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The Secret Lives of Homeless People | Underground Society Revealed
February 6, 2025
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Listen to Invisible Choir every other week as we uncover the most haunting true crimes you've never heard of. Available wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jean Chatsky. You may know me as the host of the Her Money podcast or the financial editor of NBC's Today Show for 25 years.
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Plus your first month is absolutely free. So come check us out at investingfix.com. We'd love to have you. Is that the homeless have readily admitted to me that we are the judge, juries and executioners in encampments because they've kind of been left alone to create their own community. You leave them to their own devices and they're in the middle of nowhere. Eventually they're going to create their own community with their own rules. This is why every encampment has a mayor.
You know, most encampments have a homeless mayor that's in charge of everybody. I've personally been taken to grave sites in the middle of the woods, you know, where they showed me where, you know, the bodies are buried. If we were ever to like do some kind of infrared thing throughout the country where there's homeless encampments, where you can kind of tell if dirt, if there's been holes dug, you're going to find people buried everywhere, you know, especially in the deep woods.
Hey, this is Matt Cox. I'm here with Kevin Dahlgren. He is a homeless consultant and he's got some interesting stories regarding homeless issues and it's going to be interesting video. Check it out. So I watched that video you sent me. Um, what like, I know we, we texted about it, but what, what happened in, in the video?
Oh, and remind me which video, I know I sent you a few, was it the one where I was attacked or was it the short documentary I made with Tyler Olivera? No, no, this was, you had been talking to a homeless guy and then a bunch of guys in coats came and just started beating on him.
Oh right, that happened in Evanston, Illinois which is a suburb of Chicago and I was there assessing their homeless situation not two months ago and I was sitting with a homeless guy, a senior citizen who then got up and walked towards his bike to do something and I heard some commotion and turned around and he was having some words with these
city employees, these contracted city employees and really quickly I saw it escalating so I kind of turned on my camera thinking something bad is about to happen and then what I sent you was this 1 minute 11 second clip
of these five city employees beating the hell out of this guy. And it wasn't like it was some mutual combat thing. They had thrown him to the ground, stood around him and just kicked him in the head. Yeah. I mean, I couldn't even believe it. And the whole time they're doing this, they were being very threatening and stuff. So anyway, I was shocked. But of course, after this happened, everyone basically said, well,
Kevin, this is Chicago. And this is just normal. And even when the police arrived, they weren't overly enthusiastic to take my report of what I had witnessed or filmed because they just said, you know, this is kind of a common occurrence. I said, well, these are city employees, not okay. No one should be on the ground and just, you know, getting their head kicked in. So the guy did do it and it's no fun.
I don't know they said that he possibly was trying to
urinate in a corner or something. I didn't see that. All I know is that they had words. And honestly, it doesn't matter what the words are. And it doesn't even matter if this guy started it with words. We are trained professionals to deescalate and not get triggered and keep the emotion out of it. So when I work with, say, a homeless person and they're just like, Hey, Kevin, F you, or I'm going to do it up. It's not like I get heated and say, Oh yeah, because what is that going to solve? Right.
You have to be professional. They were not professional. So I could, you know, basically this was a group of people that were very poorly trained. So how often do you see stuff like that? The violence I witnessed daily all over anywhere I go, because I go in the encampments, it's very, very common. Uh, you know, there's,
Street justice is very common on the streets. I was in Bend, Oregon a couple of weeks ago, which is a beautiful city in southern Oregon. And I was in the Deschutes forest where there's maybe three, 400 homeless people. And I was talking to a lady and she was camping next to a road called China Hat, which goes directly through this forest.
And I just simply, you know, we're talking in and I asked her about what's it like living out here and stuff. And she said, well, what happens in China hat stay six feet under in China hat. And what she's saying is, and this is a very common thing to hear, is that the homeless have readily admitted to me that we are the judge, juries and executioners in encampments because they've kind of been left alone to create their own community. Kind of like Lord of the Flies in a way, you know?
When there's no other supervision, that's going to happen. And some encampments work, others don't. But she was blunt because she's been living this for years and she freely admits this is just the way it is. And this is why I take this job so seriously. This effort is
I don't believe a homeless person will ever truly get their needs met on the street and we can't also allow them to do things like this because everyone deserves to be treated respectfully and to at least have their day in court and you know people getting beaten up and murdered and all that other stuff is completely unacceptable.
You know, I again, I don't know the backstories of what, you know, why a lot of these people ended up like this, but I don't think that matters. What matters is this is not normal behavior and something. This is inevitable when a community does nothing to end this homeless crisis. You know, when you leave them alone, you leave them to their own devices and they're in the middle of nowhere. Eventually they're going to create their own community with their own rules. This is why every encampment has a mayor.
You know, most encampments have a homeless mayor that's in charge of everybody. And not in charge, like they tell them what to do, but they're sort of like the senior respected figure of the area that ultimately makes decisions on the direction the encampment is going to go or even sometimes the fate of the person who they think crossed the line. And so I've met, yeah. All right, go ahead.
Well, I've just, you know, I've met dozens and dozens of mayor and they're all basically the same. It's people who've been homeless the longest, who usually hold on to the, who have the most respect of the people around them. Um, so how did you get into this? Like where were you, where were you, uh, born raised, you know, like I'm a good question. I'm 52 years old and, um, in the early 1990s, my little brother ended up on the streets of Portland, Oregon with a meth addiction.
And I knew nothing about drugs. I mean, you know, I dabbled with smoking pot when I was a kid and stuff, but nothing major, not like it is these days. So we ended up on the streets. I was in my first year of college, not really sure in what I want to do with my life. So it was like 22, 21, 22. Anyway,
Once he called me from the streets and I was like, Oh my God, my little brother's on the streets. I invited him into my studio apartment and he lived with me for about a year and then recovered and stuff. And I was very inspired by that moment of like, wow, I was able to help somebody. And then I started really paying attention to other homeless and realizing what happens when you don't have family support because he got lucky. He had me, he had
my other brother who even though at the time we were too happy with him for some reason because he was you know causing some problems and that's fine just he was just young and angry
We also, he had the, he still had that family support to help him. So I started obsessively trying to understand the rest of the homeless population. What happens to homeless person without that support? Well, guess what? They stay homeless because the system wasn't really built to actually really get anybody off the streets I noticed. And that was a rude awakening for me because when I entered the field, I was thought I was going to be surrounded by people who woke up every day ready to,
change the world and mostly you know what I found was a high percentage people I worked with were doing it because it was a job and that to me was a very backwards way looking at it because I've always thought of what we're doing homeless services or addiction should be a cause not a job cause meaning you know we should treat this like a crisis it is not a job and also have the belief that we can end this crisis
So I entered the field professionally in the early 90s after my brother got off the streets, went back to school, just kind of studied all the right things. I needed to study to have that piece of paper to get my foot in the door in various places and then worked in that system for about 29 years and only just recently left it. And while I think there's still good people working in the system, I've been very critical of this system
that once was felt like a cause in the 90s became this multi-billion dollar industry and it's something I've been very vocal about is it's of highly highly profitable industry and the fact is the longer the people stay on the streets the more money people get and I am very unhappy that it's become this way so I've been very much
Very vocal about this problem and trying to get people to think differently about it and get people to start treating it like the crisis It is which we definitely are not doing today So what do you typically Like what is your typical I hate to say day because obviously it's probably not typical day, but what's your typical month like You know, like what do you do?
for organizations. What do you do when you go out to these places? Like, how are you making a living? Well, I am currently I'm not. I am. I am very boots on the ground. I am a strong believer. If you want to understand a problem, you go to the problem, you immerse yourself, you spend time, right?
I absolutely hate all these so-called professionals that write books on homelessness and addiction that have no first-hand experience. It's not like you have to necessarily have been homeless or been an addict, but you need to also devote your life to being around it and immersing yourself to understand the population, and it's almost non-existent. So every day,
Every day I'm in some encampment somewhere interviewing the homeless and I've been doing this to try to then share with anyone who's willing to listen what the homeless think and what's actually going on because they've never really been given a voice. So I have started doing homeless consulting so I have been traveling a bit to different cities
You know, counties, communities that are interested and talking to me about kind of what works and what doesn't, you know? And so like, for example, I'm a big believer in boots on the ground, not just for me, but for anybody who wants to end this crisis. We're not going to end it by building multimillion dollar buildings, right? We're going to end it by doing the outreach and building that trust, building that rapport, bringing back that hope. That is like step one and the most important step.
but the step that isn't really utilized at all. It's so, for example, I interviewed just this year alone about 150 homeless people just in Portland, Oregon, which is my hometown, and 90% told me I'm the first outreach worker to ever approach them, ever. I mean, that's insane. So even if you don't work in homeless services,
You have to assume, right, that at least there's outreach going out there and talking with them and working with them. It's not really happening and that doesn't make any sense. And so I've been very much pushing for people to rethink what we're spending our money on and maybe diverting funds towards the actual outreach because that is where we learn the problem and that is where we're going to kind of save the lives is once we understand it.
Well, if nobody's going out and actually talking with these guys and figuring out, you know, how to, you know, help with their problems to get them back, you know, in this acclimated back into society, then where's the money going that is dumped into this problem? Well, a lot of it is wasted on studies, research,
the housing first model which is really that's where billions of it is spent on brand new apartment buildings where they will place the homeless but they will place them without any sort of expectations or responsibility so imagine you know you work for an agency and a person who's actively using fentanyl which is terrible
I'm a drug and alcohol counselor, and that's the worst thing I've ever seen, right? So anyway, he shows up and said, I want housing. Great. So what they do is they will put him into a fully furnished apartment without any requirements of getting sober, going on meds, getting a job, following any type of rules, anything. It's just lit. It started with a scream inside a quiet Maryland home.
A mother trying to protect the family dog and her son in the grip of a violent hallucinogenic rage. By the time it was over, she was dead, and he claimed LSD made him do it. His name, David Minor IV, and we talked to him. Listen to Invisible Choir every other week as we uncover the most haunting true crimes you've never heard of, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Now, you do this thousands and thousands of times to the people who aren't in the field, you're going to see a noticeable difference. You're going to see the sidewalks emptied, right? Because people sometimes want that. The problem is, is we're not solving the problem. We're hiding the problem because we're not helping these individuals recover. We're simply placing them in these very expensive buildings, which by the way, they don't pay rent for for life.
We as taxpayers continue to pay it. I'm the big believer in empowering an individual to the point where they become self-sufficient, which I believe is the case. That can happen 75% of the time. So what's the majority of the problem? Is it drugs or is it mental illness or is it a combination? It's a combination.
In almost every community within the United States, I would say about 80% of every homeless person has addiction issues and about 70% have mental health issues. And of that group, about 90% have experienced childhood trauma. It's very, very common. You sit with a homeless person and once they build that trust, a high percentage of the time, nine times out of 10,
They're going to bring up something when there are five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. That was traumatic, right? And it fundamentally affected him. And it's something we're not really talking about, but I've been talking to thousands of homeless over the last few decades. And it's a reoccurring theme about a challenge because nobody really chooses to go to the streets. Yes, there's going to be those rare occasions where a person just likes the party.
