In many instances over the years, I have been a voice crying in the wilderness over public safety. The thin blue line is slimming down to anorexic proportions. One of the police divisions appears to be on the chopping block, considered for elimination as another cost-saving measure. New technology is being praised, but when was the last time a camera drove up on a motorcycle and wrote a ticket?
One-time revenues that Mayor Foster claimed to be irresponsible to spend on an academy and to maintain police levels will again be discussed. Then again, the gang of six will quash it for tunnels and technology. The one-time revenue from the upland oil fund isn’t being used for a new tracking system to recover the millions in lost revenue from parking tickets or the quarter of a million allegedly lost through embezzlement at the animal shelter. No, we want to continue with plans for a tunnel while they can’t complete Station #12 in a timely manner. Yes, I know these are from different funding mechanisms, but when will we wake up and realize that public safety is our number-one priority? When will we realize the Oil fund of the last 12 years has continued to rise, and when will we realize that the crime rate that is moving up is affected by manpower? Instead, let’s remove a whole division and then remember to report crime stats two months behind!
We can add to this the realignment of non-violent offenders or the fact we do not have a “zero-base budget” and we have a perfect storm. Crime will rise and rise, the citizens will continue to be at risk, the budget will remain in a deficit as it has the past 25 years and we will not figure out how not to spend more than we take in. Let’s just cut across the board and glean our protection while the citizens sleep and Long Beach smolders. Just look at the north and west if you don’t think that happens. Let’s fire-sale the old RDA property while it is expedient and no one is looking. Business as usual? No, business worse than usual.
Signal Hill can manage three officers per 1,000. Los Angeles can get 10,000 officers on the street. Yet Long Beach will proportionately cut again this year without an academy and without new officers until 2015 at least. Have we decided on where we are going to spend one-time oil revenues that will rise again next year? Yes, at least $15,000 on technology again. However, expect proportional cuts and no answer on a police academy next year.
Dan Pressburg
Long Beach
