Tag: homelessness

LA man accused of murdering three homeless men AND fourth man during horrific ‘follow-home’ robbery in crime-ridden city

Los Angeles police have nabbed a man accused of killing three homeless men – and a fourth victim gunned down in his garage during a ‘follow-home’ robbery. 

On Saturday afternoon, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore announced that the man arrested for the murders is 33-year-old Jerrid Joseph Powell.

He is also the prime suspect in the murder of Nicholas Simbolon – a father of two – which took place last Tuesday night in San Dimas.

Moore said the department suspects Powell was responsible for four murders in four days.

The suspect, who is a Los Angeles resident, is alleged to have shot three homeless men across the city from November 26 to November 29.

His vehicle was identified by the police in Beverly Hills last Wednesday. Upon conducting a traffic stop, authorities recovered the gun used in the murders – he was subsequently arrested.

On Saturday, Moore said: ‘Over the course of the investigation of our murders, we were able to identify the vehicle we believe is connected to our three homicides as being the same vehicle that Mr. Powell used in the murder of Mr. Simbolon.’

‘[We learned] that it was being held in custody of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department as evidence of their murder.

LA County Sheriff Robert Luna discussed the use of the controversial license plate reader system law enforcement officers sometimes use to identify suspicious vehicles.

‘We know there’s controversy out there about the usage of this system, but let me tell our community something. If we did not enter that plate into the system, this individual that we believe is responsible for at least four murders may have [still] been out there and reoffended,’ he said.

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LA cops are hunting a SERIAL KILLER after three homeless people were shot dead by ‘hooded male suspect’ – as police warn locals to avoid sleeping outside alone at night

LAPD has warned that a potential serial killer could be on the loose after three homeless people were murdered in the past week. 

Police are asking the public’s assistance in identifying the suspect responsible for three murders that occurred on November 26, 27, and 29 around downtown and in South Los Angeles, California. 

The LAPD said the investigation is at the early stage, but noted similarities in those three killings. 

‘A single individual approached each one and shot and killed each one as they slept,’ LAPD Chief Michel Moore said. 

‘The suspect, hooded, targets lone, unsheltered individuals sleeping on the streets, shooting them before fleeing in a vehicle without any observed altercation’, LAPD reported during a Friday afternoon press conference. 

‘To the person responsible: We will find you, we will catch you and you will be held accountable,’ Mayor Karen Bass said. 

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After Xi Jinping visit to San Francisco, city falling back into drug use and homelessness: business owner

With the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference over and done with in San Francisco, some business owners are complaining that the city is reverting into a den for homelessness and drug use. 

Restaurant owner Tony Pankaew said in a local media interview.that San Francisco rushed to clean up the city for Chinese President Xi Jinping and other foreign dignitaries for APEC.

“They cleaned up the people, they cleaned up the streets,” he told CBS News Bay Area. “They made the city look good and look impressive for the foreigners, for the politicians.”

“Now they have started to come back,” Pankaew said. “Slowly but surely. [In] a couple weeks [the city] will be back to where [it was] before.” 

Pankaew said he was hopeful that things will turn around in San Francisco, adding that a new skating rink near his business might attract more people, and therefore more business. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., was criticized on social media after admitting that San Francisco timed a massive cleanup effort ahead of the summit.

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San Francisco Clears Homeless And Cleans Sh*t-Covered Streets For World Leaders Next Week

Progressive city leadership in crime-ridden San Francisco has undertaken a massive effort to improve the city’s image, which has been tarnished with shit-covered streets, homelessness, and open-air drug markets. These measures have been implemented as a temporary solution ahead of the global trade summit that will flood the city with world leaders and corporate executives beginning today. 

The annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit is San Francisco’s largest international event since world leaders gathered in the town in 1945 to sign the charter creating the United Nations. A lot has changed in the metro area in 78 years, including radical leftists in City Hall that have pushed failed ‘defund the police’ policies that have transformed parts of the region into an out-of-control, crime-infested hellhole. 

The New York Post confirmed the wonderful folks in City Hall began pushing “drug addicts, dealers, and homeless” from the downtown area to other parts of the city, an effort that some believe is to conceal their failed policies from the international community during APEC. 

