Phoenix’s neglect of the homeless borders on unlawful
Nearly 1,000 homeless folks exist in disease, filth and crime. Phoenix is guilty of not only neglecting them but setting a policy to not enforce laws
Within an area of central Phoenix, bounded roughly between Seventh and 15th avenues and Jefferson and Harrison streets, there is an ongoing dystopia. Euphemistically and casually, it’s referred to as “the Zone.”
This past week, an unborn child, at 20-24 weeks of gestation, was found dead in the middle of the street — burned to death.
There, nearly a thousand of our fellow citizens exist in disease, filth and crime. They are “living” on the streets, in makeshift tents and under tattered tarps, amid scattered garbage, human waste, chronic illness, drug paraphernalia, fire and fear.
These are the unseen, forgotten and abandoned. They are the mentally ill, walking the streets, talking to the air, battling unseen demons. They are the drug and alcohol addicted, so desperate for another fix or drink they will do anything except seek treatment. They are routinely victims of both crime and neglect.
No decent society abandons its fellow citizens to live this way; Darfur or Beirut is not our human or scenic aspiration. Not only is Phoenix guilty of shocking neglect of these most needy among us, it seems to be the policy of
the city not to use the tools at its disposal to intervene as a force for help and repair.
Take the cases of crimes being committed against those in the Zone. Those living there are both routine and regular perpetrators and victims of serious crime. Not only are drug crimes the basis for regular escape and anesthesia, but sexual and aggravated assaults, robberies, arsons and thefts regularly define the contours of daily subsistence in the Zone.
In its 2020 report, Strategies to Address Homelessness, the city of Phoenix acknowledged, because of “Gaps,” “(t) he result is a fluctuating level of encampments along the streets, defecation in public — sometimes on private property, litter and debris, public drug use, lewd acts, theft and other property and violent crimes.”
It’s only become worse.
According to a recent complaint that area business operators filed in Maricopa County Superior Court, the city “refuses to enforce in and around the Zone quality-of-life ordinances prohibiting loitering, disturbing the peace, drunken and disorderly conduct, drug use, domestic violence, and obstructing streets, sidewalks, or other public grounds.”
So, the victims are abandoned. Article 2 of our state constitution recognizes victims of crimes have the rights to “justice” and “to be treated with fairness, respect, and dignity.” These constitutional rights are promises made by the people of Arizona to every victim of crime, rights that city officials from the mayor on down have sworn to uphold.
Yet they have become a mockery as city officials refuse to enforce the very laws that have been written to protect victims from harm.
In this limited area of a few city blocks, in just the first nine months of this year, people have called the police for help more than 2,800 times. On average, in just a few square blocks, more than 10 people need help from the police every day.
Enforcing our criminal laws when a homeless person commits a crime