And do that. But for the most part, for the most part, I've never met an addict that says, I love being an addict. They may say, I love being high because guess what? Being getting high feels good because of the dopamine. It's no different than drinking three glasses of wine, right? So there's a difference. You can feel good, but it doesn't mean they're okay with it. It just means they're doing it because they're trying to fill a void. And that void is usually the trauma.
So again, it's a colicory disorder where there's a lot of mental illness and chemical dependency and one just feeds into the other. And this is something we really need to talk about openly rather than saying that all homeless people are on the streets due to, say, affordable housing issues. And while that certainly is a small piece, it's not the big piece. But that seems to be the narrative is that most homeless
Buried by the US government and ignored by the national media, this is the story they don't want you to know.
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Yeah, I was going to say, I, uh,
I actually have a buddy that has continually relapsed. And if it weren't for his family, you know, and friends, just, I mean, literally, it's like there have been times he's definitely been homeless, like, but very briefly.
You know when I say I mean like sleeping in his car sleeping behind a 7-eleven, but you know they he gets into a program goes to the goes to the Red Cross or Wait, what do they call?
The Salvation Army or what's the other one Goodwill or they've got just different programs and he's even been there where he stayed for like 18 months where they gave him a job and he stayed there and actually kind of worked there and then he got out and he just as he gets older and I've known this guy my whole life. I mean there have been times when he and it's all all addiction there have been times when he went years
did great for three, four or five years and then relapse. And I noticed that as he's getting older, it's getting worse. Like he can't, you know, those, those, those, those, those times of sobriety are getting that gap is going from, you know, five years to four to three to, well, you know what I'm saying? It down to the point where it's like, he'll get sober for on his own a few months.
in a program, maybe 90 days, you know, six months or maybe six months soon as he's off on his own, got a job back on his feet. He didn't last a month or two. And, and, um, yeah, I don't, I don't know what it is. And I know I've, I've definitely had some, some interactions with homeless people in it. And to me, it always seemed like mental illness. Um, but in his case, it's not mental illness. It's, it's, it's addiction.
I just wonder, you know, I wonder what the problem is, because I've been to, so I've been to LA twice in the last couple of years, and I've been to San Francisco in the last few years. And it's, it's horrible. You know, the inner cities. A lot of these other cities have decriminalized drugs.
right and while your friend is in desperate need of intervention a lot of these cities have a strong belief that he should have that right to use and how dare us try to stop him because it's called bodily autonomy which is a more progressive way of thinking about things that a person should have a right to do whatever they want and how dare we suggest otherwise and that's why we're kind of in this crisis too is because
There's a strong, strong social justice philosophy about why a person is homeless or is using, and that's what kind of makes my job very challenging. So I don't know what city your friend lives in, but I think there's a very good chance he lives in a community that strongly supports the decriminalization of drugs.
No, he lives in Tampa. That's not what's happening. Okay, so in that, so East Coast, well, because I'm the West Coast guy, so Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, San Diego, that's a very big piece of it. So it could be in his community, he's not simply supported in the right way, or maybe he's just not ready to accept the help either.
no i think it's the combination of those two things i think one it's he's he's not ready he gets ready he knows what first of all he knows what to say to get help but he's got the system down and he's got family that just keeps pulling him up pulling him up pulling him up playing no matter what and you know the few times that you know we've spoken i've been like you know don't help him
Let him be homeless. Let him hit bottom. He knows what to say to get you to help him and he will clean up for a few weeks or a month or two and he'll go right back to it. That is the advice I give family and you are spot on Matt because the fact is it's difficult but sometimes you have to let the person hit bottom because of a family will always take care of them
And then they continue the same behavior year after year after year. You're not really doing any good. You know, they have to sometimes get cut off. And of course then there's the fear of like, well, what if he dies? Well, he's dying anyway. I hear that dying anyway. And you need to know that. And it sounds harsh, but sometimes a person has to hit bottom. I mean, I have talked to countless family members where they now like, and I'm talking, these are people now in their,
80s and 90s saying my 60 year old son has been, you know, I've been taking care of him my entire life or 70 year old son. I'm like, oh my God, it's time to just say no. And she's like, but I'm scared he's going to die. I'm like, yeah, but you have barely kept him alive his entire life. And he knows every single time he makes a mistake, he can always come back to you. And you know what this has done?
This is taking your life away is what it's done. She spent her entire life
Worrying about our kids. And this is very common. So I try to advise parents, like, look, tough love is sometimes the best type of love, right?
because what do you say that yeah I could I've said that many many times like you know you don't understand tough love that's the problem you know it's funny about his sister because his dad's just done with him his sister I you know she she is very big on what if he dies I'd never forgive myself and I'm like let me explain something I'm like you've got two kids an elderly father I said listen
You can only save so many people. I said, and sometimes it's a matter of just it's triage. You know, sure, if you could dedicate him, but you are you going to put him before you put your two kids or your elderly father who's been there for you your entire life? Like at this point, it's sink or swim. And this guy, you know, I mean, you're doing more damage. I said, you're doing more damage by helping him at this point.
Yep. And this thing too, like he's been in and out of programs. He's been to rehab over and over. He's been in the Salvation Army multiple times. Like it's, and I even told her, I said, I said, look, I would have some sympathy if it was mental illness, but it's not. It's addiction. And the fact is, if he has been doing this for this many years,
this is manipulation oh yeah he's good he's good at it he knows exactly what he's doing because he's because he's you know there he's pulling their heartstrings and it's effective and i will tell sometimes tell the family like you are being manipulated and this is what an addict will do and they need to sometimes just you know take you know get serious accept the tough love and do what's necessary and
It's a shame that she doesn't see that and I understand why because the love is attached. That is why sometimes it's easier for me to do my job because when I'm working with a person and this is my client, this is the family member, and I can very bluntly say you're manipulating your mom, right? And mom, you need to stop, right? Because it's easy for me to do, but I'm trying to help both of them.
I'm doing it because I see how it becomes extremely codependent. It's an extreme codependent relationship and that is a problem and it hasn't done any good for him. I have personal experience with my family where we basically took care of our uncle until he drank himself to death when he was 59 years old and his entire life
you know, the family continuously kind of bailed him out. And, you know, and so I love my uncle, but I just always, I didn't, I never respected him because I just, even when I was 12, 13 years old, I just saw like, come on. Right. And so he ended up dying when I was in my maybe late thirties, but it's just, was so frustrating to see
the family and some of the family, you know, we're like, nah, I'm done. But the rest of ones would just take care of him over and over and over again. Right. And it's a very common thing to do. But you know what? It never helped him. It never, never helped him because ultimately at the end he ended up drinking himself to death. And when we found him, he was just completely naked lying in a lying in a pile of trash. And it's sad, but that is the reality.
And so tough love is sometimes the best thing you can do for a person. Yeah. I was, yeah. The manipulation is it's funny. It's, it's funny too, because like the, he is such a nice guy. Like I, I, you know, some of these guys are so, they're such nice guys, which is make, you know, it's even harder. It's like, yo, he, he is a nice guy. He's also a guy that's manipulative and you know, he's got major issues and he's bringing you down and he's depressed. And it's so, um, I wonder what the,
With the exception of building a massive project, housing these people, which you're saying isn't the solution. And you're saying outreach is the solution. You think 75% of the time you could probably, what, reacclimate them back into society? So not only that, but make them self-sufficient. Right. Would you say get them into
It's not like they're going to do it on their own. It's not like I'm saying pull up your own pants and just get a job, right? It's not that easy. They need a lot of support. These are very complex individuals.
but by empowering them to reach their fullest potential, to give them the opportunity to succeed and working with them every single day, they can become self-sufficient. And if you do this, you no longer need those apartments and all the other things because the system has basically sent the message is that the homeless don't know how to take care of themselves. They're unable to ever recover. We need to take care of them for life. And I disagree.
Because I've worked with hundreds of people that when I first met them, they were the biggest hot mess you've ever seen, right? I mean like screaming in the middle of traffic in their underwear and now they have jobs and are thriving and doing really well. They just had reached terrible low points in their life and it's our job is to find that small piece of humanity still left in them and help them grow again. And that's the difference between enabling and
We have to empower these people. What we've done instead is we've enabled the homeless to the point of dependency where now it's not that they want the food, they now need the food. They're waiting for us to feed them. They're waiting for us to take care of them. They're waiting for us to house them. And it's no different than this, the friend that says, I'm waiting for my family to take care of me over and over and over again. And he's going to be completely okay with this to the day he dies. If something doesn't change.
you should show your show your friends this video after we after this after we talk oh listen i've talked to this guy until he's blue in the face and he's so good he's he's like you know i know you're right you're right it's like stop stop it don't do that to me well you gotta matt i mean i watch you you got a bs meter you see you're like matt like you know just stop not doing the whole telling me exactly what i want to hear
What I was gonna say, do you ever watch Soft White Underbelly? Yes. Mark Lay? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like, yeah. Sorry, yeah, go on, I love that stuff. No, no, I was gonna say, he's amazing and you know, have you ever seen the videos of him walking through? Because I did an episode with him. Oh, cool. Yeah, I was interviewed by him and you know,
Prior to going out to LA and meeting him, I had watched several of the episodes. Some of them I just can't watch. My wife will watch 10 of them in a row.
Can't get enough and I'm like, it's I can't watch them. It's depressing It's you know, she just can't get enough of watching these things that I just can't but I had watched several and what was so funny about that is I Remember listening to these people story and every stories and every once while you could hear like sirens or someone in the background screaming or cars, you know screeching and
And then I went out to LA and he picked me up and I, we drove to Skid Row because that's where his, uh, his studio is. I had no idea. Like I thought he, I remember watching it and I remember thinking, Oh, he throws in sound effects. You know, no, no, no. Just outside the door are people fighting and screaming and sirens and everything.
And if you see him walk through, I mean, he's gone through hell. Just doing the videos and being down there. He's been robbed multiple times. He's invested in many, many of the people that he's
That have come to him and pled for help. Um, he's put them in, in a hotel rooms and apartments. He's, you know, some of them have just, I'm not going to say blood and dry, but you know, they have just milked them for money until he finally just gives up on them. And he's like, yeah, it's this, um, it, it, it's definitely a situation where you're right. You can't just throw money at the problem. And you know why?
Because of money with a solution, we would have solved it by now. Right. Important to remember that. We have spent billions of dollars yet the crisis grows every year. And by the way, and that to me is always the red flag, to anyone who doesn't work in social services and is watching this, anytime you hear an elected official, we just need more money. Nope. That means they either don't understand the problem or they do understand the problem and realize we're going to continue to ask for money because we're not really there to fix it.
