Now police chief Carmen Best is reciting a litany of the worst things that have ever happened in encampments (all the way back to 2017), none of which has direct bearing on the legislation at hand, since no one is proposing the legalization of things like sex trafficking.

"Crack! Heroin! Meth! Pills! Firearms! Knives! A sword!" It feels like listening to a stranger-danger TV broadcast from the 80s. Crime happens in homes, too. (Mostly, even!) No one is arguing that crime is good, they are arguing against sweeping everyone because of crime by some.

It also reminds me of when I covered the death penalty in Texas, when the "argument" for the death penalty was usually a lurid recitation of the crime. Chief Best is just describing the most lurid conditions that have ever been found in camps.

I can't tell you how much this tactic angers me in all contexts. It is simply dishonest to say "X kind of people committed crimes" and extrapolate to "X type of people should be deprived of their civil liberties."

A direct corollary is that people should not be allowed to live in homes because that is where most murders occur. Encampments are an inhumane symptom of a lack of housing, but the suggestion that they produce criminality or are the product of inherent criminality is offensive.

Let's have a rational conversation about how to get people into housing and out of inhumane encampments. That conversation cannot include someone shouting "crack cocaine!" like they're talking to John Stossel on 20/20 in 1989.

When your starting point is telling a story about a man sitting in his own feces and eating a sandwich with maggots in it, you are not trying to have a rational conversation, you are trying to stir revulsion that will lead to an emotion-based policy.

I've been around for a long time and listened to a lot of these litanies in many different contexts. It is incredibly important that we not give in to the natural but irrational impulse to base policy on emotions rather than the evidence of what actually works.

In this case, the evidence is that crime and homelessness require different approaches, and that sweeping entire encampments because of criminal activity by a few is as rational as tearing down entire neighborhoods because of one drug house.

And I guess it has to be said explicitly, removing 100 people from a spot because 5 people are doing crime does not actually make the crime go away. And, again, drug, firearms, and sex trafficking primarily happen inside buildings and homes, not tents.