At least one infectious disease expert has compared the city’s streets to the slums in third-world countries.
Just recently, the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit released a report exposing the amount of filth plaguing the streets in San Francisco, California. Alarmingly, the streets of the liberal bastion that were surveyed appear to be so bad that at least one infectious disease expert has suggested that conditions regarding health and contamination may actually be worse than poverty-stricken slums in Brazil, Kenya, and India.
Basically, this means that the democrats who run the city have essentially created a third-world country right here in the United States.
Specifically, after surveying 153 downtown blocks of the city, the investigators purportedly found giant mounds of trash and food on the majority of the streets. What’s worse, they also reportedly found roughly 100 discarded needles and over 300 piles of human feces.
“The contamination is…much greater than communities in Brazil or Kenya or India,” asserted Dr. Lee Riley, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) who has researched health conditions that have been caused by extreme poverty in several of the world’s poorest areas.
To clarify, he explained that dried feces can release potentially dangerous viruses, like the rotavirus. “If you happen to inhale that, it can also go into your intestine,” mentioned Riley, who noted that this could prove to be fatal, especially when it comes to children.
He also added that if someone accidentally gets poked with one of the needles, they could possibly contract a bunch of other dangerous diseases. “If you do get stuck with these disposed needles you can get HIV, Hepatitis C, Hepatitis B, and a variety of other viral diseases,” the expert from UCB reasoned.
Consequently, organizations are allegedly starting to cut their ties with the city. For example, just recently, a Chicago-based medical association reportedly decided to cancel the future events that they had planned in the city, including a massive convention that usually has roughly 15,000 attendees.
As a result, the city’s officials have been scrambling to address this issue. “We have been working with the convention staff…our tourist industry and really trying to address the concerns,” explained Mohammed Nuru, who is San Francisco’s director of public works, while speaking to reporters.
“I would hope that this is just a short-term type of concern and that we can really get our city to where it should be: a nice clean destination for people who want to come out to the West Coast,” added Nuru, who’s the one tasked with cleaning up the streets.
According to the public works director, the problem has mainly been caused by the city’s homeless population.
“Our resources have been focused on really trying to clean up areas that mostly have been trashed by homeless, had tents where people [were] living in them,” mentioned Nuru. “People were using the streets for the bathroom,” he continued, adding, “it creates definitely a different problem.”
Disturbingly, though, the city’s new mayor, London Breed, has proposed trying to solve the problem by adding millions more in taxpayer dollars to the city’s street cleaning budget. Specifically, Breed has suggested adding “$13 million to the city’s $65 million street cleaning budget over the next two years.”
She also noted that the homeless who are contributing to the problem need to be held accountable for their actions.
“I will say there is more feces on the sidewalks than I’ve ever seen growing up here,” observed Breed while speaking to reporters last month.
“We have to make sure people who live here, [and] sadly, people who are homeless here, that they are also held accountable for taking care of our streets,” she added, noting, “this is our home.”
Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who called the situation “absolutely unacceptable,” also suggested throwing money at the problem to try and solve it.
“We’re losing tourists. We’re losing conventions in San Francisco. All of this is happening because we aren’t addressing the root cause, which is we need more temporary beds for street homelessness,” claimed Ronen, who’s calling for an additional 1,000 temporary beds, which would cost roughly $25 million, to combat street homelessness.
When asked about acquiring the funds, she stated, “we need to find a source of revenue. Whether that’s putting something on the ballot to raise business taxes or taking a look at our general fund and re-allocating money towards that purpose and taking it away from something else in the city.”
Ironically, though, the city’s apparent tactic of throwing taxpayer money at the problem has purportedly turned them into “a magnet” for the homeless.
“A large number of the people we see on our streets are not necessarily from San Francisco,” Nuru told reporters, adding, “they are coming from surrounding counties and, in some cases, across state lines.”
To make matters worse, homelessness isn’t the only problem currently plaguing San Francisco. They are also having to deal with the consequences of being a “sanctuary city.”
Earlier this year, for example, Orlando Vilchez Lazo, a 36-year-old illegal alien from Peru, was arrested by law enforcement officials for allegedly sexually assaulting at least four women over the course of about five years while reportedly pretending to be a ride-sharing driver.
Following his arrest, officials at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency “lodged a detainer” against Lazo, who was nicknamed “the Rideshare Rapist,” with the San Francisco County Jail.
“ICE maintains that cooperation by local law enforcement is an indispensable component of promoting public safety,” explained the ICE officials in a statement that they released about the matter.
“The San Francisco jail does not honor ICE detainers nor notify ICE about the impending release of aliens in its custody,” they added, noting, “in doing so, the jail not only provides a refuge for illegal aliens, but it also shields criminal aliens who prey on people in the community.”
Apparently, their comments about the city’s past failures were in reference to the sanctuary and due-process ordinances in the city that have largely prohibited city employees from helping ICE agents. The policies have also limited the notice to ICE about a person’s release from jail and banned city officials from cooperating with ICE holds.
According to the city’s immigration officials, however, their policies are supposedly doing more good to the area than harm.
“[The ordinance] promotes public trust and cooperation…by making sure that all residents, regardless of immigration status, feel comfortable calling the police and fire departments during emergencies and cooperating with city agencies,” argued officials with the San Francisco Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs in a statement of their own.
Following Lazo’s arrest, Commander Greg McEachern, who heads the investigations bureau for the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD), held a press briefing to provide the public with some additional information about the case.
“These assaults were not date-rapes. They were not acquaintance rapes. These assaults were violent rapes committed by a serial rapist. A sexual deviant predator who was not going to stop until he was caught,” stated McEachern, adding, “this is the exact thing that everyone fears could happen here in this city.”
By saying this, though, he essentially admitted that people have been trying to explain to others that this was a potential consequence of their sanctuary city policies. Basically, they were warned that something like this would happen and then it ended up actually happening.
Fortunately, though, the current administration has been actively working to push back against the city’s sanctuary policies.
Clearly, there are some serious problems plaguing San Francisco.
