Posts tagged street
Boulders Lost: Jann Scott’s Journal
Dec 23rd
Kathy has been living in section 8 housing for 5 years. She is 50ish has a bad leg and drinks everyday. She lives in one of Boulders section 8 apartment buildings. Social security and Medicaid keep her propped up so she can drink all day and get sicker and sicker. Kathy is an alcoholic. She admits it. Most chronic alcoholics do. Her alcoholic gout is so bad she can barely walk. A visiting nurse drops in to see her twice a week. Social worker interns from the Boulder Homeless shelter see her monthly. They are all very nice and hopeful for Kathy, but her basic problem is she is an alcoholic. If she stopped drinking 90% of her health problems would go away. But you and I pay for her lost lifestyle. We enable her. Now the county mental health officials, nor the DA will agree with me on this. They think I am uncaring and mean-spirited. But I know what is going on out there. I mentor a lot of these folks. They are honest with me. They don’t have mental illness. They have alcoholism. Last month Kathy fell and drove a spike into her head. She was found by her friend Austin who took her to the hospital where she spent a week. Now she has a little brain damage, a hole in her head and she can’t drink enough.. so she takes pills…… Disappearing into pitiful demoralization.
Austin has been in and out of prison, jails, the ARC and hospitals over the past 35 years. He’s always been an alcoholic. He went to prison 30 years ago for molesting his daughter while he was drinking. That is actually a plight of a lot of alcoholic men. They just don’t get reported or caught. But Austin was an alcoholic speed freak. Today he has served all of his time and has put stretches of sobriety together. We talked earlier today at his campsite. He lives under a tarp like hundreds of drunks in Boulder. He is a registered sex offender for a crime he committed over 30 years ago and he can’t catch a break. He never re-ofended, but he has an SO jacket. 20 years ago he was sober and had a job in the kitchen of one of the dorms at the University. H’d worked there for 5 years, was an exemplary employee and CU wanted to make him a supervisor. Austin had learned kitchen management in the penitentiary. He could fix any piece of industrial equipment, cook any meal, run a kitchen and serve 2000 people 3 times a day. He was excellent at it. When the university ran a background check they discovered his past and fired him on the spot and had him escorted off campus. From that point Austin gave up and went down hill. He told me today from his campsite that he is persecuted for his past. He can’t get a place to live, can’t get a job…. so he collects SSI and Medicaid and drinks… He is waiting for death.
Sometimes Kathy lets him sleep on her floor. But she is being thrown out of her apartment because the landlord hates section 8 rentals. They all do. Austin can’t qualify for section 8. The homeless shelter can’t help him. So Austin crashes where he can. Sometime I let him sleep in my heated garage in my big beautiful house….. but he is always drunk and he knows better than to come around me when he is drinking.
Scottie lives in a trailer. His kidneys gave out from drinking. He is nearing 50 and is friends with Austin and Kathy. He got fired from his gas station job last month for drinking. Austin says he’s not long for this world.
Scottie rents a room to Harmony who is 20 something. She tells everyone she has cancer and shaves her head everyday. But Harmony is a chronic alcoholic and drug addict. She doesn’t work but she always has money. Scottie and Austin theorize that she is a prostitute because she disappears with various older men routinely. Some of Harmonies friends who were strippers and hookers from the Bustop got killed over the past few years. One flipped her pickup truck in the Canyon last year. She was drunk and high. The other got killed by a John. The police are still looking for him. The case never even made the papers. Why ? Because these are people no one cares about.. no one knows… they live in the dark shadows of Boulders trailer court. Richard lives 3 trailers down from Scottie. He is a bad alcoholic too. He used to be a finish carpenter and cabinet maker. Richard says he could just never stop drinking. He gets his SSI check each month and drinks.
20 street alcoholics died this year. The public officials call them homeless and want you to believe they died from exposure and mental illness. Nothing could be further from the truth. You know what they died from right ?? They died from what is killing my friends above.
Citizens of Boulder are killing these people with kindness. so what are we supposed to do? Here is the rub. Make all public assistance contingent upon being sober. sounds reasonable right ?? Nope .. not to all the drunks and drug addicts who run our city. They feel threatened too. After all we live in Dope Boulder. we live in beer Boulder. so we will just lie about it all and make up some nice story.
Jann Scott
from Boulder Colorado
Jann Scott’s Journal is Boulders official voice of reason and conscience.
Beth Haynes death Senseless
Apr 14th
I stood with a Camera on the corner and video’d the whole thing. John Graham attended the Funeral. I went to Boulder PD and interviewed officers the day of. There were candles and flowers left in parking lot. Interesting our coverage that day sealed a bond with officers of Boulder PD. It is a dangerous job and one never knows when the Grimm reaper will come a knocking.
It was also a wake up call to Boulder PD. There are crazy people out there who won’t think twice about shooting, stabbing or running over a cop. Beth Haynes ran into one such very pissed off middle easterner the night she got killed.
There is no such thing as a routine domestic violence call either. They all have the potential to turn deadly. That is why officers never go into one alone. Beth Haynes made a fatal mistake that night. She proceeded into the apartment complex parking lot instead of waiting for backup on the street. She only had three years on the force and little experience and minimal training with a high level of violence.
Her choice of firearm was not the best either. 9mm is considered a very small arm with not much knock down power. A 38sp or 357 revolver has quite a bit more. Or a 40 millimeter Marine Corps Beretta has even more and is easy for a small women to handle. It is a show stopper.
One thing is for sure. Boulder cops choice of firearms have changed since Beth Haynes was gunned down. The department completely revised their training programs. They get a lot more. More cops carry more guns and knives too. 3 guns is not uncommon. A police officer can never have too much training. Women cops need even more than men; Just because of the mere physical challenges in violent situations. Most of us don’t go to work each day with a high probability of getting into a gun fight or having a drunk throw a molotov cocktail into our car. Boulder cops do. And they put their life on the line for us every day.
Boulder still isn’t as violent as Denver. But we all need to learn how to stay safe and protected. The PD needs all of it’s budget requests for training.
Jann Scott’s Journal
from Boulder Colorado