BY ED FELIEN
On Tuesday, Oct. 20, at about 6:45 p.m., in the bus shelter at Lake Street and Park Avenue, Jessica Denise St. Marie was shot multiple times in the head. She was 28, African American and homeless. Adopted when she was 8, her adoptive mother said, “There was a hurt little girl in there for all her bravado,” according to Libor Jany and Paul Walsh of the StarTribune. Jessica Denise St. Marie died four hours later at Hennepin County Medical Center.
A Native-American woman remains in a coma from a rape and beating she received on Sept. 3 at 1 a.m. at Lake and 12th Avenue.
Gary Hoover walks up and down Lake Street at night between 35W and Hiawatha Avenue. He reported recently: “I walked Lake Street from midnight to 3 a.m. Sunday morning. I walked with a woman being prostituted who seemed to want a companion. At one point, she stopped and grabbed my hand. The hair on one side of her head was long, but on the other side it was quite short. She pressed my fingers to the top of her head and said ‘feel my head.’ I felt a dent in her head with a healed-over crack in her skull that ran from her hairline back to where her skull rounded toward her spine.
“Someone had hit her on the head and left her for dead a year ago. Someone found her, called for help, and she woke up at HCMC.
“ ‘Why are you back out here on the street!?!?’ I asked.
“ ‘I can’t just quit!’ she replied. ‘Besides, I have to find whoever did this to me.’
“She kept asking me for money. She said she was willing to have sex in exchange for money—quite clearly.
“After another block she looked at me and said. ‘You just keep walking.’ She turned onto a side street where a limo was parked and another car behind it—both with headlights on. She called out to me, ‘I love you! Keep walking! Be careful!’
“When I passed the McDonalds on Lake just east of 35W, I crossed over to the south side of Lake Street and began walking eastward again. The limo and the other car were gone, and so was she.”
Gary talks about his meditative walks: “I have been walking with a very definite meditation practice in order to be a loving presence in times and places in our neighborhood that we have collectively abandoned to hatred.
“The streets and alleys I walk—especially when I walk them—we have collectively signed over to hatred. Many of the people on the streets at that time are people we wipe from our consciousness and reject as losers and as repulsive, disease-ridden human refuse.
“I am talking about the drunks and addicts, the people being prostituted, the pimps and drug dealers, and the working poor who must use public transit and so must wait at bus stops in order to go to work, get groceries or to go home.”
So, what is the solution?
Should we all take personal responsibility for these tragedies and join Gary Hoover and patrol Lake Street? How can anyone with an ounce of pity not agree with Gary and wish him well when he says, “Even though you and I, and everyone we know, really care, we have not found a way to be present on the streets when and where a loving presence is needed. I want to make a plan to do that. Meanwhile, I am doing that as best as I can.”
No, Gary, this is not a good idea for two reasons. It’s dangerous and you are not a trained professional.
Yes, we need people out on the streets to care for the homeless and the troubled souls that cannot find an anchor in their lives. But it is the height of folly and conceit to believe that good intentions will be enough to bring permanent comfort to the neglected souls that travel down Lake Street late at night.
We can change this. But not by one person helping one person. We can only change this if we all work on it together. That’s why we form political organizations like cities and counties and states.
The Rock-Hard Republican State of Utah has proven that there’s no excuse for homelessness. If someone is homeless in Utah, the State finds them a place to live. The state has found out that it’s cheaper to care for homeless people by giving them a rent-free apartment than to treat them in emergency wards and the judicial system. It’s a fairly safe bet that the problems of Jessica Denise St. Marie were compounded because of her homelessness.
The police can’t handle this problem. They have a tough enough job cleaning up the mess after it happens. Visible police presence in an area might help deter crime, but in order to try to stop the continuing violence against women at night on Lake Street we need trained psychiatric counselors walking the Street like Gary Hoover and talking to these women.
Hennepin County already does something like this: “Community Outreach for Psychiatric Emergencies (COPE) provides emergency intervention services 24 hours a day, 7 days per week, when someone is experiencing an emotional crisis that threatens their personal safety. To access a COPE team, call 612-596-1223. COPE professionals will go to the person in crisis, handle the immediate crisis, and provide a clinical assessment. COPE can arrange for inpatient psychiatric services if necessary or admission to a crisis shelter (during which they also provide case management for a few days). Services are available to adults whose crisis occurs in Hennepin County; clients do not need to reside in Hennepin County.”
So, if you see someone in obvious trouble, a danger to themselves or others, don’t try to handle it yourself. You’re not trained and you don’t have the resources. Call psychiatric professionals at COPE: 612-596-1223.
