A California woman says she is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after a homeless man randomly doused her with a bucket of diarrhea near the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles earlier this year.
An <a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/diarrhea-poured-on-woman-hollywood-homeless-564585101.html">NBC4 investigation broadcast on Monday night</a> revealed that the vagrant who attacked her was charged with battery, taken to jail, sent to a mental health residential facility for two months, and is now “back on the streets.”
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Homeless people who&#39;ve randomly attacked LA residents&#8211;dousing them with diarrhea or punching them in the head&#8211;now walk free. <a href="https://twitter.com/NBCLA?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NBCLA</a> I-Team uncovers a system that doesn&#39;t help the suspects get treatment or protect the victims from more attacks, on Channel 4 at 11pm.
&mdash; Joel Grover (@JoelNBCLA) <a href="https://twitter.com/JoelNBCLA/status/1194114541610602496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 12, 2019</a></blockquote>
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NBC4’s I-Team <a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/diarrhea-poured-on-woman-hollywood-homeless-564585101.html">reports</a>:
<blockquote>Heidi Van Tassel was parked in Hollywood after having a pleasant evening out with friends at an authentic Thai restaurant. Suddenly a man randomly pulled her out of the car, dragged her out to the middle of the street, and dumped a bucket of feces on her head, Van Tassel said and public records confirm.
“It was diarrhea. Hot liquid. I was soaked, and it was coming off my eyelashes and into my eyes,” Van Tassel said. “Paramedics who came to treat me said there was so much of it on me, that it looked like the man was saving it up for a month.”
Van Tassel was rushed to Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital after the grotesque attack, where she was tested for infectious diseases caused by contact with feces. She’ll need to be retested every three months.</blockquote>
Van Tassel told NBC4 investigative reporter Joel Grover: “It was all inside my car because it was so much. He just kept pouring it and splattering it all over me,” adding, “The PTSD that I’m dealing with is beyond anything that I’ve ever felt… There needs to be some kind of help for the victims of these crimes.”
<a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/diarrhea-poured-on-woman-hollywood-homeless-564585101.html">According</a> to the report, security cameras captured video of the incident, but the businesses would not release the footage. LAPD also refused to show Van Tassel images recorded from the responding officers’ body cameras. She said police did not return her phone calls after telling her they would investigate the crime.
Police and court records identified the homeless attacker as Jere Blessings, described in the documents as a “transient” with “schizophrenia and psychotic disorders,” the report said. Blessings was found mentally incompetent to stand trial.
“He doesn’t need jail time. He needs mental health care,” Van Tassel told NBC4. “I have empathy for him. Because he needs help.”
The NBC4 I-Team has extensively reported on crimes in L.A. where the suspects are homeless for more than a year. After examining court records, it found many of these cases are linked to methamphetamine abuse or mental illness, and “homeless who are arrested for these crimes are often right back on the streets without getting any treatment.” The investigation said there were 6,528 of these crimes citywide in 2017, more than 9,800 in 2018, and determined those numbers are on track to climb even higher by the end of this year.
 Follow Jeffrey Cawood on Twitter<a href="https://twitter.com/jeffreycawood">@JeffreyCawood</a>.
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Homeless Encampment

REPORT: Homeless Man Randomly Poured ‘Bucket Of Hot Diarrhea’ On Woman In Los Angeles

Homelessness

Los Angeles

A new fire in Los Angeles that erupted Monday morning is threatening homes in the wealthy area of Brentwood where celebrities live, including NBA star Lebron James, who was forced to evacuate his home.
CBS Los Angeles reported, “A fire erupted in the early hours of Monday morning near the Getty Museum. The Los Angeles Fire Department is ordering mandatory evacuations in the Mountain Gate and Mandeville Canyon communities between Mandeville Canyon Road and Interstate 405 north of Sunset Blvd.”
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<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GETTYFIRE?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#GETTYFIRE</a>: A fire erupted in the early hours of Monday morning near the Getty Museum. The Los Angeles Fire Department is ordering mandatory evacuations in the Mountain Gate and Mandeville Canyon communities between Mandeville Canyon Road and Interstate 405 north of Sunset Blvd. <a href="https://t.co/xKVaoHKbqr">pic.twitter.com/xKVaoHKbqr</a>
&mdash; CBS Los Angeles (@CBSLA) <a href="https://twitter.com/CBSLA/status/1188775332708569088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2019</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Evacuations-Ordered-Near-Getty-Center-LA--563969391.html?_osource=SocialFlowTwt_LABrand">NBC News</a> added that the fire “erupted in the hills above the 405 Freeway early Monday, burning homes and forcing evacuations in neighborhoods on Los Angeles&#8217; Westside. The fire, fueled by dry brush in an area that hasn&#8217;t seen rain since May, quickly expanded to 500 acres and cast an eerie orange glow over the 405 Freeway after it started around 1:30 a.m.&#8221; They also reported, &#8220;Residents as far west as Malibu were warned to be prepared for evacuations. Mandatory evacuation zones were extending from the 405 Freeway to the west early Monday.”
<a href="https://www.lafd.org/news/getty-fire">The Los Angeles Fire Department</a> reported, “This is a very dynamic fire that is moving in a westward direction driven by high winds. STRUCTURES AFFECTED: There are over 10,000 structures (both residential and commercial) in the mandatory evacuation zones.”
ABC News posted a video from a driver of the fire ravaging the hillside near the 405 freeway:
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&quot;Oh my Lord.&quot;
A driver on interstate 405 captured terrifying footage of the aggressive <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GettyFire?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#GettyFire</a>. The Getty Center tweeted their building was safe, but many nearby residents have been forced to evacuate. <a href="https://t.co/wo0iYNamQm">https://t.co/wo0iYNamQm</a> <a href="https://t.co/gfrf3BPB2F">pic.twitter.com/gfrf3BPB2F</a>
&mdash; ABC News (@ABC) <a href="https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1188837122444288001?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2019</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-28/brush-fire-t-home-on-405-freeway-in-bel-air">The Los Angeles Times </a>reported on the evacuation areas:
<blockquote>“The mandatory evacuation zone was described by fire officials as a box: Mulholland Drive on the north side, the 405 on the east, Sunset Boulevard on the south and Temescal Canyon Road on the west. Within the evacuation zones are Mount St. Mary’s University, Mountaingate and Mandeville Canyon.” The Times added, “All Santa Monica and Malibu schools are closed.”</blockquote>
The J. Paul Getty Museum, which is near to the blaze, tweeted, “Getty Center and Getty Villa remain SAFE from the #GettyFire, which is burning to the north and west of the Center. Both Getty sites will be closed today (October 28, 2019). We have activated our full emergency response.”
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Getty Center and Getty Villa remain SAFE from the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GettyFire?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#GettyFire</a>, which is burning to the north and west of the Center. Both Getty sites will be closed today (October 28, 2019). We have activated our full emergency response.
Our thoughts are with neighbors and first responders.
&mdash; J. Paul Getty Museum (@GettyMuseum) <a href="https://twitter.com/GettyMuseum/status/1188797494588657665?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The California Highway Patrol <a href="https://twitter.com/CHPWestValley/status/1188824426734768129">noted</a>, “Despite news reports that the SB 405 is completely shut &#8211; the only closures in place include all ramps from Valley Vista to Sunset Blvd. The 405 Fwy is currently open in both directions. However, we encourage everyone to avoid the area.”
There were reports of planes flying to the Pacific Ocean to obtain water and then fly back to the scene of the fire:
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Super Scoopers!!!!
&mdash; Megster (@m3gst3r) <a href="https://twitter.com/m3gst3r/status/1188831810349780993?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2019</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/california-fires-los-angeles-october-2019/index.html">CNN</a> reported that Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Koretz spoke at a news conference and warned residents in mandatory evacuation zones: &#8220;Get the hell out. If you’re in the mandatory evacuation zone and you’re still there watching this, you’re an idiot, get the hell out.”
James tweeted, &#8220;Man these LA (fires) aren’t no joke. Had to emergency evacuate my house and I’ve been driving around with my family trying to get rooms. No luck so far!”
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Man these LA 🔥 aren’t no joke. Had to emergency evacuate my house and I’ve been driving around with my family trying to get rooms. No luck so far! 🤦🏾‍♂️
&mdash; LeBron James (@KingJames) <a href="https://twitter.com/KingJames/status/1188770703438278657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2019</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://www.latimes.com/sports/lakers/story/2019-10-28/lebron-james-evacuated-getty-fire-405-freeway">The Los Angeles Times</a> reported that James tweeted eighteen minutes later, &#8220;Finally found a place to accommodate us! Crazy night man!&#8221; then added, “I [pray] for all the families in the area that could be affected by these [fires] now! Pretty please get to safety ASAP. My best wishes as well to the first responders right now doing what they do best!”

Wildfire in Los Angeles Mandeville Canyon

New Fire Ravages Wealthy LA Area: LeBron James Forced To Evacuate

Fire

In a movement that started with a tweet from President Trump about &#8220;rat and rodent infested&#8221; Baltimore, a group of pro-Trump activists took to the trash-strewn streets of Los Angeles to continue what they&#8217;d begun on the East Coast: help clean up Democrat-controlled cities. By the end of the effort, they&#8217;d cleaned up a stunning 50 tons of garbage and uncovered hoards of rats carrying who-knows-what diseases.
A new video from Austen Fletcher (&#8220;Fleccas&#8221;) documents the latest clean-up effort led by Scott Presler, a pro-Trump activist who organized the first such project last month in Baltimore. Presler and a group of volunteers, which Fletcher describes as consisting of &#8220;mostly Trump supporters,&#8221; managed to clean up a jaw-dropping 50 tons of trash in the San Fernando Valley, which, Fletcher notes, is the district for which Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff is responsible.
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49788/watch-video-captures-shocking-extent-la-homeless-james-barrett">The Daily Wire</a> has chronicled, largely as a result of progressive policies, Los Angeles is increasingly plagued by homelessness, which has resulted in rampant drug abuse, the spreading of diseases, and the accumulation of garbage in many areas. The problem has also increasingly inspired residents to begin to call out elected officials for failing to keep neighborhoods safe.
In a 10-minute documentary on the L.A. clean-up effort, Fletcher features residents expressing their disgust with the current situation in the county.
&#8220;Even though I live in L.A. — and I see these homeless encampments every day — this is so much worse than I expected,&#8221; says one volunteer. &#8220;In fact, there&#8217;s a rat that just ran past your shoulder there on the left. The smell is horrific. It&#8217;s dangerous. And it&#8217;s frustrating because we pay among the highest taxes here. We shouldn&#8217;t have to come out here and clean.&#8221;
&#8220;We had to get the [shopping] carts out first. So we pulled all the carts out, and then we had to start getting the trash out,&#8221; says another volunteer. &#8220;That&#8217;s when all the rats came.&#8221;
&#8220;We started to haul away the trash, and there&#8217;s literally dead rats everywhere,&#8221; says another.
&#8220;You have typhus, bubonic plague that are coming back in LA for the first time in the United States in I don&#8217;t know how many years,&#8221; notes a volunteer.
Asked if things have changed in the city, one guy who says he grew up in the area says, &#8220;It&#8217;s unexplainable.&#8221;
Asked if the city has tried to reach out and help the group, a volunteer says no. Another notes that last year, the city spent nearly $650 million on homelessness, yet because of misuse of the funds, the problem has only gotten worse.
&#8220;We have to look at how our money is being allocated,&#8221; says a female volunteer. &#8220;My impression is that my congressman, Adam Schiff, is not really paying attention for a few reasons. One, he doesn&#8217;t live here. And, B, he&#8217;s very focused on his hyper-partisan anti-Trump, Republican vs. Democrat thing.&#8221;
WATCH:
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The &#8220;rat infested&#8221; city clean-up projects were prompted by Trump tweeting about conditions in Rep. Elijah Cummings&#8217; Baltimore in late July.
Rep. Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men &amp; women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA,&#8221; Trump tweeted. &#8220;As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient &amp; well run, just very crowded. Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous &amp; filthy place.&#8221;
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">&#8230;.As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient &amp; well run, just very crowded. Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous &amp; filthy place
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1155073965880172544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Like many of his tweets, Trump&#8217;s post sparked a massive controversy, with Democrats decrying his comments as &#8220;racist&#8221; while Trump supporters pointed to Democrats&#8217; own past comments about Baltimore which admitted that parts of the city are indeed a &#8220;rat and rodent infested mess.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50397/watch-trump-critics-presented-racist-comments-james-barrett">WATCH: Trump Critics Presented With ‘Racist’ Comments About Baltimore, Then Learn Who Actually Said Them</a>

