• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
  • We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.

Boston police destroy wheelchairs and other belongings of homeless residents in "Operation Clean Sweep"

Luminish

Luminish

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
6,508
Denver
screen_shot_2019-08-07_at_2.15.49_pm_0.png


The destruction of the wheelchairs is only the latest incident involving the trashing of the possessions of homeless people in the operation.

One of the destroyed wheelchairs was reportedly confiscated from a man named Jarrod who was hit by a car last month.

"It was heartbreaking to speak with Jarrod, who lost not only his wheelchair, but everything he owns that he keeps in his backpack," said homeless advocate Cassie Hurd.

Hurd told Boston Magazine that Jarrod's wheelchair was taken after he left it "for a minute" in spite of pleas from his partner to police.

"He is not able to be mobile without it, and not having a home, nowhere to sit, nowhere to go, and was having pain," said Hurd of Jarrod. "He couldn't really balance or walk."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
More at the link:

This is a very stark example of cities across the country believing the reason homeless people are homeless is that homelessness isn't shitty enough. Urban areas like Boston are supposed to be bastions of progressivism where things like this should not be allowed to happen, and yet it happens all the time. It's really depressing.
 
hjort

hjort

Member
Nov 9, 2017
4,096
I'd sooner kill myself than carry out these orders. Then again, I guess that's why I'm not a fucking cop. What a shit society.
 
Volimar

Volimar

volunteer forum janitor
Member
Oct 25, 2017
38,914
As someone who often spends time in a wheelchair, this is cruelty to the extreme.
 
Musubi

Musubi

Unshakable Resolve - Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,729
If they thought they could get away with it they'd just round up all the homeless and euthanize them.
 
Jedi2016

Jedi2016

Member
Oct 27, 2017
15,868
Homeless or not, you can't just steal someone's shit and throw it away. Normal people get arrested for that.

Being homeless doesn't preclude the concept of ownership. Might as well take all their clothes, too.
 
Sean

Sean

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,591
Longview
Cops are such fucking trash. What kind of human being actually goes through with something like this. Fucking seriously.
 
Volimar

Volimar

volunteer forum janitor
Member
Oct 25, 2017
38,914
Jedi2016 said:
Homeless or not, you can't just steal someone's shit and throw it away. Normal people get arrested for that.

Being homeless doesn't preclude the concept of ownership. Might as well take all their clothes, too.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


What are they going to do, sue? I doubt anyone there gives enough of a shit to go after police for damages on their behalf pro bono.
 
Chirotera

Chirotera

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
4,292
Cops in this country disgust me every single day. I don't care if there are good ones, why aren't they stopping this shit? Their complicity means their acceptance. To serve and protect is a worthless motto devoid of all fucking meaning.
 
AM_LIGHT

AM_LIGHT

Member
Oct 30, 2017
3,729
Honestly I still find it quite weird how in America ( the richest country on earth ) you still have these many homeless people .
It simply enforces the Idea that Americans are a bunch of selfish assholes with no empathy towards their fellow countrymen .
 
cameron

cameron

The Fallen
Oct 26, 2017
23,854
The police behavior was "cartoon evil," tweeted media reporter Adam Johnson, who also noted the largely unmentioned historical significance of the operation.

"Mass removing homeless people (e.g. human beings) and calling it 'operation clean sweep' (the obvious implication being said human beings are trash) is genocidal rhetoric and it's disturbing no one in Boston government or media feels the need to point this out," said Johnson.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

At no point during this operation did anyone involved come to the realization that this is fucked up? This isn't a "forced to make a split second decision" situation.
 
NeonZ

NeonZ

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 28, 2017
9,387
TaySan said:
Just why do this? What is there to gain from making their lives as shitty as possible?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It seems to be tied to this.

An assault on a county corrections officer has resulted in 19 arrests as part of "Operation Clean Sweep," with both the district attorney and Boston police saying they will keep up the enforcement along the "Methadone Mile" where the beating took place.


The latest arrest of 51-year-old Sean Stuart, who was charged with aggravated assault and battery, was announced a day after a Suffolk County House of Corrections Officer was attacked on Atkinson Street while attempting to report to work.


The 28-year-old officer was hit in the face with a metal object at about 7:30 a.m. Thursday, police said. He was treated and later released from Boston Medical Center.


He had stepped out of his car, police said, when a fight broke out that was caught on tape showing about five others joining in. The officer's watch, glasses and phone were taken during the brawl, police said.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


Basically, there was a brawl in the area, a police officer got hit, so now they want to make everyone disappear from there.
 

