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Comments
Joel
Sounds like he should be in the state mental hospital in Salem.
Lulu
Nobody goes to the state mental hospital. Oregon wants us to deal with these increasing situations on the home front and cut more slack.
Stella
State of Oregon..... do gooders think locking up and treating mentally ill is 'mean". No one cares about the responsible members in our society
Where is this guy from?
Stella
Looks like he has lived in Grand Ronde and Salem. Why is he in McMinnville? SERVICES
CUT the services
Bill B
This is the kind of thing that happens when you allow people to camp out on the street
tagup
Bill—-I think this is more related to his mental illness than where he lives...would you rent to this guy?
Stella
Tagup
No it's definitely related to where he sleeps and attacks people.... he chooses a town that enables him vs the one he left that moves him along during daylight hours (Salem) or one without services (Grand Ronde)
Stella
Cut services and the campers will head to Portland guaranteed
Stella
Compassion = ENFORCEMENT & TREATMENT
We have 100+ empty beds.. now we need quality treatment and monitoring or repeat as necessary
Guess what? They will move on to a City that's "do gooders" feel warm and fuzzy providing low barrier campsites vs offering the help they need
QUIT enabling
tagup
So your answer is just to get him out of McMinnville and not address the real issue?...mental health in this case, is the issue no matter if it’s here or in Portland.....and not all homeless are mentally ill or drug addicted.....some are holding jobs and looking for change......no compassion for anyone?......
Bill B
Tagup, have you driven on 4th street, Marsh Lane and 1st Street? All I see are able bodied individuals sitting or standing around at all hours of the day. If some are working it's certainly very few.
This guy may be suffering from mental illness; who the heck knows what created this anger. The point I was making was allowing him to camp out on 4th street improves his access to the streets. One of these days it will be a person rather than a car that gets hit.
Stella
Tagup
ENFORCEMENT and TREATMENT = compassion
You sound like a do gooder - low barrier and look the other way
Stella
PS. Very few were Mac residents before they heard about our "services"
actionjax
Sounds like a real charmer. The city council wants us to hug him and kiss him and call him George and powder his nappy and spoon feed him. If he had gone off on one of our children or grandchildren the headlines would be dramatically different. It seems quite fitting that he got Judge Wiles (a bleeding heart liberal) so we can expect this bloke to be back out rather quickly. RECALL THEM ALL!
Lulu
Tagup--did you ever play the school game "Hot Potato"? The objective has much to do with our homeless problem. Where did they originate? Why? What did they hear about McMinnville welcoming the least productive, the most wacko along with those demanding rights with nothing to offer in return?
I want to know the name of, at minimum, one homeless individual who holds down a job, who drives to the office and returns to his tent. One.
They're not the only ones looking for change.
tagup
There not hard to find Lulu....but you have to look....
gregtompkins
It you want to see just how much worse it could get take a visit to Santa Cruz and Monterey California. I was shocked to see such a ultra wealthy hifalutin Democrat area have such a bad homeless problem. McMinnville is headed in the same direction. Too many wealthy California liberals, illegals and vagrants all from down south have invaded into your town. I’m glad I fled to Newberg!
rtistic1
Agree...agree..agree. Stella I can count on you to post what I am thinking
You go girl!
Bigfootlives
I don’t understand. We have a free needle exchange that was supposed to help this situation. All sarcasm aside this is a perfect example of what this ‘crisis’ is truly about. This is not a homeless or housing crisis it is a mental health (depression, anxiety, mental illness, abuse - mental - physical - sex) problem and an addiction problem. It is not compassionate or merciful to let people live like this in any city! Free needles, camp grounds and looking the other way isn’t working.
Mike
A suicidal crazy man, who was leaping in front of cars and who wanted the hospital staff to kill him. He is a danger to himself and the rest of us. Clearly mental health issue. There is no information in the article about Conklin's living situation. I see how his actions triggered the 'ain't it awful' about our homeless and our 'good for nothing government'. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves.
gregtompkins
Wow, someone eloquently wrote an opinion article in the NY Times about this issue of liberal hypocricy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/opinion/california-housing-nimby.html?searchResultPosition=1
Paul Daquilante
Stella / Mike . . .
He is a transient and from McMinnville, according to jail records.
He currently has no permanent address.
Paul Daquilante/reporter
bonnybedlam
The worst thing about McMinnville is the cruelty of its citizens. How is cutting services to the homeless and mentally ill going to do anything except create more problems? You all have a lot to say about "bleeding heart liberals", but maybe if we didn't have all these tax cuts for the rich increasing income inequality by the day, we wouldn't have all these people on the street. Have you looked at rental prices lately? I came to Mac in 1995 and rented a one bedroom apartment for $340 that now costs $1000 but wages haven't increased nearly that much. My husband works 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, both at his regular job and the business he created, and with my disability (which hasn't increased in 8 years due to "no inflation", until this year, when the entire increase was immediately allocated to Medicare premiums) we make decent money. But if we hadn't bought our house in 2002, with a mortgage 1/3 the amount they tried to give us, refinanced twice, and used part of an inheritance to mostly pay it off, we'd be on the edge of homelessness, too. And that would make it a LOT more difficult to manage my terminal muscle disease and mental illness.
Tl;dr: I guess you do have to experience hard times to feel even a scrap of compassion for others. I hope you "good" citizens never have to suffer like a lot of us other regular people do, but sometimes I fear that's the only way you'll learn that these "others" you despise actually are people, too.
gregtompkins
Bonny how about you go back home to California and take some others with you?
Stella
Paul: I didn't say he wasn't from McMinnville now... I was talking "pre services" he lived elsewhere.
Bonny: Enforcement and treatment. Why do you focus on "cut services"? How compassionate would you feel to HELP those with mental illness and drug issues vs turning a blind eye and enabling them? All other "services" would be cut i.e. Get help or move on vs come one come all and live like you want at the taxpayers expense.
Stella
Ps. A lot (not all) but a lot of the mental illness is the result of.... METH
GRM
Gregtompkins how about y o u go back to the boondocks ?
gregtompkins
GRM I’ve lived in Dayton, Newberg, Beaverton, Portland, Salem and McMinnville. All these places quality of life has slidden thanks to Californians and Democrat mentality.
tagup
Perspective?
actionjax
Stella, you are absolutely right drug use can exasperate pre-existing mental health issues and actually cause psychosis in those who had no prior mental health history. This includes marijuana use. In cases where mental health issues and addiction co-occur there is a 75% chance of violence and violent outcomes. Now consider we have a sitting County Commissioner who grows and sells this horrible drug to our citizens in this community. Supposedly taxing crops like these was going to bring a windfall to the state to help offset the costs to our communities for the increase in law enforcement hours.
https://bpspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1476-5381.2010.00721.x