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I don't see the point in arguing about this. You said they mostly keep to themselves, maybe a little pretty crime here and there (as if even that is okay).. That has NOT been my experience and I brought one especially-egregious receipt to make my point. The other poster who mentioned clapped-out RVs and catalytic converter theft must also be from LA.
We could argue anecdotes and experiences back and forth and get nowhere, or we could look at the data. According to the LAPD 8% of crimes involved homeless people. This includes cases where either the victim or the suspect is homeless. The article also states that they are more likely the victim then the perpetrator so we can cut that down to ~3% are the suspects of crime. Also considering that homeless are often falsely accused or scapegoated that is still probably a high guess for actual perpetrators.
That's ~3% of crime, considering your also in general not likely to be a victim of crime the odds you are a victim of a crime committed by a homeless person is very low. Not 0 so you'll get lurid stories like the one you posted on the local news, but still low.
The tactic of citing the most horrific news story about an individual in a group of people has long been used to demonize people of color. Some news agencies realize they can't do this anymore so they're shifting to a new marginalized group that just so happens to be composed of mostly people of color.
But also the LAPD is much less likely to respond to crimes in poorer areas. So the numbers they report aren't all that meaningful.
I find those numbers misleading since they only account for those people who've been caught and prosecuted. Police almost universally ignore property crimes like theft and vandalism because there is so much of it and because it doesn't bring any benefit to the city/department when your perpetrators can't pay their fines or court costs. With mentally ill people, they're more likely to just shoot them dead rather than bring charges against them or take them to a mental health facility. Somehow this all gets excluded from the studies.
My mother-in-law was disabled for years before she died and required the use of a scooter to travel more than about 50 feet. We have sidewalks here that are completely impassable due to the tents and accumulated junk from our unhoused population. But disabled people can suck it, amirite?
LAPD doesn't do anything about it, and everyone here knows they do everything in their power to avoid so much as filing a report, much less making arrests. Maybe their statistics are technically correct but they are not at all representative of the lawless landscape that is the streets of LA.
You imply I'm a bigot because I'd rather get these people the mental health care they need but are incapable of choosing for themselves. You evidently would rather let these economic free thinkers trash our communities and steal anything not nailed down, in case they want to "opt out of capitalism." Okay, Karl Marx.
You know, I never see anyone talking about doing anything like this when people with homes do drugs or have mental illness. How is every single crime automatically chalked up to "the homeless." There's a million housed and perfectly mentally stable people in California stealing catalytic converters, among other things. But the minute that or retail theft or violent crime comes up, it never fails that it's attributed only to people who can't pay rent.
I might agree with you on the catalytic converters but who do you think is stealing mail out of mailboxes, who's leaving dirty needles in our parks, who's taking over our sidewalls and other public spaces with tents and other junk ? All of us deserve better than this, including them.