la_homeless_camp_gi.jpg

WATCH: Trump Supporters Go To Clean Up Filthy L.A., Shocked With What They Find

Donald Trump

In August, a group of Trump supporters led by conservative activist Scott Presler went to West Baltimore for a massive clean-up operation following tweets sent by President Donald Trump highlighting the dire conditions in the area.
Keeping to his promises, Presler has since led clean-up efforts in Newark, New Jersey and Virginia Beach, Virginia. And on Saturday, Presler and some 200 volunteers headed to Democrat-run Los Angeles, removing a stunning 50 tons of garbage, according to the activist.
&#8220;Without the help of the city, 200 volunteers picked up 50 tons of trash in 9 hours at a homeless camp in Los Angeles,&#8221; Presler told The Daily Wire on Monday.
&#8220;It’s almost 9 a.m. &amp; we’re removing waste from a homeless camp in Los Angeles. Why is an outsider from Northern Virginia here &amp; not California elected leadership?&#8221; the activist posted to Twitter Saturday, adding, &#8220;<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LosAngelesCleanup?src=hashtag_click">#LosAngelesCleanup</a>.&#8221;
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">It’s almost 9 a.m. &amp; we’re removing waste from a homeless camp in Los Angeles.
Why is an outsider from Northern Virginia here &amp; not California elected leadership? <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LosAngelesCleanup?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#LosAngelesCleanup</a> <a href="https://t.co/yqW2pxKA3c">pic.twitter.com/yqW2pxKA3c</a>
— #ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) <a href="https://twitter.com/ScottPresler/status/1175436890125635584?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 21, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Presler periodically posted photos and videos tracking the group&#8217;s impressive progress. In one video showcasing the effort, the activist said they were working as &#8220;an act of love.&#8221;
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">We’re making incredible progress.
This is an act of love. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LosAngelesCleanup?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#LosAngelesCleanup</a> <a href="https://t.co/lbR7tU8VPU">pic.twitter.com/lbR7tU8VPU</a>
— #ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) <a href="https://twitter.com/ScottPresler/status/1175478791461724160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 21, 2019</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;We did it. We actually did it,&#8221; he captioned a video around 2 p.m. local time.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">We did it.
We actually did it. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LosAngelesCleanup?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#LosAngelesCleanup</a> <a href="https://t.co/zreUb0Mlyh">pic.twitter.com/zreUb0Mlyh</a>
— #ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) <a href="https://twitter.com/ScottPresler/status/1175519843669307392?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 21, 2019</a></blockquote>
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In additional tweets, Presler called the clean-up &#8220;one of the proudest moments of my life,&#8221; adding, &#8220;I’ll never forget the day we cleaned up a homeless camp in LA.&#8221;
&#8220;I hope I make you proud, mom &amp; dad,&#8221; another tweet said. &#8220;In Baltimore, we cleaned up 19 tons of trash. In Los Angeles, we cleaned up 50 tons of trash.&#8221;
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">I hope I make you proud, mom &amp; dad.
In Baltimore, we cleaned up 19 tons of trash.
In Los Angeles, we cleaned up 50 tons of trash. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/69Tons?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#69Tons</a>
— #ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) <a href="https://twitter.com/ScottPresler/status/1175550054536364032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 21, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The impressive feat, however, has gone widely unnoticed by the mainstream media.
&#8220;National media has been completely silent,&#8221; Presler said. &#8220;Yet, the day before our cleanup, the LA Times reported on the climate strike. I&#8217;m not a climate striker — I&#8217;m a climate doer. Perhaps if the LA Times reported stories on real activism, we would see more cleanups and fewer protests. #StopTalkingStartDoing.&#8221;
The LA Times recently begged for such clean-up efforts executed by Presler and company in a collective editorial published in June, titled, &#8220;<a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-encampments-cleanups-20190620-story.html">A plan to clean up L.A. and help the homeless? Get it done already</a>.&#8221;
&#8220;Don&#8217;t postpone the decision. Don&#8217;t call for another study. This is an emergency,&#8221; the LA Times editorial board urged.
&#8220;Finally, Los Angeles city officials are recognizing the urgent need to clean up the trash near homeless encampments. Both the trash that homeless people have nowhere to put and the garbage illegally dumped by businesses are a blight and health hazard for everyone in the city. Too bad our elected representatives had to be shamed into performing one of local government’s most basic duties,&#8221; the piece said.
Again, Presler and company, who have not taken a dime from the city, have yet to earn any coverage from the outlet.
But that might be a notch better than how <a href="https://bsun.md/2GQuocC">The Baltimore Sun</a> reacted to Presler&#8217;s efforts in their area. The liberal outlet questioned his motives and scolded the activist for &#8220;reinforc[ing] the tired image that the poor people in this city can’t take care of their own neighborhoods.&#8221;
He also took a hit from Real News Network, which erroneously <a href="https://therealnews.com/stories/right-wing-extremist-scott-presler-organizes-trash-clean-up-in-west-baltimore">labeled</a> Mr. Presler, who is openly gay, a &#8220;right-wing extremist.&#8221;
Presler is clearly undeterred by the opposition media. On Monday, he posted a message of encouragement for others. &#8220;I&#8217;m just 1 guy,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We were able to organize 200 volunteers to pick up 50 tons of trash in 9 hours. If each of us did something, we could transform America for the better.&#8221;
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none">Thank you for helping this video reach 1 Million views.
I’m just 1 guy.
We were able to organize 200 volunteers to pick up 50 tons of trash in 9 hours.
If each of us did something, we could transform America for the better.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LosAngelesCleanup?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#LosAngelesCleanup</a>
— #ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) <a href="https://twitter.com/ScottPresler/status/1176110120922574848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 23, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Conservative Activists Clean Up 50 TONS Of Garbage In Liberal Los Angeles; Media Silent

Los Angeles Times

Media

Media Bias

On Wednesday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” Knowles talks about President Trump’s recent California fundraisers and how Trump is using Hollywood leftists for his strategic advantage. Video and partial transcript below: 
President Trump got a great deal on his two- or three-day swing through California. He was just in Beverly Hills, and I think the total he&#8217;s taking out of that state is 15 million bucks. The big takeaway here for the Left, for the chattering class, is that 15 million bucks didn&#8217;t come from nowhere. We talk about California as though it&#8217;s just monolithic, completely leftist, there isn&#8217;t a conservative anywhere. I mean, I make jokes about it, too. But there are [conservatives there].
I mean, we used to have a group out in Los Angeles called “Friends of Abe,” and &#8220;Friends of Abe&#8221; was friends of Abraham Lincoln. It was all the secret conservatives in Hollywood. There were a lot of us. The Obama administration tried to get a list of our members. Everyone wanted to know who they were, because if you asked anybody in the industry they&#8217;d say, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know any conservatives out here, I don&#8217;t need any conservatives in Hollywood.&#8221; And yet there were a lot. They just were afraid of speaking up because the Left is so vindictive in California.
I suppose this is what we mean by the phrase, &#8220;the silent majority.&#8221; Republicans — conservatives have been relying on that silent majority since Nixon, since Reagan, and all the way up through Trump. There are different names for them: The forgotten Americans, the great men and women of the middle of the country. Whatever, they&#8217;re out there. They&#8217;re even in California. I think what Trump is seeing here is [that] he doesn&#8217;t need to win California for California to help him win in 2020. You know it&#8217;s true.
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Hillary Clinton won California in a landslide. Trump got four and a half million votes there, four and a half million people voted for President Trump in 2016. That was the harder election to vote for Trump, because we didn&#8217;t know what he was going to do. We didn&#8217;t know how he was going to behave. He&#8217;s exceeded pretty much everybody&#8217;s expectations. We were told the economy was going to collapse, we were told we&#8217;re going to go to World War III, we were told all the terrible things would happen if Trump got elected. Instead, pretty much everything has improved. The economy&#8217;s great, we have record-low unemployment, relative peace abroad, re-negotiated trade deals. Things are looking pretty good.
How many votes is he going to get in 2020 [in California]? Enough to win? Almost certainly not, but it could galvanize some support for him. Four and a half million votes in 2016. He also raised $333 million in California in 2016. That&#8217;s a lot of money. What this tells you is there are Trump supporters in California. I probably know most of them personally, but there are [some], there actually are.
This isn&#8217;t even a Left/Right thing. Trump made a central pillar, of his fundraising swing through California, how the cities are deteriorating — Los Angeles and San Francisco. I live in L.A., [and it&#8217;s] falling apart. Homelessness is up 16% in just one year in L.A. San Francisco is falling apart, there are drugs all over the street, they&#8217;re decriminalizing the homeless behaviors there as well. There&#8217;s public defecation on the streets in San Francisco.
You don&#8217;t need to be some rock-ribbed Reaganite Republican to say this isn&#8217;t good, maybe we don&#8217;t want this, maybe we want the state to move in another direction. So I think Trump is very smart to bring this up — to talk about this. He was talking about L.A. homelessness; obviously the president of the United States is probably not going to fix a municipal problem like L.A. homelessness, but it&#8217;s a symbol for the rot that comes as a result of these leftist policies.
More importantly even than that, &#8230; the reason why Trump probably should swing back through Hollywood next time he gets a chance is just for the rest of the country. He gets to use Hollywood as a foil for him and for his policies. That liberal, vindictive Hollywood can be the foil. It&#8217;s like the anti-Trump. I mean, we saw just a few weeks ago the stars of &#8220;Will and Grace,&#8221; Eric McCormack and Debra Messing, who Trump then nicknamed Deborah &#8220;The Mess&#8221; Messing in his very Trumpian way. They came out and they called for the public naming of any Trump supporters in Hollywood.
We&#8217;re talking about McCarthyite blacklists. I even hesitate to use the term McCarthyite to describe what they were doing, because at least Joe McCarthy was going after communists, at least Joe McCarthy was going after enemies of America. Those two, Will and Grace, were going after people who support the president and saying — they said explicitly — we want you to name their names so we know who not to work with. We want you to name their names so we know who to blacklist, to ruin their reputations, ruin their careers, take away their livelihood. That is a bad look.
I mean, there was even some pushback from liberal Hollywood about that, and Trump gets to come out there and &#8230; trigger them [and] whip them up into [a] frenzy, and then show the rest of the country. So you have genuinely a choice, not an echo. You know Hollywood has widespread reach. They are exporters of culture, and so Will and Grace going out and calling for a blacklist, maybe it won&#8217;t change votes in California — it&#8217;s almost certainly not going to flip California to become some Republican state — but, that sort of vindictive leftism is not going to play in Peoria &#8230;
Every election is about a choice, if [you] have to choose between Trump who&#8217;s given us a pretty good economy — you know he&#8217;s got some mean tweets, but whatever, they&#8217;re pretty funny — and relative peace, and he actually seems pretty normal and [you] get to choose between that or these lunatics out there in Hollywood, who [are you] going to pick? Obviously, you&#8217;re going to pick President Trump.
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-michael-knowles-show/id1266577963?mt=2">Listen to full episodes of “The Michael Knowles Show” on iTunes.</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/show/michael-knowles-show">Watch “The Michael Knowles Show” on-demand!</a>