So stop talking about the money. You know, we have a lot. You think the funds are there, they just need to be reallocated. Oh yeah, I truly believe that. Yes, maybe up front if like say miraculously the government said, this is a crisis we need to fix us today. If that's the case, we need 10 times as many detox facilities
We need 10 times as many recovery, mental health, all that stuff. Up front, yes, if somehow we all came together in this magical moment and said, we're gonna get everyone off the streets. Up front, that's gonna be very expensive the first year or two, but if you treat it like a crisis, that crisis will end.
And after that two plus year period, guess what? Nobody's on the streets anymore. Everybody recovered. And then all we have to focus on now is retention and prevention. Make sure people never return to the streets again and prevent them doing so. So yes, I do think we have enough money right now. So you realize like prisons are just filled with people with mental illness.
I've actually, anybody who's ever watched this, you know, my interviews has probably heard me talk about the multiple guys with mental problem. Matter of fact, in Coleman, in the facility I was at at Coleman, so they have 12 units. There's like three buildings and four units in each building, so there's 12. They have a one unit, it's got over 150 guys in it that just have mental problems.
So that's one-twelfth of that population. Listen, a ton of other people do, but they're functional. You can be functional, have mental illness in prison and be functional because you're told what to do, where to go. Other inmates will help maneuver you. Hey, you got to get to your cell. Hey, you got to do this. They'll help structure your day. But some of the guys are just so
unstructured. And I remember it. I mean, there's multiple stories, but this one inmate, they call them Mr. Freeze. He had narcolepsy, extreme narcolepsy, and he had gotten himself he was addicted to like a I want to say crack cocaine. And he ended up in state prison. There was in Florida in state prison. It's very hot and there's no air conditioning. They just have fans. So he hated it. And he told
His cellies, he, he, he wanted, you know, he hated it there. They said, he said, I don't know why they don't have air conditioning and his cellies were like, Oh, you want to go to federal prison. They have air conditioning. You should get yourself moved to federal. I mean, just messing with him. You have to commit a federal crime. He said, and then they'll move you to a federal prison, which isn't necessarily the case. And so he writes a letter to president Bush threatening to kill him.
You know, kill him, his whole family. I remember he said he was going to rape the dog. And I remember thinking that that was a nice touch. You know, just bizarre. The guy was just a complete mental case. I mean, there was no way you could have a conversation and not know there's a serious problem. Well, the Secret Service, they come and they question him. They indict him. He's brought to federal court.
He's given, I think, I want to say seven years or something for writing a letter about killing the president that he couldn't possibly, even if it was really his intent, and they knew what his intent was. I think the judge had even said, I understand.
what's happening here and what you were going for but it is illegal blah blah blah even if he had one head was able even if that was his intent this guy couldn't get himself to washington he couldn't get himself a gun he couldn't have pulled off anything that he said in that in that letter they still gave him six or seven years and he ended up in federal prison after he did his state sentence and
he was in this unit and you know like that like it seems like to me prisons are are the the the mental wards that no longer really exists for these people like the system just wants to throw them away and you know i mean granted it's not as bad as you know nazi germany where they're just executing them but instead you're just locking them up forever like they're not helping these guys
Although, except it's very profitable to do so. You know, the homeless industrial complex benefits from a homeless person. The prison industrial complex benefits from people in prison. Right. Right. And I hate to say that, but it's like it's true. And for me, because I get threatened all the time. Right. It's like, I mean, I'm sorry, Mr. President, give me a break. Six, seven years. That's insane. A mentally ill person writing a stupid ass letter. I mean, that just bothers me.
It's like we all know it was a mental health thing. That person should be in treatment, not in prison. It's not like he's going to get any better. I mean, again, that doesn't make any sense. But where do you send them? Well, that's the problem. So for example, for him, if he's severely mentally ill and is ill, a lot of these state hospitals shut down. And so where do you think they went? They went to the streets.
Right. So I live in Oregon. Oregon is ranked last place in America, last when it comes to mental health treatment. We are last. So that makes it very challenging for me because we have a serious amount of mentally ill people on our streets. But you ask a good question is divert the funds towards treatment and mental health services.
Yeah, I was going to say like here, like probably the most you're going to get here for, I don't think there's any place that they really can lock them down and give them treatment for a certain period of time. Mostly you just get locked up for like your Baker act. I don't know if what they call it in Oregon, but it's either they'll Marchmen act them or Baker act them. Baker acting is like it's drug, no,
No, that's mental illness. Marchman acted, I think is drug addiction. If you're if they're afraid you'll harm yourself as a result of drugs. I think I'm or I might have them confused anyway. Yeah, you get locked up for three days and they release you. Even though they know you've got an issue until eventually you commit a crime that they can lock you up, throw you in prison, then you're in prison. Supposedly you're going to get you're going to get counseling in prison. That's not going to happen. Well, I shouldn't say you might get some counseling, you know, but
The doctors are, listen, nobody ends up at the top of their field and ends up working for a prison. The doctors that are there are just trying to collect their check and go home. They're not really trying to do anything. Although they do have a drug program,
in federal prison. They have them in state prisons, too, and most of them are based kind of on the federal system. They have one in federal prison. It's called the ARDAP. And it really has very little to do with drugs at all. It's really about behavior modification as far as criminal thinking is concerned. And it's actually a really good program. And pretty much, I'd say, out of the five people that run the one in Coleman,
I would say four of them were really seriously dedicated. There was one guy, he just wanted to get his check and go home. He was like, fill out the paperwork, I'll grade the books, let's have a talk. Okay, everything's fine. Let's move on. He just wanted to go home. But the other doctors, they call them drug treatment specialists, even though you never really talked about drugs.
they genuinely wanted to be there. So that was actually a good program. I just don't know why. Now I get what you're saying about, you know, the prison, prisons, you know, profiting. It just seems to me it costs so much money to incarcerate someone. And it really in, in, in comparison, it costs so little money to
To treat someone for drug addiction and mental illness where that's something that's correctable. I mean, let's face it is Incarceration you get out You're good for a couple of years maybe and you go right back to prison. I guess just a complete cycle over and over and over again Where if you kept these guys on? If you did give them someone that could keep tabs on them and
You know, just like they do in federal prison and most state prisons, you'll do a sentence of five or 10 years and then you have several years of supervised release, you know, or probation, where you have a probation officer and they kind of keep an eye on you and where are you working and what are you doing and who are you living with and who are you hanging out with? And so after several years of that, you become so acclimated to behaving correctly, you have a better chance
You know, maybe not a great chance, but a better chance of acclimating back into society as a decent citizen. So, yeah, I don't know. Well, our society, you know, we're very big on the band-aid solutions. We wait for it to happen rather than getting to like, say, the root causes or, you know, it's the band-aid. Yeah, you're reactive. So what it is is we're reactive, not proactive exactly. And we need to be more proactive. And there's certainly
Some people out there really trying. I had a good friend who served on and off 15 years in prison, but his last prison stand, he finally met this person who really changed his life and he had a history of addiction and stuff and basically completely changed the way his outlook and I'm 100% confident he'll never return to prison because this person changed him, but he went in and out, in and out, in and out ever since I was 18 years old, right?
And I spent thousands of dollars talking to this guy on the phone because prisons love to charge money for those damn phones. I couldn't even believe what I was being charged. I'm like, can you just charge me a quarter? It was like $30 a call or something. And this was, I was poor. So I spent thousands talking to this guy over a decade. Anyway, so he met the, he read the person he's thriving now. So there are some systems that work and you gotta, when a, when a program works, duplicate it.
Talk about it and duplicate it because that's how we're going to fix the system. What is going to happen? Is Oregon as bad as California for homeless? It's very close. I've done a lot of outreach in San Francisco, but I would still say possibly California is still worse.
Because I was recently in San Diego, and it's something we're not really talking about much, but I was there with my friend and colleague Kate Monroe, and I was talking about how everything's a crisis, crisis, crisis. I say that a lot, you know? And she paused for a moment. She says, you know what, Kevin? This is not a crisis. This is malicious neglect.
And I'm like, Oh my God, she's so right because we had given the government many opportunities to fix this. And so I walked around with her and I realized she's absolutely right. This is now malicious neglect because we gave these people decades to solve this and it's still bad. So I was blown away when she said that it's very, you know, she now she's been doing a lot of media and stuff and she's
a local leader there, Kate Monroe. I'm very impressed with her. So, but that really made me think, realize that we need to start kind of going on the attack and talking about, you know, who has failed this, you know, how have we failed these people because we can't keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. So yeah, California is quite bad. Portland, Oregon,
What's gonna happen when I mean there's so many people leaving California there's so many businesses that are leaving they've got a deficit like what's gonna happen when they
They keep pushing these progressive programs that aren't helping and now their tax base is leaving. Like it's affecting the people that live there. They don't want to live there anymore. Then people need to vote differently, don't they? Yeah. And I'm not, I'm not, I'm not political, but I'm saying vote the candidate, not the party vote, the candidate that has great ideas to solve this crisis and to save their community and whatever
So, what about the documentary?
Well, I worked on this really great, just 18-minute piece on Portland, Oregon, homelessness and addiction with Tyler Olivera, who does a lot of great YouTube videos. We only did this a couple of weeks ago and it's gotten a lot of attention. I think it's at just under 6 million views in four days now.
I haven't seen this because you didn't send this to me. Yeah, I forgot what I sent you, but what I'll do is right after we talk, I'll text it to you and, you know, if you want, post the link and what we're doing here. Yeah, exactly. We'll post the link in the description. But it's wild. And what's crazy is we did this over one day because you know what? Every day is documentary. You go out to these camps and no matter what, you're going to see something crazy.
and you know we talked to a lot of people on the streets and addiction and really just you know like so for example in the first 10 minutes of us even out there a guy pulls a knife on us and chases us that we filmed and it's like you can't really make up to make this stuff up it's like what the heck now
Because I had, you know, the small camera crew with me and they're not really used to be in that kind of situation, I was like, well, let's just walk away. But the guy kept pursuing us and I got a little frustrated. So I just basically stopped and walked up to him and stood my ground and just said, stop. He's like, I've been here longer than you. You don't get to do this. And he walked away. But I'm like, I was frustrated because I'm like, look, that's not going to solve anything.
Right. And by the way, I had done outreach in that encampment, uh, hundreds of times in a year and a half. And so everyone knew me and this was a new guy who sort of just took over who clearly was a little more violent. And I was not happy with that. I'm like, you don't, how dare you pull a knife on anybody. That is not okay. It's just like, come on. So I was, I was pretty frustrated, but you know, we eventually left and did our, did the rest of the day, but it's a pretty cool video.
