One former California police officer is speaking out on the state’s spiraling drug crisis, arguing access to affordable housing is not really the issue causing so many residents to become homeless on the streets.Â
Rick Campbell served as a police officer in Oceanside for more than 10 years. He recently penned an op-ed in Newsweek, outlining how the state’s progressive crime policies are actually predicating the rampant drug use and homelessness plaguing the state.Â
“Lack of affordable housing is a problem, but it’s not why we have such a huge increase in homeless camps and mentally ill people in California,” he wrote. “I believe we have a massive drug addiction crisis, and no longer any tools to force anybody to change.”
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“We also have a huge mental health crisis and no tools to force them into treatment. Meth use and mental illness are peas in a pod. So many of the people I took in for mental health holds — a 5150 — told me their mental health deteriorated when they started using the drug… There aren’t words to describe the horrors I saw. And yet, in my opinion, civil rights advocates continue to stand in the way of reform,” he continued.Â
Campbell told “America’s Newsroom” on Thursday that Prop 36, which was passed in 2000, offered a carrot and a stick to drug offenders by establishing drug courts that were often used as alternatives to prison time.
“If people were caught [with] simple possession for meth, heroin or cocaine, they’d be offered the option for treatment via drug court rather than going to prison,” Campbell told co-host Bill Hemmer. “But they have this felony charge hanging over their head, so it was kind of like instead of all carrot, begging people to stop using drugs and use treatment, there was also kind of a stick there, which was necessary to motivate them.”
But that all changed in 2014 when Californians voted to enact Prop 47, which he…
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