Homeless woman wants a ride from police to homeless shelter, gets taken to jail instead

[TheMathieu]

A woman who wanted a ride to a homeless shelter spent the night at the Stark County jail instead.

According to jail records, the 33-year-old woman with no permanent address was at Walgreens at 4024 Fulton Drive NW in Jackson Township around 5:45 p.m. Sunday when she asked the store's staff to call police to take her to a homeless shelter.

When Jackson police arrived, officers advised her that their job was to take suspects to jail and not give free rides. The woman then demanded to be taken to jail, but officers said she had committed no crime.

She then approached the store pharmacy counter and yelled that she was going to rob the pharmacist. She then refused to leave the store unless she was under arrest, according to the jail report.

http://www.cantonrep.com/article/20140217/News/140219359#ixzz2tiqUp9Sc

It's an absolute travesty how the homeless are treated. How a police officer can refuse this homeless woman a simple request for a ride to a shelter is beyond words. And then they go home to their wives, daughters, sisters, moms and other people they know and manage to keep up the facade that they are capable of loving people. Anyone that would treat the homeless in this way is severely lacking empathy. I feel sorry for the people in their life. /endrant

[freshwest]

1. The solution is not with the officer. Some communities don't fund any more than the jail. One size

fits all for a lot of citizens who think anyone with a problem belongs out of sight, or jail. Mentally ill? Mentally challenged? Addicted? On the street? They want them in jail to 'teach them a lesson.'

To change this requires going to city or coutnry councils on a regular basis and working with them to create a program or an order that funds this. You might be surprised how many citizens do NOT want the police to act as a taxi service, really.

The hearts that need to be changes are the ones who see her as nothing more than refuse, not the police. I've had to deal with this before, it's not the officer's perogative. The idea that the police man is an ogre is personalizing a situation that is structural with no options built in.

Changing the policy means funding it. That means the T-word, taxes. That means believing that people are not bad, but have bad situation.

Public services can be lacking in both common sense and compassion, due to the way the state legislature sets the laws and regulations up. I've had to deal with hard hearted legislators (all conservative Republicans) and they really do hate the poor, disabled, addicted and the homeless. They want them punished and deny funding for anything but incarceration, as they think that is what they all deserve.

It's the job of the public to make the system be more humane, and that's done at the ballot box. And some communities are mean as hell, and really don't care.

If the city had a program for doing this with police officers, it would have been no skin off their back. They do what they are paid to do. When these kinds of situations come up, the best bet is for a person to call their community's crisis hotline if there is one. Some places have shut theirs down. And then this happens.

[Lancero]

2. Faux News worthy title