KNOWLES: How Trump Will Use California To Win In 2020

California

Conservatism

Hollywood

Republican Party

San Francisco

According to an internist at the New York University School of Medicine, the burgeoning number of homeless people in the cities of America, particularly Los Angeles, could see a surge in a disease thought uncommon since the Middle Ages: leprosy.
Dr. Marc Siegel, of New York University&#8217;s Langone Health, writing in <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/460442-is-a-dark-ages-disease-the-new-american-plague-threat">The Hill</a>, notes that the CDC reports that between 100 and 200 new cases of leprosy are annually reported in the U.S. He adds that a USC study found that of the 187 leprosy patients treated at its clinic between 1973 to 2018, most came from Mexico, where leprosy is more common. Siegel points out, &#8220;Leprosy is still <a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Leprosy-Remains-Prevalent-in-24-Latin-America-Countries-20180204-0031.html">more prevalent in Central America and South America</a>, with more than 20,000 new cases per year. Given that, there is certainly the possibility of sporadic cases of leprosy continuing to be brought across our southern border undetected.&#8221;
Then Siegel addresses Los Angeles:
<blockquote>And it seems only a matter of time before leprosy could take hold among the homeless population in an area such as Los Angeles County, with <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2019/6/4/18652755/2019-homeless-count-los-angeles-numbers">close to 60,000 homeless people</a> and 75 percent of those lacking even temporary shelter or adequate hygiene and medical treatment. All of those factors make a perfect cauldron for a contagious disease that is <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/leprosy/transmission/index.html">transmitted</a> by nasal droplets and respiratory secretions with close repeated contact.</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7442947/Homeless-people-risk-LEPROSY.html">The Daily Mail</a> notes, &#8220;Leprosy, or Hansen&#8217;s disease, affects 250,000 people worldwide every year, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention … The bacteria behind the infection, Mycobacterium leprae, attacks nerves in the body, which can lead to the characteristic &#8216;peeling&#8217; skin. Untreated, this can cause paralysis of the hands and feet.&#8221;
Los Angeles soaring homeless problem has also triggered an outbreak of typhus. The Los Angeles Times reported in June:
<blockquote>CatsUSA Pest Control, brought in to assess areas outside City Hall and nearby buildings, warned that homeless people create &#8220;harborage for rodents&#8221; … The company said it found &#8220;poor sanitary conditions&#8221; — including leftover food, human waste and hypodermic needles — and recommended that the city clear away the homeless population living in the Civic Center.</blockquote>
David Costa, building construction and maintenance superintendent, stated, &#8220;The homeless are using the grated areas above the pits as their bathroom and relieving themselves, This is also attracting the rats. Custodial will need to do some hazmat cleaning of the grates and the pits. There are even hypodermic needles being tossed in the pits along with human waste and other garbage.&#8221;
The Times added, &#8220;County health officials also declared a <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-typhus-20181004-story.html">typhus outbreak last year</a> in downtown L.A. and one Los Angeles city employee, Deputy City Atty. Elizabeth Greenwood, has filed a $5-million legal claim against the city, saying she contracted typhus while working in her office at City Hall East.&#8221;
Siegel said <a href="v">last February</a>, &#8220;Simply cleaning up the garbage in so-called ‘typhus zones’ will not solve the problem, as people who have nowhere to go and nowhere to dispose of their waste will simply make more. And more garbage means more rats which means more fleas which means more typhus.&#8221;

NYU Doctor Warns Los Angeles: You May Be Hit With This Medieval Disease

Health

On Tuesday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show,” Klavan talks about “Star Wars,” “American Sniper,” and how hungry people are for stories about heroism. Video and partial transcript below: 
I was at the Hollywood Bowl — had a wonderful time, I thank Josh Kerr for bringing us and letting us share seats — and they did a tribute to John Williams, who conducts the L.A. Philharmonic and who wrote so many great soundtracks. He wrote Star Wars, that&#8217;s the big one — Star Wars. I think he also did E.T., and so everybody shows up with these lightsabers, and you know it was really an interesting experience because on the one hand, it was delightful. It&#8217;s delightful to have people in L.A. come together — it&#8217;s a big city. It&#8217;s nice that they come together to appreciate music, and it&#8217;s nice that they come together to appreciate the Philharmonic, which it does as a whole — you know all through the summer, The Hollywood Bowl does all these different things which include Beethoven and &#8230; movie themes and all this.
But at the same time, every time I see the devotion that Star Wars fans have — and this is not, believe me, this is not an attack on Star Wars fans at all. I am touched by the fact that I know that Star Wars started out as a sort of tribute to the old Flash Gordon films. George Lucas loved these Flash Gordon films, they all started — I think [it] was the Emperor Ming, when he&#8217;s taking over the universe and Flash Gordon was always going to fight them. And they always started with that scroll that you&#8217;re probably familiar with from Star Wars, where the story unfolds and kind of scrolls into the background just like it does in Star Wars — that&#8217;s an imitation of that.
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And as he went forward, [George] Lucas, you know, incorporated other influences. The great Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa was part of his influences and of course Joseph Campbell — I&#8217;ve read I think virtually everything that Campbell has ever written who wrote about mythology, and what mythology means. And he wrote a famous book called “The Hero With A Thousand Faces,” which talks about the meaning of the kind of modern myth, what James Joyce called the modern myth. The one myth that all myths sort of partake of, and Lucas incorporated those ideas into Star Wars. I believe Campbell was actually a consultant on it and brought those heroic ideas, what the hero means, into that story.
And what I find so touching is this thing that sort of started out — and you can see it when you watch the first Star Wars — this sort of started out as a parody that people were so hungry, so desperately hungry for these ideas about heroism — about manhood, about adulthood, about becoming an adult, that they idolized Star Wars with complete seriousness. They discussed the Star Wars idea and the Star Wars universe and where it should go, and where it goes — a place that they don&#8217;t like. And it just shows you how hungry people are for these ideas and these ideas are built into the mythology of the Greeks [and] the mythology of the Romans.
Certainly, in a new and fresh and completely revolutionary way, into the stories of Christianity, which as C.S. Lewis said was the myth that really happened — the myth that was actual reality. And what&#8217;s said to me is that there are not enough artists who can incorporate those ideas into stories that are adult and complex. The only movie I can think of that actually talks about real heroism in a complex, and deep, and human way recently [and] was a great movie was “American Sniper” by Clint Eastwood. And there&#8217;s such a need to — once you become an adult, there is a need to maybe leave some of these heroes behind that are so pure and so perfect and that live in a universe that doesn&#8217;t exist and remind people of what it looks like to be a hero in a world that does exist, and how complex it is, and how it doesn&#8217;t make you perfect and it doesn&#8217;t make you anything except a hero.
That&#8217;s why “American Sniper” is such a good film, and that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m sort of sometimes sad when I see Star Wars fans, that they have nothing to move on to, that even as they grow older and then grow old, they still cling to what is essentially a fantasy film. Not that — that&#8217;s not an attack on them or on the film, it&#8217;s simply to say that with that, we also need a deeper version of the heroic story that I think is really lacking from American culture, which is why so many films are about superheroes and so few films are any good. So anyway, those were just my reactions to listening to wonderful music wonderful evening at the Hollywood Bowl that I thoroughly enjoyed. But it does remind me of the need for something that&#8217;s missing in American culture, which is complexity and depth in adulthood and heroism.
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-andrew-klavan-show/id1045171376?mt=2">Listen to full episodes of “The Andrew Klavan Show” on iTunes.</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/show/andrew-klavan-show">Watch “The Andrew Klavan Show” on-demand!</a>

Star Wars: Galaxy&#8217;s Edge Media Preview At The Disneyland Resort

KLAVAN: We Should Be The Heroes Of Our Own World

Star Wars

As I&#8217;ve made clear in recent pieces on the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50612/khan-addiction-fuels-homelessness-crisis-not-lack-sharif-khan">addiction epidemic</a> and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50201/khan-setting-record-straight-sharif-khan">deinstitutionalization</a>, I remain fiercely critical of the myopic, misguided progressive policies at play in the current homeless and addiction crisis in California. Still, meaningful faith won&#8217;t allow me to disregard the suffering right in front of me. I&#8217;m reminded of a quote from Dostoevsky in &#8220;Brothers Karamazov&#8221;:
<blockquote>Brothers, have no fear of men&#8217;s sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth.</blockquote>
It echoes a beautiful line from 2 Timothy 1:7:
<blockquote>For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.</blockquote>
It&#8217;s far too easy to pretend to know what may have led one down the treacherous path of addiction. The truth is, we often have no idea what siren songs of suffering and despair guide one to make such a terrible choice.
I’ll give just one anecdote to illustrate my point: One of my dearest friends over the last 20 years was addicted to heroin and alcohol some 10 years ago. What compelled him toward such addictions? His own father shot him up with heroin on a small, rural farm up north when my friend was a mere 15-year-old kid. So, again, we often just don&#8217;t know, and a measured kind of compassion becomes imperative, especially from a religious vantage point.
My Own Street View of the Crisis
I&#8217;ve spent a lot of time walking the wild streets of Los Angeles in my almost two decades here. In my many strolls, I&#8217;ve gotten to know some of the many homeless addicts that stumble through the neighborhoods around me. Here are a few of their stories in brief.
Melinda
I first met Melinda more than a decade ago outside of a Rite Aid. She has a genuinely sweet disposition completely at odds with her circumstances. She&#8217;s almost candid in her defeat. She doesn&#8217;t try any of the typical hustles when she sees me. There is no pitiable glance or mention of money. She just asks how I&#8217;m doing and I do the same. She had once gotten clean enough from heroin addiction to land a job at an animal clinic. She looked great, rejuvenated. A few months later, she was living out of a car more strung-out than ever.
These days, she&#8217;s doused in haggard makeup stumbling through the streets with a noticeable limp. She now openly sells herself for a fix. It&#8217;s absolutely heartbreaking to witness. So it goes.
Raj
Raj used to panhandle outside of a local Trader Joe&#8217;s. I&#8217;d sometimes grab him a sandwich or a soda. He&#8217;s also Punjabi. He says he ended up on the streets after his wife introduced him to meth. Unfortunately, it&#8217;s always difficult to gauge the veracity of the stories an addict tells. These days he takes what he can get – heroin, meth, anything.
Like many other homeless addicts, Raj also subsistence deals – that is, he deals simply to maintain his habit. The other day he jokingly asked me if I was looking for anything in particular. I pretended I didn&#8217;t hear him and wished him well. I also know that the dealers higher up in the sinister food chain use addicts as dealers now because <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50612/khan-addiction-fuels-homelessness-crisis-not-lack-sharif-khan">Prop 47</a> reduced felony possession to a misdemeanor. The dealers know they can spread their contraband into manageable portions among subsistence dealers with little fear of legal reprisal.
As if fate conspires in its own mercurial ways, Raj and Melinda are a kind of couple at the moment. I see them together all the time, pushing their lonely carts down the various boulevards. It&#8217;s inscrutable and tragic to witness.
Danny
Danny harbors all the broken mannerisms of a homeless addict. It&#8217;s as though Atlas stones have broken him down into some wasted state of subservience, his head permanently bent down in some derelict act of penance.
Danny used to live in a van a few blocks down from where I live. Like so many other heroin addicts, he thought he could manage his addiction. Recovering heroin addicts will <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9huWlXFA1s">tell you over and over again</a> that the reason why heroin&#8217;s grip is so insidious is that it begins as a gentle breeze. The first few hits are manageable. The high simply softens the hard world a bit. One is convinced they only need it once or twice a month if at all. Almost always, within a year or less, they&#8217;re in the throes of full-blown addiction, using multiple times a day.
Danny always seems to be on the verge of tears whenever I talk to him. Today is no different. When I ask if he&#8217;s seen his 7-year-old son recently, he simply breaks down and weeps. I mention rehab for the umpteenth time. He finally looks up at me with a profound sense of dejection. It&#8217;s as though I’ve asked him to consider climbing to the moon.
Sometimes objectivity is only available at the bottom of the proverbial pit. Only then do we see the full view of our self-destruction and our suffering. It&#8217;s why my friends who attend AA insist that one often has to hit rock bottom before genuine change can occur. How much farther down Melinda, Raj and Danny must descend is beyond me. For many, there is no bottom. It&#8217;s impossible not to feel for them though, regardless of the terrible choices they&#8217;ve made. The only respite I can find is my firm belief that they remain in Gods hands, as do we all.
More from Sharif Khan: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50612/khan-addiction-fuels-homelessness-crisis-not-lack-sharif-khan">Addiction Fuels The Homelessness Crisis, Not Lack Of Housing Or Jobs</a>

