THE ONLY REAL WAY TO RID COSTA MESA OF GANGS
City Council, finding the way to rid Costa Mesa of gangs and gang crime is as simple as sticking pins in a map of our city.
Just have the CMPD give you a map with pins stuck in where the gang members live, and where the gang crimes are committed.
We don't even need a crystal ball to tell you what the results will be. You'll see most pins stuck in the Shalimar slum, the slum near Wilson/Hamilton/Placentia, the Mission-Mendoza slum in Mesa del Mar (where Katrina Foley lives), and the Fillmore-Coolidge slum in Mesa North.
See a pattern? The gangs are concentrated in small geographic areas of our city.
This is because the gangs are mostly Hispanic and have links with illegal immigration. Hispanic gangs are turf oriented. They don't usually commute to other areas to live the gang life. Just as snail-darters need a certain habitat to survive and grow, so too do these gang members need a certain habitat.
The gang members need the slums. They need to be among illegal aliens. They need to be in Hispanic ghettos.
So what's the solution?
Mr. Mansoor, tear down the slums!
Do that and the gang members will move away. They can't survive without their habitat. Put them on the endangered criminal list by turning slums into parks or whatever.
And, you don't need eminent domain to do that.
Some people are confused about eminent domain. The reality of it is that the city doesn't take the properties for free under eminent domain. It still has to pay fair market value.
And, if the city takes residential properties under eminent domain it has to replace them 3 to 1, so the city might end up building new future slums.
The advantage of eminent domain is that allows the city to take properties if the owners don't want to sell them and to assemble large parcels. We may not need to do that in Costa Mesa.
Instead, the CM PRESS is suggesting that the city simply buy up slum buildings on a onesy-twosy basis as they come on the open market, just as though the city is any other buyer of properties. The difference is that the city will then raze the buildings it has bought and put in pocket parks and soccer fields or whatever.
City Council, the present kumbaya suggestions to rid this city of gangs are just more liberal psycho-babble programs of the type that keep popping up year after year and which are then tried for several years at great expense and which are then discarded as non-working. Remember DARE? The only people who benefit from these programs are the charity bosses who take down nice salaries for running these goofy programs.
Rid this city of the habitats of gangs and the gangs will move away. Don't do this, and the gangs will increase in size and numbers. This is inevitable.
All living things gravitate to where they feel comfortable. Make Costa Mesa uncomfortable for gangs by destroying the gang habitats.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
