Back in the ‘good old boy’ days Lee would have used skills and tactics to send slaves after the people that have now moved in to his park. In just two months there have been 80 calls for crime in the one tiny block in downtown C-Ville (last time this got reported it was 70 calls in 50 days). It seems as if people like being drunk and are trying to live in the park.
The solution…shut down the park at an earlier hour. Anyone in the park while it’s closed can be arrested on the spot for trespassing. I sure hope no one walks through to get home at 9:01pm. Perhaps it is just time to seal all parks in the city with large gates that are properly opened from 9 to 5. What about just putting up a gigantic wall around the downtown mall, and you need to get a special ID card to get in to the Free Zone.
I’m sure this will reduce the number of calls related to the park, but where will the ‘drunk people’ now go to live? I guess the calls will shift to the new location….wherever that is. What is the park next to the historic courthouse? There is some other southern hero statue there. Perhaps that can be the new hangout for drunks that want to live next to a southern hero.
So they can move to the river near my condo, no thanks! People with no homes need some place to go all year round, not just when PACEM is open and the Salvation Army is fun by fascists. So we need a low demand shelter open year round for these folks. Other cities have them, there’s no reason Charlottesville couldn’t. Once it’s open, you can gradually persuade folks to connect to services to help them overcome their addiction(s). And if you feed folks food that fills their belly at the same time, they may not need to get drunk as much or as often. We could even try being nice to these folks when they come in for shelter and treating them like human beings with problems. Nah, would never work…
oops, that should be “run by fascists” not “fun by fascists”, it’s no fun at all from what I hear from people who have stayed there.
If all these “homeless” people don’t have homes, why not go to a community with a better shelter? What draws them to Charlottesville? Don’t tell me they were all born and raised in Charlottesville. They end up where people give them a place to be and where the weather is accommodating. A lot of them migrate south in the winter. I’m just curious.
If the Salvation Army was fascist in the true sense of the word, then they’d lure the homeless in with promise of shelter, euthanize them, and sell their organs on the black market. Well, at least the relatively healthy ones. The old, infirm, and besotted would be chopped up and fed to the guard dogs.
Problem solved.
Interesting idea TJWAC. Now…off for one of those new Soylent Sandwiches. Mmm…I’ve heard they are delicious and nutritious