Homeless Skid Row

KHAN: A Brief View From The Streets Of The Addiction Epidemic In California

Drugs

Los Angeles recently launched an initiative intended to improve public health, empower the destitute, and advance sanitation efforts in the epicenter of the city’s homeless crisis: Skid Row.
On Monday, Democratic Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the formation of the Skid Row Clean Team — a new street cleaning program targeting the roughly 54-block area best known for rat-infested piles of garbage, a typhus outbreak, and sidewalks lined with tent encampments. He said the new project currently employs “about two dozen” homeless and formerly homeless individuals to help pick up the trash in their neighborhood.
Garcetti maintained that the team members are all determined to make a better life for themselves, adding, the endeavor is “just as much about cleaning the streets as it is about lifting up the people who live on them.”
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Our new Skid Row Clean Team is empowering homeless and formerly homeless Angelenos through a program that’s just as much about cleaning the streets as it is about lifting up the people who live on them. <a href="https://t.co/q2m3pONyIM">pic.twitter.com/q2m3pONyIM</a>
— Mayor Eric Garcetti (@MayorOfLA) <a href="https://twitter.com/MayorOfLA/status/1166115255207911424?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 26, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The workers were hired and primarily trained by the <a href="https://twitter.com/UrbanAlchemyUA/status/1166373925153955840">contracting organization</a> Urban Alchemy and are not city employees. <a href="https://kfiam640.iheart.com/content/2019-08-26-skid-row-team-pays-homeless-15-and-hour-to-clean-up/?Sc=editorial&amp;Pname=local_social&amp;Keyid=socialflow">According</a> to KFI Radio, they are paid “$15 an hour or more.” The minimum wage in L.A. <a href="https://wagesla.lacity.org/">increased</a> to $14.25 an hour last month for businesses with more than 25 employees.
Mayor Garcetti lauded their training in “hazardous waste management” and “litter abatement,” while also highlighting acquired skills such as “conflict de-escalation” and “community engagement.”
“When I first started the job, the homeless wouldn’t let us pick up the trash,” said a woman named Monique, who has been part of the clean team for about three weeks. “But I communicated with them…started picking up around them, and they began to trust us.”
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Thank you <a href="https://twitter.com/MayorOfLA?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@mayorofla</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/LACoPublicWorks?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@lacopublicworks</a> for giving our <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SkidRowClean?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SkidRowClean</a> team the opportunity to care for the beautiful city of Los Angeles <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/UrbanAlchemy?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#UrbanAlchemy</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CCC?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CCC</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SFClean?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SFClean</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SFPitStop?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SFPitStop</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LAPitStop?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#LAPitStop</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BART?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BART</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ParkStopSF?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ParkStopSF</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SkidRowClean?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SkidRowClean</a> <a href="https://t.co/n5bXnxvgyw">pic.twitter.com/n5bXnxvgyw</a>
— Urban Alchemy (@UrbanAlchemyUA) <a href="https://twitter.com/UrbanAlchemyUA/status/1166373925153955840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
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A spokesperson for Garcetti told The Daily Wire that the Mayor’s Office would evaluate the impact of the current program and consider expansion to meet the needs of the community.
L.A. directed $20 million in state funds to improve the Skid Row area last year. A recent count <a href="http://www.ladowntownnews.com/news/number-of-homeless-people-on-skid-row-spikes-by/article_aa32fbda-bafb-11e9-849f-ab047fa8951a.html">estimates</a> 4,757 homeless individuals currently reside there. This fall, the city <a href="https://www.lamayor.org/confronting-crisis-helping-our-homeless-neighbors">plans</a> to upgrade the neighborhood’s hygiene infrastructure, increasing the size of a personal care center that offers showers, toilets, and laundry machines for residents. The facility currently <a href="https://www.josehuizar.com/city-council-approves-new-long-term-home-for-skid-row-refresh-spot/">provides</a> more than 500 services per day.
“Every un-housed Angeleno deserves the help that they need to get off the streets,” Garcetti <a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Mayor-Garcetti-Homeless-Los-Angeles-Crisis-Response-558338541.html">said</a>.
A recent NBC4 investigation documented homeless people, often in the Skid Row area, “hijacking” fire hydrants throughout L.A. <a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/Los-Angeles-Homeless-Illegally-Use-Fire-Hydrants-to-Fill-Water-Balloons-Bathe-Shave-558051461.html">The probe found</a> that vagrants “are illegally using fire hydrants as a source of water to bathe, shave, even fill water balloons, leaving the hydrants damaged and often useless to firefighters during the critical fire season.”
A <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/typhus-zone-rats-trash-infest-los-angeles-skid-row-fueling-n919856">flea-borne typhus outbreak</a> on Skid Row last year led to a <a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Typhus-Epidemic-Worsens-in-Los-Angeles-505166301.html">record</a> 124 confirmed cases in L.A. County. <a href="https://www.lamayor.org/confronting-crisis-helping-our-homeless-neighbors">According</a> to the Mayor’s Office, the disease has returned to baseline levels within city limits where only one case has been reported in 2019.
CBS2 News <a href="https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2019/08/26/garcetti-la-homeless-crisis/">reports</a> that government officials estimate 17 more people become homeless every day in L.A. County.
Follow Jeffrey Cawood on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffreyCawood">@JeffreyCawood</a>.

Skid Row

L.A. Launches ‘Skid Row Clean Team,’ Homeless Paid $15 An Hour To Pick Up Trash

California’s occupational safety and health agency <a href="https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2019/08/15/city-employee-diagnosed-with-typhus-last-year-still-not-well-enough-to-return-to-work/">found</a> that workers at a Los Angeles City Hall building “were exposed to unsanitary conditions from trash and bodily fluids,” issuing multiple citations for failing to keep the structure’s passageways and exteriors clean.
State inspectors responded to a complaint submitted by Deputy City Atty. Elizabeth Greenwood. She <a href="https://www.dailybreeze.com/2019/02/07/deputy-la-city-attorney-in-san-pedro-goes-public-with-typhus-bout-prompting-city-hall-to-take-notice/">said</a> she contracted flea-borne typhus last year while working at City Hall East, an 18-story high-rise that sits across the street from L.A.’s iconic City Hall. The City Attorney’s Office, along with several other municipal agencies, is located inside the facility.
Greenwood, who is still recovering, filed a $5-million claim against the city in March. She <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-city-attorney-rat-flea-typhus-legal-claim-20190421-story.html">accuses</a> Democratic Mayor Eric Garcetti and other elected officials of recklessly endangering the public by allowing human feces and garbage to accumulate outside of her workplace, luring rats that carried typhus-infected fleas to the property.
“The people that live and do business in the city of Los Angeles expect the city of Los Angeles to not casually allow them to catch a medieval disease as they walk into City Hall,” <a href="https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2019/08/15/city-employee-diagnosed-with-typhus-last-year-still-not-well-enough-to-return-to-work/">said</a> Greenwood in a recent interview with CBS2/KCAL9 News.
Typhus, which is seldom fatal, usually reaches humans by flea bites or flea feces. It cannot be passed person to person, <a href="https://www.dailybreeze.com/2019/02/07/deputy-la-city-attorney-in-san-pedro-goes-public-with-typhus-bout-prompting-city-hall-to-take-notice/">according</a> to public health officials.
The Division of Occupational Safety and Health, also known as Cal/OSHA, determined that the city did not provide adequate cleaning services for City Hall East’s entrances and walkways outside. <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-15/city-workers-trash-bodily-fluids-los-angeles-civic-center">According</a> to the Los Angeles Times, homeless people often sleep in those spaces overnight. The Times went on to report that Cal/OSHA issued one citation to the City Attorney’s Office and another to the General Services Department, which oversees the maintenance of city buildings. The combined fines amounted to nearly $2,000. Both violations will be appealed.
“Our office clearly has no role in maintaining the building’s exterior grounds,” said a spokesperson for the City Attorney.
<a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-15/city-workers-trash-bodily-fluids-los-angeles-civic-center">More from the L.A. Times</a>:
Cal/OSHA took action roughly eight months after a pest control company <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-rats-homelessness-city-hall-fleas-report-20190603-story.html">issued a report</a> linking <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-rats-in-city-hall-20190207-story.html">rodent infestation</a> at City Hall to several homeless camps in the immediate area. Maintenance officials never mentioned those findings during three <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-city-hall-rat-problem-20190208-story.html">City Council meetings</a> called to discuss the rat problem. 
The report, submitted by pest company Cats USA, identified unsanitary conditions in the Civic Center, such as leftover food, human waste and hypodermic needles. …
Greenwood said she viewed Cal/OSHA’s actions as vindication, arguing that (L.A. City Attorney Mike) Feuer has repeatedly failed to take responsibility for how she contracted her illness. “They checked for fleas in the dead of winter, when fleas are dormant, and declared it was not their fault,” she said in an email.
Earlier this year, Greenwood <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-city-attorney-rat-flea-typhus-legal-claim-20190421-story.html">claimed</a> she had faced retaliation from her employer for contacting Cal/OSHA.
Los Angeles County set a new record with 124 typhus cases confirmed in 2018, <a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Typhus-Epidemic-Worsens-in-Los-Angeles-505166301.html">according</a> to the California Department of Public Health. However, Greenwood is the only City Hall employee to go public with a typhus diagnosis. She <a href="https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2019/08/15/city-employee-diagnosed-with-typhus-last-year-still-not-well-enough-to-return-to-work/">said</a> doctors told her she would continue to test positive for the illness for another 6-12 months.
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/37329/report-los-angeles-slow-implement-typhus-zone-jeffrey-cawood">REPORT: Los Angeles Slow To Implement ‘Typhus Zone’ Sanitation Plan</a>.
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47888/bubonic-plague-likely-already-present-los-angeles-joseph-curl">Bubonic Plague ‘Likely’ Already Present In Los Angeles, Dr. Drew Says.</a>
Follow Jeffrey Cawood on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/jeffreycawood">@JeffreyCawood</a>.

