Human Waste

September 17, 2008 | Filed Under Lifestyles of the Heartlessly Bitchy, The Heartless Bitch Way | 1 Comment

Every day that I head into work I see human carnage in the form of drug addicts, alcoholics, and the mentally ill that our government saw fit to dump on the street years ago, when they cut back funding for institutions and treatment centers.

Within a 6 block radius in “The Byward Market”, there are 4 “Shelters” or Missions.  While you might think this is helpful, in reality all it does is congregate all the damaged, fucked-up, addicted and mentally ill people in one area so the drug dealers have easy access to a steady market.

Every morning when I come into work, I see them openly dealing crack, heroin and all manner of other drugs on the sidewalks and in the parking lots, with no attempt to hide what they are doing. Every evening when I leave, the drug dealers and the addicted are there.  There is a walkway between Rideau and York Streets called the “Waller Mall”. Everyone here calls it “Crack Alley”.  It’s generally littered with passed out or nearly passed out individuals high on one thing or another.  It’s so dangerous at night that they close it at 11pm with gates.   One of my employees was assaulted there at 5:30 in the evening by some nutbar who just started screaming. “You killed my family!” over and over again. In the last 3 months there have been 2 stabbings nearby. In fact, on my way to lunch a couple of weeks ago, a co-worker and I were commenting on how deplorable the area has become, and he pointed out that the dark spatters on the sidewalk were bloodstains from the stabbing that occurred 2 days before. It happened behind our office parking lot one evening, undoubtedly over a drug deal gone bad.  They run sidewalk cleaners nearly every day past the ice-cream stand one block away. You’d think the fucking city could CLEAN up the BLOOD all over this part of the sidewalk.

One morning at 8:30, another one of my staff was threatened by a strung-out hooker who told him she’d stab him with an HIV-infected needle if he didn’t give her a dollar. He told her to fuck off.

Another employee was approached by a woman who was so wasted that she was offering *anything* he wanted for $10. It’s sickening.

You have to be damn heartless to survive working in this area.  I have heard every pitch and near-pitch and excuse imaginable.  Money for the bus to get to the train station? Well buddy, if you can’t afford the bus, how can you afford a train ticket?  Money for coffee? Get some at the mission next door.  Money for lunch? Pick any one of the shelters or go to the sandwich wagon that comes around every day. 

We live in a society that has welfare, free medical care, and free dental if you are on welfare.  If you have been out of work for an extended period of time, the government will pay for your retraining. While I think our welfare system could do even more to help low-income families, there is no financial excuse to be begging on the street.    I don’t give money to people begging.  I’m even more heartless if they are sporting numerous tattoos and piercings  - those things cost hundreds of dollars, I’m not in the business of funding someone’s body modification fetish.  If you can afford a tattoo and you are hungry then maybe you need to reassess your priorities.  If they are strung out, slurring, and staggering, I know any money I give them will go to booze or drugs and I will not contribute to feeding someone’s habit.  There are shelters and numerous aid agencies in the vicinity – they offer food, and a place to sleep.  In fact, numerous information posters in the area discourage giving panhandlers money.

It’s gotten to the point now where I don’t even wait for the pitch. I just say NO, firmly, and keep walking. I keep my distance.  You don’t let them get close – that’s how you get assaulted. Sometimes they scream at you and follow you.  You keep your pace, square your shoulders, and keep going forward without engaging.  You have to pay close attention to your personal safety and everything going on around you.  And after 6pm, you don’t walk with your headphones on and music playing.  You can’t hear someone coming up behind you if your music is playing.  One guy I know was doing just that (listening to his ipod) after leaving a club around midnight and a bunch of guys came up from behind and clobbered him in the back of the head with a 2-by-4.  He’s lucky he’s alive. 

And where are the cops in all of this?  I seldom see them anywhere that would matter. In over a year, I’ve never seen an arrest or drug bust. I’ve seen almost NO presence where all the dealing is taking place.  Crack is sold and smoked out in the open.  It’s like a free ride for the drug dealers.   Oh, I often see the cop cars out FRONT of my building, a block away, positioned so they can gab to each other without leaving the confines of their cars,  but I can count on ONE hand the number of times I have seen a cop in any of the real trouble spots in the last year.  It’s appalling and ultimately frustrating. 

Could they not at least go after the crack and heroin DEALERS? Could they not maintain a presence in the areas that are desperately degrading every day?  Put some cops there to dissuade the dealers, and perhaps put some trained counsellors in the area to start working with people and trying to get the salvageable ones in to treatment?

This is a high-traffic tourist area, believe it or not. This is our nation’s capital, and it’s turning into a cesspool.

Residents tell me that crime and break-ins in the area are becoming intolerable.

I look at the ravaged remnants of humanity as I head into work and I feel conflicted.  Yeah, most have mental illnesses, and some perhaps were abused, born drug-addicted, born with fetal-alcohol syndrome, or are the product of a shitty home life.  I should feel sympathy, but mostly I just feel sad and disheartened that these people are destroying this amazing thing called a LIFE that they were blessed with.  I’m not religious, but I think we owe it to ourselves to make the best of the life we are given.  Life can be AMAZING or it can be hell. It’s really what you make it, and these people seem to have chosen hell.  How do you have compassion for someone bent on destroying themselves in slow deliberate steps?   I look at them and sigh, and think, “what a waste.” 

I wonder, would it be better if they were all rounded up and put in treatment centers so they can be given the chance to dry out and get their shit together, since they seem mentally incapable of taking proper care of themselves?  But then, who decides who to commit? At what point does the state go from being a responsible caretaker to a fascist dictatorship?  Where is that line, and could we trust our law enforcement (who can’t even be bothered to SHOW UP today) to make that decision? Or our politicians?  (Shudder)   I have flashes of “A Scanner Darkly“, and worry that it might be one of our possible futures if things continue to spiral out of control. 

Could we put more time, money and effort into earlier interventions, so that people have more opportunities to make good choices?  But then where does personal freedom come into play?  What of the (few) people who choose to live the homeless lifestyle?

The price of freedom and personal responsibility is a heavy one.  And we ALL pay the price for other people fucking it up.  If they get drug or alcohol addicted, they injure themselves or others and we pay through our medical system. We pay through increased law enforcement costs. We pay when crime and property theft/damage increase.  But more importantly, our peace of mind and sense of safety is destroyed and that is something you can’t put a price tag on. And the less money we put into treatment options and early intervention with “at risk” youth, the more we pay in the long term. Unfortunately with our “me first” conservative government, they’d rather deal with building more jails and talking about “getting tough” on criminals, than on preventing this kind of stuff in the first place. It benefits a conservative government to not deal with the root causes and instead focus on the aftermath, because a populace that is scared and on edge is easier to manipulate.   But I’m not paranoid.

If we opened more free treatment centers, would these people take advantage of it? Perhaps, but there is a significant percentage who are so far gone that I doubt they will ever make it back to any semblance of  “responsible adult”.  What of them?  What is our responsibility to them? 

There are no easy answers and far too many difficult questions.