How's this as a consequence of radical leftist policies that coddle society's troublemakers?

As of Sunday, the San Diego Union-Tribune ran a Page One above-the-fold story by Paul Sisson headlined "Hospitals in County Look for Ways to Cut Attacks on Workers," which is an important story indeed because it points to the consequences to innocent hospital workers of constantly coddling bums, illegals, drug addicts and criminals, all of whom were named as perpetrators in the piece.

For some strange reason, the story not there on the San Diego Union-Tribune's website and I looked and looked. I don't think it's a time delay, as there are other significant Page One stories up on the site -- one about the sleazy world of "Fat Leonard" who is linked to corruption in the Navy, and another on Comic-Con, for example.

But this story is somehow not up there. Maybe it's an innocent overlooking. Maybe it's a mistake. Maybe it's a legal issue. Maybe I am bad at 'search.' Maybe there was something wrong with the story and it was pulled. But it appears well reported in the paper edition, and the correspondent is a veteran health care reporter so I am skeptical it was that. What I am less skeptical about is that in light of its sensitive content to the city's ruling leftists, is that they just don't want this important story getting out there.

Wonder why.

Sisson starts with doozy figures as to what is going on. I'll transcribe:

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of intentional injuries against health care workers and technicians has increased from 6.7 to 12.9 per 10,000 workers from 2011 to 2020. A survey of health care workers nationwide conducted in early 2023 found that 40 percent reported that they were directly involved in workplace violence in the previous two years.

That's right about when Joe Biden opened the U.S. border, the homeless-industrial complex ballooned into a surge of homelessness, and Soros district attorneys started running blue cities into the ground by effectively refusing to enforce laws against criminals.

Sisson reports that people are pretty mad about this and have begun to form a health care task force to find some way to make it stop. It must be horrendous for the health care workers, especially if they are working at hospitals in areas with large concentrations of vagrants, based on open air drug dealing along with large numbers of federally-fattened NGOs there to "serve" these clients otherwise. You can bet the figures for them are higher.

In addition, the Border Patrol has been bringing in its caught criminals and illegal border crossers in for treatment and some of them have been reportedly violent and fought doctors, too, the report said.

Places around the Hillcrest area were named by the writer as sites of attacks. Hillcrest, recall, shut down one of the nation's oldest Starbucks stores because they couldn't keep the bums away. Hillcrest and adjacent North Park are where the vagrants are so aggressive and entitled they've been caught eating food off diners' plates in sidewalk cafes, prompting local businesses to install plastic sheetings.

But the task force solutions don't look as though they'll be up to solving the problem.

Start with this picture described by Sisson:

The meeting's minutes detail cases where patients have choked, punched and pulled their caregivers to the ground by their coast, even doing hand-to-hand combat with their officers in the middle of busy emergency rooms.

One emergency room specialist at the meeting said that her facility was handling between 34 and 64 cases of "code green," where a cop has to be called into the hospital -- per month, or one to two police call incidents a day, and have since installed a "Taser protocol" in its emergency departments. They've since had to install metal detectors.

Some, after all, have been caught coming in armed with guns and knives, another testified. 

What is this task force talking about?

Increasing communication, said one hospital administrator at one of the hellish hospitals.

Better communication, he said, is especially necessary in common situations such as bringing patients picked up on "5250" holds when incidents in the community cause officers to suspect someone may be a danger to themselves or others or gravely disabled and unable to take care of themselves. 

He said he hoped to have a number to call when violent types threaten hospital staff. 

San Diego's reasonably able anti-Soros district attorney, Summer Stephan, says that another problem is that while she's happy to prosecute, the hospitals often don't report these attacks, often due to (leftist) medical personnel (the dancing COVID nurse types) being anti-police.

Her solution sounds pretty wretched, though: "In my mind, it's important that these incidents are investigated and prosecuted if appropriate because, you know, then you send a clear message that the hospital workforce is something we value and are going to take care of," Stephan said. "But within the justice system, there are different, very humane ways to deal with people with, for example, mental health (issues), through behavioral health court, collaborative courts, mental health diversion."

What kind of nonsense is that? They already have that coddling garbage going on with stone cold criminals and they have the situation they have.

The first emergency room person cited said that having the cops come around on rounds and recommend security measures was their other solution.

I've got a better solution for them: Prison hospitals, where people who commit crimes can get their treatment with appropriate bite masks, handcuffs and leg cuffs. Hospitals should not be treating drug addicts or bums or cartel members rolling over the border illegally and exposing their workers or their patients to this thuggery and violence. The hospitals are there for people to get treated, not for bums to gather around and camp out and city funds to flow to pay for it. If they become as dangerous as the streets of San Francisco, people won't come to get treated, and medical workers will go remote or quit and move to a red state.

These namby-pamby solutions are not going to cut it until they admit there's a problem with bum proliferation, drug proliferation and illegals proliferation and take on those policies at their root causes. 

In the meantime, hospitals are becoming battlefields and someone at the Union-Tribune seems to not want this news to get out. The numbers Sisson reported look very big indeed and mandate priority attention. And patients should be warned before they come about the bum risk that isn't being resolved. Let's not count on any solutions soon, based on the tired committee recommendations and what looks like the actual suppression of the news. Just that it seems like a big story out there that's ought to be out.

Image: Screen shot from CBS8 YouTube video.