Santa Monica Police Reform Commission Votes to Disallow Police Pretextual Stops Citing Fears of Racism

Letter to the editor:

I am appalled by the City's "Police Reform Commission" that voted 6-4 against allowing our police to make pretextual stops because they think the Santa Monica police are making traffic stops based on race. You have gamed the statistics and revealed yourselves as out of touch with reality. This will soon come up as a vote by the city council. Residents will be watching.

Because yet again Santa Monica, held hostage by a tiny group of people with an anti-police ideology, is wasting time and money to solve a problem we don’t have, while ignoring one screaming for our attention. We don’t have a police brutality problem, or a racial profiling problem from our racially diverse force. What we do have is a crime problem from bad actors who see us as a soft target and come from other parts of the county to attack us.

This is personal for me. I was attacked by a drug enraged guy with a pipe from out of state. He happened to be a redhead. Last week, four young men came to town in a stolen Kia, attacked an old lady, got in a car wreck, and hid in carports and apartments until our police apprehended them without using any force even though a gun was recovered. This all happened within a block of my house—my wife is was terrified because of the helicopters overhead triggered her back to the riots, where we surrounded by looters (also not from here). These four men happened to be black, but their race isn’t a factor, it was their behavior, which was criminal and dangerous. And yet our police took them down with no violence.

Recently, a pickup truck with 500 pounds of copper wire in it was stopped based on a cop’s suspicion. A little over a week ago, tragically, a bicyclist was killed in a traffic accident with a motorist in the area of 19th Street and Idaho. By all accounts, one of the parties likely ran a stop sign. A minor violation. Until it wasn't. Cops need the tools they need, and have told me over and over that Santa Monicans are for the most part law-abiding, but we have a huge influx from all over the county that want to predate on and manipulate our generous spirit and liberal values.

City Council, do not, fighting some imaginary battle against racist cops as if Darryl Gates was our chief of police, take away a tool that the police are telling us is vital to protect us. What an insult to these hardworking men and women to even have to go through this charade. This reform commission, virtue signaling and taking the absolute wrong lesson from the riots, should be disbanded until we see actual proof that we have a problem.

Sincerely,

Arthur Jeon