal record to solve the problem, it was announced that the encampment behind Broadview Thomson K-8 School will not be removed before classes start on Sept. 1.

Meeting attendees said the campers are being made a higher priority than the children who attend the school and officials set no timeline for when the tents will be cleared.

Teachers, parents and neighbors have been calling for the encampment’s removal for over a year but have been stymied multiple times by the school board. In that time, the encampment has grown and currently 55 people are still living in tents on the property.

During a meeting Thursday night hosted by deputy superintendent Rob Gannon, school board member Liza Rankin, and Mike Mathias of Anything Helps, Mathias falsely claimed that the encampment was not a security threat despite numerous lockdowns in the school, violence in the encampment and overdose deaths. Due to the encampment, the district was forced to hire security guards after having banished police officers as school resource officers from campuses in 2020.

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State using COVID robot dog to take temperatures of homeless

The Honolulu Police Department in Hawaii is using a $150,000 robot named “Spot” to take the temperatures of homeless people in its effort to combat COVID-19.

Lt. Joseph O’Neal, acting lieutenant of HPD’s community outreach unit, justified the cost, which was borne by pandemic relief funds. He argued a tool that “takes transmission out of the equation” is not “a waste” from a long-term perspective.

KHON-TV in Honolulu reported Spot, a product of Boston Dynamics, is capable of taking a person’s temperature from a distance of seven feet in a fraction of a second.

“It also has two-way communication and can deliver PPE (personal protective equipment), food and water to someone who does test positive for COVID,” the news anchor said.

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Innocent Man Locked in Mental Facility, Forcibly Drugged for YEARS Because No One Cared to ID Him

Every time Joshua Spriestersbach tried telling the doctors, nurses, and staff at a state hospital in Hawaii that they had the wrong man, no one listened and his protests were answered with drugs. After nearly three years, the blithering idiots running the hospital finally figured out their blunder and instead of fixing their mistake, they covered it up by quietly kicking Spriestersbach out on the street with only 50 cents to his name.

The Hawaii Innocence project is now representing Spriesterbach and this week they asked the court to correct this innocent man’s life. The filing by the Innocence Project explains how the state was looking for a man named Thomas Castleberry and grabbed the first person they saw instead, Spriesterbach.

According to the report, at the time, Spriesterbach was homeless and hungry and was waiting in a food line in 2017 outside of a Honolulu shelter. The line was long and he fell asleep only to be roused awake by a cop who was arresting him. Spriesterbach though he was being arrested for breaking the city’s ordinance of laying down on the sidewalk but he was sorely mistaken.

That officer falsely claimed that Spriesterbach was Thomas Castleberry, who had a warrant out for his arrest for violating probation in a 2006 drug case. Spriesterbach and Castleberry had never met, yet police and every official involved with Spriesterbach’s wrongful kidnapping claimed he was Castleberry.

According to the Innocence Project, the incompetence of the police and hospital officials reached utterly criminal levels as all they needed to do to figure out that Spriesterbach was not Castleberry was to compare fingerprints or photographs — but none of that was done.

Instead, officials claimed Spriesterbach was insane for telling the state they had the wrong guy and he was committed to a state mental facility in Hawaii.

“Yet, the more Mr. Spriestersbach vocalized his innocence by asserting that he is not Mr. Castleberry, the more he was declared delusional and psychotic by the H.S.H. staff and doctors and heavily medicated,” the petition said. “It was understandable that Mr. Spriestersbach was in an agitated state when he was being wrongfully incarcerated for Mr. Castleberry’s crime and despite his continual denial of being Mr. Castleberry and providing all of his relevant identification and places where he was located during Mr. Castleberry’s court appearances, no one would believe him or take any meaningful steps to verify his identity and determine that what Mr. Spriestersbach was telling the truth — he was not Mr. Castleberry.”

The incompetence along the way was systemic. Even his public defenders chose to ignore him instead of simply running his fingerprints or looking at a photo.

Luckily, after spending nearly three years being drugged in a cage, Spriesterbach crossed paths with a competent psychiatrist who finally listened to him. According to the Innocence Project, all it took was a simple Google search to verify Spriesterbach’s identity.

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They’re Normalizing Police Robots By Calling Them “Dogs”

Hawaii police are defending their use of pandemic relief funds for a robotic “police dog” made by Boston Dynamics which scans homeless people’s eyes to see if they have a fever.

“If you’re homeless and looking for temporary shelter in Hawaii’s capital, expect a visit from a robotic police dog that will scan your eye to make sure you don’t have a fever,” says a new report from Associated Press. “That’s just one of the ways public safety agencies are starting to use Spot, the best-known of a new commercial category of robots that trot around with animal-like agility.”

“Acting Lt. Joseph O’Neal of the Honolulu Police Department’s community outreach unit defended the robot’s use in a media demonstration earlier this year,” AP reports. “He said it has protected officers, shelter staff and residents by scanning body temperatures between meal times at a shelter where homeless people could quarantine and get tested for COVID-19. The robot is also used to remotely interview individuals who have tested positive.”

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