(no subject)

[fj]

Tonight I drove through East of Downtown over 7th street to the entry of the 5 I take to Glendale, to get to the Whole Foods and get my shopping for the coming week over with. This means driving right through Skid Row to Alameda and then through some very low-cost housing with boarded- and barred-up liquor stores on the ground floor. And I think it was across from the bus station that I drove by a man, sitting on steps of some brick house, rocking back and forth, slapping his head and chest with his hands in a repetitive, mechanical, yet uncontrollable-seeming, motion.

I don't know enough to distinguish withdrawal from untreated Parkinsons from mental illness in the second that I drove by. I think I do know enough to recognize this person needed to be in a psychiatric ward. Of which one bed in jail is being taken up by a girl who is there, longer than most people would be for the same offense, because the world around her basically is so outraged she had it too easy in her life and she has become a pawn between feuding government institutions jerking her around at their whim.

Oh, there's much to be outraged about in LA tonight. Just like every night.

Comments

[jered]

Agreed -- I'm not sure it's fair to claim her sentence is out of line at all. Wasn't this her third incident of driving without a license?

Also, as someone pointed out at dinner last night, many people to violate their license suspension do so out of necessity. Ms. Hilton could afford a chauffeur to take her anywhere at any time and not even notice the impact on her account interest statement. What she was doing was willful disregard for the law, which justifies harsh punishment.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

Thirded. Also, people with far worse medical conditions fail to get a free pass.