Is there a lot of violence or murders among the homeless? Or just violence? I mean, murders happen, but there's a lot of violence at Street Justice. Right. You know, it's hard to prove a murder because, for example, fentanyl. Back in the day, when I worked at homeless shelters, if a homeless person wanted to off another homeless person,
They would inject them with heroin and then they would die of an OD, right? Uh, now these days it's fentanyl because fentanyl is 10 times easier because I can even share with you, I had a client just a couple months ago who was completely sober and had zero interest in drug use. Someone put fentanyl powder in his drink and he died 20 minutes later and
Do the police even look into it? They don't because think about it, a homeless junkie, I mean, it's just like, of course it's a, what they call it is not even a suicide, it's accidental overdose. Now I come across people overdosing every single day. So I carry with me Narcan, which is the opioid blocker because fentanyl has basically replaced all other drugs, but murders
I wouldn't say are common, but are not also uncommon. They're going to happen. You know, I mean, but you know, my question is like when you find a person who's overdosed and died, we don't know how it, how they ended up in that situation. Cause the fact is on the streets, there's a lot of infighting, there's a lot of drama and there's almost no law and order. So these things kind of happen sometimes.
I've personally been taken to grave sites in the middle of the woods in Portland, Oregon, where they showed me where the bodies are buried. Usually it's in the deep, deep woods, but it's not like they were always killed. Some died of natural causes and they decided to bury them in the woods because that's where they live. It's just hard to tell, but if we were ever to do some kind of infrared thing
Okay.
Do you want like is there any anything that people that watch this like you want them to? Go to any links or anything like that that we sure in the description. Well, I appreciate that Matt I do have a website truth on the streets org okay, and also that's you know, I I have a good I I do a lot of tweeting and
where I interview the homeless and talk about the crisis. And I've been doing this for a couple of years. And that's just my name, Kevin Dahlgren. And you can find me pretty easily on there. And of course, I write for Substack, which is an opportunity where I can write articles and share my 28 years working the system and kind of what I thought works and doesn't work. But I can send you all the links and stuff, Matt. And thank you for asking. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you, you know, talking with me.
This is great. I follow you, I listen to you, so this is a pleasure for me. That's funny. I appreciate that. I was like, whoa. I had to actually do a double S. I was like, is there another Matthew Cox? I couldn't believe it was you. And I had to actually Google it thinking, well, I don't want to get excited because I wasn't sure. And I'm like, because I love watching podcasts, so I thought that was really cool, brother. Well, yeah, I appreciate that. Tyler, you
Well, I've been harmed multiple times. I've been
I still have the bruising of my brain, brain bruising. I was in San Diego a few weeks ago and got beaten down really hard and I filmed the entire thing and it was brutal. Then I got kicked in the head. I've been stabbed twice. I've been attacked multiple times. I'm just kind of resilient.
but you know these things happen now of course the guy who attacked me i he was mad because i was filming him but i was only doing it because he was beating up another guy and i went over there in a very respectful way said please stop just stop right because nobody else was doing anything and this guy was weaker than him and he was just this guy ended up getting hospitalized for a week right
So I just said please stop and I'm filming it and the victim was like oh thank you and kind of stumbled away and then this guy who was all so really pumped walked right up to me and just said boom and then I stood back up punched me a second time I stood back up he punched me a third time knocked me down and then got and kicked me. Now I don't live in San Diego I didn't know everybody there so I also know it wasn't wise
at that moment to fight back because I don't know if he had something else on him or who his friends were because there was good 30 people there. So sometimes you have to sometimes just know when not to duck, you know, and when to take a punch. And so it wasn't like it was the way I painted is, uh, I got off lucky because guess what? I got to go home. I got off lucky because I was just punched a few times and I'm recovering.
But what about the people out there in the streets every day getting raped, getting murdered, getting beat up daily, every single day? That's what we got to be talking about. So I'm not, I'm definitely not the victim. I definitely got hit and getting hit is no fun. It's painful, but I got to go home. They don't because the system isn't really set up to really help them in any real way. So that's all I want to say about that. Okay.
I'll send you the link here in a minute, okay?
Absolutely. Hey, thank you guys for watching the video Do me a favor if you liked the video subscribe to the channel hit the bell so you get notified Leave a comment and I'm going to leave all of Kevin's links in the description including the link for the 18 minute documentary his social media links and So yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. See ya
It started with a scream inside a quiet Maryland home, a mother trying to protect the family dog and her son in the grip of a violent hallucinogenic rage. By the time it was over, she was dead, and he claimed LSD made him do it. His name, David Minor IV, and we talked to him. Listen to Invisible Choir every other week as we uncover the most haunting true crimes you've never heard of, available wherever you get your podcasts.
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"text": " Talkspace is the number one rated online therapy. They work with many insurance companies and most people with insurance pay zero dollars for therapy or psychiatry. You can change your provider for free. This helps you find the licensed therapist who fits your needs the best. Therapy can be costly, but part of the mission of Talkspace is to provide quality care that is accessible and affordable whether or not you are insured. Talkspace makes getting the help you need easy. Let me tell you more about why I love Talkspace."
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"text": " podcast and enter promo code SPACE80. It started with a scream inside a quiet Maryland home. A mother trying to protect the family dog and her son in the grip of a violent hallucinogenic rage. By the time it was over, she was dead and he claimed LSD made him do it. His name David Minor the fourth and we talked to him."
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"text": " Listen to Invisible Choir every other week as we uncover the most haunting true crimes you've never heard of. Available wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jean Chatsky. You may know me as the host of the Her Money podcast or the financial editor of NBC's Today Show for 25 years."
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"text": " Today I'd personally like to invite you to join my women-led investing club. It's called Investing Fix with two X's. We walk through current market trends, teach investing fundamentals, and build a real portfolio together."
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"text": " Plus your first month is absolutely free. So come check us out at investingfix.com. We'd love to have you. Is that the homeless have readily admitted to me that we are the judge, juries and executioners in encampments because they've kind of been left alone to create their own community. You leave them to their own devices and they're in the middle of nowhere. Eventually they're going to create their own community with their own rules. This is why every encampment has a mayor."
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"text": " You know, most encampments have a homeless mayor that's in charge of everybody. I've personally been taken to grave sites in the middle of the woods, you know, where they showed me where, you know, the bodies are buried. If we were ever to like do some kind of infrared thing throughout the country where there's homeless encampments, where you can kind of tell if dirt, if there's been holes dug, you're going to find people buried everywhere, you know, especially in the deep woods."
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"text": " Hey, this is Matt Cox. I'm here with Kevin Dahlgren. He is a homeless consultant and he's got some interesting stories regarding homeless issues and it's going to be interesting video. Check it out. So I watched that video you sent me. Um, what like, I know we, we texted about it, but what, what happened in, in the video?"
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"text": " Oh, and remind me which video, I know I sent you a few, was it the one where I was attacked or was it the short documentary I made with Tyler Olivera? No, no, this was, you had been talking to a homeless guy and then a bunch of guys in coats came and just started beating on him."
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"text": " Oh right, that happened in Evanston, Illinois which is a suburb of Chicago and I was there assessing their homeless situation not two months ago and I was sitting with a homeless guy, a senior citizen who then got up and walked towards his bike to do something and I heard some commotion and turned around and he was having some words with these"
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"text": " city employees, these contracted city employees and really quickly I saw it escalating so I kind of turned on my camera thinking something bad is about to happen and then what I sent you was this 1 minute 11 second clip"
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"text": " of these five city employees beating the hell out of this guy. And it wasn't like it was some mutual combat thing. They had thrown him to the ground, stood around him and just kicked him in the head. Yeah. I mean, I couldn't even believe it. And the whole time they're doing this, they were being very threatening and stuff. So anyway, I was shocked. But of course, after this happened, everyone basically said, well,"
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"text": " Kevin, this is Chicago. And this is just normal. And even when the police arrived, they weren't overly enthusiastic to take my report of what I had witnessed or filmed because they just said, you know, this is kind of a common occurrence. I said, well, these are city employees, not okay. No one should be on the ground and just, you know, getting their head kicked in. So the guy did do it and it's no fun."
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"text": " I don't know they said that he possibly was trying to"
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"text": " urinate in a corner or something. I didn't see that. All I know is that they had words. And honestly, it doesn't matter what the words are. And it doesn't even matter if this guy started it with words. We are trained professionals to deescalate and not get triggered and keep the emotion out of it. So when I work with, say, a homeless person and they're just like, Hey, Kevin, F you, or I'm going to do it up. It's not like I get heated and say, Oh yeah, because what is that going to solve? Right."
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"text": " You have to be professional. They were not professional. So I could, you know, basically this was a group of people that were very poorly trained. So how often do you see stuff like that? The violence I witnessed daily all over anywhere I go, because I go in the encampments, it's very, very common. Uh, you know, there's,"
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"text": " Street justice is very common on the streets. I was in Bend, Oregon a couple of weeks ago, which is a beautiful city in southern Oregon. And I was in the Deschutes forest where there's maybe three, 400 homeless people. And I was talking to a lady and she was camping next to a road called China Hat, which goes directly through this forest."
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"text": " And I just simply, you know, we're talking in and I asked her about what's it like living out here and stuff. And she said, well, what happens in China hat stay six feet under in China hat. And what she's saying is, and this is a very common thing to hear, is that the homeless have readily admitted to me that we are the judge, juries and executioners in encampments because they've kind of been left alone to create their own community. Kind of like Lord of the Flies in a way, you know?"
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"text": " When there's no other supervision, that's going to happen. And some encampments work, others don't. But she was blunt because she's been living this for years and she freely admits this is just the way it is. And this is why I take this job so seriously. This effort is"
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"text": " I don't believe a homeless person will ever truly get their needs met on the street and we can't also allow them to do things like this because everyone deserves to be treated respectfully and to at least have their day in court and you know people getting beaten up and murdered and all that other stuff is completely unacceptable."
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"text": " You know, I again, I don't know the backstories of what, you know, why a lot of these people ended up like this, but I don't think that matters. What matters is this is not normal behavior and something. This is inevitable when a community does nothing to end this homeless crisis. You know, when you leave them alone, you leave them to their own devices and they're in the middle of nowhere. Eventually they're going to create their own community with their own rules. This is why every encampment has a mayor."
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"text": " You know, most encampments have a homeless mayor that's in charge of everybody. And not in charge, like they tell them what to do, but they're sort of like the senior respected figure of the area that ultimately makes decisions on the direction the encampment is going to go or even sometimes the fate of the person who they think crossed the line. And so I've met, yeah. All right, go ahead."
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"text": " Well, I've just, you know, I've met dozens and dozens of mayor and they're all basically the same. It's people who've been homeless the longest, who usually hold on to the, who have the most respect of the people around them. Um, so how did you get into this? Like where were you, where were you, uh, born raised, you know, like I'm a good question. I'm 52 years old and, um, in the early 1990s, my little brother ended up on the streets of Portland, Oregon with a meth addiction."
