Am I the only one who is sick to death of global warming? And it frustrates me to hear the Governor talking more about that than controlling spending or fighting crime. Maybe it is because I live in Oakland and every day there is another story about a teenager shot and killed in Oakland or Richmond.
The other day a small news story caught my eye in the San Francisco Chronicle. The mayor of Richmond, Irma Anderson, announced her intention to put a measure on the November ballot which would require the city to set aside five percent of the city budget for additional police and crime-prevention programs. Frankly, I was surprised to see a Bay Area politician pushing a public safety proposal that wasn’t raising taxes to fund midnight basketball programs. If the voters approve the initiative, the city will set aside 5 percent of its $123 million budget to hire an additional 36 police officers and increase spending on programs for youth and ex-cons. It sounds like the mayor is asking the city to make public safety a top priority in its annual spending. And it’s no wonder–Richmond, like Oakland, has experienced a jump in homicides this year. Twenty-two people have been killed so far this year in Richmond, compared to 40 homicides in last year.
Memo to Gov. Schwarzenegger’s policy planners/campaign strategists: get the governor out talking about crime. Have him reach out to the mayors of Richmond and Oakland and brainstorm on ways the state might help stop the killing sprees dominating their cities. Perhaps he can use his star power/bully pulpit to get through to the youth who are getting caught up in the gang/drug culture of their city’s streets.
That always plays well with GOP voters and, frankly, it is the right thing to do. It’s all well and good to sit around and bemoan the slight rise in temperature over the next century, but when you can’t be sure that your child will come home safe and sound at the end of the day (take a minute to read this sad profile the Chronicle ran last week about a tragic killing in Richmond two years ago), do you really care how hot it will be in 2090? I’m sure that the Volvo-driving, latte-drinking liberals in Santa Monica and Berkeley see that as short sighted, but I bet that the families of the 102 people murdered this year in Richmond and Oakland would like to see the governor come tour their streets, talk with their police chiefs and find ways for the state to lend a hand in making their cities a safer place to live.
This entry was posted
on Monday, August 7th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.
