FREE VENICE BEACH HEAD - FOLLOW THE MONEY - POLITICAL WILL OF CREATING HOMELESSNESS full article by Mark Lipman
EXCERPT:
You see, the actions the city are taking are quite understandable, if you look at it in a detached objective manner. What is happening is there is a major conflict of interest going on involving incredibly large sums of money. Homelessness is a very profitable industry.
By Pacific Division’s own numbers, 80% of all their policing revolves around interactions with homeless people – mostly ticketing and harassing people for actions of basic survival, like sitting, sleeping … existing. That’s a lot of money, to pay a lot of police salaries … money we wouldn’t have to spend – police we wouldn’t need on the streets – if we simply provided the basic services that our communities have been demanding for well over a decade.
Then of course, we cannot ignore that incarceration costs the city over $62,000 per year for every person we jail. That is an awful lot of money that pays for prison guards … no wonder their union is the strongest in the state. And how many private contracts to companies get paid for with that money? Jails are big money and make a handful of people very rich … and just perhaps those riches get turned into influence to keep the system working just the way it is … perhaps?
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