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"text": " And I knew nothing about drugs. I mean, you know, I dabbled with smoking pot when I was a kid and stuff, but nothing major, not like it is these days. So we ended up on the streets. I was in my first year of college, not really sure in what I want to do with my life. So it was like 22, 21, 22. Anyway,"
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"text": " Once he called me from the streets and I was like, Oh my God, my little brother's on the streets. I invited him into my studio apartment and he lived with me for about a year and then recovered and stuff. And I was very inspired by that moment of like, wow, I was able to help somebody. And then I started really paying attention to other homeless and realizing what happens when you don't have family support because he got lucky. He had me, he had"
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"text": " my other brother who even though at the time we were too happy with him for some reason because he was you know causing some problems and that's fine just he was just young and angry"
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"text": " We also, he had the, he still had that family support to help him. So I started obsessively trying to understand the rest of the homeless population. What happens to homeless person without that support? Well, guess what? They stay homeless because the system wasn't really built to actually really get anybody off the streets I noticed. And that was a rude awakening for me because when I entered the field, I was thought I was going to be surrounded by people who woke up every day ready to,"
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"text": " change the world and mostly you know what I found was a high percentage people I worked with were doing it because it was a job and that to me was a very backwards way looking at it because I've always thought of what we're doing homeless services or addiction should be a cause not a job cause meaning you know we should treat this like a crisis it is not a job and also have the belief that we can end this crisis"
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"text": " So I entered the field professionally in the early 90s after my brother got off the streets, went back to school, just kind of studied all the right things. I needed to study to have that piece of paper to get my foot in the door in various places and then worked in that system for about 29 years and only just recently left it. And while I think there's still good people working in the system, I've been very critical of this system"
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"text": " that once was felt like a cause in the 90s became this multi-billion dollar industry and it's something I've been very vocal about is it's of highly highly profitable industry and the fact is the longer the people stay on the streets the more money people get and I am very unhappy that it's become this way so I've been very much"
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"end_time": 799.019,
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"start_time": 772.534,
"text": " Very vocal about this problem and trying to get people to think differently about it and get people to start treating it like the crisis It is which we definitely are not doing today So what do you typically Like what is your typical I hate to say day because obviously it's probably not typical day, but what's your typical month like You know, like what do you do?"
},
{
"end_time": 822.654,
"index": 31,
"start_time": 799.821,
"text": " for organizations. What do you do when you go out to these places? Like, how are you making a living? Well, I am currently I'm not. I am. I am very boots on the ground. I am a strong believer. If you want to understand a problem, you go to the problem, you immerse yourself, you spend time, right?"
},
{
"end_time": 848.763,
"index": 32,
"start_time": 823.012,
"text": " I absolutely hate all these so-called professionals that write books on homelessness and addiction that have no first-hand experience. It's not like you have to necessarily have been homeless or been an addict, but you need to also devote your life to being around it and immersing yourself to understand the population, and it's almost non-existent. So every day,"
},
{
"end_time": 872.056,
"index": 33,
"start_time": 849.189,
"text": " Every day I'm in some encampment somewhere interviewing the homeless and I've been doing this to try to then share with anyone who's willing to listen what the homeless think and what's actually going on because they've never really been given a voice. So I have started doing homeless consulting so I have been traveling a bit to different cities"
},
{
"end_time": 900.435,
"index": 34,
"start_time": 872.858,
"text": " You know, counties, communities that are interested and talking to me about kind of what works and what doesn't, you know? And so like, for example, I'm a big believer in boots on the ground, not just for me, but for anybody who wants to end this crisis. We're not going to end it by building multimillion dollar buildings, right? We're going to end it by doing the outreach and building that trust, building that rapport, bringing back that hope. That is like step one and the most important step."
},
{
"end_time": 929.531,
"index": 35,
"start_time": 900.879,
"text": " but the step that isn't really utilized at all. It's so, for example, I interviewed just this year alone about 150 homeless people just in Portland, Oregon, which is my hometown, and 90% told me I'm the first outreach worker to ever approach them, ever. I mean, that's insane. So even if you don't work in homeless services,"
},
{
"end_time": 958.319,
"index": 36,
"start_time": 930.794,
"text": " You have to assume, right, that at least there's outreach going out there and talking with them and working with them. It's not really happening and that doesn't make any sense. And so I've been very much pushing for people to rethink what we're spending our money on and maybe diverting funds towards the actual outreach because that is where we learn the problem and that is where we're going to kind of save the lives is once we understand it."
},
{
"end_time": 984.019,
"index": 37,
"start_time": 958.746,
"text": " Well, if nobody's going out and actually talking with these guys and figuring out, you know, how to, you know, help with their problems to get them back, you know, in this acclimated back into society, then where's the money going that is dumped into this problem? Well, a lot of it is wasted on studies, research,"
},
{
"end_time": 1011.425,
"index": 38,
"start_time": 985.418,
"text": " the housing first model which is really that's where billions of it is spent on brand new apartment buildings where they will place the homeless but they will place them without any sort of expectations or responsibility so imagine you know you work for an agency and a person who's actively using fentanyl which is terrible"
},
{
"end_time": 1039.957,
"index": 39,
"start_time": 1012.415,
"text": " I'm a drug and alcohol counselor, and that's the worst thing I've ever seen, right? So anyway, he shows up and said, I want housing. Great. So what they do is they will put him into a fully furnished apartment without any requirements of getting sober, going on meds, getting a job, following any type of rules, anything. It's just lit. It started with a scream inside a quiet Maryland home."
},
{
"end_time": 1064.991,
"index": 40,
"start_time": 1040.538,
"text": " A mother trying to protect the family dog and her son in the grip of a violent hallucinogenic rage. By the time it was over, she was dead, and he claimed LSD made him do it. His name, David Minor IV, and we talked to him. Listen to Invisible Choir every other week as we uncover the most haunting true crimes you've never heard of, available wherever you get your podcasts."
},
{
"end_time": 1101.92,
"index": 41,
"start_time": 1073.285,
"text": " Now, you do this thousands and thousands of times to the people who aren't in the field, you're going to see a noticeable difference. You're going to see the sidewalks emptied, right? Because people sometimes want that. The problem is, is we're not solving the problem. We're hiding the problem because we're not helping these individuals recover. We're simply placing them in these very expensive buildings, which by the way, they don't pay rent for for life."
},
{
"end_time": 1127.176,
"index": 42,
"start_time": 1102.858,
"text": " We as taxpayers continue to pay it. I'm the big believer in empowering an individual to the point where they become self-sufficient, which I believe is the case. That can happen 75% of the time. So what's the majority of the problem? Is it drugs or is it mental illness or is it a combination? It's a combination."
},
{
"end_time": 1156.92,
"index": 43,
"start_time": 1128.49,
"text": " In almost every community within the United States, I would say about 80% of every homeless person has addiction issues and about 70% have mental health issues. And of that group, about 90% have experienced childhood trauma. It's very, very common. You sit with a homeless person and once they build that trust, a high percentage of the time, nine times out of 10,"
},
{
"end_time": 1185.691,
"index": 44,
"start_time": 1157.312,
"text": " They're going to bring up something when there are five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. That was traumatic, right? And it fundamentally affected him. And it's something we're not really talking about, but I've been talking to thousands of homeless over the last few decades. And it's a reoccurring theme about a challenge because nobody really chooses to go to the streets. Yes, there's going to be those rare occasions where a person just likes the party."
},
{
"end_time": 1213.302,
"index": 45,
"start_time": 1186.271,
"text": " And do that. But for the most part, for the most part, I've never met an addict that says, I love being an addict. They may say, I love being high because guess what? Being getting high feels good because of the dopamine. It's no different than drinking three glasses of wine, right? So there's a difference. You can feel good, but it doesn't mean they're okay with it. It just means they're doing it because they're trying to fill a void. And that void is usually the trauma."
},
{
"end_time": 1240.06,
"index": 46,
"start_time": 1214.036,
"text": " So again, it's a colicory disorder where there's a lot of mental illness and chemical dependency and one just feeds into the other. And this is something we really need to talk about openly rather than saying that all homeless people are on the streets due to, say, affordable housing issues. And while that certainly is a small piece, it's not the big piece. But that seems to be the narrative is that most homeless"
},
{
"end_time": 1268.49,
"index": 47,
"start_time": 1240.35,
"text": " Buried by the US government and ignored by the national media, this is the story they don't want you to know."
},
{
"end_time": 1289.974,
"index": 48,
"start_time": 1269.206,
"text": " When Frank Amadeo met with President George W. Bush at the White House to discuss NATO operations in Afghanistan, no one knew that he'd already embezzled nearly $200 million from the federal government, money he intended to use to bankroll his plan to take over the world. From Amadeo's global headquarters in the shadow of Florida's Disney,"
},
{
"end_time": 1319.206,
"index": 49,
"start_time": 1290.333,
"text": " With a nearly inexhaustible supply of the Internal Revenue Service's funds, Amadeo acquired multiple businesses, amassing a mega-conglomerate. Driven by his delusions of world conquest, he negotiated the purchase of a squadron of American fighter jets and the controlling interests in a former Soviet ICBM factory. He began working to build the largest private militia on the planet, over one million Africans strong. Simultaneously,"
},
{
"end_time": 1349.462,
"index": 50,
"start_time": 1319.684,
"text": " Yeah, I was going to say, I, uh,"
},
{
"end_time": 1367.551,
"index": 51,
"start_time": 1350.811,
"text": " I actually have a buddy that has continually relapsed. And if it weren't for his family, you know, and friends, just, I mean, literally, it's like there have been times he's definitely been homeless, like, but very briefly."
},
{
"end_time": 1384.974,
"index": 52,
"start_time": 1368.08,
"text": " You know when I say I mean like sleeping in his car sleeping behind a 7-eleven, but you know they he gets into a program goes to the goes to the Red Cross or Wait, what do they call?"
},
{
"end_time": 1411.971,
"index": 53,
"start_time": 1385.503,
"text": " The Salvation Army or what's the other one Goodwill or they've got just different programs and he's even been there where he stayed for like 18 months where they gave him a job and he stayed there and actually kind of worked there and then he got out and he just as he gets older and I've known this guy my whole life. I mean there have been times when he and it's all all addiction there have been times when he went years"
},
{
"end_time": 1438.712,
"index": 54,
"start_time": 1412.363,
"text": " did great for three, four or five years and then relapse. And I noticed that as he's getting older, it's getting worse. Like he can't, you know, those, those, those, those, those times of sobriety are getting that gap is going from, you know, five years to four to three to, well, you know what I'm saying? It down to the point where it's like, he'll get sober for on his own a few months."
},
{
"end_time": 1469.053,
"index": 55,
"start_time": 1439.565,
"text": " in a program, maybe 90 days, you know, six months or maybe six months soon as he's off on his own, got a job back on his feet. He didn't last a month or two. And, and, um, yeah, I don't, I don't know what it is. And I know I've, I've definitely had some, some interactions with homeless people in it. And to me, it always seemed like mental illness. Um, but in his case, it's not mental illness. It's, it's, it's addiction."
