Santa Ana's Politicians and Santa Ana's issues.

[antarez]

That depends if the metrics used were the same, this is starting to reverse Teenage boy shot to death in Santa Ana identified | bertagna, gang, santa - News - The Orange County Register make that 4 and according to this article " they are investigating 5 other shootings since this Friday" and that Gang related assaults such as shootings and stabbings have surged in the past few months. Hipolito Tapia Bravo, OC Homicide No. 27: Strangled and Hung on a Fence Post - Orange County News - Navel Gazing Bravo pleaded guilty in April 2005 to misdemeanor obstructing or intimidating a business or customers : News Photo

Then you have stories like this that initially were reported as a suicide, then later other questions emerge.
When you have a lot of undocumented/Illegal immigrants in a community lots of crime goes unreported also. When you have a City that declares itself a Sanctuary City and chooses to ignore Federal Laws you have more crime, more crimes not reported you cannot pick and choose what Laws you choose to enforce.
When a City takes this stance it is encouraging Lawlessness. The influx of Illegals has definitely made it more overcrowded and the City has declined in the last few decades. It is definitely not safer, maybe less crime has made the stats in the last few years and thjat might not be an entirely accurate gauge.

[SoCal35]

Yeah..but the article was discussing HOMICIDES. People report THOSE crimes. You can't toss the body in the river! LOL.

[Coldjensens]

Originally Posted by antarez

When a City takes this stance it is encouraging Lawlessness. The influx of Illegals has definitely made it more overcrowded and the City has declined in the last few decades. It is definitely not safer, maybe less crime has made the stats in the last few years and thjat might not be an entirely accurate gauge.

Actually it did get much safer. In 1988 it was among the worst cities in the US. In 1995-1997 it was at the top of the list for safest cities in the US and at one time was the safest city of its size. Now it is in the middle, slightly above average for safety, but it may drop to average at the rate things are going. A whole lot of the safety issues depends on the money that they have to spend. Santa Ana got a lot of money from Bill Clinton's "100,000 cops on the street" campaign platform and they used the money well. That is when they started Community Oriented Policing and the police worked closely with neighborhood associations, code enforcement, fire marshall and other enforcement agencies. They also assigned policmen to local precints so that the officers knew the people. Further, they put policement in golf carts, on bicycles and on horses. This is much more effective than cars which the bad guys can see long before the policemen can see the bad guys. It was very very effective and crime diminished substantailly. However now they are out of moeny. The programs are gone. The gang unit was down to something like 3 or 5 officers where it was once over 30.

So crime is back up some. It is no where near where it was in the 80s and early 90s, but it is noticably increased. However, statistically, Santa Ana is still safer than 50% of the other similar sized cities in the US.

They are not going to get more money. It is up to the neighborhoods to start crime watch and citizen patrols to identify and fight crime, however the neighborhoods seem to have lost a lot of their momentum and no longer have the cohesiveness and activism that they did five years ago. I hope that someting stirs them up before tings get bad again.

[antarez]

Gang detectives investigate two more shootings | bertagna, officers, victim - News - The Orange County Register
I hope yoo're right cold jensens, if they can gain on the gangs then they can turn it around. Here's another link showing that this may not be the case.

Unfortunately with the State Budget cuts and the early releases from Prison the problems in most of OC and the rest of the State are probably going to get worse. The State Legislature and our inept Gov. Schwarzenneggar have only made things worse for Californians.

[psr13]

Originally Posted by SoCal35

Yeah..but the article was discussing HOMICIDES. People report THOSE crimes. You can't toss the body in the river! LOL.

Sure you can. There just won't be any water for it to sink in.