trailangel

News report this morning said 500 in motel rooms. Do they double up?
Hepatitis can live on a long time.....we need a good rain to clean it all good.

TakingMyTime

So, was this a Homeless on Homeless crime? I don't think anyone in their right mind would be on that trail at 4am.

jimincalif

Don't know, could very well be since a lot of the homeless have bicycles, even multiple bicycles (all legally acquired of course). From an updated OCR article:

ZippyThePinhead

Rode from Memory Lane south and back this morning. Sheriff deputies were posted at Memory Lane to keep anyone from heading north on SART. Today the trail was largely empty. Saw a few homeless, a few cyclists, a few others. Pretty cold and windy, with the wind from the west, exactly the wrong angle for a SART ride. Regarding Judge Carter, a friend of mine told me an anecdote about the judge once clearing his courtroom (apparently this was back in the day when he was a judge in the Superior Court). During some murder trial, one of the defendants, who'd been packing the courtroom with his "homies," apparently had a seizure of some kind during the trial. The judge, unsure of whether it was faked or genuine, decided to err on the side of caution and brandished the Model 1911 he kept concealed in the bench, ordering all the homies to immediately vacate his courtroom, more or less at gunpoint. Apparently the Sheriffs found this amusing, and I agree. Any judge who'd pull a .45 ACP on a courtroom full of nogoodnik gangbangers can't be all bad. Word on the street is that some of the recipients of motel vouchers have already been evicted for unsuitable behavior in their taxpayer-provided motel rooms, and apparently once the word got out in re: the vouchers, there was a significant influx of new "campers" who went to the riverbed to get a voucher for themselves.

jimincalif

ABC 7 news is reporting the fight that left one dead was between two homeless men.

Garfield Cat

It might have been less costly if the homeless were kept at the SART for 30 days, but with upgrades, food, and temporary hygiene facilities.

When the 30 days are over, the County Board of Supervisors, would probably extend it due to lack of consensus.

The judge? It might be partly a good thing and partly a mis-judgment as far as a temporary solution. A solution in search for a solution.

TakingMyTime

I was watching a TV news clip the other day and the judge was onsite talking to some of the homeless advocates and he said something like "Look, they've had plenty of time and they knew this was coming". I'm sorry but I didn't catch the whole clip but he did have a tone in his voice as if he thought everything had been done according to the law and their time was up.

ZippyThePinhead

It might have been less costly if the county had simply enforced existing laws, effectively nipping this problem in the bud. When everything is cleaned up, it would be interesting to know how many million$ were wasted on the cleanup, soil scraping, waste removal, etc.

What you allow, you encourage, and I can't think of a better illustration. It's not like this is the first time local authorities have had an opportunity to learn that lesson. At the same time, I concede that coordination of enforcement along the river is probably much easier to talk about than to actually achieve, so I'll look forward to the reopening and try to enjoy it for so long as the trail remains good for cycling.

This was taken four years ago:



Looking forward to the time when it is like this again.

McBTC

Exactly... build a public pier and next time you go to see how your dollars are being spent it's full of tents and shiftless rounders? You can get an idea when livening on the cheap lifestyle started becoming a problem by looking back to when businesses started locking their bathrooms and began posting them as for customers only.

JMH714

I couldn't wait till it's completely cleared and cleaned up, so that I can ride bike from Green River to Huntington Beach! I haven't attempted it yet. I just begun riding road biking since 2014 - mostly at Santiago Creek trail and San Diego Creek trail.

skidder

I was on it this morning (Sunday). While going up the river I quickly passed a scruffy-looking guy with a few trash bags of stuff (couldn't get a good look as I came upon and passed him pretty quickly) examining the front wheel of his old beach cruiser at the Slater/Segerstorm bridge. A few minutes later, up near 1st street, I see a OC sheriff's car with an SUV following (maybe a OCHCA social worker?). Coming back down it looked like the sheriff and SUV had stopped and checked the guy out, and as I slowly passed it appeared he was just fixing a flat front tire and the bags were full of cans/bottles he had collected along the river. This all happened between 8:15AM - 9AM.

Second weekend in a row I've seen the cops out there; last week it was the Santa Ana PD. Seems the cops aren't taking too tough a stance, but they are making their presence known.

dogmeat26

Well I'm on that trail at 5am in spring/summer to commute to work myself. Wondering if the trail will be open for me to use next month.

TakingMyTime

I"m sure it will be safe. What I meant was that anyone riding in that area in the "off" hours when the homeless encampments were at their peak should probably think of an alternate route.

Garfield Cat

Los Angeles Times article says the clean up will continue for a week to haul away things. Lots of things.

