California Mayor Suggests Giving Homeless Fentanyl to ‘Purge’ the Streets

R. Rex Parris, the Democratic governor of Lancaster, Calif. , is facing a remember. As of this writing, Parris may not have much to worry about since only 6 % of the 20,000 signatures needed has been gathered.

Fox News notes that at issue is a speech by Parris during a February town committee meeting. Referring to the city’s homeless population, Parris asserted that” What I want to do is offer them free fentanyl. That’s what I want to accomplish. ”  

He was responding to a question about a plan to create a core homeless camp at an abandoned sport program, which happens to be near a residential neighborhood. Parris after told Fox 11 that he did not expect his remarks to be taken at face value since fentanyl is so easy to obtain that there would be no place in a town handing it out for free.  

Parris told the shop:

I made it very clear I was talking about the legal aspect that were let out of the prison that have now turn 40 to 45 % of what’s referred to as the unemployed people.  

They are responsible for most of our thefts, most of our murders, and at least quarter of our deaths. There’s everything that we can accomplish for these people. “

Quite frankly, I wish that the president did give us a clean. Because we do want to clean these people.

Today, is it terrible? Of program, it is severe. But it ’s my duties as the mayor of the city of Lancaster to defend the enthusiastic families that live it, and I am no longer able to do it … It’s an untenable position, and I’m available to any solution … I want these people out of our town.

I have encountered the poor in Salt Lake City. I have seen all manner of chaotic behavior on the roads, including a woman come from a wooden house in a small camp city armed with a huge pair of scissors. She was no brandishing them but wearing them as one might a Bowie weapon.  

Panhandling voltages dot the driving lots of two purchasing centers near me, and next summer, one decided to stretch out and sleep on a park ribbon in front of a temple in my area. Kids set up lemonade appears and walk their bikes on that wall, and individuals use that road to move to church and a local park. Because of the unexpected behavior of this socioeconomic, there would be cause for alarm if said people continued to consider that the city was a great location for a noonday slumber.

I called the police, and the cop said that unless the property owner filed a complaint, there was nothing he could do. He added that if he told the man to leave, he would just go somewhere else. I don’t know if the officer just didn’t want to respond or if, like so many others, he rationalized that nothing would be accomplished anyway.

Certainly, the idea of handing out fentanyl to wipe out a population is more than alarming, even if it is made in jest or as a sarcastic policy underscore. After all, Christ did command us to minister to the “least of these. ” If we are serious in our contention that life is precious, such a conviction applies to the homeless and addicted as well as the unborn.  

But what does one do when” the least of these” is not interested in improving their lot? The mentally ill are a different story, but what about someone who has chosen the transient lifestyle, perhaps one that involves fentanyl or heroin?  

People have a right to be transient if they so choose. But other people have the right to be safe on the streets and in parks. They should be able to step out into the open air without worrying about being accosted, assaulted with a pair of scissors, or having to navigate garbage and human waste. And Parris did go to lengths to say he was talking about the criminal element that refuses help.  

At what point are one’s choices no longer tolerated after they begin to infringe on the safety and welfare of others? It’s one thing to give a couple of bucks to a guy with a sign outside of Walmart. You may even choose to donate to the local food pantry or warming center. But what if you and your kids have to do an about-face on the way to the playground because someone is shooting up or defecating at the swing sets? Or what if you find yourself recovering from a head wound delivered by a madman roaming the sidewalks? How much must a community tolerate the lifestyle choices of others when said choices intrude on the safety of the citizens? Parris ‘ remarks may have been distasteful, bombastic, hyperbolic, and sarcastic, but the problem is very real.  

The irony behind the opposition to Parris’s idea is that what he is advocating is already being done, albeit in slow motion. Such are already mired in their own squalor, taking fentanyl or other drugs, their minds decaying and their bodies literally rotting. As unseemly as Parris ‘ proposal may be to some, it is well underway in many cities, large and small. Some of it was evident in the cop’s response to me: that if he rousted the vagrant, he’d just move someplace else, so why bother?  

Other than ennui and resignation, one must ask whether, in far too many cities and states, there is more money to be made in grants, allocations, and other  funding cycle denizens by managing a problem rather than fixing it. After all, if we fixed homelessness, how many government jobs would be on the line?

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