Deleted member 8561

user requested account closure
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
11,284
1upsuper

1upsuper

Member
Jan 30, 2018
5,489
Volimar said:
As someone who often spends time in a wheelchair, this is cruelty to the extreme.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Same. This is utterly vile. I don't even know what to say. How are the homeless supposed to "pick themselves up by their bootstraps" if the cops throw away their fucking boots? Oh right, they aren't.
 
VariantX

VariantX

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,922
Columbia, SC
Jedi2016 said:
Homeless or not, you can't just steal someone's shit and throw it away. Normal people get arrested for that.

Being homeless doesn't preclude the concept of ownership. Might as well take all their clothes, too.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Cops across this country don't get punished for murdering people in cold blood or faking evidence so this is easy as shit for them to get away with.
 

jdmc13

Member
Mar 14, 2019
2,941
Didn't even have to read it to know it was Methadone Mile, Boston's not-so-secret shame. Methadone Mile is the area of Mass Ave near a methadone clinic.

The clinic is in a weird situation. It's basically in the best possible and worst possible spot. The entrance to clinic is within spitting distance of the Boston Medical Center ER, but it is also a couple blocks from the Boston University Medical Center campus. If you are willing to walk a few blocks more, you'll hit South Station and be in one of the financial centers of Boston. Addicts tend to congregate near the clinic and the homeless tend to congregate on the grass by the highway within a block of the clinic.

What the city really needs to do is build more shelters. Specially, one should be built as close to the clinic as possible. The others should be built elsewhere in Boston. That way, the addicts have access to the clinic and a shelter while the other homeless have access to a safer place away from the addicts. The problem being the same as everywhere with residents wanting the homeless "gone" rather than "homed", and due to where the clinic is located, there is just that much more pushback.
 
TheBaldwin

TheBaldwin

Member
Feb 25, 2018
8,316
Just awful.

What is there even to gain from this? You think destroying something that someones needs to simply walk and not feel pain will somehow motivate them to gain employment or some shit?

Its clearly just a means for them to pick on someone. Fucking Cops man
 
Mr Jones

Mr Jones

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,747
I saw this last week, but didn't post it.

There really isn't much to say on it, other than it is cruel, and retaliation.
 
spyder_ur

spyder_ur

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,622
I'm from Boston, read about this a couple weeks back and it's disgusting. For added (probably familiar) context, the area where this is happening is a traditionally working class and minority neighborhood which borders on the ever-expanding South End of Boston, which is full of multimillion dollar brownstones, dozens of coffee shops and absurdly overpriced restaurants. You'll see very few people of color in most of the South End, but things change dramatically when you walk 4 to 5 blocks away.

Any safety concerns cited in this area are mostly bullshit. The situation basically combines the worst of the issues facing cities - gentrification, housing costs, homelessness, NIMBYism, 'neighborhood groups', and economic disparity.
 
Cation

Cation

The Fallen
Oct 28, 2017
3,603
Really the cops might as well shoot his other leg and drag him into the street, cause they pretty much killed the guy
 
Silvergun-Blue

Silvergun-Blue

Member
Oct 26, 2017
9,962
The cruelty is the point.

It's not about solving problems, it's about blaming certain demographics for problems and very publicly "punishing" them in order to appease idiots.
 

Something Creative

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,205
TheLostBigBoss said:
A bit more than that


Pretty clear that this is a type of "retaliation" from the police department for what happened.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So the officer is stopped and the other guy punches him through the window so he.... gets out and then punches him back? Wtf are you doing? He is a victim here, let me be clear, but as a corrections officer should not be engaging in that way.

First time I've heard of or seen Methadone Mile. Holy shit. Amazing how these problems can concentrate.
 
GrandHarrier

GrandHarrier

Member
Oct 25, 2017
302
The problem is that it is so incredibly easy to not only become apathetic to the plight of the homeless, but also downright hostile, because of the "problems" that come with them. I live in a City that has had increasingly severe homelessness. In the last decade+ you can just *see* the differences. The trash everywhere. The destruction. The drugs. You can drive down stretches of road that used to be pristine and now have human refuse in piles from where the homeless have dumped it. I work in a business that has to deal with the issue; We have to call the police multiple times per week for everything from drunks passed out on the property, to massive theft (in fact multiple businesses that used to be 24 hours have closed because it literally became unprofitable to be open during late hours, when the theft was the most rampant), to assaults; I've had coworkers literally attacked for something as simple as nicely asking them to not go into our trash enclosure and dig through the trash.

Its just incredibly sad that no serious attempts at actually trying to solve the issue happen. And it doesn't surprise me that something like this incident can happen.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.