by Kent Scheidegger · Dec 3, 2021 1:35 pm
Marie Edinger has this report with the above title for KMPH in Fresno:
The law enforcement community is fired up after comments Governor Gavin Newsom made about crime in California Wednesday. Continue reading . . .
by Michael Rushford · Dec 2, 2021 11:16 am
A UCLA study examining deaths among LA’s homeless population during the Covid-19 pandemic reports that 1,493 died in shelters and on the streets. Nicholas Morgan of the International Business Times reports that most of the deaths over the 17 month study period (March 2020 to July 2021) were not attributed to the virus. Roughly 40% of those who died on the streets and 60% who died in temporary housing were killed by drug or alcohol overdoses. So while most Americans were sheltering in their homes, limiting their interaction with others, wearing masks for protection, and being vaccinated, the homeless, who did none of these things were overdosing on drugs or drinking themselves to death. The fact that the rate of dying from these causes was much higher in government-funded housing than for those sleeping on the sidewalks is disturbing. Maybe housing should not be the main focus of efforts to address the homeless. Perhaps putting the homeless in a controlled environment focused on detox, mental health treatment along with job and life skills development might reduce deaths and actually restore some to self sufficiency. The study also reveals the fact that homeless deaths in LA have been steadily increasing every year since 2014 and has been over 1,000 annually since 2018.
by Steven Erickson · Dec 2, 2021 6:48 am
The new issue of JAMA Psychiatry has an alarming article on trends in illicit methamphetamine use. Not only are more people using; more are dying:
Among adults aged 18 to 64 years from 2015 to 2019, we found a substantial increase (180%) in overdose deaths involving psychostimulants other than cocaine (largely methamphetamine), but this increase was considerably larger than the growth in the number of adults who reported past-year methamphetamine use (43%), indicating riskier patterns of methamphetamine use.
The toll of drug use is a cancer on our society.
by Michael Rushford · Dec 1, 2021 3:20 pm
As if we already did not know this, but sometimes the national media exposes itself so blatantly it defies logic. Jason Riley has this piece in the Wall Street Journal discussing the amazing double standard in the way the national media covered the death of George Floyd, the Rittenhouse case and the Waukesha massacre. “The protests that followed Floyd’s death rested on two assumptions. The first is that Floyd, a career criminal and drug addict, was somehow representative of black America, which is not only false but deeply insulting. The second is that police acted out of racial animus, which has never been proven. This is what happens when racial identity becomes the centerpiece of politics and public life in a multiracial society.” But that was the prevailing narrative and the riots and murders swept the country in response to Floyd’s death were generally reported as justified. “The Biden administration has picked up where the Obama administration left off.” Although the criminals killed by Rittenhouse were white, he was immediately characterized as a racist white supremacist in “a clumsy attempt by President Biden and his allies to further a narrative about bias in the criminal justice system.”
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