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Homeless Pirates Pillage Leisure Boats In San Francisco Bay

There’s a new, maritime dimension to the scourge of rampant crime in northern California cities, as homeless creeps are now taking to the water and preying on houseboats and yachts docked on San Francisco Bay, reports Fox News. 

“Multiple vessels have been stolen and ransacked. Victims have had to resort to personally confronting the criminals to recover their property without the benefit of police support,” said former harbor master Brock de Lappe at a recent municipal meeting. “Is this appropriate activity for a 79-year-old senior?”

The 3,000-slip Oakland-Alameda Estuary has been particularly hard-hit, as thieves use small boats to burglarize or steal private boats on the waterway. The pirates use stolen boats or old, abandoned dinghies to carry out their raids. 

A boating school for children has seen four of its eight safety boats stolen and destroyed. The boats cost the school between $25,000 and $35,000 apiece. “We cannot run our program without these boats,” wrote Kame Richards, owner of the nonprofit Alameda Community Sailing Center, in a letter to his municipal commission.

“The response we received from APD (Alameda Police Department) was that they could do nothing, and a warning not to approach the perpetrators if we located our boats,” added Richards. Sounds about par for the course in a state where the Senate has advanced a bill that would criminalize retail-store policies requiring employees to attempt to thwart thieves. 

“We had all hands on deck to retrieve this stuff, and it took 35 hours to get a police report number from the Alameda Police Department,” said Richards during a municipal meeting. The school is on the verge of calling it quits.

Another woman scared a troubling tale, telling Fox that she recently heard faint cries of “help me, please, please, anybody help me” coming from the inky darkness of the estuary. She dared to venture out with her kayak and a headlamp, and found a sailboat with a “panicked and terrified young man” aboard. He said pirates cut his sailboat line and set him adrift after a confrontation. 

“If there had been any wind at the time I wouldn’t have been able to go out there and rescue this young man who had no motor and no ability to sail that boat,” said his rescuer, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. 

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Banning Criminal Background Checks Will Lead To More Housing Discrimination, Not Less

America needs more housing. Pressure for reform is only growing as available homes get less and less affordable. Unfortunately, rather than addressing the root cause of high housing prices—an epidemic of local overregulation that prevents enough homes from being built—some legislators continue to flirt with social experiments that can harm both landlords and renters.

For example, some states and localities have implemented well-meaning “fair chance” laws banning criminal history on background checks for prospective tenants. Progressive Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D–Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D–Mich.) recently introduced the idea as federal legislation. In a statement, Pressley said, “It’s time we remove the systemic obstacles that have exacerbated the prison-to-homelessness pipeline.”

We do indeed have an overcriminalization and overincarceration problem in this country, so on its face, this seems like a good idea. According to the Department of Justice, more than 650,0000 ex-offenders are released from prison every year, not counting the nearly 6.9 million people on probation, on parole, or still in jail or prison at any one time. Far too many face undeserved challenges when trying to re-acclimate into society and not reoffend.

That’s partly because relatively few landlords want to rent to people with criminal records. Landlords minimize the risk of delinquent or destructive tenants by selecting the best applicants on a given margin. From this perspective, avoiding people with criminal records seems like an easy choice, even though it means some potentially great tenants are rejected. The best reforms would correct the real problems of overcriminalization and overincarceration. That’s politically difficult and may take a long time. Equally important would be removing all artificial barriers to building more homes.

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Los Angeles Spends $44,000 Per ‘Temporary’ Tent For Homeless Village

Los Angeles is reportedly spending $44,000 for each individual tent in a temporary tent village for homeless people in East Hollywood, The Messenger reports.

All told, it cost about $4 million to put up fencing, bathrooms, and staffing facilities for the village. Catering services and 24-7 staffing cost an additional $3 million per year, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Despite the high costs, the site is only temporary. It’s located on a parking lot that will eventually be turned into public housing. But because it will take years for construction to commence on that project, the city decided to fill the space with tents in the meantime.

San Francisco-based nonprofit Urban Alchemy maintains the encampment. Launched in 2018 with a small grant, the group hires mostly former prisoners because they have the “ability to read people in unpredictable situations.”