Homeless Populations Surge In Los Angeles County

Workers Exposed To ‘Trash &#038; Bodily Fluids’ At L.A. City Hall Building, Citations Issued In Response To Typhus Case

Elected officials in Los Angeles County decided to scrap a $1.7 billion jail project last week after anti-incarceration activists convinced them to change course, adopting a new “care first, jail last” approach.
The Board of Supervisors, which governs the most populous county in the United States, voted 4-1 to cancel a contract it had approved with McCarthy Building Companies. The deal called for the construction of a modern facility to replace the aging Men’s Central Jail in downtown L.A.
A coalition of <a href="https://www.theroot.com/jailbeddrop-la-s-fight-against-a-multi-billion-dollar-1821559819">prison abolition advocates</a> spent nearly two years rallying the community against the plan, arguing the money would be better spent on social services and alternatives to incarceration. The abandoned proposal had been revised several times, ultimately <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-jail-construction-20190212-story.html">amended</a> to the point that the new facility would have been managed by the Department of Mental Health rather than the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, which currently oversees the nation’s largest jail system. Opponents of the prospective “Mental Health Treatment Center” <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-jail-construction-20190212-story.html">insisted</a> it was still designed like a penal institution.
“Before we move forward with building an expensive new jail, we must address the mental and physical health needs of our jail population, many of whom can be safely diverted to community-based treatment facilities, which have better outcomes, and thereby increase public safety,” <a href="https://hildalsolis.org/supervisor-solis-leads-successful-effort-to-cancel-the-mccarthy-jail-building-contract-prioritizing-rehabilitation-over-punishment/">said</a> L.A. County Sup. Hilda Solis, who previously served as U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Barack Obama.
Officials <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-08/supervisors-reconsider-la-jail-project">estimate</a> that 70% of the inmates held in the county jail system are medically or mentally ill.
“Mental health care cannot be provided effectively within a custody environment and we must be focused on a ‘care first, jail last’ model,” Solis said. “Men’s Central Jail must be demolished, but we must replace it within a criminal justice system that includes modern, decentralized countywide continuum of non-custody community-based care facilities.”
“I am thankful that additional information and community advocacy in the past several months has brought us to this important realization.”
Solis <a href="https://twitter.com/HildaSolis/status/1161445265682812928">joined</a> “Justice LA” jail reform activists at a press conference last Tuesday before the Board voted to kill the contract. She co-authored the motion along with Sup. Sheila Kuehl, who recently <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/us/los-angeles-jails.html?fbclid=IwAR1tARS4Rrs5aTKVNHiyvVClY6LookH3yeNJwcOfDhF5gtOZ3xh4yl68joI">referred</a> to incarceration as “an experiment that has failed.” Each of the five county supervisors represents approximately 2 million people.
Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/21643/black-lives-matter-co-founder-soros-funded-jeffrey-cawood">established</a> the Justice LA coalition in 2017, which <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-jailbeds-20171228-story.html">staged</a> multiple demonstrations opposing the plan.
“We are demanding an end to mass incarceration in the U.S. and our county’s investment in policing and jails,” she <a href="https://www.theroot.com/jailbeddrop-la-s-fight-against-a-multi-billion-dollar-1821559819">explained</a> in an editorial written shortly after the group’s launch, later referencing “our movement’s call for abolition.”
The Los Angeles Times <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-08/supervisors-reconsider-la-jail-project">describes</a> Men’s Central Jail, built in 1963, as “dungeon-like” and “antiquated.” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/us/los-angeles-jails.html?fbclid=IwAR1tARS4Rrs5aTKVNHiyvVClY6LookH3yeNJwcOfDhF5gtOZ3xh4yl68joI">According</a> to the New York Times, it “is often referred to as America’s largest mental health institution, a dystopian, run-down facility where mentally ill inmates are often chained to the furniture.” Still, lawmakers opted to start over and develop a new strategy rather than continuing with the modified plan that had initially been approved in 2015.
County Counsel <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2019/8/13/20803756/mens-central-jail-los-angeles-contract-vote">predicts</a> it will take three or four years of bureaucracy for another jail replacement project to come before the Board.
“This issue around criminalizing mentally ill people is actually not just an L.A. issue,” Cullors <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/us/los-angeles-jails.html?fbclid=IwAR1tARS4Rrs5aTKVNHiyvVClY6LookH3yeNJwcOfDhF5gtOZ3xh4yl68joI">told</a> the NY Times. “L.A. is the microcosm of what’s happening across the country. You can go to Cook County in Chicago. You can go to Rikers Island in New York.”
“If Los Angeles gets this right and is able to build a model, this could be a blueprint for the rest of the country,” she continued.
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/21643/black-lives-matter-co-founder-soros-funded-jeffrey-cawood">Black Lives Matter Co-Founder, Soros-Funded Activist Aim To Stop L.A. From Building New Jails</a>
Follow Jeffrey Cawood on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/jeffreycawood">@JeffreyCawood</a>.

A prisoner behind bars with hands cuffed.

Los Angeles County Nixes $1.7 Billion Deal To Replace Jail After Pressure From Prison Abolition Advocates

Actor Danny Trejo is best known as a villain in numerous movies and TV shows, but in real life, the 75-year-old is much different than his onscreen persona.
On Wednesday, Trejo was in the Sylmar neighborhood of Los Angeles when he witnessed a car crash that caused one vehicle to overturn. Trejo rushed to help a child that was in the overturned vehicle strapped to a car seat. CNN <a href="https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/08/07/entertainment/danny-trejo-saves-baby-trnd/index.html">reported</a> that Trejo at first tried to crawl through one of the vehicle’s broken windows but was unable to unhook the seat belt holding the child seat. Another bystander, Monica Jackson, helped him and the two were able to save the child. The child’s grandmother was still trapped in the driver’s seat, but firefighters were able to rescue her using special equipment.
Security footage <a href="https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/video/4140957-security-video-shows-actor-danny-trejo-running-to-help-after-rollover-accident-traps-woman-child-in-suv/">shows</a> Trejo rushing to the overturned vehicle as one of the first people on the scene.
ABC7 reporter Veronica Miracle reported that the child was special needs and Trejo “distracted the boy until grandma was OK.”
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Not only is <a href="https://twitter.com/officialDannyT?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@officialDannyT</a> (Danny Trejo) one of the nicest actors, he’s also a <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/hero?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#hero</a>!
He was right behind a crash in Sylmar and pulled a special needs baby out of an overturned car. He distracted the boy until grandma was OK. ️ —&gt; <a href="https://t.co/tS2Za4bZVZ">https://t.co/tS2Za4bZVZ</a><a href="https://twitter.com/ABC7?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ABC7</a> <a href="https://t.co/U9iLzAkHkA">pic.twitter.com/U9iLzAkHkA</a>
— Veronica Miracle (@ABC7Veronica) <a href="https://twitter.com/ABC7Veronica/status/1159257677190422528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 8, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Trejo told reporters at the scene that he works with special-needs children and knew what to do to calm the child.
“He was panicked. I said, &#8216;OK, we have to use our superpowers.&#8217; So, he screamed &#8216;superpowers&#8217; and we started yelling &#8216;superpowers,'&#8221; Trejo said, <a href="https://abc7.com/actor-danny-trejo-helps-save-child-in-sylmar-car-crash/5451006/">according to ABC7</a>. &#8220;I said do this, with the muscles. He said &#8216;muscles.'&#8221;
&#8220;We got kind of a bond. I kept facing him away from the accident,&#8221; Trejo added.
He later told a photographer at the scene that “The only thing that saved the little kid was his car seat.”
“Everything good that has happened to me has happened as a direct result of helping someone else,” Trejo told ABC7. “Everything.”
Trejo has not always been a Hollywood actor. He spent an entire decade in and out of prison when he was a teenager and said he started smoking marijuana when he <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/20/from-prison-to-profits-danny-trejos-secret--do-not-act-like-a-movie-star.html">was just 8 years old</a>. He has been sober for more than 40 years since his last prison sentence. After he was out, he began working as a youth drug counselor and was asked by a patient to help with drug problems on a movie set. Trejo’s menacing appearance landed him a job as an extra in the film.
The movie’s screenwriter recognized Trejo from prison — where Trejo became a boxer. The screenwriter hired Trejo to train one of the stars of the film. From there he was offered another small part in another movie and the rest is history.
Outside of his film career, Trejo owns several successful restaurants: Trejo’s Tacos, Trejo’s Cantina, and Trejo’s Coffee &amp; Donuts. He also still helps kids avoid drugs and alcohol, using his own life as an example.

Danny Trejo

Danny Trejo Helped Rescue A Child From An Overturned Car

Children

The latest video by popular man-on-the-street interviewer Austen Fletcher efficiently captures the alarming homeless situation in the city of Los Angeles, particularly the infamous &#8220;Skid Row,&#8221; wherein reside thousands of homeless people — most of whom are either suffering severe psychological problems or substance addiction, and among whom hundreds of sexual predators roam.
The 4-minute video, which Fletcher (also known as Fleccas) says he filmed in just one hour, is presented as a final look at the area he&#8217;s moving out of because of the rapidly deteriorating situation. In the area, he explains, there&#8217;s been a 50% increase in homelessness since 2012 (the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48852/watch-how-dangerous-la-homeless-problem-dangerous-james-barrett">number</a> of homeless now topping 36,000 in L.A. and 59,000 in L.A. County). As his video shows, the situation poses a very real health threat to residents. Because of the rampant drug use, filth, and rats, disease is proliferating in the area.
The video begins with Fleccas and his cameraman driving up to the heart of Skid Row. Lining the sidewalks are tents, human waste, and trash, including hypodermic needles.
The camera captures a half-dressed woman standing amid trash attempting to bathe herself in a stream of water from a fire hydrant. The sidewalks and streets are strewn with garbage — bags, bottles, discarded shoes, and heroin needles.
When Fletcher asks one of the residents, who is sitting in a torn tent, if he can interview her, another woman throws an empty bottle at him.
One person who agrees to give an interview is a man who works for a group attempting to bring relief to the area. Asked why things are so &#8220;crazy&#8221; in Skid Row, the man replies, &#8220;Why&#8217;s it so crazy out here? Because everybody&#8217;s on drugs.&#8221; The next shot shows multiple needles lying amid yet more trash.
Asked why the city allows all of these people to live out on the streets, the man says, &#8220;The city, they keep saying they&#8217;re going to build more houses and more houses, but it&#8217;s taking too long. And then you&#8217;ve got more people that are coming from other cities, and they&#8217;re coming to downtown Los Angeles because of the resources they hear about but that is so slow.&#8221;
&#8220;So there are a lot of resources being advertised, but in the end there&#8217;s not much to go around,&#8221; says Fletcher.
&#8220;There are less toilets in Skid Row than there are in the Syrian refugee camps,&#8221; notes Fleccas, the camera focusing on human excrement in the street. The homeless, he explains, just relieve themselves on the side of road.
Another person who is willing to talk to Fletcher is an emaciated woman who tells him that she is about to start her 12 Steps, and that she is HIV positive. She tells him she&#8217;s been in the area since 1985, having come there after escaping her father, who she says molested her for nine years. Asked if she thinks the problem is a resource problem or a mismanagement problem, she says &#8220;mismanagement.&#8221;
She goes on to describe the diseases she&#8217;s seen spreading in the area, while Fleccas notes that people are literally dying the streets by the hundreds there every year.
WATCH:
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Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48852/watch-how-dangerous-la-homeless-problem-dangerous-james-barrett">WATCH: How Dangerous Is The L.A. Homeless Problem? This Dangerous.</a>

