Our
police chief in Salt Lake City of late has been boasting about how
crime is down in the city's downtown core, i.e., the environs of the
homeless shelters and free clinics.
Or,
perhaps it is simply that people who used to report crimes -- folks
you a couple years ago moved into new condos erected as the formerly
depressed area of rail yards was "gentrified," got tired of
the futility of calling in drug deals, bum fights, drunks urinating
and defecating on the sidewalks, etc.
I
work in the middle of the worst of this area. Every morning before
dark, I ride the train downtown and get off one block from the
shelters and the scene of weekly stabbings and strong-arm robberies
committed by that criminal element that thrives within any large
homeless community.
Like
wraiths, there are always a couple of shadowy forms peering out from
the parking lots, alleys and not-yet-open business entry ways.
During
the daylight hours, the danger is likely less, but you cannot walk
half a block without being accosted by beggars with stories of woe,
and the hungry, wan look of meth or crack addicts in bloodshot eyes.
Twice,
by different police officers I've dealt with as a breaking news
reporter, I've been strongly advised to get a concealed/carry
permit and carry a locked and loaded firearm.
Having
once been confronted in the predawn dark by a couple street men, one
circling behind me while the other attempted to cut me off from the
front, I took the advice.
On
the cited occasion, I was somewhat younger and lucky enough to find a
piece of scrap rebar in a vacant lot that convinced the two to walk
away.
Now,
a last resort would be a legally obtained and licensed handgun. I
pray I never have to pull it out, let alone fire it in a desperate,
last ditch defense of myself, my family or an innocent stranger.
But
this is the world we live in, and as my police acquaintances told me,
going unprotected into such areas as where I work, and at the time of
day I work, is to go naked into a den of hyenas.
So,
today was another morning in the Zoo, the Asylum, or some circle of
Hades, whatever you call these occasionally very mean streets. The
shadowy forms flitted into and out of the dim street lamp lights, and
away.
On
the train platform where I daily get off to walk the couple blocks to
the office, someone had abandoned a shelter blanket in one place, and
a pair of underwear a few feet away. On other days, I've walked by huddled forms, their ragged faces brielfy lit by the glow of their crack pipes.
And, in front of the Tribune's
main entrance was an abandoned syringe, the needle gone. I carefully
picked up the syringe tube and tossed it in the garbage.
After
all, little kids walk that sidewalk later in the day on the way to a
nearby children's museum and school children by the busloads visit
the planetarium across the street.
Still, it seems an almost futile effort, like trying to dig through a mountain of sludge with a teaspoon.
The economy, and lack of jobs -- at least ones that can support a family or pay a mortgage; drug addiction; mental illness ignored by underfunding of needed treatment programs; and the human predators who thrive within a desperate, often hopeless community . . . all are contributors to the sickness.
All those things, and at the heart of it all, of our existence as human beings, the hopelessness of spirits broken by life, and however to define it, yes, sin.
And on the other hand, I live in a world where just going to my job means facing the possibility of a life-threatening encounter -- and, in the most extreme of circumstances, one where it becomes -- as it has for others, too often -- a decision to take a life to keep your own.
