Too far gone

I was sitting on a bench outside my shop the other day when the young man approached me. He looked relatively normal. But when he started talking I knew that there was something very wrong.

"Tell the cops and FBI to stop watching me. They think I am abusing my parents, I am not. I'm a nuclear physicist you know..."

He continued to ramble. The paranoid schizophrenic conversation went downhill from there and I tried to extricate myself as quickly as possible. But it was sobering. Looking at the guy from the outside you would not have had a clue as to the demons he was wrestling internally.

We are getting more and more young people like this on our streets. 

Some say they are getting bused in from other municipalities, I don't know. 

The old Fallbrook hospital treats the psychologically damaged from Riverside County, not sure that they don't get out and join the crazy multitude from time to time, the answer is out of my pay grade.

I was talking to my friend Tony, the P.I. about this the other day. Tony has been around here a lot longer than my forty six years in town.

He was bemoaning the state of the town, the open hard drug use, violence, crime and homelessness. We agreed that it has never been this bad. How do we get back to the good old days?

He showed me a video of a fentanyl user that was stomach turning. 

Too large to post on my blast but this guy was in full junkie lean out of his mind.

People are seriously whacked. 

Tony posted pictures on Friends of Fallbrook and took some grief from people who thought that it was hurting the town's image. Or so he says, I am not on Facebook but will take him at his word.

Tony wants them to shut down the Pico Promenade until they get a little more control of the rampant crime happening there on a daily basis and at Heynemann Park.

When was the last time you walked down Pico Promenade? I haven't for over ten years and I wouldn't, it looks far too scary. It is an open sewer of deprivation. Don't go unless you are heavily armed.

One of Tony's complaints is that the cops do nothing, he says they know who the dealers are and do nothing. They give the junkies narcan and go on their merry way. 

He also said that well meaning church goers come to the park and bring the homeless pizza and pray for them regularly, enabling them in the worst way. What a country we live in!

I had a conversation with a friend who regularly gives food to the needy at the library. I asked him if he sees these faces and he said rarely. He mostly sees people who fell through the cracks and really need help.

Not alcoholic, psycho drug addicts that are never going to be anything else and who would never even consider rehabilitation, let alone work. The too far gone.

He said that the majority of the people that congregate at Heynemann are latino yet the no drinking signs are in english. Time to fix that.

I tried to be nice, the street people used to sleep behind my store. And then they shit by my back door repeatedly and told me to clean it up if I didn't like it. I had the block walls that gave them shelter demolished within a day. My empathy is hereby gone. 

And I don't think that the people feeding them pizza and enabling them are helping them or the rest of us either. Help the truly unfortunate, not the drug addled sponges who will never rehabilitate.

Glad my friend Tony had the guts to speak up. Close Pico Promenade until it is safe for the public again. It is clearly out of control. What other parts of town are we willing to cede and give up? Let's be a friendly village but let's not be a bunch of saps.