WATCH: Video Captures Shocking Extent Of L.A. Homeless Crisis In 4 Minutes

Austen Fletcher

The sheer scope of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45822/hammer-customs-and-border-protections-insane-march-josh-hammer">systemic</a>, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46992/crisis-cbps-april-border-numbers-further-reveal-josh-hammer">all-encompassing</a> sovereignty <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46457/amidst-unprecedented-border-crisis-united-nations-josh-hammer">crisis</a> at our southern border is staggering.
From both a <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/48335/hammer-federal-government-has-no-more-important-josh-hammer">constitutional and a philosophical perspective</a>, the federal government has no more important responsibility to its citizenry than securing the border. Period.
From a national security perspective, it is stupefying to ponder the reality that we are releasing tens of thousands of barely vetted aliens into the interior each month due to a brutal combination of catch-and-release tomfoolery, limited bed space due to the under-funding of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the erroneously decreed <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46601/hammer-why-did-dhs-abort-its-re-writing-infamous-josh-hammer">Flores settlement</a>. Indeed, we know from the <a href="https://cis.org/Bensman/Assessing-Report-about-Four-ISIS-Terrorist-Suspects-Caught-Nicaragua">intrepid reporting</a> of journalist extraordinaire Todd Bensman that the predominantly Central America-fleeing economic migrants have no shortage of dangerous Middle Easterners <a href="https://www.toddbensman.com/from-panama-and-costa-rica-complete-findings-of-bensmans-terror-travel-threat-investigation/">mixed in among them</a>. Furthermore, we are letting in <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/contagion-invasion-part-1-ever-happened-principle-protecting-borders-dangerous-diseases/">no shortage</a> of migrants afflicted with <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/contagion-invasion-part-2-untold-public-health-endemic-borders-beyond/">deadly diseases</a>.
From an assimilation perspective, the huge number of Central Americans absconding into the nation&#8217;s interior due to the de facto amnesty of catch-and-release only exacerbates our increasingly stark crisis of national unity — including but hardly limited to our ability to (literally) all <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/what-assimilation-half-the-people-in-americas-largest-cities-speak-foreign-languages/">speak a common language</a>.
From a crime perspective, we know that non-citizen aliens commit a <a href="https://cis.org/Camarota/NonCitizens-Committed-Disproportionate-Share-Federal-Crimes-201116">disproportionate share of federal crime</a> — 44.2% of it over the course of 2011 — in 2016, according to <a href="https://cis.org/Camarota/NonCitizens-Committed-Disproportionate-Share-Federal-Crimes-201116">statistics</a> from the U.S. Sentencing Commission. And from a pure common sense perspective, it ought to make sense that vulnerable unaccompanied alien youths showing up at our border would be more susceptible to recruitment by MS-13 and other Central America-originating transnational gangs. In fact, both MS-13 and the cartels operate so fluidly throughout the U.S. due in no small part to the ongoing surfeit of prospective gangsters and drug mules who reach our border and are released into the interior. Consider this <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/19-22-indicted-ultra-violent-ms-13-murders-illegal-aliens-central-america/">harrowing story</a> out of Los Angeles:
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">&#8220;Nineteen of the 22 defendants charged in the indictment had entered the country illegally in the last four years,&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/MHQ1kW4aAU">https://t.co/MHQ1kW4aAU</a>
— Daniel Horowitz (@RMConservative) <a href="https://twitter.com/RMConservative/status/1151463048827346944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 17, 2019</a></blockquote>
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But perhaps the singular least discussed aspect of the ongoing crisis at our southern border is that the illegal alien influx there has dramatically metastasized America&#8217;s <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db329-h.pdf">already-dire drug epidemic</a>. An eye-opening <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/drugs-pour-in-from-mexico-as-border-patrol-forced-to-focus-on-migrants">report</a> in the Washington Examiner this morning shines a spotlight on the extent to which the border crisis has frozen our Department of Homeland Security (DHS) human assets — redirecting those officials who would normally be in the business of interdicting contraband 50-100 miles inland to deal with apprehension and toddler daycare duty at the border itself. Per the Examiner:
<blockquote>Border Patrol highway checkpoints in the southern New Mexico region that normally seize seven figures worth of drugs annually have not seized a dollar in nearly four months after being shuttered in late March, allowing drugs to flood into the country. Meantime, with the added supply, prices for illicit drugs are dropping precipitously.
Those seven checkpoints have sat unattended after Border Patrol closed them to move all personnel to the border to assist with apprehending, processing, and caring for the high number of migrant families arriving. &#8230;
Officials have also noted upticks in methamphetamine and fentanyl seizures since March. Black said the cost of a pound of meth has been slashed in half since then, from $4,700 when the checkpoints first closed to $2,500 by late June. The price dropped because the market is saturated.</blockquote>
To summarize, then, Border Patrol assets who are normally tasked with interdicting contraband have been, due in no small part to the current under-funding of DHS, redeployed to the border to deal with the sundry maladies transpiring there. As a consequence, drugs trafficked in by the cartels and their terrorist allies (like Hezbollah) are not being seized. There is now a huge, unprecedented glut of deadly narcotics pouring into the nation. Recall that a sugar packet-sized dose of fentanyl can kill a whole room full of people. And now, so much meth is being trafficked into the interior that prices in Las Cruces, New Mexico have been cut by nearly half in just four months! That is simply astonishing.
America&#8217;s drug overdose epidemic, while <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/senate-about-to-pass-opioid-laws-that-are-built-on-lies/">misdiagnosed</a> as an &#8220;opioid&#8221; epidemic, is really a more general narcotics epidemic that has fentanyl, cocaine, meth, and heroin as its leading contributors. Our under-funded DHS and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48281/hammer-trump-has-unilateral-power-stop-migrant-josh-hammer">political unwillingness</a> to stanch the illegal alien influx bleeding at our border is not just resulting in <a href="http://www.conservativereview.com/news/19-22-indicted-ultra-violent-ms-13-murders-illegal-aliens-central-america/">machete-style MS-13 murders</a> in Los Angeles. It is also leading to an unprecedented crisis of drugs so potent that — in the case of fentanyl — they might be reasonably compared to cartel-driven chemical warfare against our inner cities and collective progeny.
This is a huge, huge problem. Drugs are literally destroying countless small towns across the nation. And now our political elites, by ignoring the border crisis as they have, are somehow making the drug epidemic crisis even worse than it already is. It is nothing short of a blemish upon our entire political ruling class.

HAMMER: Why Is No One Discussing The Drug Trafficking Aspect Of Our Southern Border Crisis?

Department of Homeland Security

Illegal Immigration

Immigration

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

MS-13 Gang

New Mexico

Southern Border

U.S. Customs and Border Protection

On Saturday, on the eve of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in cities across America, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti released a video on Twitter in which he told illegal immigrants, “Rest assured, here in Los Angeles we are not coordinating with ICE.”
The tweet was captioned, “A message for all Angelenos: Here in Los Angeles, we will not be coordinating with ICE. Your city is on your side, we are in this together.”
Garcetti began by noting the actions ICE would implement on Sunday: “We’ve all heard reports that the Trump administration is threatening to round up and deport thousands of immigrant families in cities across America this weekend.”
He continued with advice for illegal immigrants:
<blockquote>No matter their immigration status, I want every Angeleno to know their rights and how to exercise them. Remember: you have the right to remain silent. You don’t have to open your door to an ICE agent that doesn&#8217;t have a warrant signed by a judge. You have the right to speak to a lawyer before signing any documents or speaking to law enforcement. And, if you need help finding an attorney, you can call 311 and learn more about our Justice Fund and other resources that offer legal support. And whenever possible, keep a record of everything that happens. Take note of an officer&#8217;s name and badge number, of when and where you are being questioned, so you can use that information in your own defense.</blockquote>
Garcetti then made it clear that he was against ICE: “And most importantly, I want you to know, you do not need to be afraid. Your city is on your side, and rest assured, here in Los Angeles we are not coordinating with ICE.”
Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore, standing next to Garcetti, added:
<blockquote>Our police force does not do the job of federal law enforcement. So I want to reiterate what the mayor just said: The Los Angeles Police Department is not assisting ICE in any way. We will not enforce immigration laws that are civil in nature and fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Immigration is a federal matter. Safety is a police matter, and we&#8217;re not going to mix those two. Everything we do is focused on what’s best for the security and safety of all Angelenos, and consistent with our commitment to constitutional policing and deepening our community partnerships. Simply put, we are here to protect and serve all the people of Los Angeles, regardless of their immigration status.</blockquote>
Garcetti concluded, “In Los Angeles, we draw strength from the diverse dynamic communities that call our city home, and we support immigrant families, because they’re our friends, neighbors, colleagues, confidants, our fellow taxpayers, local business owners, and co-workers. For us, this isn’t partisan politics; it’s about being a good neighbor. It’s about who we are as Angelenos and who we should always be as Americans. And we will never let fear and intimidation win the day. We are in this together. And we believe that Los Angeles, and the United states, are places where every family should remain together, where everyone should feel safe, and where everybody belongs.”
As <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7247621/Los-Angeles-Mayor-Eric-Garcetti-releases-video-directed-Trumps-ICE-raids.html">The Daily Mail</a> noted of acting ICE Director Matt Albence, “Albence told Fox News that enforcement operations would target families who entered the country illegally then mostly failed to attend court hearings to pursue an asylum claim.”
Video below:
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">A message for all Angelenos: Here in Los Angeles, we will not be coordinating with ICE.
Your city is on your side, we are in this together → <a href="https://t.co/mHCFBjJ4vC">https://t.co/mHCFBjJ4vC</a> <a href="https://t.co/b3apkjzXms">pic.twitter.com/b3apkjzXms</a>
— Mayor Eric Garcetti (@MayorOfLA) <a href="https://twitter.com/MayorOfLA/status/1150138702233911296?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 13, 2019</a></blockquote>
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WATCH: LA Mayor Garcetti On Eve Of ICE Raids: ‘Rest Assured, We Are Not Coordinating With ICE’