},
{
"end_time": 1490.93,
"index": 56,
"start_time": 1469.974,
"text": " I just wonder, you know, I wonder what the problem is, because I've been to, so I've been to LA twice in the last couple of years, and I've been to San Francisco in the last few years. And it's, it's horrible. You know, the inner cities. A lot of these other cities have decriminalized drugs."
},
{
"end_time": 1521.391,
"index": 57,
"start_time": 1491.732,
"text": " right and while your friend is in desperate need of intervention a lot of these cities have a strong belief that he should have that right to use and how dare us try to stop him because it's called bodily autonomy which is a more progressive way of thinking about things that a person should have a right to do whatever they want and how dare we suggest otherwise and that's why we're kind of in this crisis too is because"
},
{
"end_time": 1542.244,
"index": 58,
"start_time": 1521.869,
"text": " There's a strong, strong social justice philosophy about why a person is homeless or is using, and that's what kind of makes my job very challenging. So I don't know what city your friend lives in, but I think there's a very good chance he lives in a community that strongly supports the decriminalization of drugs."
},
{
"end_time": 1567.517,
"index": 59,
"start_time": 1543.746,
"text": " No, he lives in Tampa. That's not what's happening. Okay, so in that, so East Coast, well, because I'm the West Coast guy, so Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, San Diego, that's a very big piece of it. So it could be in his community, he's not simply supported in the right way, or maybe he's just not ready to accept the help either."
},
{
"end_time": 1588.234,
"index": 60,
"start_time": 1567.995,
"text": " no i think it's the combination of those two things i think one it's he's he's not ready he gets ready he knows what first of all he knows what to say to get help but he's got the system down and he's got family that just keeps pulling him up pulling him up pulling him up playing no matter what and you know the few times that you know we've spoken i've been like you know don't help him"
},
{
"end_time": 1615.606,
"index": 61,
"start_time": 1588.831,
"text": " Let him be homeless. Let him hit bottom. He knows what to say to get you to help him and he will clean up for a few weeks or a month or two and he'll go right back to it. That is the advice I give family and you are spot on Matt because the fact is it's difficult but sometimes you have to let the person hit bottom because of a family will always take care of them"
},
{
"end_time": 1643.882,
"index": 62,
"start_time": 1616.049,
"text": " And then they continue the same behavior year after year after year. You're not really doing any good. You know, they have to sometimes get cut off. And of course then there's the fear of like, well, what if he dies? Well, he's dying anyway. I hear that dying anyway. And you need to know that. And it sounds harsh, but sometimes a person has to hit bottom. I mean, I have talked to countless family members where they now like, and I'm talking, these are people now in their,"
},
{
"end_time": 1668.2,
"index": 63,
"start_time": 1644.377,
"text": " 80s and 90s saying my 60 year old son has been, you know, I've been taking care of him my entire life or 70 year old son. I'm like, oh my God, it's time to just say no. And she's like, but I'm scared he's going to die. I'm like, yeah, but you have barely kept him alive his entire life. And he knows every single time he makes a mistake, he can always come back to you. And you know what this has done?"
},
{
"end_time": 1679.036,
"index": 64,
"start_time": 1668.2,
"text": " This is taking your life away is what it's done. She spent her entire life"
},
{
"end_time": 1712.807,
"index": 65,
"start_time": 1683.933,
"text": " Worrying about our kids. And this is very common. So I try to advise parents, like, look, tough love is sometimes the best type of love, right?"
},
{
"end_time": 1739.838,
"index": 66,
"start_time": 1713.097,
"text": " because what do you say that yeah I could I've said that many many times like you know you don't understand tough love that's the problem you know it's funny about his sister because his dad's just done with him his sister I you know she she is very big on what if he dies I'd never forgive myself and I'm like let me explain something I'm like you've got two kids an elderly father I said listen"
},
{
"end_time": 1762.807,
"index": 67,
"start_time": 1740.128,
"text": " You can only save so many people. I said, and sometimes it's a matter of just it's triage. You know, sure, if you could dedicate him, but you are you going to put him before you put your two kids or your elderly father who's been there for you your entire life? Like at this point, it's sink or swim. And this guy, you know, I mean, you're doing more damage. I said, you're doing more damage by helping him at this point."
},
{
"end_time": 1787.432,
"index": 68,
"start_time": 1763.131,
"text": " Yep. And this thing too, like he's been in and out of programs. He's been to rehab over and over. He's been in the Salvation Army multiple times. Like it's, and I even told her, I said, I said, look, I would have some sympathy if it was mental illness, but it's not. It's addiction. And the fact is, if he has been doing this for this many years,"
},
{
"end_time": 1815.469,
"index": 69,
"start_time": 1788.183,
"text": " this is manipulation oh yeah he's good he's good at it he knows exactly what he's doing because he's because he's you know there he's pulling their heartstrings and it's effective and i will tell sometimes tell the family like you are being manipulated and this is what an addict will do and they need to sometimes just you know take you know get serious accept the tough love and do what's necessary and"
},
{
"end_time": 1839.189,
"index": 70,
"start_time": 1815.913,
"text": " It's a shame that she doesn't see that and I understand why because the love is attached. That is why sometimes it's easier for me to do my job because when I'm working with a person and this is my client, this is the family member, and I can very bluntly say you're manipulating your mom, right? And mom, you need to stop, right? Because it's easy for me to do, but I'm trying to help both of them."
},
{
"end_time": 1868.507,
"index": 71,
"start_time": 1839.77,
"text": " I'm doing it because I see how it becomes extremely codependent. It's an extreme codependent relationship and that is a problem and it hasn't done any good for him. I have personal experience with my family where we basically took care of our uncle until he drank himself to death when he was 59 years old and his entire life"
},
{
"end_time": 1896.374,
"index": 72,
"start_time": 1869.343,
"text": " you know, the family continuously kind of bailed him out. And, you know, and so I love my uncle, but I just always, I didn't, I never respected him because I just, even when I was 12, 13 years old, I just saw like, come on. Right. And so he ended up dying when I was in my maybe late thirties, but it's just, was so frustrating to see"
},
{
"end_time": 1924.087,
"index": 73,
"start_time": 1897.125,
"text": " the family and some of the family, you know, we're like, nah, I'm done. But the rest of ones would just take care of him over and over and over again. Right. And it's a very common thing to do. But you know what? It never helped him. It never, never helped him because ultimately at the end he ended up drinking himself to death. And when we found him, he was just completely naked lying in a lying in a pile of trash. And it's sad, but that is the reality."
},
{
"end_time": 1954.497,
"index": 74,
"start_time": 1924.65,
"text": " And so tough love is sometimes the best thing you can do for a person. Yeah. I was, yeah. The manipulation is it's funny. It's, it's funny too, because like the, he is such a nice guy. Like I, I, you know, some of these guys are so, they're such nice guys, which is make, you know, it's even harder. It's like, yo, he, he is a nice guy. He's also a guy that's manipulative and you know, he's got major issues and he's bringing you down and he's depressed. And it's so, um, I wonder what the,"
},
{
"end_time": 1985.35,
"index": 75,
"start_time": 1955.759,
"text": " With the exception of building a massive project, housing these people, which you're saying isn't the solution. And you're saying outreach is the solution. You think 75% of the time you could probably, what, reacclimate them back into society? So not only that, but make them self-sufficient. Right. Would you say get them into"
},
{
"end_time": 2010.06,
"index": 76,
"start_time": 1986.22,
"text": " It's not like they're going to do it on their own. It's not like I'm saying pull up your own pants and just get a job, right? It's not that easy. They need a lot of support. These are very complex individuals."
},
{
"end_time": 2037.363,
"index": 77,
"start_time": 2010.316,
"text": " but by empowering them to reach their fullest potential, to give them the opportunity to succeed and working with them every single day, they can become self-sufficient. And if you do this, you no longer need those apartments and all the other things because the system has basically sent the message is that the homeless don't know how to take care of themselves. They're unable to ever recover. We need to take care of them for life. And I disagree."
},
{
"end_time": 2067.21,
"index": 78,
"start_time": 2037.824,
"text": " Because I've worked with hundreds of people that when I first met them, they were the biggest hot mess you've ever seen, right? I mean like screaming in the middle of traffic in their underwear and now they have jobs and are thriving and doing really well. They just had reached terrible low points in their life and it's our job is to find that small piece of humanity still left in them and help them grow again. And that's the difference between enabling and"
},
{
"end_time": 2097.142,
"index": 79,
"start_time": 2068.166,
"text": " We have to empower these people. What we've done instead is we've enabled the homeless to the point of dependency where now it's not that they want the food, they now need the food. They're waiting for us to feed them. They're waiting for us to take care of them. They're waiting for us to house them. And it's no different than this, the friend that says, I'm waiting for my family to take care of me over and over and over again. And he's going to be completely okay with this to the day he dies. If something doesn't change."
},
{
"end_time": 2127.995,
"index": 80,
"start_time": 2098.2,
"text": " you should show your show your friends this video after we after this after we talk oh listen i've talked to this guy until he's blue in the face and he's so good he's he's like you know i know you're right you're right it's like stop stop it don't do that to me well you gotta matt i mean i watch you you got a bs meter you see you're like matt like you know just stop not doing the whole telling me exactly what i want to hear"
},
{
"end_time": 2156.152,
"index": 81,
"start_time": 2128.66,
"text": " What I was gonna say, do you ever watch Soft White Underbelly? Yes. Mark Lay? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like, yeah. Sorry, yeah, go on, I love that stuff. No, no, I was gonna say, he's amazing and you know, have you ever seen the videos of him walking through? Because I did an episode with him. Oh, cool. Yeah, I was interviewed by him and you know,"
},
{
"end_time": 2172.312,
"index": 82,
"start_time": 2156.852,
"text": " Prior to going out to LA and meeting him, I had watched several of the episodes. Some of them I just can't watch. My wife will watch 10 of them in a row."
},
{
"end_time": 2197.602,
"index": 83,
"start_time": 2172.944,
"text": " Can't get enough and I'm like, it's I can't watch them. It's depressing It's you know, she just can't get enough of watching these things that I just can't but I had watched several and what was so funny about that is I Remember listening to these people story and every stories and every once while you could hear like sirens or someone in the background screaming or cars, you know screeching and"
},
{
"end_time": 2226.357,
"index": 84,
"start_time": 2199.531,
"text": " And then I went out to LA and he picked me up and I, we drove to Skid Row because that's where his, uh, his studio is. I had no idea. Like I thought he, I remember watching it and I remember thinking, Oh, he throws in sound effects. You know, no, no, no. Just outside the door are people fighting and screaming and sirens and everything."
