Crime blowing up in Santa Ana, will the Mayor do anything about it?

It wasn’t exactly the sort of headline that Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido and his cabal were looking for going into the November City Council elections.  “Santa Ana rattled by four shootings, including three in 24 hours,” but Tony Barboza’s latest article in the L.A. Times was quite accurate, as was the sub-title: “The gunfire stirs memories of a time when gang violence colored life in the city’s hard-pressed core.”

“Police called the shootings a temporary spike amid an overall downward trend in violent crime in the city.”  That would be a big, fat lie!  As we have been reporting here over the past couple of years, violent crime is NOT going down in Santa Ana.  How anyone can say that when we have led the county in carjackings, wait – no other O.C. city that I know of has had carjackings – is beyond me.

Clowncilman David Benavides told Barboza that the cops need to focus their attention where the crime is.  Uh-oh.  Pulido won’t like losing his private security force in his rityz Floral Park neighborhood!

One apartment manager noticed an increase in vandalism and thefts over the last few months, “”Now it’s shootings, killings and pursuits,” he said.  And he was right.

And, as Barboza put it, at this point last year Santa Ana had suffered 11 shootings.  This year they are already at 15 shootings.  That is NOT a decrease in violent crime!

While the City’s EPIC/Gang Commission has done little to solve the gang problem in Santa Ana, its Chairman nailed the issue quite well, “Can the city be doing more? Yes.”

For starters when is our absentee Mayor, Pulido, going to address the problem?  No other big city Mayor is as adept as Pulido at avoiding the press, except when it suits him, and at avoiding the issues in general.  But this year he is up against Councilwoman Michele Martinez.  Does that mean he will actually hold a press conference, with our lame Chief of Police Paul Walters, and actually talk to the media and his constituents about what is going on in our city?  Doubt it.

And will Martinez hold her own press conference?  Doubt it.  Instead the crime and shootings will continue unabated.  Even the Border Patrol has gotten into the act.  The O.C. Register is reporting that four men were arrested “in Santa Ana by border patrol agents following a chase that started at the immigration checkpoint near San Clemente.”

A Santa Ana resident said that “said the border patrol vehicle crashed into the back of the Navigator, pushing it onto the sidewalk, and causing it to hit a vent pipe that went flying about 40 to 50 feet in the air before landing near children.”

The resident then said that the chase and its conclusion were “five times more dangerous than the earthquake.”  But the Border Patrol and the SAPD nabbed four guys – two thought to be immigrant smugglers and the other two thought to be immigrants.  Boy I feel safer already!  Not.

If only the SAPD would expend such efforts going after the gang members in Santa Ana – most of whom are not immigrants.

And if only our idiotic Mayor, Pulido, had actually done his job over the last twenty years.  How many new libraries has L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa opened since he took office?  I counted 72 branches on the L.A. Library website.

Let’s call it like it is.  Pulido has spent twenty years trying to get rid of his fellow Mexicans.  Villaraigosa, who is hardly my favorite politician, has opened I am guessing over a dozen libraries and Adult Literacy Centers, at least, during his brief tenure as Mayor of Los Angeles.

Why the difference?  Because Villaraigosa does not hate his constituents.  Pulido does.  Pulido could have spent the last twenty years trying to help folks get educated and move up the socio-economic ladder.  Instead he spent all that time hating and trying to gentrify the city.

So is it a surprise that Santa Ana is drowning in crime?  No.  Will local voters do something about this in November?  Hard to say.  My co-blogger Thomas Gordon spent two years kissing up to the “Usual Suspects” hoping in vain that they would turn on Pulido.  The lot of them have been serving on Pulido’s campaign commitee.  Every last one of them.  Gordon was so disgusted he dropped out of the Mayor’s race.

But George Collins is in.  If anyone really thinks that Martinez will do much more than Pulido, please feel free to vote for her.  I will be voting for Collins.  I KNOW he wants change we can believe in.  After watching Martinez for the past couple of years I have serious doubts she can deliver.  And after watching Pulido for over 15 years I KNOW he can’t.


About Admin

"Admin" is just editors Vern Nelson, Greg Diamond, or Ryan Cantor sharing something that they mostly didn't write themselves, but think you should see. Before December 2010, "Admin" may have been former blog owner Art Pedroza.