‘Commentary’ Archives
Encampment Safety: Is Private Security Really a Solution?
from Letter to the Editor The vital issue of security at homeless camps in our city is finally being raised by the City Council Public Safety Committee. The Public Safety Committee is tasked with a difficult job, made more challenging through past neglect of issues. The attention of the new members of the Public Safety Committee to the difficult problems posed by homelessness is appreciated. A proposed solution is to hire private security. Would the security at the camps be armed, and if so what would their liability be? What kind of complaint system and accountability will these private security guards be held to? Recently a man was shot and killed in one of the Nenookaasi Camps. The threat was known by camp members and police. The police did not try to intervene or de-escalate in any way. How will using private security be better than a professionally trained MPD officer? If the MPD can’t get it right, why do we think private security is the answer? Even considering [...]
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They
from the series Something I Said... By DWIGHT HOBBES Dwight Hobbes Horace McCoy’s Depression Era classic, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (Simon & Schuster), may inspire you to get up on a drizzling, overcast morning and go slit your throat. Simone de Beauvoir lauded it as “The first existentialist novel to have appeared in America” and, sure enough, it’s a grim portrayal of man’s desperate inhumanity to man. And woman. It is a deftly crafted indictment of life, itself. We witness two down-and-outers trying to get a leg up in their hard scrabbled lives. Robert, dreaming of directing film, rakes and scrapes by, hired now and then as an extra. He comes across Gloria, whose best acting prospects fled with her youth. She sees the rose through world colored glasses. They end up unlikely partners in a grueling dance marathon, taking a shot at the $1500 prize. That amount of money is still nothing to sneeze at. In those days, it was a fortune. Along with, for these [...]