According to several lawsuits, however, some of those employees have engaged in abusive behavior.

After expanding to Portland and Austin, the group brought in $51 million in 2021.

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Homeless Program in Washington State Has Burned Through $143 Million to House Less Than 1,000 People

Washington State has been trying to deal with their homeless problem, but they haven’t had much success.

A program designed to close down tent communities and get homeless people into housing has already spent $143 million dollars to house less than a thousand people. That’s a horrible ratio.

And now they want more cash, because they think this program has been so effective.

FOX News reports:

Blue state’s $143 million homeless program got less than a thousand people housed. Now governor wants more

An initiative to remove homeless camps from roadways needs more money to continue next year, according to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, after burning through $143 million in a little over a year.

“You can’t do this with zero dollars,” Inslee, a Democrat, told KOMO News. “We’ll need the legislature in January to step up to increase funding so we can continue the progress we’re making.”

Inslee’s statewide Rights-of-Way Safety Initiative began in June 2022 with the goal of removing homeless camps from state property near roads and offering housing to the people living in the camps.

On Friday, Inslee toured a tiny home village in Olympia funded by the initiative that will soon provide shelter to 50 people who previously lived in an encampment along I-5, KOMO reported. The governor said during the tour that the safety initiative is out of money and, come January, camps will remain on state lands if the legislature does not allocate more funds.

“We’re very proud of the work state agencies have done in our right of way initiative working alongside local officials and service providers,” a spokesperson for the governor told Fox News in an email. “We will take as much funding as we can get to continue this work.”

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Texas man found ‘not guilty’ after being ticketed for feeding homeless

A Texas man was found not guilty after he was ticketed for feeding homeless people in Houston.

According to Fox 26, Phillip Picone opted to go to trial after being ticketed while volunteering for Food Not Bombs, a group that has been feeding homeless people near the public library in Downtown Houston for 20 years.

The city had outlawed setting up feeding stations, initially citing public health and safety concerns after violent incidents near the library. It asked that charities moved their services to the old Houston Police Headquarters.

The jury unanimously found Picone “not guilty.”

Picone received his ticket on March 3 and is the first of dozens of volunteers to go to trial. Attorney Paul Kubosh represents him and 37 other volunteers.

“What I’m hoping for is vindication,” Kubosh told Fox 26 before the hearing. “I’m hoping for not guilty. If you’re trying to affect the lives of homeless and trying to make their situation better, you don’t do that by attacking the Samaritan. This law is not about the homeless. It’s about the Samaritan.”

The city of Houston defended the charges in a statement.

“The City of Houston intends to vigorously pursue violations of its ordinance relating to feeding of the homeless,” city attorney Arturo Michel said. “It is a health and safety issue for the protection of Houston’s residents. There have been complaints and incidents regarding the congregation of the homeless around the library, even during off hours.”

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Woke Tennessee Rep. Justin Jones accused of covering up sexual assaults by homeless man

Infamous Democratic Tennessee House Rep. Justin Jones allegedly covered up two sexual assaults committed by a homeless man, according to a 2020 Facebook post made by fellow activist Jeneisha Harris and recently unearthed by journalist Matt Murphy.

In the post, Harris said Jones witnessed two women get assaulted during a protest, then told the victims not to report the incident to police out of fears it would shift the “narrative” of the event, which he was supporting.

“For almost a week now, there has been a group of protestors demonstrating outside the Capitol to advocate for the removal of Nathan Bedford’s bust,” Harris wrote. “Last night, a homeless man sexually assaulted two women who were protesting. Two different incidents. Same man.”

She explained that Jones, “Nashville’s favorite activist,” witnessed the attack, but when the group suggested that it should be reported, he said the women had to stay silent “because it would change the narrative of why they’re actually protesting,” and that, “the incident would overpower the advocacy.”

Harris went on slam Jones for embodying the “egotistical, prideful, and patriarchal activism” in Nashville, and said that even she, someone who never trusted the police, wanted the women to report the homeless man to achieve some level of protection.

“F*ck you to Justin, his fake activism and anyone who defends what he did,” she stated, unapologetically.

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