The opioid epidemic - hoppers/thieves

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@OVERKILL I hear what you're saying. I think the past year and a half it's gotten worse for a lot of people. More homeless people and politicians have big problems to deal with outside of this issue. People in my neighborhood complaining that they lost their wallets and items from their vehicles when they forgot to lock them up. If that happens, people are always going to be breaking into vehicles.

Unless we install large fences around our houses and leave dogs outside to protect your belongings, what can we do?

Cops have so many other issues, this kind of crime will be near the bottom of the priority list. Cameras don't seem to deter everyone either.
 
I think most people are addicted to something. I don't know any people like this but I do see them sometimes. I can't imagine they listed "turning tricks for drugs" as an asperation in their HS year books so I often wonder what set of life choices get people to that intersection.
I can imagine a new kind of 'What would you do for a Klondike Bar' ad. It might depict a gang of first graders mugging old lady Farnsworth so they can get their fix from the ice-cream man. :LOL:
 
For vehicles parked outside around my area, the recommendation is to have garage door openers, identifying registration/insurance info and valuables pulled out. Also, the vehicle left unlocked as the repair of forced access can be high.
That's a little nuts. That's what insurance is for. I always automatically lock my doors. You can't leave your car unlocked in the city.
 
That's a little nuts. That's what insurance is for. I always automatically lock my doors. You can't leave your car unlocked in the city.
In the bad areas of town that get hit every night, this is exactly what people have started doing. Removing all valuables and leaving the doors unlocked, because it's easier than having to deal with having a window replaced. These people are defeated, driven to this by a system that is either incapable or unwilling to deal with the problems our tax dollars are supposed to fund the solutions for.

It's infuriating. Those who choose not to be victims will then be punished for defending themselves, their family and their property and the same police force that takes their sweet time, if they show up at all, when you report this invasion, will be there with bells on to drag you in.

It seems The Purge should have been the documentary rather than Idiocracy, lol.
 
Call the police often to make patrols around your home at various times. Squeaky wheel will get the grease. Also lots of exterior lights around home and a big Mastiff like a male Cane Corso.
 
Call the police often to make patrols around your home at various times. Squeaky wheel will get the grease. Also lots of exterior lights around home and a big Mastiff like a male Cane Corso.
We have a Newfoundland (though he's geriatric now) and a boxer. A lack of dogs isn't the issue.

I actually saw the police twice in the area last night when I was out rolling around in the Jeep seeing if I could spot the dirtbag.
 
I think this thread will eventually turn political, I'll try my best to look at this as an economical instead of political as possible (criminals are there to make money, obviously).

SF Bay Area is about 30 years ahead of you guys, so we have seen it first hand how things and policies turn out. In general some policies cannot be carried out by one city or one state or else people will relocate, or given a one way bus ticket to go there. It also happens over time as housing becomes polarized instead of relatively affordable, combine with the lost of former manufacturing based jobs, that many blue collar workers end up in subsidized / rent control housing and then a minority of new economy and expensive housing, with few in between.

In the US at least, it seems like we go through new development, decline, slum, redevelopment cycle over time, so when your once good area lost the charm of good jobs and families move to better area, then it will becomes lower and lower income and eventually a druggie area, then when it is very cheap, some politically influential people would buy it up and redevelop it into some trendy SoHo area and it gets cleaned up again.
 
I think most people are addicted to something. I don't know any people like this but I do see them sometimes. I can't imagine they listed "turning tricks for drugs" as an asperation in their HS year books so I often wonder what set of life choices get people to that intersection.
I'm addicted to BITOG. That and oil clearances at WM.
 
This topic is of interest to me however I'm posting with vague generalities out of caution for occupational reasons. This is from a LEO related perspective however I'm not LEO.

1. The junkies/users need about $45-60 a day to buy food and their drugs of choice. There are a lot of government services and most of these people use them. This is discretionary money and this doesn't include treatment at methadone clinics.

2. Homelessness, drugs and mental health are all tied together. They are not separable and you can't treat one or two and ignore the others. Digging deeper, it's not against the law to homeless, an addict or have mental health problems and so long as you aren't a danger to yourself or others, you can live on the street. That means if you want to avail yourself of government services you can and then you can simply walk out without consequence and most of them do just that. Unless you can compassionately hold people (yes that conjures up images of Cuckoo's Nest) this is not a winnable battle.

3. A fair amount of people on the street don't have problems and just choose to be feral and live where there are no formal societal rules.

4. The bikes are stolen and quickly taken to a chop shop area that can be at the end of a trail, secluded under trees at an overpass where the bikes are quickly disassembled and then the parts are swapped to build a new bike. This way you can't ID your stolen bike because enough parts have been changed where it's your word against the thief, unless you've registered your bike.

5. The bikes are sold on eBay.

6. Druggies and their dealers love Venmo. It's how they transact nearly all their business.

7. Heroin is on the wane and Fentanyl is the rapidly surging drug of choice. It's cheap, it's plentiful and it's less expensive than Heroin. You can thank China for making that possible.

8. You can easily spot a meth addict because they have scars and/or scabs on their shoulders, upper shoulder blades, face and torso. This is because meth makes your skin hypersensitive and itch and they scratch. Lather, rinse, repeat on a daily basis. A lot of homeless people take meth at night because it keeps them awake so they won't get beaten up or robbed. They are the ones you see crashed and sleeping hard during the day. Meth people also feel hot and this is why they remove their clothes.


There's more but that's the essence. Every community in every city, rich or poor, hot or cold weather all has the same problems.
 
