Right now the SF City Council is more concerned about bizarre elitist business regulations that artificially drive up unemployment and housing prices than they are about keeping communities safe - and now they are paying the price.
Instead of letting the free market do it's thing, San Francisco has tried to manipulate the economy and housing to guarantee equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity - and the result is now housing no one can afford, jobs that are no longer available and streets that are no longer safe.
The second part of this disastrous 'progressive' formula is that instead of putting cops first and giving them the tools to fight crime, San Francisco has put leftist activism first - and the result is areas of the city that give Cartagena and Caracas a run for their money in violence and mayhem.
Again, indifference to unacceptable behavior is mistaken for compassion - a shift of blame from personal responsibility and accountability to some nebulous social construct is why our state is letting thousands and thousands of violent felons back out on to the street. It's such a sad thing that doesn't have to be.
I just wonder, how bad will it have to get before people have had enough? It got so bad in New York in the 1990's, the crime, the homelessness, the drug dealers and the murder rate - that New Yorkers found themselves electing a Republican out of desperation. Rudy Guilianni God knows wasn't perfect - but in under four years he had utterly transformed the city from a top 5 crime center - to a city that didn't even crack the top 30 in homicides. He quite literally saved the city.
He did this with a zero tolerance policy for vagrancy - the options were shelter, treatment or jail and they were mandatory. He did this with broken window enforcement from the cops - every violation , no matter how minor, was cited, arrested and/or prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Stop and frisk was a big part of this equation. Criminal recidivists were taken off the street for prolonged periods of time. Thousands upon thousands of minority lives no doubt were saved because of this.
Today, crime in New York remains low despite the disasterous reign of mayor DeBlasio, because the NYPD has a system in place that they have fought tooth and nail to maintain. Despite roll backs in stop and frisk policing and broken window enforcement, and a plummeting morale among the NYPD ranks, NYC is at this moment in time still a very safe major city. The mentally ill are creeping back in and taking over, urination in the streets is no longer a crime - but all is not lost. Not yet.
I pray all the time that Californians will see the light and finally demand safe streets. Conventional wisdom says that this is a very difficult problem and that there are no easy solutions. I say that is nonsense.
I live in Burbank, and the city council and cops simply don't put up with criminals or the mentally ill. Our parks are virtually free of derelicts because they are not allowed to be there. They are given options but they must pick one - shelter, treatment, jail or a ride out of town.
If other cities would follow Burbank's lead we could eliminate that last option - it is, I will concede by far the least compassionate of the choices. Eventually, the best case scenario would also be to eliminate jail as a mandatory alternative to the a city park or playground. But as bad as jail is, I will always argue that it is infinitely more compassionate that allowing someone to live on the streets.
Instead of letting the free market do it's thing, San Francisco has tried to manipulate the economy and housing to guarantee equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity - and the result is now housing no one can afford, jobs that are no longer available and streets that are no longer safe.
The second part of this disastrous 'progressive' formula is that instead of putting cops first and giving them the tools to fight crime, San Francisco has put leftist activism first - and the result is areas of the city that give Cartagena and Caracas a run for their money in violence and mayhem.
Again, indifference to unacceptable behavior is mistaken for compassion - a shift of blame from personal responsibility and accountability to some nebulous social construct is why our state is letting thousands and thousands of violent felons back out on to the street. It's such a sad thing that doesn't have to be.
I just wonder, how bad will it have to get before people have had enough? It got so bad in New York in the 1990's, the crime, the homelessness, the drug dealers and the murder rate - that New Yorkers found themselves electing a Republican out of desperation. Rudy Guilianni God knows wasn't perfect - but in under four years he had utterly transformed the city from a top 5 crime center - to a city that didn't even crack the top 30 in homicides. He quite literally saved the city.
He did this with a zero tolerance policy for vagrancy - the options were shelter, treatment or jail and they were mandatory. He did this with broken window enforcement from the cops - every violation , no matter how minor, was cited, arrested and/or prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Stop and frisk was a big part of this equation. Criminal recidivists were taken off the street for prolonged periods of time. Thousands upon thousands of minority lives no doubt were saved because of this.
Today, crime in New York remains low despite the disasterous reign of mayor DeBlasio, because the NYPD has a system in place that they have fought tooth and nail to maintain. Despite roll backs in stop and frisk policing and broken window enforcement, and a plummeting morale among the NYPD ranks, NYC is at this moment in time still a very safe major city. The mentally ill are creeping back in and taking over, urination in the streets is no longer a crime - but all is not lost. Not yet.
I pray all the time that Californians will see the light and finally demand safe streets. Conventional wisdom says that this is a very difficult problem and that there are no easy solutions. I say that is nonsense.
I live in Burbank, and the city council and cops simply don't put up with criminals or the mentally ill. Our parks are virtually free of derelicts because they are not allowed to be there. They are given options but they must pick one - shelter, treatment, jail or a ride out of town.
If other cities would follow Burbank's lead we could eliminate that last option - it is, I will concede by far the least compassionate of the choices. Eventually, the best case scenario would also be to eliminate jail as a mandatory alternative to the a city park or playground. But as bad as jail is, I will always argue that it is infinitely more compassionate that allowing someone to live on the streets.
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