Eric Garcetti

On Wednesday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show,” Klavan discusses how Hollywood has tried to normalize child abuse through films and television while covering for true abusers in their own company. Video and partial transcript below.
John Nolte, my pal over at Breitbart, wrote about this many, many years ago back in 2009, which is, I think, when Harvey Weinstein and Woody Allen and the rest were standing up for Roman Polanski because he&#8217;d been busted and they didn&#8217;t want him extradited to America, which he wasn&#8217;t. Nolte started writing about the fact that movie after movie after movie was coming out in that year 2009 to normalize and make you sympathize with people who abuse children. He talked about &#8220;Doubt.”
Now &#8220;Doubt&#8221; is a very good play, but in &#8220;Doubt&#8221; there is a scene where a priest who is accused of molesting a 12-year-old boy is kind of given an out by the boy&#8217;s mother saying, &#8220;Well the boy&#8217;s father didn&#8217;t understand him. At least he had this priest to understand him.&#8221; I remember seeing this play in a theater and there was a question time afterwards, and I remember a gay guy getting up and sort of waxing lyrical about what a wonderful thing it was that this priest had molested this boy and given him some kind of place to go, some kind of sympathy.
There was another one called &#8220;Towelhead&#8221; with Aaron Eckhart and Maria Bello. It&#8217;s a film that Nolte says Roman Polanski might have seen many times while wearing a raincoat. The protagonist is a 13-year-old, Jasira. The story surrounds her sexual abuse at the hands of a number of men, including Eckhart&#8217;s Gulf War vet. Rather than the repeated abuse damaging the young girl, the filmmaker portrays the rapes and molestations as a healthy and sexually liberating experience. Here&#8217;s the one that drove me crazy. It was &#8220;The Reader.&#8221; Kate Winslet won last year&#8217;s best actress Oscar for her role in it. She plays a sympathetic Nazi guilty of mass murder who seduces and then engages in a steamy sexual affair with a 15-year-old boy. I wrote about this too when this film came out. I thought, &#8220;What the hell are you talking about?!&#8221; The woman is a Nazi, she&#8217;s a sex molester and I do not care about her. I don&#8217;t support her. But this, Nolte believed, and has a good case for this, that this is on purpose.
I mean we&#8217;re having it now in California where they want to teach little children about pedophilia and pederasty. When somebody went to complain to the school district in California said, &#8220;This is done because we&#8217;re talking about historical perspectives and how gender relations and different type of sexual orientations have existed in history.&#8221; Well, screw you. I mean you&#8217;re normalizing the abuse of children.
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You know the other day, on Twitter where I&#8217;m under attack now, they&#8217;re trying to get me thrown off Twitter, OJ Simpson puts out a video paying tribute to his old pal Michael Jackson. I looked at this and I thought we&#8217;re all going to hell. I thought, &#8220;Thank God OJ Simpson isn&#8217;t saying he voted for Trump,&#8221; because then Twitter would throw him off. But if OJ Simpson, a man who I think reasonable people are justified in thinking is a savage killer, is praising Michael Jackson, a man I think reasonable people are well justified in thinking he was an abuser. I personally believe Jackson used his wealth and his power and his fame as a spider&#8217;s web to lure in and abuse little boys. I just thought this is this normalization process.
Nobody complained about this except our friend Michael Knowles, the only guy who pointed it out. I just think we have traded morality for politics. These people who were going after Donald Trump and going after Alex Acosta all the while leaving these children in the dirt. Which is exactly what they&#8217;re doing by making it all about politics. Don Lemon making it all about politics. The news media making it all about politics are abandoning these children to the abuse of powerful people because they haven&#8217;t got the guts and they haven&#8217;t got the means and they haven&#8217;t got the willpower to go after the powerful people themselves. If Epstein was blackmailing people, there must have been a lot of people on those tapes.
I&#8217;d like the U.S. attorney to see him. Good for Donald Trump&#8217;s Justice Department for going after him. I hope they go after him with everything they&#8217;ve got. But just watch how this story disappears and watch how this story never gets bigger than a certain field. Because unless they can use it for politics unless they can use it to go after Trump, I do believe the press will not follow it up.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/show/andrew-klavan-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/show/andrew-klavan-show&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1562766007106000&amp;usg=AFQjCNH8uAWQZCkub6Kwyk-BZ9D6TiOafg">Watch more of The Andrew Klavan Show here</a>.
<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-andrew-klavan-show/id1045171376?mt=2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-andrew-klavan-show/id1045171376?mt%3D2&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1562766007106000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEmG06HxAJOOQx6F4h4Y62RUsFlfw">Listen to more of The Andrew Klavan Show on iTunes here.</a>

KLAVAN: The Sick Normalizing Of Child Abuse By Hollywood

Andrew Klavan

Michael Jackson

Woody Allen

<a href="https://twitter.com/HussamA">Hussam Ayloush</a>, the longstanding leader of the Greater Los Angeles chapter for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-GLA), wrote a blistering attack against the American government on Friday, a day after Independence Day, before flying to Turkey to begin a whitewashed spiritual social media travelogue.
Ayloush <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hussam.ayloush/posts/10156800910444825">published</a> to his Facebook page, “As someone who grew up through wars, occupation, loss of loved ones, being displaced, and enduring bloody dictators, I truly appreciate freedom. But how can I celebrate our Independence Day when migrants and their children are abused in our US concentration camps and denied freedom? Or when our tax money funds the denial of freedom to Palestinians and Egyptians? Or when our weapons wage the UAE/Saudi war on Yemeni lives and freedom? My freedom is not complete until everyone else is free.”
Ayloush curiously did not mention Turkey among the list of repressive Middle Eastern states, despite Ankara’s growing reputation for <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-06-28/turkey-jails-more-journalists-any-other-nation-those-detention-are-all-terrorists">jailing journalists</a> and political prisoners.
Two days later on July 7, Ayloush played tour guide, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hussam.ayloush/videos/10156807718594825/">streaming </a><a href="https://www.facebook.com/hussam.ayloush/videos/10156807718594825/">live</a> on Facebook for just over two-and-a-half minutes outside at “Istanbul&#8217;s newest and one of its most beautiful mosques, Camlica Camii.”
Ayloush then <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hussam.ayloush/videos/10156807738524825/">streamed</a> another minute-and-a-half once inside the mosque, declaring, “The inside of the new Camlica Masjid in Istanbul is just breathtaking. Masha Allah. May Allah bless everyone involved in making that amazing project possible.”
Ayloush would later <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hussam.ayloush/posts/10156808663179825?__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARAM6BMuZeYeIMSVdT9BWvRaYWRKjLJWJB2Wy8bUb-Rd3aPxD7fTrB-gqNYgwCMKICyFDGuly6WpTibJ350xlxVEeNDyaVRBVvlhGb24g7udU7HHE2cIcnCOf3QQ-EN2bGAio0nk7ESITw1shjvkCd587AJhQMcopxYER_9Vx9RlzgNpvrcCGW0PqezbJ4CNWJBvO5NGBmMIAuOOxjW5OvjHJc7rAg1gsbj5fsMmipOairvPhbIaWPICKVFT0qSSVk2tH0_EPOGQUpFaRQGVunA9mrs&amp;__tn__=-R">report</a> that one of his taxi drivers claimed to love an American leader. He reports, “I cringed, thinking: Please don&#8217;t make it be Trump.” The driver then supposedly said, “Malcolm X, A brave and principled leader.”
On July 8, Ayloush streamed <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hussam.ayloush/videos/10156810607224825/">inside</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hussam.ayloush/videos/10156810559139825/">outside</a> the Eyüpsultan masjid, which he described as “possibly the most spiritual place to visit in Istanbul.”
If Ayloush is really as committed to the principle that “freedom is not complete until everyone else is free,” then how can he be idyllically chronicling his mosque tour while the state he is in <a href="https://clarionproject.org/turkey-systematic-torture-rape-political-prisoners/">engages</a> in appalling torture and rape of its political prisoners?
In 2016, The Independent published an <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/turkey-coup-attempt-erdogan-torture-human-rights-suspension-kurdish-prisoners-freedom-from-torture-a7149951.html">article</a> claiming that “Torture has returned to Turkey under Erdogan.” Ann Hannah wrote, “The European Court of Human Rights has frequently found Turkey to be in breach of the absolute ban on torture and our clients at Freedom from Torture are living proof that it continues to take place under Erdogan’s government.” Hannah revealed that doctors with Freedom from Torture had documented beatings, electrocutions, rape, and sexual torture — all utilized during interrogations about political activity.
In 2017, Safak Pavey, a member of the Turkish Parliament and the Republican People’s Party, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/turkey-erdogan-prison.html">wrote</a> in The New York Times about what he’d discovered since having to become “a specialist in the Turkish prison system.” He noted that 38,000 real criminals — fraudsters, rapists, and thieves — had to be released to make room for journalists and political prisoners. He describes coerced interrogations, where prisoners are beaten with batons until signing confessions.
On July 9, Ayloush <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hussam.ayloush/posts/10156811796139825">made clear</a> his support for the Erdogan regime and his lack of concern for those oppressed within it: “Appreciating Turkey&#8217;s beauty and stability cannot be complete without recognizing the brave citizens who sacrificed their lives to oppose the military coup attempt and protect their country&#8217;s freedom and democracy in July of 2016. May Allah accept them as Shuhada&#8217;.”
Ayloush’s whirlwind tour again shows the increasingly <a href="https://spectator.org/mas-icna-and-its-web-of-turkish-support/">cozy relationship demonstrated in recent </a><a href="https://spectator.org/mas-icna-and-its-web-of-turkish-support/">years</a> between American Islamists and the <a href="https://clarionproject.org/turkey-pm-erdogan-unabashed-support-muslim-brotherhood/">Muslim Brotherhood-backing</a> Erdogan regime. Other noteworthy examples include Turkey <a href="https://counterislamist.org/turkish-leadership-in-international-islamist-movement-means-armenian-genocide-denialist-propaganda-for-american-muslims/">pushing propaganda</a> at last year’s Muslim American Society West Coast convention and Turkey <a href="https://counterislamist.org/turkey-indoctrinates-american-muslim-children-to-celebrate-islamist-leader-erdogan/">indoctrinating</a> California Muslim children with an Erdogan political campaign song.
Ayloush’s decision to criticize the U.S. the day after Independence Day while celebrating the increasingly authoritarian Turkey once again raises serious questions about Ayloush and CAIR’s commitment to freedom and human rights.
David M. Swindle is the Southern California associate of the <a href="https://counterislamist.org/">Counter-Islamist Grid</a>. He also works as the Director of Research for <a href="https://theisraelgroup.org/">The Israel Group</a>. Follow him on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/daveswindle">@DaveSwindle</a>.

