The last time we visited Los Angeles in our posts, a local TV investigative team reported that the city wastes tens of millions of dollars per year in clean-up efforts because LA’s homeless encampments quickly repopulate once cleaning ends.
The rat population has exploded as a result of garbage accumulation, and a Los Angeles police officer has now shown symptoms of the flea-borne disease typhus spread by rats.
The I-Team has been exposing uncollected filth, an exploding rat population and fears of a new typhus outbreak in downtown Los Angeles, with an LAPD officer working downtown possibly the latest victim of the disease.A spokesman for the LAPD confirmed to the I-Team that an officer stationed at Central Division has typhus-like symptoms but has not yet been diagnosed with the disease. Typhus can be spread by infected fleas that live on rats that have been linked to growing homeless encampments.The disease can cause fever, chills, vomiting and confusion.
Typhoid fever is another disease associated with garbage and sewage, which doctors can confuse with typhus. One LAPD officer is now recovering from that disease.
The LAPD announced late Wednesday that an employee who fell ill at the downtown LAPD station had contracted the strain of bacteria that causes typhoid fever and was being treated for the condition. The LAPD confirmed that a second employee had a lower intestinal infection, but a specific diagnosis has not been determined.It’s unclear where the officers contracted typhoid, though officials said they were not patrol officers. The LAPD appeared to link the case to officers’ work conditions, saying in a statement that “our police officers often patrol in adverse environments and can be exposed to various dangerous elements.”
Typhoid fever is a life-threatening illness caused by the bacterium Salmonella Typhi. It affects about 22 million people worldwide each year, with 350 cases reported in this country annually, usually as a result of their travels to poverty-stricken areas abroad. One can contract Typhoid fever from eating food or drinking beverages that connected with infected people, sewage, or bacteria-filled water.
The NBC4 Los Angeles video of the area shows why the police department suspects that the officer’s work environment exposed them to the diseases.
The Los Angeles Police Department has demanded a clean up of the area around the impacted station.
The division polices downtown Los Angeles, including the notorious Skid Row area where hundreds of homeless people camp on the streets. The police union says homeless encampments must be cleaned up following the recent diagnosis and other cases where officers contracted hepatitis A and staph infections.’The last thing I need is my members coming to work worried about contracting an infectious disease and bringing it home to their families,’ Los Angeles Police Protective League treasurer Robert Harris said.Dustin DeRollo, a union spokesman, said officers who patrol Skid Row ‘walk through the feces, urine and trash’ – conditions that ‘should alarm everyone and must be addressed.’
Hopefully, the officers will succeed where taxpayer complaints have failed, in terms of inspiring civic leaders to act. Dr. Drew Pinsky, who is a board-certified internist, notes the potential for a “black death” outbreak if these dire conditions continue.
“We have a complete breakdown of the basic needs of civilization in Los Angeles right now,” Pinsky told Fox New host Laura Ingraham. “We have the three prongs of airborne disease, tuberculosis is exploding, rodent-borne. We are one of the only cities in the country that doesn’t have a rodent control program, and sanitation has broken down.”Pinsky said bubonic plague — also known as the “Black Death,” a pandemic that killed off millions in the 14th century — is “likely” already present in Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, California is going to do California.
While Los Angeles, and other large California cities are experiencing rat infestations within homeless camps, AB 1788, by Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica) will ban Rodenticides – rodent poisons. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Pesticide Regulation already regulate these products for efficacy, human health impacts and impacts to the environment….San Francisco has a no-kill, catch-and-release rat policy: “Humane Wildlife Control addresses the problem by sealing holes in buildings that can create entry points for rodents, and then they set up live catch traps to capture rats,” SF Gate reported in 2017. “Once rats are caught, they’re released right in the backyard.”
At this point, I think California is going to have to clean itself up quite a bit before it can rise to third-world status.
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