Dangerous Madness: The New Face of Santa Monica

June 25, 2024

Dear Council,

Hate to hit you two days in a row, but this sociopath was arrested after attempting to rape a 17 year-old girl at the beach, strangling her until she lost consciousness and breaking her nose. He then attempted to rape and drown another woman, a homeless woman who is a hero that seems in real need of our services, who came to the girl's aid. Victim 3 was a 73 year-old tourist from Montreal who also intervened and was robbed of a necklace and dragged 40 feet in another attempted drowning. Welcome to Santa Monica!

THIS VIDEO OF THE ARREST AND AFTERMATH IS GOING VIRAL WITH A HALF A MILLION VIEWS IN 20 HOURS

This is now our brand. I have seen this guy in my neighborhood and at Reed Park several times. I saw similar craziness down at the beach during a company retreat at Castle Del Mar the same day a woman was dragged into a restroom.

Tonight you are honoring the officer with EMT training who saved the life of the stabbed tourist a few weeks ago. As far as I'm concerned, we have gotten lucky nobody was killed, but that's only a matter of time. If you really want to honor him, hire more officers like him. Otherwise, these are empty words from half of the council who thinks cops are the bad guys and all this homeless sociopath needs is an apartment in Santa Monica.

As for resolution 16b, while I don't agree with the sign on the promenade singling out David White, as the above grim litany of serious crimes shows, the sentiment that Santa Monica is not safe is absolutely true. And this line from the resolution itself reveals an inability for some on the council to accept that safety, crime, and disorder are the major impediments to our recovery:

"Finally, the signs also may be counter-productive to the community's stated goal of economic recovery as they may deter people from visiting and shopping in Santa Monica at a time when the City's retail, travel, and entertainment businesses are still recovering from the pandemic."

What pablum - solve the problem, not the sign. The store owners getting robbed aren't leaving because of a slow recovery. They are leaving because they are getting robbed blind. Stop playing budget games and get serious about getting to the 300 police that our professional force is telling us they need. Be useful and start lobbying Sacramento to support the new Prop 47 rewrite that's on the ballot instead of them trying to poison pill it. Because what happens when two of these attacks happens at the same time with an understaffed force? We have to face that we have urban problems in a suburban setting and any new tax should only be for sworn officers because that is the only kind of deterrence that will work.

Intelligence is the ability to hold two things to be true at the same time:

Half the homeless are deserving of our attention (why don't our expensive services start by reaching out to the hero homeless woman who saved that young girl's life?).

Half of the homeless are criminal, or addicts, or mentally ill-or some combination of all three (the homeless hero accurately called this perp a "scumbag" at the end of the video).

Assailant was on probation for sexual assault - why had they released him on probation when he is obviously not sane or able to behave in a manner fit for society?

We are all carrot, and no stick. Until we change our reputation amongst the people we don't want here, we will continue to scare off the people we do want. Give us some kind of sign in tonight's meeting that you're awake at the wheel.

ADDENDUM: I found out the assailant was on probation for assault and was a registered sex offender.