ANOTHER PITCH FOR GANG INTERVENTION
Hold onto your wallets, here comes another pitch telling citizens of Costa Mesa that we have to empower the usual gaggle of lefties and liberals to have special intervention programs to prevent "our" kids from joining gangs.
The CMPD will be making a presentation about gangs to the City Council at the Council's study session starting at 4:30 Tuesday, April 8, in Conference Room 1A LINK
If the above LINK doesn't work, try this LINK and navigate to the Study Session.
Here's the CM PRESS strategy for dealing with gangs:
1. Understand that all living things tend to go to and stay in places where they feel comfortable--such places become their habitats.
2. Get rid of the habitats and whatever finds them comfortable will move away.
In Costa Mesa, unlike some other cities, we have just a few gang habitats--so far. They are mostly barracks style apartment buildings in the following slums: Shalimar, Mission-Mendoza, Fillmore-Coolidge, and an area near Rea School.
The City should immediately start buying up and tearing down slum buildings--one here and one there--as they come on the market, and put in pocket parks or other desirable uses in their place. Then, the City should work with developers to put in modern low cost housing that is more spread out and which won't recreate the present over crowded and over concentrated slums that we now have.
No gang habitats=No gangs.
We need to understand that Costa Mesa gangs are primarily and overwhelmingly Latino, and that the members have strong links to illegal aliens.
We also need to understand that these Latino gangs are largely territorial. This means they "protect" their habitats. That's what the graffiti and neighborhood shootings are mostly about.
These gangs have helped drive Costa Mesa ever lower as middle class people simply move away from areas that these gangs have taken over. This is destabilizing Costa Mesa. The major problem is the Westside, and the gang problems on the Westside are exacerbated by do-gooder charities and individuals who are actually rewarding illegal aliens, gang members, and criminals for staying in the area.
Say you're a young professional and your employer has just transferred you and your family to Orange County. One of the first things you do is go out looking for a home. You'd like to be near the beach, but Newport is too expensive for you. Well, what about Costa Mesa and especially the Westside? Why, it's so close to the ocean that sea breezes keep it naturally air conditioned during the summer. You take a look at the school scores and are dismayed to see that they are at slum levels, but you don't believe your eyes. How can Costa Mesa which is right next to Newport Beach and which shares the same school district have school scores so low when Newport's are so high? You conclude that you must be looking at misprinted school scores.
So, you decide to look around for yourself. You drive around the neighborhoods of the Westside and what do you see? Sixty acres of industrial buildings on land that would be better for homes. And, what's that chemical smell? You're starting to get a headache so you roll up your windows. Then you see the slums and the graffiti and day workers congregating in parking lots.
When we next see you, you've pulled on to the 405 Freeway and you're heading down to South County to find a home in a City without all the problems of Costa Mesa.
And, as you drive, you may wonder to yourself: "Who are the incompetent twits who let Costa Mesa, and especially the Westside, become the mess it is and why isn't the City Council doing something about it?"
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