SWINDLE: CAIR-L.A. Leader Trashes American Freedom Before Visiting Authoritarian Turkey

CAIR

Islam

Radical Islam

Turkey

An activist coalition in Los Angeles recently <a href="https://www.aclusocal.org/en/press-releases/lausd-ends-random-searches-schools">claimed victory</a> after education officials voted to end mandatory, random student searches in the city’s public schools, a policy that has been in place for nearly 26 years.
United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), a union that represents more than 31,000 educators in the L.A. Unified School District (LAUSD), partnered with the ACLU, Black Lives Matter, and student-led organizations that claim the practice unfairly discriminates against black, brown, and Muslim children, creating an authoritarian environment that makes some schoolkids more likely to become incarcerated in the future.
“This is some of the most significant work of the Black Lives Matter movement…the disruption of the school-to-prison pipeline,” <a href="https://twitter.com/DocMellyMel/status/1141279113388404741">tweeted</a> Dr. Melina Abdullah, lead organizer of Black Lives Matter’s official L.A. chapter. “Our children’s bodies and spirits will no longer be violated by those who seek to criminalize them in schools.”
The resolution was approved by the school board last month with a 4-3 vote. <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-random-searches-lausd-20190618-story.html">According</a> to the Los Angeles Times, it “calls for the superintendent to end the searches by July 2020, and to come up with an alternative policy that would avoid an increased police presence at schools.”
The Times went on to report that “under the current policy, administrators search students.”
However, some activists who advocated for the change see it as part of a long-term plan to remove law enforcement officers from the district altogether. Dr. Abdullah, who is also a college professor, once referenced an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/26194/black-lives-matter-youth-vanguard-organizes-jeffrey-cawood">incremental strategy</a> to eradicate police from school grounds, which includes “taking an abolitionist approach, and beginning by ending random searches.”
The L.A. School Police Department is the <a href="https://achieve.lausd.net/Page/15609">14th largest force in California</a>, protecting <a href="https://achieve.lausd.net/about">more than 600,000 students</a> on more than 1,000 LAUSD campuses. The L.A. Times <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-lausd-teachers-strike-guide-20190113-story.html">reports</a> that “the overwhelming majority” of pupils enrolled in the district “come from low-income families.”
Student-led groups, like the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/26194/black-lives-matter-youth-vanguard-organizes-jeffrey-cawood">Black Lives Matter Youth Vanguard</a> and the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/27046/black-lives-matter-rally-causes-rift-between-jeffrey-cawood">Schools L.A. Students Deserve</a>, have spent years <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/17157/la-public-school-teacher-whiteness-not-default-jeffrey-cawood">rallying</a> their classmates, teachers, and parents against the random search policy. Both organizations advocate for abolishing police in schools and include top organizers who have been <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/26194/black-lives-matter-youth-vanguard-organizes-jeffrey-cawood">mentored</a> by Dr. Abdullah. The teachers union <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43949/los-angeles-honors-black-lives-matter-youth-jeffrey-cawood">negotiated</a> on the student-activists’ behalf in a deal that ended a six-day strike in January.
As NBC4 Los Angeles <a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/LAUSD-students-not-suspects-searches-metal-detectors-vote-motion-stop-511467412.html">recently reported</a>:
Vice President of United Teachers Los Angeles Cecily Myart-Cruz said the union convened with student groups earlier this year to discuss what they wanted in the bargaining package following the recent strikes. As part of the settlement with LAUSD, the union’s contract stipulated that the random searches formally come to an end, with an immediate stop to the policy in nearly 20 schools, she added.
<a href="https://twitter.com/BLMLA/status/1093166075355774976?s=20">According</a> to Black Lives Matter-L.A., at least two of its members are also high-ranking officials with the teachers union, including UTLA Vice President Cecily Myart-Cruz. She <a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/LAUSD-students-not-suspects-searches-metal-detectors-vote-motion-stop-511467412.html">commended</a> the students “for standing up for their civil rights” and “for speaking truth to power on this issue.” While lobbying to end the searches, student-activists <a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/student-organizers-protesting-random-weapons-searches">demonstrated outside of the homes</a> of the superintendent and school board president, along with organizing a sit-in at district headquarters during the work stoppage earlier this year.
“The sentiment is high to end this policy because we know it’s not random,” Myart-Cruz <a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/LAUSD-students-not-suspects-searches-metal-detectors-vote-motion-stop-511467412.html">said</a>. “We don’t stand behind the students, and the students don’t stand behind us. We are standing shoulder to shoulder in this fight.”
The school board’s decision puts an end to search procedures that were first <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-random-searches-lausd-20190618-story.html">implemented</a> in 1993 after two high school students were shot to death on separate LAUSD campuses a month apart. In 2011, district officials required daily searches at secondary schools after another shooting left two students injured.
Moving forward, the coalition <a href="https://www.aclusocal.org/en/press-releases/lausd-ends-random-searches-schools">plans</a> to “advocate for the district to invest meaningfully in programs such as restorative justice, positive behavior interventions, and peer mediations.”
UTLA’s bond with Black Lives Matter <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/27046/black-lives-matter-rally-causes-rift-between-jeffrey-cawood">created a conflict</a> with the school police department last year when the union used its social media platforms to encourage “youth of color” to organize against “the over-policing” of schools.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/27046/black-lives-matter-rally-causes-rift-between-jeffrey-cawood">RELATED: Black Lives Matter Rally Causes Rift Between Teachers Union and School Police. Cop Groups Investigate After Daily Wire Article</a>.
Follow Jeffrey Cawood on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffreyCawood">@JeffreyCawood</a>.

Teachers Union Teams With Black Lives Matter To End Random Searches In L.A. Public Schools

Black Lives Matter

In an video message aimed at President Trump, Los Angeles activist Alexandra Datig pleaded for the president to intercede regarding the soaring homelessness in Los Angeles, asserting, “Please, President Trump, we are calling on you: Help our city. Our citizens are dying; they will continue to die.”
Earlier this week, in an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49070/watch-trump-rips-democrats-cities-becoming-filthy-hank-berrien">interview</a> President Trump did with Tucker Carlson of Fox News, Trump stated of cities that have homelessness problems, “They’re run by very liberal people and the states are run by very liberal people. … Do they really think this is okay? Because it’s not. It’s destroying their city and it’s destroying a whole way of life. &#8230; We may intercede.”
The video from Datig starts with this message emblazoned on the screen: “Message to the President of the United States. Donald J. Trump. Urgent Call for Federal Intervention. Due to the state of emergency caused by homelessness in Los Angeles California.”
Datig stated:
<blockquote>My name is Alexandra Datig and I am calling on the President of the United States to intervene in Los Angeles due to the state of emergency created by its homeless crisis. In the county of Los Angeles, we have more than 59,000 people homeless. We have more than 36,300 people homeless in the city of Los Angeles, and we have more than 16,000 people living in his or her cars. We have more than 3,000 homeless veterans. Veteran homelessness was supposed to be ended by the year 2015 according to our mayor.
This has not happened.
We have had a 75% increase in homelessness in the past six years under the leadership of our mayor, Eric Garcetti. Our leaders, here in this city, have lost heart and cannot deal with the crisis at hand. Our police officers are getting sick; our social workers are getting sick. Our sanitation workers are being treated terribly. Trash problems are everywhere. We are having serious environmental crimes happening, every day, several times a day, where 59,000 people in the county of Los Angeles are dumping raw sewage into our storm drains, entering our waterways.
These are serious, serious environmental crimes. We have homeless youth; we have had, in the past five years, to 2018, more than 3,600 people die on the streets of Los Angeles. These people, who are living on the street, some of them, are sentenced to death by homelessness. This situation is completely unacceptable and we need a federal intervention immediately. We need FEMA; we need the Red Cross; we need the CDC and the Environmental Protection Agency.</blockquote>
Datig concluded: “We need immediate assistance. This is urgent. Immediate assistance is needed. Now. Today. No delay. Please, President Trump, we are calling on you: Help our city. Our citizens are dying; they will continue to die.”
Earlier this month, Datig <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48715/los-angelenos-fed-skyrocketing-homelessness-launch-hank-berrien">spearheaded</a> a petition to recall Garcetti, saying, &#8220;We don&#8217;t want any more excuses from this mayor. We want him to step down. We want him gone and we want leadership that is going to take care of this city. This city has become a death camp for the homeless,&#8221; as <a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Los-Angeles-Garcetti-Mayor-Recall-Homeless-Petition-511437052.html">NBC News</a> reported. Datig created <a href="http://recallthelamayor.com/">www.recallthelamayor.com</a>, which offers information on homelessness.
<a href="https://www.wral.com/la-mayor-targeted-by-recall-effort-over-homeless-crisis/18461878/">WRAL</a> reported, “Figures released earlier this month showed a 16% jump in Los Angeles&#8217; homeless population over the last year, pegging it at 36,300 — the size of a small city. That&#8217;s no surprise to anyone who lives or works downtown, where tents crowd sidewalks within sight of City Hall and the stench of urine fills the air.”
Video below:
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WATCH: LA Activist Sends Message To Trump: Please Save Our City

With the number of homeless in Los Angeles surging 16% in a single year — the total number now surpassing 36,000 in the city and 59,000 in the county — the homeless crisis in Los Angeles is reaching a boiling point. Along with the health threat posed by the proliferation of disease and sickness in the homeless camps, the problem poses an immediate physical threat to citizens, as demonstrated Tuesday afternoon when a 63-year-old woman was violently attacked by a homeless man. The woman is in critical condition.
The attack, which police say appears to have been random, occurred just before 2 p.m. near the 1400 block of N. San Fernando Boulevard, <a href="https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2019/07/02/woman-in-critical-condition-following-violent-attack-by-homeless-man/">CBS Los Angeles</a> reports. A woman, who reportedly works in an office building nearby, was brutally attacked by a homeless man, who jumped out from behind bushes and began to hit and kick her repeatedly.
The 63-year-old woman, whose identity has not been released, was found suffering a serious head injury in an alleyway behind an office building. She has been taken to the hospital and is currently in critical condition.
Authorities have identified the suspect as Hector Manuel Ulloa, 51, who they say was on parole for assault when he attacked the woman.
Police, who have security video footage of the alleged assault, say Ulloa was hiding behind bushes, apparently waiting for the victim to walk by. When she passed the bushes, he erupted in violence on the unsuspecting woman.
&#8220;Witnesses at the scene told police they heard screams and saw Ulloa kicking and punching the victim numerous times,&#8221; CBS reports.
&#8220;He jumped out and kind of like punched her in the head, and that kind of took her down,&#8221; one witness told CBS. &#8220;Then he started punching her in the head and kicking her multiple times — maybe 10 to 20 times — and she was screaming for help.&#8221; The witness expressed shock at the brutal attack, saying he &#8220;really didn’t expect anything like this to happen.&#8221;
Ulloa has been booked for attempted murder and is being held without bail as he awaits formal charges by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, CBS reports.
As <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/48852/watch-how-dangerous-la-homeless-problem-dangerous-james-barrett">The Daily Wire</a> reported last week, the homeless situation in Los Angeles has begun to gain national attention amid a series of reports detailing the severity of the problem. One of those reports, produced by KOMO News, highlights the threat posed by the diseases and sickness festering in the increasing number of homeless camps. The situation in &#8220;Skid Row,&#8221; where thousands of homeless line the streets, &#8220;has been in L.A. for a long time,&#8221; KOMO reports, &#8220;but not like this. Never like this.&#8221;
&#8220;People get beaten, women get raped. It&#8217;s just a brutal environment,&#8221; Andy Bales, CEO of the Union Rescue Mission, told KOMO. Along with the 1,000 or so sex offenders currently on the streets, said Bales, the homeless camps are &#8220;like a petri dish for disease.&#8221;
Bales, whose organization attempts to help the homeless in the area, contracted staph, E. coli and strep while serving the homeless population. As KOMO notes, Bales lost his leg as a result of an infection he contracted during his humanitarian work in the area.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48852/watch-how-dangerous-la-homeless-problem-dangerous-james-barrett">WATCH: How Dangerous Is The L.A. Homeless Problem? This Dangerous.</a>

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