The mayor of Lancaster, Rex Parris, has lit a controversy after reflecting on a meeting of the Council that an approach to the lack of housing would be “to give them free fentanyl … all the fentanyl they want.”
Parris, a larger litigating lawyer than life, made incendiary comments on drug response for tens of thousands of overdose deaths to February City Council meetingIn a reply to a resident who opposed his reflections to congregate the residents not vegetated in a “camp.”
It wasn’t until Parris I folded an interview in his comments With Fox 11, his statements became viral, causing anger far beyond the city of Alto Desert, where he has presided as mayor as 2008.
He said he did not believe that no one had tasks of his comments literally, but that he did not regret them. In the interview, Whony said for “a purge” or homeless people.
A camp for homeless people in Lancaster, where those in the street often face extreme heat.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“I made it very clear that I was talking about the criminal element that was allowed to leave prisons that have now become 40 to 45% of what is known as the homeless population,” he said. “They are responsible for most of our robberies, most of our violations and at least half of our murders,” he said, without providing evidence to support those statements.
He added: “Frankly, I would like the president to give us a purge.
“Now, is it hard? Or the course is hard. But it is my obligation as mayor of the city of Lancaster to protect the working families who live here, and I can not do it anymore … it is an anbenable situation … I want these people.”
Parris did not respond to a request for comments from the times.
His political opponents say they are outraged.
“Anyone who is willing to give homeless people who wish, or suggest that President Trump should allow a purge of the homeless population, has no business in public positions,” said Johnathan Earvin, a Democrat who challenged and lost to Parris. Earvin has now joined the winner of third place in that contest, Mark Maldonado, to try to remember the mayor.
Parris has approached Lancaster for decades, first as a litigating lawyer and civic leader and during the last 15 years as mayor.
The city, which is in the Mojave desert in the north of Los Angeles County, has a population of approximately 175,000.
According to the figures of the homeless people of the great Los Angeles, Reported in Antelope Valley Press, There were 6,672 people who experienced the lack of housing in 2024, 1,989 more than in 2023. That includes the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale, as well as in the surrounding areas.
Lancaster residents have become accustomed to a mayor with proposals that are often great and sometimes jajotics.
In 2013, holders in the holders when, in an effort to court Chinese investment, He spoke or opened a trade office In Beijing and building a Buddhist temple in his desert city of Mojave.
In 2018, it was Back in the news For a proposal to make optional ties among city workers, citing studies that decrease blood flow to the brain.
It is also a long voice for law and order, and many in their city have a dim vision of the lack of housing.
In 2021, the American Union of Civil Liberties of South California Published a report that alleges generalized abuse Or homeless people in Lancaster. The ACLU said that the city had created a “criminalization drag network” in which agents and city code application officers “regularly devastate the camps of unleashed people and order them to move by threat of citation.”
At that time, Parris said the city had done more than its part to serve its homeless population. Hello, he also said that he was “trying to create an environment where people with disabled can prosper” and that “I was not going to let people live wherever they want, camping where they, extort the money of the people they buy.”
