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comment by scarp
scarp  ·  4629 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Woman demanding care at St. Mary's hospital is arrested for trespassing, dies in jail
Almost certainly, yes. The final sentence sums up the whole article in a nutshell: "My sister is not here today because people passed judgement."

People looked at her and saw a crazy homeless junkie with poor insurance. It's sad that she was never able to get the mental and physical help she needed. Still, it's hard for me to feel too angry at the doctors and officers involved. They gave her the standard treatment and unfortunately didn't find anything pressing, so they assumed the worse. Seeing thousands of similar cases in their line of work wore their compassion down to apathy and indifference which seem even more monstrous in retrospect. Fuck, this whole story has me conflicted. I don't know what to feel or who to blame. It's all so frustrating.





thenewgreen  ·  4629 days ago  ·  link  ·  
It is frustrating. The realty could very well be that if a well educated white woman refused to leave a waiting room after medical professionals had exhausted the efforts they deemed necessary to diagnose or treat her ailments, she too might be arrested? -Doubtful. But maybe the real problem is that the white educated woman would have avenues to private care and therefore would never have to resort to such measures.

By the way, I'm just playing devils advocate here. I assume much judgment was passed but that judgement came at the expense of years of repetitive behavior on the part of homeless junkies that likely fit her bill.