Santa Monica Crime Keeps Getting Worse. Vote For Phil Brock, Oscar de la Torre, Vivian Roknian and John Putnam to Reverse the Trend.

It seems anymore like not a week goes by without news of a stabbing, shooting, assault, rape or home invasion. And there are undoubtedly countless more less-serious crimes, many of which go unreported, like car break-ins, store theft, public drug usage, and harassment of residents and visitors by homeless wanderers on our streets. Santa Monica wasn’t like this 10 years ago. Crime continues to get worse and clearly we need to make changes in order to reverse this trend.

The causes of increasing crime can be argued but I would venture to say that growing crime in our communities is due in great part to weakened law enforcement that has been imposed by our county district attorney as well to permissive local policies with regard to homelessness. I’ve read that about 70% of calls for police and medical assistance in Santa Monica involve homeless people.

And now we are faced with elections for four of the seven seats on our city council involving two slates of candidates with differing views regarding crime and homelessness.

One slate, comprising Phil Brock, Oscar de la Torre, Vivian Roknian and John Putnam, has come out in favor of reducing crime by increasing our police force, fighting against assistance to drug users in our public parks, and tightening rules with regard to use of public areas by homeless people. All four of these candidates are in favor of replacing George Gascon as our county district attorney so that we in Santa Monica can strengthen our own enforcement of laws with regard to criminals.

The other slate, including Barry Snell, Ellis Raskin, Dan Hall and Natalya Zernitskaya , has taken positions more in line with maintaining the status quo. They support the re-election of George Gascon, and thus a perpetuation of his catch-and-release and no-bail policies for criminals. They favor a continuation of county programs to distribute drug needles and pipe distribution in our public parks, a program that has served to attract drug users to our parks, making many of our residents feel unsafe, particularly for taking their children. And they are against curbing sleeping in our public spaces.

Some of them are against strengthening our police force.

This is a critical election for giving our city leaders a chance to reverse our growing crime trend. I urge all voters who care about the safety for our families, our children and elders, and our many visitors, to vote for the Brock-de la Torre-Roknian-Putman slate. And we need for you to vote for all four in order to have the necessary majority on the city council that will allow it to effect changes.

To those voters who are inclined to support the Snell-Raskin-Hall-Zernitskaya slate, perhaps more for ideological reasons, I urge you to re-consider your choices so that we may allow our council to take practical steps to reduce crime and improve the safety and welfare of your neighbors and our community in general.

Faustino Garza, 37-year resident of Santa Monica