},
{
"end_time": 2243.37,
"index": 85,
"start_time": 2227.227,
"text": " And if you see him walk through, I mean, he's gone through hell. Just doing the videos and being down there. He's been robbed multiple times. He's invested in many, many of the people that he's"
},
{
"end_time": 2270.725,
"index": 86,
"start_time": 2243.643,
"text": " That have come to him and pled for help. Um, he's put them in, in a hotel rooms and apartments. He's, you know, some of them have just, I'm not going to say blood and dry, but you know, they have just milked them for money until he finally just gives up on them. And he's like, yeah, it's this, um, it, it, it's definitely a situation where you're right. You can't just throw money at the problem. And you know why?"
},
{
"end_time": 2300.23,
"index": 87,
"start_time": 2271.493,
"text": " Because of money with a solution, we would have solved it by now. Right. Important to remember that. We have spent billions of dollars yet the crisis grows every year. And by the way, and that to me is always the red flag, to anyone who doesn't work in social services and is watching this, anytime you hear an elected official, we just need more money. Nope. That means they either don't understand the problem or they do understand the problem and realize we're going to continue to ask for money because we're not really there to fix it."
},
{
"end_time": 2324.855,
"index": 88,
"start_time": 2301.237,
"text": " So stop talking about the money. You know, we have a lot. You think the funds are there, they just need to be reallocated. Oh yeah, I truly believe that. Yes, maybe up front if like say miraculously the government said, this is a crisis we need to fix us today. If that's the case, we need 10 times as many detox facilities"
},
{
"end_time": 2343.08,
"index": 89,
"start_time": 2325.316,
"text": " We need 10 times as many recovery, mental health, all that stuff. Up front, yes, if somehow we all came together in this magical moment and said, we're gonna get everyone off the streets. Up front, that's gonna be very expensive the first year or two, but if you treat it like a crisis, that crisis will end."
},
{
"end_time": 2368.968,
"index": 90,
"start_time": 2343.353,
"text": " And after that two plus year period, guess what? Nobody's on the streets anymore. Everybody recovered. And then all we have to focus on now is retention and prevention. Make sure people never return to the streets again and prevent them doing so. So yes, I do think we have enough money right now. So you realize like prisons are just filled with people with mental illness."
},
{
"end_time": 2397.483,
"index": 91,
"start_time": 2369.121,
"text": " I've actually, anybody who's ever watched this, you know, my interviews has probably heard me talk about the multiple guys with mental problem. Matter of fact, in Coleman, in the facility I was at at Coleman, so they have 12 units. There's like three buildings and four units in each building, so there's 12. They have a one unit, it's got over 150 guys in it that just have mental problems."
},
{
"end_time": 2425.026,
"index": 92,
"start_time": 2398.217,
"text": " So that's one-twelfth of that population. Listen, a ton of other people do, but they're functional. You can be functional, have mental illness in prison and be functional because you're told what to do, where to go. Other inmates will help maneuver you. Hey, you got to get to your cell. Hey, you got to do this. They'll help structure your day. But some of the guys are just so"
},
{
"end_time": 2455.469,
"index": 93,
"start_time": 2425.589,
"text": " unstructured. And I remember it. I mean, there's multiple stories, but this one inmate, they call them Mr. Freeze. He had narcolepsy, extreme narcolepsy, and he had gotten himself he was addicted to like a I want to say crack cocaine. And he ended up in state prison. There was in Florida in state prison. It's very hot and there's no air conditioning. They just have fans. So he hated it. And he told"
},
{
"end_time": 2484.121,
"index": 94,
"start_time": 2456.049,
"text": " His cellies, he, he, he wanted, you know, he hated it there. They said, he said, I don't know why they don't have air conditioning and his cellies were like, Oh, you want to go to federal prison. They have air conditioning. You should get yourself moved to federal. I mean, just messing with him. You have to commit a federal crime. He said, and then they'll move you to a federal prison, which isn't necessarily the case. And so he writes a letter to president Bush threatening to kill him."
},
{
"end_time": 2509.974,
"index": 95,
"start_time": 2484.872,
"text": " You know, kill him, his whole family. I remember he said he was going to rape the dog. And I remember thinking that that was a nice touch. You know, just bizarre. The guy was just a complete mental case. I mean, there was no way you could have a conversation and not know there's a serious problem. Well, the Secret Service, they come and they question him. They indict him. He's brought to federal court."
},
{
"end_time": 2530.35,
"index": 96,
"start_time": 2510.452,
"text": " He's given, I think, I want to say seven years or something for writing a letter about killing the president that he couldn't possibly, even if it was really his intent, and they knew what his intent was. I think the judge had even said, I understand."
},
{
"end_time": 2554.394,
"index": 97,
"start_time": 2531.067,
"text": " what's happening here and what you were going for but it is illegal blah blah blah even if he had one head was able even if that was his intent this guy couldn't get himself to washington he couldn't get himself a gun he couldn't have pulled off anything that he said in that in that letter they still gave him six or seven years and he ended up in federal prison after he did his state sentence and"
},
{
"end_time": 2581.288,
"index": 98,
"start_time": 2554.787,
"text": " he was in this unit and you know like that like it seems like to me prisons are are the the the mental wards that no longer really exists for these people like the system just wants to throw them away and you know i mean granted it's not as bad as you know nazi germany where they're just executing them but instead you're just locking them up forever like they're not helping these guys"
},
{
"end_time": 2611.476,
"index": 99,
"start_time": 2581.988,
"text": " Although, except it's very profitable to do so. You know, the homeless industrial complex benefits from a homeless person. The prison industrial complex benefits from people in prison. Right. Right. And I hate to say that, but it's like it's true. And for me, because I get threatened all the time. Right. It's like, I mean, I'm sorry, Mr. President, give me a break. Six, seven years. That's insane. A mentally ill person writing a stupid ass letter. I mean, that just bothers me."
},
{
"end_time": 2639.241,
"index": 100,
"start_time": 2611.954,
"text": " It's like we all know it was a mental health thing. That person should be in treatment, not in prison. It's not like he's going to get any better. I mean, again, that doesn't make any sense. But where do you send them? Well, that's the problem. So for example, for him, if he's severely mentally ill and is ill, a lot of these state hospitals shut down. And so where do you think they went? They went to the streets."
},
{
"end_time": 2664.565,
"index": 101,
"start_time": 2639.548,
"text": " Right. So I live in Oregon. Oregon is ranked last place in America, last when it comes to mental health treatment. We are last. So that makes it very challenging for me because we have a serious amount of mentally ill people on our streets. But you ask a good question is divert the funds towards treatment and mental health services."
},
{
"end_time": 2695.708,
"index": 102,
"start_time": 2666.288,
"text": " Yeah, I was going to say like here, like probably the most you're going to get here for, I don't think there's any place that they really can lock them down and give them treatment for a certain period of time. Mostly you just get locked up for like your Baker act. I don't know if what they call it in Oregon, but it's either they'll Marchmen act them or Baker act them. Baker acting is like it's drug, no,"
},
{
"end_time": 2724.172,
"index": 103,
"start_time": 2696.237,
"text": " No, that's mental illness. Marchman acted, I think is drug addiction. If you're if they're afraid you'll harm yourself as a result of drugs. I think I'm or I might have them confused anyway. Yeah, you get locked up for three days and they release you. Even though they know you've got an issue until eventually you commit a crime that they can lock you up, throw you in prison, then you're in prison. Supposedly you're going to get you're going to get counseling in prison. That's not going to happen. Well, I shouldn't say you might get some counseling, you know, but"
},
{
"end_time": 2747.722,
"index": 104,
"start_time": 2724.753,
"text": " The doctors are, listen, nobody ends up at the top of their field and ends up working for a prison. The doctors that are there are just trying to collect their check and go home. They're not really trying to do anything. Although they do have a drug program,"
},
{
"end_time": 2776.596,
"index": 105,
"start_time": 2747.978,
"text": " in federal prison. They have them in state prisons, too, and most of them are based kind of on the federal system. They have one in federal prison. It's called the ARDAP. And it really has very little to do with drugs at all. It's really about behavior modification as far as criminal thinking is concerned. And it's actually a really good program. And pretty much, I'd say, out of the five people that run the one in Coleman,"
},
{
"end_time": 2802.671,
"index": 106,
"start_time": 2778.063,
"text": " I would say four of them were really seriously dedicated. There was one guy, he just wanted to get his check and go home. He was like, fill out the paperwork, I'll grade the books, let's have a talk. Okay, everything's fine. Let's move on. He just wanted to go home. But the other doctors, they call them drug treatment specialists, even though you never really talked about drugs."
},
{
"end_time": 2830.026,
"index": 107,
"start_time": 2803.183,
"text": " they genuinely wanted to be there. So that was actually a good program. I just don't know why. Now I get what you're saying about, you know, the prison, prisons, you know, profiting. It just seems to me it costs so much money to incarcerate someone. And it really in, in, in comparison, it costs so little money to"
},
{
"end_time": 2855.674,
"index": 108,
"start_time": 2830.742,
"text": " To treat someone for drug addiction and mental illness where that's something that's correctable. I mean, let's face it is Incarceration you get out You're good for a couple of years maybe and you go right back to prison. I guess just a complete cycle over and over and over again Where if you kept these guys on? If you did give them someone that could keep tabs on them and"
},
{
"end_time": 2882.193,
"index": 109,
"start_time": 2856.459,
"text": " You know, just like they do in federal prison and most state prisons, you'll do a sentence of five or 10 years and then you have several years of supervised release, you know, or probation, where you have a probation officer and they kind of keep an eye on you and where are you working and what are you doing and who are you living with and who are you hanging out with? And so after several years of that, you become so acclimated to behaving correctly, you have a better chance"
},
{
"end_time": 2912.551,
"index": 110,
"start_time": 2883.012,
"text": " You know, maybe not a great chance, but a better chance of acclimating back into society as a decent citizen. So, yeah, I don't know. Well, our society, you know, we're very big on the band-aid solutions. We wait for it to happen rather than getting to like, say, the root causes or, you know, it's the band-aid. Yeah, you're reactive. So what it is is we're reactive, not proactive exactly. And we need to be more proactive. And there's certainly"
},
{
"end_time": 2943.131,
"index": 111,
"start_time": 2913.353,
"text": " Some people out there really trying. I had a good friend who served on and off 15 years in prison, but his last prison stand, he finally met this person who really changed his life and he had a history of addiction and stuff and basically completely changed the way his outlook and I'm 100% confident he'll never return to prison because this person changed him, but he went in and out, in and out, in and out ever since I was 18 years old, right?"
},
{
"end_time": 2973.456,
"index": 112,
"start_time": 2944.019,
"text": " And I spent thousands of dollars talking to this guy on the phone because prisons love to charge money for those damn phones. I couldn't even believe what I was being charged. I'm like, can you just charge me a quarter? It was like $30 a call or something. And this was, I was poor. So I spent thousands talking to this guy over a decade. Anyway, so he met the, he read the person he's thriving now. So there are some systems that work and you gotta, when a, when a program works, duplicate it."
