Two People of No Consequence

I was telling someone at a Poverty Action fundraiser last night that I've been losing it lately. One measure is that I've taken to offering anyone going to the upcoming NAEH conference $500 to pie Phil Mangano. The bounty's on the table, but no one's taken me up on it yet.

It's probably just as well. Splattering banana cream all over Mangano's impeccable tailoring and distinguished mane of silver hair would probably get one sent to Guantanamo these days, which is why I don't just do it myself. Even if someone else did it, they'd probably arrest me for conspiracy to assault a presidential appointee or something.

I don't know about you, but my last angry period was like twenty years ago, and coincided with my college years. I was reading Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States for one class and Todd Gitlin's The Whole World is Watching for another, and then Reagan invaded Grenada. I just sort of lost it for the next decade or so.

Eventually, I got used to the world being a corrupt shit hole and became sort of blasé about it all. I'd see some new outrage and think, "Well, that's how it is, isn't it?" This, I think, is basically the definition of middle age. But lately, it's like all the sores have been reopened.

And there's always some asshole standing around with a box of salt.

Last Friday, for example, I wrote about how one of our vendors literally got his head caved in, and the cops don't really seem all that interested in catching his homeless assailant. They went through the motions of doing a report at the scene, and, when our vendor was released from the hospital a month later and knew who his assailant was and where to find him, they couldn't be bothered to come take a report.

Today we tried again. Our vendor, who wears a helmet to protect his misshapen head and has brain damage from the assault, once again called the police. His assailant has told other street people that if he sees our guy again he's going to kill him. We're pretty sure that the assailant is in police custody right now for a different assault charge.

So we called 911, and this time, at least, they told us out right that they couldn't be bothered. They did say, however, that they would call back later to get a statement over the phone. An hour later, our guy had to go. Six hours later, we were still waiting for the call. Our staff called back to ask what happened.

The operator reported that they called back, but got the front desk recording and didn't know which extension to push, so they gave up.

The third sentence of the message, said our staff, is "press 0 for the front desk."

Well, they didn't stay on the line long enough to hear that, so they closed out the complaint. Normally, two attempts are required before this occurs, but they felt they'd exhausted their options.

They perked up a little at hearing that our guy was getting death threats, and said we should try again tomorrow. For the third time.

It's hard for me to believe that the police would be this disinterested if anyone with a credit card and a house key had gotten his head bashed in. In fact, if even the assailant had been middle class, there would be more interest. We haven't yet reached the point where it's open season on the homeless.

But when a homeless guy tries to kill another homeless guy, it's just two people of no consequence. They don't even give us a quarter to call someone who cares.

Cops Are For The Big People

A few months ago I made a post where I asked the question, "If a homeless guy breaks another homeless guy's arm in the woods, does anyone give a shit?"

In case you weren't aware, the answer is "no."

One of our former vendors, a developmentally delayed man with an anger management problem, busted another guy's arm in a dispute over turf. We fired him but it wasn't a happy moment. Imagine a homeless eight year-old who is prone to violent temper tantrums and lives in a 40-year-old man's body and you have a pretty good picture of our guy. Most of the time, he's like a sweet little kid who just wants to be loved. But when he's mad, he can do some real damage.

In this case, he bashed another homeless guy with a trash can and busted up his arm and shoulder. It hasn't healed well. Mark, we'll call him, will probably have chronic pain for the rest of his life. On top of his homelessness, he now has a disability.

Mark told the police exactly where to find the man who did this, and they did nothing. We had them come to the Real Change office and take a report, but as soon as they learned that the accused lives at Union Gospel Mission, they folded up their notepads and lost interest.

Homeless on homeless crime doesn't count, because the homeless aren't really even people. They exist is a parallel universe where, so long as they stay the fuck away from the rest of us, they're on their own.

Today brought another example.

Last week we fired another vendor after numerous complaints of threats and rudeness to other vendors. We probably should have done it long ago. This guy, unlike our dangerously overgrown eight-year-old, has no redeeming characteristics whatsoever. He's a straight-up thug who doesn't seem to give a crap about anyone.

So today, a vendor we hadn't seen for awhile — a frail, late-stage alcoholic who wasn't in great shape to begin with — showed up for papers wearing a helmet. He'd been hospitalized for a month. After a bit of questioning, we learned that the guy we just fired had bashed his head in with a two by four over a turf dispute.

His skull, from which the doctors removed a good deal of crushed bone, is now deformed, and has a huge indentation from the injury. As one of our vendor staff put it, "I don't understand where his brain is."

Staff asked what we should do, and I said, "I want that fucker behind bars."

Well, it's not so easy. I mean, forget that police were summoned to the scene and reports were made, and that our thuggish former vendor isn't exactly some sort of master criminal who has somehow managed to skillfully evade capture.

Police just didn't care enough to investigate and make an arrest.

So, today, we called the West Precinct and said, "We know who did this and where you can find him."

And they said, "We can't do anything if the victim doesn't call himself." We explained that the victim is a frighted and confused late-stage alcoholic who now has brain damage to boot, and isn't a real effective self-advocate these days, but it didn't matter. He had to call himself.

So we talked with him and talked with him and finally convinced him it would be OK. He made the call. He dropped the phone out of sheer fright several times but was coaxed to pick it back up, and he followed through to the end.

Police said they were "on the way."

An hour later, he was still waiting. We called them again. They said it was a busy morning. Another hour and several more phone calls went by and they were still busy. After two hours of waiting, our man in the helmet with the caved in head had to go to an appointment. He said he'd come back and try again next week.

I called an attorney who has experience in these sorts of things and he said, "It's about big people and little people and who the law protects."

That pretty much says it all.

Our guy in the helmet says he's not giving up. Neither are we.