It’s a very unfortunate situation, once they are hooked on ____ drug..... it’s almost impossible to get off and be clean.
 
Putting large amounts of depressants into your body for years tends to make you depressed...
The judge sentenced me to 3 AA meetings along with the other stuff. I have been sober since.

Alcohol is a depressant. But you don't drink it because of the depressive effect, you get drunk because alcohol is a powerful opiate stimulant. That's where the hook is. Alcohol is probably the most complicated drug. It's the only one a long time heavy user can die in withdrawal from because your body reacts to the depressant by pumping adrenaline into your bloodstream. It also is clinically shown to have far more effect on the brain than most any other drug....

The Sinclair Method is a system for curing alcoholism, or alcohol abuse disorder, by taking a small dose of an opioid antagonist prior to drinking. You then drink as much as you want but the pill takes the fun away and you mostly feel the depressive effect. Most tend to trend downward and then takes days off, many stop drinking altogether....
 
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7. Heroin is on the wane and Fentanyl is the rapidly surging drug of choice. It's cheap, it's plentiful and it's less expensive than Heroin. You can thank China for making that possible.

I thought your post is dead on except for the "blame China" part. Yeah, they had the Fentanyl but we laid the groundwork ourselves. There many articles on how the collective American pharmaceutical industry are by far the worlds' most effective and insidious drug cartels, and the lawsuits are beginning much the same way as it did in the early days with the tobacco industry.

The Chinese didn't invent painkiller candy suckers, we did!
 
This topic is of interest to me however I'm posting with vague generalities out of caution for occupational reasons. This is from a LEO related perspective however I'm not LEO.

1. The junkies/users need about $45-60 a day to buy food and their drugs of choice. There are a lot of government services and most of these people use them. This is discretionary money and this doesn't include treatment at methadone clinics.
I thought a heroin addiction was a lot more expensive. Wow. No wonder there are so many addicts.
2. Homelessness, drugs and mental health are all tied together. They are not separable and you can't treat one or two and ignore the others. Digging deeper, it's not against the law to homeless, an addict or have mental health problems and so long as you aren't a danger to yourself or others, you can live on the street. That means if you want to avail yourself of government services you can and then you can simply walk out without consequence and most of them do just that. Unless you can compassionately hold people (yes that conjures up images of Cuckoo's Nest) this is not a winnable battle.
This was not the case until relatively recently. It wasn't until the middle of the last century that the standard for requiring people to get treatment was changed from the basis of "medical need" to "a danger to self and the community". The number of treatment beds in the US has tragically plummeted over the past 60 years to almost nothing as a result. Now we house the severely mentally ill in county jails, for the most part. Sad. The psychiatric community thought in the 1950's that the emerging classes of anti-psychotic drugs was going to more or less solve mental illness in the general population, but boy were they wrong about that.

I totally agree that you can't separate homelessness, drugs, and mental health as they all drive each other. Drug use causes mental illness, many mentally ill self medicate with recreational drugs, etc.
3. A fair amount of people on the street don't have problems and just choose to be feral and live where there are no formal societal rules.
Yep. For lots of street people, life's too short to spend sober following rules. Take the consequences away, and there is no incentive for them to change. Maybe a third of street people fall into this category.
4. The bikes are stolen and quickly taken to a chop shop area that can be at the end of a trail, secluded under trees at an overpass where the bikes are quickly disassembled and then the parts are swapped to build a new bike. This way you can't ID your stolen bike because enough parts have been changed where it's your word against the thief, unless you've registered your bike.
Bikes are a perfect for crimes of opportunity. The cops here busted a bike chop shop operating out of a motor home a while back. Catalytic converters are a similar situation.
5. The bikes are sold on eBay.

6. Druggies and their dealers love Venmo. It's how they transact nearly all their business.

7. Heroin is on the wane and Fentanyl is the rapidly surging drug of choice. It's cheap, it's plentiful and it's less expensive than Heroin. You can thank China for making that possible.
Aren't they effectively the same for the user? Fentanyl is just 100's of times more concentrated.
8. You can easily spot a meth addict because they have scars and/or scabs on their shoulders, upper shoulder blades, face and torso. This is because meth makes your skin hypersensitive and itch and they scratch. Lather, rinse, repeat on a daily basis. A lot of homeless people take meth at night because it keeps them awake so they won't get beaten up or robbed. They are the ones you see crashed and sleeping hard during the day. Meth people also feel hot and this is why they remove their clothes.


There's more but that's the essence. Every community in every city, rich or poor, hot or cold weather all has the same problems.
Every user that I've ever known who got clean for any length of time has told me that the only way they were able to break free was hitting bottom. Whatever that meant for them. "I'm going to die", "I'm losing my family", "I'm losing my career", "I'm going to jail", etc.
 
We will never be able to stop the war on drugs for obvious reasons
A lot of war funding comes from either oil, diamond, drug, etc because they can be transported and therefore money made off someone else's location instead of their own local population (and face the crackdown). Warlord, intelligences / spies / secret services across the world use drug to fund weapon purchases etc off the book. The war on drug will not win until the sources are entering middle classes themselves.
 
My wife and I have witnessed a once thriving business district of a nearby city succumb to drug related crime. There were three stores and a couple of restaurants that we often frequented there. Customers quit visiting the area and businesses were broken into repeatedly. Most are now permanently closed and boarded up. Addicts and homeless own the area now. It seemed to happen almost overnight. An addiction centre opened nearby (free needles, etc.) and surprise, the addicts moved in.

I don't know what the solution is, but opening that centre in that business district sure wasn't it.
 
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