},
{
"end_time": 3001.459,
"index": 113,
"start_time": 2973.558,
"text": " Talk about it and duplicate it because that's how we're going to fix the system. What is going to happen? Is Oregon as bad as California for homeless? It's very close. I've done a lot of outreach in San Francisco, but I would still say possibly California is still worse."
},
{
"end_time": 3030.145,
"index": 114,
"start_time": 3002.381,
"text": " Because I was recently in San Diego, and it's something we're not really talking about much, but I was there with my friend and colleague Kate Monroe, and I was talking about how everything's a crisis, crisis, crisis. I say that a lot, you know? And she paused for a moment. She says, you know what, Kevin? This is not a crisis. This is malicious neglect."
},
{
"end_time": 3055.708,
"index": 115,
"start_time": 3031.766,
"text": " And I'm like, Oh my God, she's so right because we had given the government many opportunities to fix this. And so I walked around with her and I realized she's absolutely right. This is now malicious neglect because we gave these people decades to solve this and it's still bad. So I was blown away when she said that it's very, you know, she now she's been doing a lot of media and stuff and she's"
},
{
"end_time": 3083.148,
"index": 116,
"start_time": 3056.015,
"text": " a local leader there, Kate Monroe. I'm very impressed with her. So, but that really made me think, realize that we need to start kind of going on the attack and talking about, you know, who has failed this, you know, how have we failed these people because we can't keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. So yeah, California is quite bad. Portland, Oregon,"
},
{
"end_time": 3105.145,
"index": 117,
"start_time": 3083.507,
"text": " What's gonna happen when I mean there's so many people leaving California there's so many businesses that are leaving they've got a deficit like what's gonna happen when they"
},
{
"end_time": 3134.172,
"index": 118,
"start_time": 3106.015,
"text": " They keep pushing these progressive programs that aren't helping and now their tax base is leaving. Like it's affecting the people that live there. They don't want to live there anymore. Then people need to vote differently, don't they? Yeah. And I'm not, I'm not, I'm not political, but I'm saying vote the candidate, not the party vote, the candidate that has great ideas to solve this crisis and to save their community and whatever"
},
{
"end_time": 3164.582,
"index": 119,
"start_time": 3135.299,
"text": " So, what about the documentary?"
},
{
"end_time": 3190.555,
"index": 120,
"start_time": 3166.203,
"text": " Well, I worked on this really great, just 18-minute piece on Portland, Oregon, homelessness and addiction with Tyler Olivera, who does a lot of great YouTube videos. We only did this a couple of weeks ago and it's gotten a lot of attention. I think it's at just under 6 million views in four days now."
},
{
"end_time": 3220.742,
"index": 121,
"start_time": 3191.732,
"text": " I haven't seen this because you didn't send this to me. Yeah, I forgot what I sent you, but what I'll do is right after we talk, I'll text it to you and, you know, if you want, post the link and what we're doing here. Yeah, exactly. We'll post the link in the description. But it's wild. And what's crazy is we did this over one day because you know what? Every day is documentary. You go out to these camps and no matter what, you're going to see something crazy."
},
{
"end_time": 3245.213,
"index": 122,
"start_time": 3221.374,
"text": " and you know we talked to a lot of people on the streets and addiction and really just you know like so for example in the first 10 minutes of us even out there a guy pulls a knife on us and chases us that we filmed and it's like you can't really make up to make this stuff up it's like what the heck now"
},
{
"end_time": 3272.551,
"index": 123,
"start_time": 3246.049,
"text": " Because I had, you know, the small camera crew with me and they're not really used to be in that kind of situation, I was like, well, let's just walk away. But the guy kept pursuing us and I got a little frustrated. So I just basically stopped and walked up to him and stood my ground and just said, stop. He's like, I've been here longer than you. You don't get to do this. And he walked away. But I'm like, I was frustrated because I'm like, look, that's not going to solve anything."
},
{
"end_time": 3302.961,
"index": 124,
"start_time": 3273.029,
"text": " Right. And by the way, I had done outreach in that encampment, uh, hundreds of times in a year and a half. And so everyone knew me and this was a new guy who sort of just took over who clearly was a little more violent. And I was not happy with that. I'm like, you don't, how dare you pull a knife on anybody. That is not okay. It's just like, come on. So I was, I was pretty frustrated, but you know, we eventually left and did our, did the rest of the day, but it's a pretty cool video."
},
{
"end_time": 3333.302,
"index": 125,
"start_time": 3305.196,
"text": " Is there a lot of violence or murders among the homeless? Or just violence? I mean, murders happen, but there's a lot of violence at Street Justice. Right. You know, it's hard to prove a murder because, for example, fentanyl. Back in the day, when I worked at homeless shelters, if a homeless person wanted to off another homeless person,"
},
{
"end_time": 3361.596,
"index": 126,
"start_time": 3333.763,
"text": " They would inject them with heroin and then they would die of an OD, right? Uh, now these days it's fentanyl because fentanyl is 10 times easier because I can even share with you, I had a client just a couple months ago who was completely sober and had zero interest in drug use. Someone put fentanyl powder in his drink and he died 20 minutes later and"
},
{
"end_time": 3390.52,
"index": 127,
"start_time": 3362.176,
"text": " Do the police even look into it? They don't because think about it, a homeless junkie, I mean, it's just like, of course it's a, what they call it is not even a suicide, it's accidental overdose. Now I come across people overdosing every single day. So I carry with me Narcan, which is the opioid blocker because fentanyl has basically replaced all other drugs, but murders"
},
{
"end_time": 3415.316,
"index": 128,
"start_time": 3391.067,
"text": " I wouldn't say are common, but are not also uncommon. They're going to happen. You know, I mean, but you know, my question is like when you find a person who's overdosed and died, we don't know how it, how they ended up in that situation. Cause the fact is on the streets, there's a lot of infighting, there's a lot of drama and there's almost no law and order. So these things kind of happen sometimes."
},
{
"end_time": 3444.855,
"index": 129,
"start_time": 3416.254,
"text": " I've personally been taken to grave sites in the middle of the woods in Portland, Oregon, where they showed me where the bodies are buried. Usually it's in the deep, deep woods, but it's not like they were always killed. Some died of natural causes and they decided to bury them in the woods because that's where they live. It's just hard to tell, but if we were ever to do some kind of infrared thing"
},
{
"end_time": 3470.316,
"index": 130,
"start_time": 3445.657,
"text": " Okay."
},
{
"end_time": 3497.483,
"index": 131,
"start_time": 3472.244,
"text": " Do you want like is there any anything that people that watch this like you want them to? Go to any links or anything like that that we sure in the description. Well, I appreciate that Matt I do have a website truth on the streets org okay, and also that's you know, I I have a good I I do a lot of tweeting and"
},
{
"end_time": 3527.346,
"index": 132,
"start_time": 3497.841,
"text": " where I interview the homeless and talk about the crisis. And I've been doing this for a couple of years. And that's just my name, Kevin Dahlgren. And you can find me pretty easily on there. And of course, I write for Substack, which is an opportunity where I can write articles and share my 28 years working the system and kind of what I thought works and doesn't work. But I can send you all the links and stuff, Matt. And thank you for asking. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you, you know, talking with me."
},
{
"end_time": 3555.964,
"index": 133,
"start_time": 3528.114,
"text": " This is great. I follow you, I listen to you, so this is a pleasure for me. That's funny. I appreciate that. I was like, whoa. I had to actually do a double S. I was like, is there another Matthew Cox? I couldn't believe it was you. And I had to actually Google it thinking, well, I don't want to get excited because I wasn't sure. And I'm like, because I love watching podcasts, so I thought that was really cool, brother. Well, yeah, I appreciate that. Tyler, you"
},
{
"end_time": 3585.742,
"index": 134,
"start_time": 3556.664,
"text": " Well, I've been harmed multiple times. I've been"
},
{
"end_time": 3611.63,
"index": 135,
"start_time": 3586.323,
"text": " I still have the bruising of my brain, brain bruising. I was in San Diego a few weeks ago and got beaten down really hard and I filmed the entire thing and it was brutal. Then I got kicked in the head. I've been stabbed twice. I've been attacked multiple times. I'm just kind of resilient."
},
{
"end_time": 3633.046,
"index": 136,
"start_time": 3612.09,
"text": " but you know these things happen now of course the guy who attacked me i he was mad because i was filming him but i was only doing it because he was beating up another guy and i went over there in a very respectful way said please stop just stop right because nobody else was doing anything and this guy was weaker than him and he was just this guy ended up getting hospitalized for a week right"
},
{
"end_time": 3659.104,
"index": 137,
"start_time": 3633.968,
"text": " So I just said please stop and I'm filming it and the victim was like oh thank you and kind of stumbled away and then this guy who was all so really pumped walked right up to me and just said boom and then I stood back up punched me a second time I stood back up he punched me a third time knocked me down and then got and kicked me. Now I don't live in San Diego I didn't know everybody there so I also know it wasn't wise"
},
{
"end_time": 3685.503,
"index": 138,
"start_time": 3659.394,
"text": " at that moment to fight back because I don't know if he had something else on him or who his friends were because there was good 30 people there. So sometimes you have to sometimes just know when not to duck, you know, and when to take a punch. And so it wasn't like it was the way I painted is, uh, I got off lucky because guess what? I got to go home. I got off lucky because I was just punched a few times and I'm recovering."
},
{
"end_time": 3715.998,
"index": 139,
"start_time": 3686.271,
"text": " But what about the people out there in the streets every day getting raped, getting murdered, getting beat up daily, every single day? That's what we got to be talking about. So I'm not, I'm definitely not the victim. I definitely got hit and getting hit is no fun. It's painful, but I got to go home. They don't because the system isn't really set up to really help them in any real way. So that's all I want to say about that. Okay."
},
{
"end_time": 3736.084,
"index": 140,
"start_time": 3717.329,
"text": " I'll send you the link here in a minute, okay?"
},
{
"end_time": 3764.104,
"index": 141,
"start_time": 3736.578,
"text": " Absolutely. Hey, thank you guys for watching the video Do me a favor if you liked the video subscribe to the channel hit the bell so you get notified Leave a comment and I'm going to leave all of Kevin's links in the description including the link for the 18 minute documentary his social media links and So yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. See ya"
},
{
"end_time": 3793.217,
"index": 142,
"start_time": 3765.299,
"text": " It started with a scream inside a quiet Maryland home, a mother trying to protect the family dog and her son in the grip of a violent hallucinogenic rage. By the time it was over, she was dead, and he claimed LSD made him do it. His name, David Minor IV, and we talked to him. Listen to Invisible Choir every other week as we uncover the most haunting true crimes you've never heard of, available wherever you get your podcasts."
}
]
}No transcript available.