The article says 700 people. I thought it was 400. Yesterday, on AM radio it said motel cost $1 million.

jimincalif

According to some other articles I read, word of free motels spread and other homeless showed up to cash in. Who knew? As we've discussed here the county created the situation by failing to enforce existing laws for so long.

Don't want to hijack the thread but this seems relevant. We're blessed with particularly inept county government here in the OC. Another thing going on right now is a fight between the sheriff dept and the fire authority over helicopter rescues. Literally racing their helicopters to the scene, violating FAA rules at times. Paramedics refusing to load victims on OCSD rescue baskets while waiting for OCFA helo to arrive. Our supervisors told the fire authority to stand down but they refuse to stop. No one has been fired for insubordination and our sups ask the state to fix it for them.

DrIsotope

Well that's what y'all get for being all fancy and having multiple helicopters. We have the helicopter that chases bad people around, and we have the one that puts out fires. But the firefighting one looks like this:



So I doubt it's hustling to pick up people.

trailangel

I heard 700 people in motels... $1.5 million.
Also this:
"The cleanup of the homeless camp has led to the removal of over a thousand pounds of human waste, 5,000 needles and about 250 tons of trash, Fox News reported Monday."

I'd be down there with a hazmat suit on.
California Homeless Camp Cleanup Finds 250 Tons of Trash and 5,000 Needles

There seem to be a lot of bike/parts down there.....looks like a chop-shop.

2seven0

Don't want to hijack the thread but this seems relevant. We're blessed with particularly inept county government here in the OC. Another thing going on right now is a fight between the sheriff dept and the fire authority over helicopter rescues. Literally racing their helicopters to the scene, violating FAA rules at times. Paramedics refusing to load victims on OCSD rescue baskets while waiting for OCFA helo to arrive. Our supervisors told the fire authority to stand down but they refuse to stop. No one has been fired for insubordination and our sups ask the state to fix it for them.[/QUOTE]

While the heads of both agencies try to cloak themselves with an air of noble intentions the real reason for the feud is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ (i.e. dept budgets).

ZippyThePinhead

I'm not holding my breath hoping for better local government here, but at the same time it could be worse. Much, much worse.

Unfortunately, I think this whole mess with the homeless is a glimpse of the future. Local government has a lot of exposure to underfunded pensions and related (OPEB) issues. There is too much duplication of many layers of local government, and even if they do things like consolidate fire departments (Fullerton and Brea), this problem has been building for years and will take many more to unravel. As today's general fund budgets are increasingly used to cover costs associated with benefits promised to yesterday's employees, there is less and less available for taking care of things like hiring more police and playing whack-a-mole with homeless.

But it's still true that police often respond to public complaints.

Is there a single map anywhere that shows the various jurisdictions covering the trail? If there is, could we sticky it here in this subforum? Maybe some of us would be willing to drop a dime as needed when homeless are seen on the trail. IME, when it comes to this kind of situation, when everyone is responsible, no one is responsible, and I include myself, meaning that I've ridden hundreds of miles on the trail and seen thousands of homeless, but I've never bothered to complain about it to local LEOs.

Part of it is because it is a hassle to stop and figure out who to call: LASD, Orange PD, Costa Mesa PD, etc.

But if there was a map that showed the jurisdictional boundaries on the trail, and some phone numbers attached (you don't call 911 to report someone in a tent along the trail), it might make it easier for a few cyclists to be proactive and to become the squeaky wheel, no pun intended. I'm happy to help with some research, and I'll ask someone I know who has some GIS skills.

Garfield Cat

Squeaky wheel? Do we start talking about chain lube now?

Garfield Cat

The math: $1.5 million for 700 people for 30 days = $71.43 a day. Now is the time for us to get the same deal: price matching, just like Fry's electronics.

TakingMyTime

Personally, I have no intention of pretending that I know what the answer to the homeless problem is.

My POV is that the SART is an incredible asset to all the communities it passes through and to everyone who enjoys getting out and enjoying this asset. I would expect to feel as safe on it as I would riding down my street. Why I have to either take a detour, or fear for my safety and the safety of others should not be a decision i need to make. I'm looking forward to riding from the beach to Corona and back without feeling I may be in some sort of danger when I decide to stop and eat my lunch or fix a flat.

jimincalif

Yup!

ZippyThePinhead

Supposedly there is such a jurisdictional map. I put in a call to the Anaheim PD to see what the deal is, waiting for a reply.

2seven0

Forgive my naivete but don't city police jurisdictions correspond with the respective city borders? Hence all county areas fall under OC Sheriff authority?
Regarding the trail itself have taken it several times recently from Hamilton to GG Blvd. my experiences concur with Skidders only a few sporadic wanderers and several SA & OC sheriff units at undercrossings probably to prevent southerly migrations. Nice and uncrowded even at midday Sunday.
West