News
City responded to 83 rough sleeping camps around Red Deer this summer… Here’s what to do if you see one.
From the City of Red Deer
Rough sleeping encampment update
With an increasing number of rough sleeper camps being reported over the last month, the City of Red Deer is focusing heavily on cleanup efforts across the city. However, citizens are encouraged to continue reporting rough sleeper camps to the City of Red Deer.
Over the summer, a collaborative cleanup and outreach team worked to respond to 83 camps, which resulted in connecting with 153 individuals about housing and 70 referrals to non-housing related social services. This collaborative approach was part of a pilot project for an enhanced collaborative response. The pilot ran from June to August 2018.
“Community safety for all citizens is what matters most when it comes to ensuring our parks, trails and community spaces are safe, clean and accessible for all,” said City Manager Craig Curtis. “It is the result of joint efforts on the part of citizens, community partners and local agencies alike that we were able to connect with and have 153 individual conversations as part of the collaborative camp clean-up process.”
All camps need to be reported to the non-emergency RCMP/Bylaw complaint line at 403-343-5575. When reporting a rough sleeper camp, you may be asked for personal information such as your name and phone number so Community Peace Officers (CPOs) can follow up on your complaint and ensure they know where the camp is located.
When a camp is reported, CPOs go to the reported site and, when their investigation is complete, they issue a 24 hour eviction notice. The CPOs then work with City of Red Deer staff to clean up the area within 14 days, whenever possible.
The process to respond to rough sleeper camps is as follows:
- Citizens contact the RCMP/ Bylaw complaint line to report the camp.
- A Municipal Enforcement Officer is dispatched to the reported camp site, which is often vacant.
- Once this work is complete, the issuing officer posts a 24-hour eviction notice, which contains social support services contact information.
- Municipal Enforcement then communicates with City of Red Deer staff, who are scheduled to complete weekly camp cleanups.
This approach and process is aimed at preventing the displacement and reoccupation of rough sleepers within the park system by attempting to house people.
“We will continue to balance the needs of all citizens as City staff and community partners respond to calls for rough sleeper camp clean-up including, but not limited to, needle debris and the need for housing and treatmentsupports,” said Mayor Tara Veer. “We strongly encourage citizens to report through the formal complaint line toensure a timely response.”
The collaborative approach to address rough sleeper camps in Red Deer’s parks and other green spaces resultedin the removal of 16 tonnes of debris and 1,005 needles between June 1 and August 30, 2018. City staff spent approximately 1,343 hours cleaning up camps, with Turning Point and the Safe Harbour society providing outreach support to individuals living at 35 of the 83 camps cleaned up over the summer months.
For more information about rough sleeper camps, visit www.reddeer.ca.
Business
Facebook / Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg on the Joe Rogan Experience
Earlier this week Mark Zuckerberg rocked the world of information with the news that Facebook, Instagram, and his other Meta properties would no longer use third party fact checking groups to censor information. As the week wraps up, Zuckerberg sits down for an extended conversation with Joe Rogan. For anyone interested in the world of information, this is a must see / listen.
From the Joe Rogan Experience
Mark Zuckerberg is the chief executive of Meta Platforms Inc., the company behind Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp, Meta Quest, Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, Orion augmented reality glasses, and other digital platforms, devices, and services.
Daily Caller
‘Embarrassingly Wrong’: Corporate Media’s Talking Heads Confess Their Biggest Blunders Of 2024
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Owen Klinsky
From MSNBC host Rachel Maddow to businessman and television personality Mark Cuban, a slew of media leaders divulged what they got wrong this past year in a Semafor article published Monday.
Media missteps included NBC News President Rebecca Blumenstein underestimating the impact of inflation on politics, Fox News anchor Dana Perino incorrectly predicting Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce would get engaged and CNBC financial journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin not putting “DOGE and the pairing of Elon [Musk] and Vivek [Ramaswamy]” on his 2024 Bingo card, according to the piece. Despite the variety of answers, one topic — Joe Biden’s lack of mental acuity — seemed to sit at the top of the list for many respondents.
“Like many others, I was completely, utterly, totally, embarrassingly wrong about [President Joe] Biden’s lack of mental competence,” progressive British-American broadcaster Mehdi Hasan told Semafor.
Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential election in July following a disastrous June debate performance in which he appeared to lose his train of thought several times and stated he “beat Medicare.” Prior to the decision to exit the race, the White House made various efforts to mask the effects of his age, with the president wearing sneakers rather than dress shoes and taking shorter steps up Air Force One.
The White House actively denied claims Biden’s mental health was declining, with White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre characterizing a video of the President wandering away from world leaders at the G7 Summit as a “cheap fake” and claiming it was orchestrated by Republicans. Much of the corporate media supported the White House’s effort, with panelists on MSNBC’s Morning Joe describing a June article from The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that detailed the president’s declining mental health as “outrageous,” and CNN’s Bakari Sellers suggesting in July, well after the debate, that there was no reason to believe Biden could not serve for another four years.
Other examples of the media downplaying concerns over Biden’s mental acuity include The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg rushing to the president’s defense after co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin said Biden could have a “senior moment” on stage prior to the debate and MSNBC analyst Mike Barnicle describing members of the Democratic Party as cruel in July for trying to oust the president from the 2024 race.
More recently, former CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza apologized in a YouTube video posted in December for waiting too long to investigate concerns that Biden’s mental acuity was deteriorating, admitting that as a journalist he should have “pushed harder earlier for more information about Joe Biden’s mental and physical well-being.”
American talk show host Brian Lehrer made a similar apology in his response to Semafor: “Many callers to my show said Joe Biden was in no shape to run for re-election. I mostly dismissed it as ageism. Then I watched the debate.”
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