My sister is in jail for the 10th time in the past 24 months for drugs, paraphernalia, false ID, and retail theft. Her life is a vicious cycle of addiction and incarceration. She was last arrested three weeks before the launch of Operation Rio Grande, which in its first day apprehended 87 people and at present accounts for upwards of 300 arrests and 100 releases.
Operation Rio Grande is described as a collaborative, multi-jurisdictional plan to eradicate lawlessness and restore public safety through policing, treatment, and opportunity. Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox says the effort was conceptualized, strategized and launched in just 16 days. Who can fail to appreciate a “very targeted and very surgical” bi-partisan campaign to “restore law, remove the bad guys, [and] protect our homeless friends”?
Our representatives pride themselves on moving fast because, they admit, an operation of this caliber should’ve taken six to eight months in development. No matter that the ACLU condemns Phase I as a mere reflection “of our broken criminal justice system” or that immediately prior to his articulation of the inevitable ever-presence of drugs and crime, House Speaker Greg Hughes stated, “We’re going to see the drug trafficking and the drug trade fundamentally be eradicated.”
At a rate of 15 times our previous speed, simple contradictions are inevitable. Mistakes will be made. Like how dozens of existing SLC inmates were knocked off the Court Alternative Treatment Program when relocated to Davis County in order to make space for the influx of inmates. Cox and Hughes identified this as a “communication gap.”
Like the one responsible for the penultimate time my sister was released. Despite her rap in Salt Lake County, Davis set her free. She’s since been re-arrested by SL County for the same criminal charges but was transferred to Davis County to make room for those who whirl through the turnstile in this super tragic comedy scripted to reprimand insolvency and sickness.
It’s trite to say that our approach to governance is proficient at incarceration and ill-equipped at rehabilitation, so I wonder what makes it so difficult to admit? How many treatment beds were made and ready at the outset for our 300 arrests and 100 releases among a population of homeless addicts? None. Treatment beds, we are told, are contingent upon the harmonization of budgets, fiscal sensibility of leaders. “The Medicaid waiver denied by the Obama Administration.”
In a story introduced as “anecdotal,” Representative Hughes described how a “gentleman” approached a cop, emptied his pockets of drugs and said, “I need to be arrested.”
There you have it. Homeless druggies clamoring for cuffs with a desire to change. With this type of unabashedly grateful response, how can we be doing anything less than what is absolutely right?
Strictly defined, “anecdotal” refers to an account that is not necessarily true or reliable. Let’s imagine this one is. If Representative Hughes’s anecdotal homeboy of 8.14.17 is anything like my sister, without treatment he’s already back on the streets ... for the second or third time.
I have great respect for our police force. I also recognize that contradiction is inherent to progress, mistakes occur unintentionally, and sometimes we only know how to do everything we’ve already done. But let us not insist that we’re doing something we aren’t, or agree to call it something it’s not, or pretend to poise ourselves for a cure in which we refuse to invest.
“Homeless friends?” These are our sisters. Or daughters, heaven forbid.
Calvin Jolley, father of two daughters, lives and writes in downtown Salt Lake City.