Are the streets of Manteca safe?

It’s a legitimate question.

And a lot of it has to do with one’s perspective, life story, and screen time on social media.

The question was asked of a community focus group that was part of an outside effort to evaluate the effectiveness of the Manteca Police Department and the direction it needs to go to address community needs and concerns when it comes to public safety.

This might sound a bit outlandish, but arguably the group of people who likely are the least safe on city streets are the 238 homeless among the city’s 95,000 residents.

They account for a disproportionate share of pedestrian traffic fatalities.

The same likely applies to assaults and other crimes.

The perpetuators are almost always other homeless.

Eight years ago heading home at 2 a.m. on a dark midsummer night, I turned left off of Powers Avenue onto Trinity Avenue.

I immediately had to swerve to avoid a large dark object in the middle of the travel lane.

I stopped, put on my emergency flashers, and went to see if I could move the item out of the street.

The “item” ended up being a woman dressed in dark clothes and cloaked in a dark blanket,

She was talking incoherently. Whether she was drunk, high, or out or her mind, I had no idea.

I called 9-1-1.

Police, fire and Manteca District Ambulance responded.

One of the firefighters mentioned they had responded to other calls involving the homeless woman.

A couple of years later just prior to midnight a few nights before Christmas, there was a persistent rapping on the front glass door of the Bulletin’s former office in the 500 block of  East Yosemite Avenue

It was a younger homeless individual who I had been told on occasions by other homeless “wasn’t all here.”

He was having a hard time breathing. He said he had been jumped by other homeless who stole his backpack that included his inhaler.

Another call to 9-1-1.

Emergency personnel arrived and I went back to getting the next day’s newspaper edition out.

A third nighttime homeless “encounter” — actually more like multiple times passing in the night — underscores what Manteca Police are up against.

A guy who looked like he was a bit out of it, walked on the narrow sidewalk in front of the Bulletin pounding the window shouting repeatedly  “F - - - you.”

He continued to walk westward shouting the “F” word again and again.

A paginator I was working with joked that  it was probably someone who didn’t like my columns.

It continued to happen almost nightly, and always after 11 p.m.

And to be clear, it is not against the law for someone to walk around shouting at night, or cursing as they make their way down Yosemite Avenue.

As far as the window pounding, he never did break anything.

You might wonder, though, whether he had mental issues that presented a clear danger to himself or others.

Personally, I do not per se fear walking the streets at 2 a.m.

I’ve done it a couple of times when my car was in for overnight repairs at Manteca Ford.

It was perhaps a mile, if that, to my house.

Several fellow employees were a bit unnerved when they found out that I did so.

That’s not to say I wasn’t very aware of every step I took.

Sidewalk hazards are always an issue.

But so is the “other Manteca” that roams the streets when the only things open are convenience stores and Raising Cane’s.

They are dressed usually in dark clothes.

If they are on bicycles, lights are a rarity.

More often than not, they will walk down the middle of  travel lanes on Yosemite Avenue or dart out from behind parked cars often in dark stretches of the street from Walnut Avenue to the edge of downtown.

Drive in the wee hours of the morning often enough, and you can appreciate the concerns of the woman at the police community focus group who expressed fear that she could end up hitting one of the dark figures that step, or bicycle, into your path.

Study after study concludes the driving force of homeless crime as well as among the primary reasons many are homeless is addiction and mental health.

Addiction almost always leads to mental health issues.

Given the folks up in Sacramento control the rules of forced  engagement with the mental health system that shedded mental hospitals and made involuntary holds difficult at best to accomplish, the problem belongs to the governor and California Legislature.

It’s more than lame to have a super majority party keep blaming it in on a decision by Gov. Ronald Reagan — with the concurrence at the time of both political parties — to basically shutter state mental hospitals with mandatory hold in favor of non-institutional treatment.

 Regardless of your politics, elected leaders who blame a serious societal situation on something that happened 50 years ago but don’t have the moxie to fix it should either hold their tongue or not run for office.

As long as dealing with the mentally ill is in the control and purview of state lawmakers and not elected local leaders, those that need to be held accountable for the situation are in Sacramento.

Sacramento is the place where fairy tales are weaved.

Build everyone a house and it will solve the homeless problem.

But for the majority of the homeless — and arguably almost all who are considered hardcore homeless — a roof of some sort over their head is not going to solve the problem.

Unless, of course, you’re fine with building apartment units and houses that are destined to become instant meth, drug, or booze dens.

That means accepting the accompanying property damage and their inability to even partially support themselves along with feeding their addiction.

The real truth — contrary to the posturing with the political winds that Gov. Gavin Newsom has mastered — is the power to do something long-lasting and effective is way above the pay grade of Manteca Police and local elected leaders.

The real power rests in the hands of governors and legislators.

And these days, the only home-related issue Newsom is interested in addressing is who will be residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. at noon on Jan. 20, 2027.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com