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WildCard27 t1_itl1zde wrote

There's a Cambridge Police satellite office across the street but when you are asking police officers to respond to a public health crisis and act as de facto social workers for people without access to healthcare this is what you get

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magnetmonopole t1_itl5l54 wrote

first of all, I’d love to know a single instance where social workers have successfully made even the slightest improvement in such a “public health crisis”. Many social workers push bullshit “harm reduction” tactics that involve providing addicts with needles in the hopes that somehow that will make them choose to go to rehab. That doesn’t really inspire confidence in their methods.

second of all, if other people are being threatened by the behavior of those hanging around central square, it is no longer just a “public health crisis”. I have been followed and threatened at central. So have many other people I know. Last time I checked, these are issues that should be handled by police.

This isn’t a defense of the Cambridge police, BTW— I’m not anti police, but I think they are either lazy or corrupt or some combination of the two. I called them when I was being followed and threatened at central and they did nothing. They seem to respond to noise complaints and speeding but nothing else.

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ooolooi t1_itldo27 wrote

The idea of harm reduction strategies like needle exchanges and safe injection sites isn't to get people to go to to rehab, it's to keep them from getting HIV and hepatitis and dying from overdose.

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magnetmonopole t1_itlmae7 wrote

what about strategies to keep people who aren’t doing drugs and endangering the public with their antisocial behavior safe? make safe injection sites if you want— don’t put them on the street though. these social work strategies are always half baked

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ooolooi t1_itloszw wrote

Well some strategies are, for example, getting people into long-term housing (instead of into temporary and restrictive homeless shelters), providing basic needs like food and clothing, and otherwise addressing the problems that cause people to be on the street and chronically homeless. Those are all the purview of social workers, though. The other approach would be to just lock people up, at expense to the state and with basically no chance of long-term behavioral change. Is that what you'd suggest? (Also safe injection sites are not on the street they are indoors???)

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coweatman t1_itmnzux wrote

yeah I have literally never seen a safe injection site on the street.

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some1saveusnow t1_itlnido wrote

City govt does not want the optics of cracking down hard on drug related offenses, there’s not even a drug unit in CPD anymore. The police here almost always show up and handle situations when they occur, unlike other cities (read the LA sub). Everyone in this sub knows damn well that if it was 2+ years ago and police were aggressively cracking down on the very transgressors we’re talking about in this thread, there’d be fucking rallies at City Hall and at CPD about the police oppressing socioeconomically disenfranchised people.

The mixed messaging about the scope of what this country wants police to do has become remarkably convoluted. If you want directives on how to handle the illegal behavior that’s going on here you need to first look at city government and city management because they delegate to the police. Do you think Portland’s well documented ongoing crisis is because of police inaction..

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magnetmonopole t1_itloewp wrote

No drug unit? that’s insane jfc. people in this city need to grow up

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