September 3, 2024

Dear Editor,

Rampant crime by an unhinged homeless population is devastating Santa Monica, yet lame local officials and an entire slate of City Council candidates continue to pretend long-failed remedies of the past will somehow work.

In the latest violent crime incident, a homeless suspect who attacked a female victim was arrested on charges of Sexual Penetration By Means of Force, Assault Likely To Produce Great Bodily Injury, and Assault to Commit Rape (“Woman Sexually Assaulted in 2nd Beach Attack This Week,” August 30, 2024).

The late-August attack was the second sexual assault at the beach by a violent homeless individual within a two-day period, capping a horrific summer trend of homeless sex crimes (“Homeless Suspect Arrested for Sexual Battery on the Beach,” August 28, 2024).

Unsurprisingly, the suspect in this latest attack had been released from jail shortly beforehand. Available law enforcement records show five prior arrests just this year, most recently in July, with an almost immediate release each time on either a citation or a “short sentence.”

Result: a grand total of eight days in jail after arrests for robbery, battery on a person, petty theft, identity theft, violation of a court protective order and drug-related charges. And then a vicious sex-crime attack.

Anyone still believe crime remains under control in Santa Monica? Consider that Santa Monica’s crime rate ranks among the worst in the nation and both overall crime and felony arrests have increased here for three consecutive years.

In addition to the beach sexual assaults, recent arrests of homeless offenders in Santa Monica were for murder, attempted murder, robbery, yet another attempted rape, carjacking, assaults with deadly weapons, burglary, another assault likely to cause great bodily injury, and both probation and parole violations (i.e., committing crimes after early release from county jail or state prison).

Anyone still doubt rampant crime here is related to homeless drifters infiltrating our public spaces? Consider that year after year homeless individuals represent about two-thirds of arrests in Santa Monica and police can only arrest someone if they have “probable cause” to believe the person committed a crime.

Yet despite all this, an entire slate of crime-friendly city council candidates (Dan Hall, Ellis Raskin, Barry Snell and Natalya Zernitskaya) stand against a slate of other candidates that simply wants a “Safer Santa Monica.”

The crime-friendly Hall-Raskin-Snell-Zernitskaya group comprises:

• Four candidates prominently endorsed by an organization whose president called for defunding SMPD.
  
  
• Two candidates —- Hall and Zernitskaya -- who are members and functioned as officers of that same defund-the-police organization.
  
  
• Four candidates who support re-electing LA County DA George Gascon, who pledged to “enhance safety” but delivered the opposite, with both violent and property crime throughout LA County increasing under his policies.
  
  
• One candidate, Raskin, who gave two policy statements in which he wouldn’t name “reducing crime” as even a top-three priority in Santa Monica.
  
  
• One candidate, Zernitskaya, who called allocating funds for additional SMPD officers “ridiculous.”
  
  
• One candidate, Snell, who, when confronted with public safety concerns Downtown and on the Promenade, fell back on long-failed double-speak, citing a “layered approach to addressing public safety and homelessness” to “ensure” downtown Santa Monica “remains a space” residents and visitors “can feel safe in.”

If you think those “public safety” values have been working, ask the crime victims.

Why do such travesties persist?

In short, thoughtless politicians and hand picked bureaucrats too often evaluate a strategy based on its intent rather than its results.

So if decades of multi-million-dollar homelessness spending result in criminal violence, benevolent intent is all these empty heads need to justify more of the same.

Similarly, if a program intends to help narcotics-addicted transients by giving them free drug paraphernalia, it doesn’t matter whether this attracts more transients or yields more crime because the program’s good intentions outweigh any failed results.

Next time you hear a politician whose vision teems with descriptors like “aligned with our values” or “layered and complex,” interpret those words to mean “good intentions, but failed results.”

Of course, it’s also fair to criticize some “Safer Santa Monica” contenders for jawing about reducing crime for nearly four years but achieving nothing close yet.

Nevertheless, between the two options, a slate of candidates that wants to solve Santa Monica’s crime disorder vs. a slate that is blatantly crime-friendly, the choice seems clear.

Sincerely,