SBPDPIO
Source: Santa Barbara Police Department
On October 12, 2021, at 3:30pm, Santa Barbara Police Officers responded to a disturbance call in the 900 block of State Street. Witnesses in the area stated a male suspect had approached a family of 4 visiting Santa Barbara and started verbally assaulting them. The family, which consisted of two juveniles, attempted to flee the area in hopes of walking away from the belligerent suspect, however the suspect continued to pursue them northbound on State Street. Eventually the family was able to flee from the suspect near the intersection of State Street and Canon Perdido Street.
The investigation revealed the suspect, identified as Mark Anthony Smith, a 57-year-old transient, had unprovokedly been yelling slurs at the family based on their clothing and perceived nationality. Smith then had focused his assault on one of the adolescents. Witnesses and the family felt if they did not actively flee the area, Smith would physically harm them.
Based on witness descriptions, Smith was located near the intersection of State Street and Canon Perdido Street where he was placed under arrest. During the arrest, Smith battered an Officer. The Officer was not injured.
Smith was booked for Felony Hate Crime Threats, and Misdemeanor Battery on an Officer. Smith was booked in Santa Barbara County Jail with $10,000 bail.
The problem with allowing the homeless a safe place to camp is that most of them won’t stay there all day. The gutter punks are still going to lounge around State street “making money.” The addicts will still be around parks looking to score or get high. I’ve been pretty vocal about not “rounding them up” and sending them away to camps, but unless a shelter is moved and they are transported FAR from downtown, we will continue to have to deal with this. More cops patrolling maybe? It’s tough. You can’t just preemptively arrest or move them. We NEED to clean it up downtown though. Maybe we crack down on the begging “travelers” and addicts/drunks, while moving those who want shelter away from the downtown area. It’s beyond time to do something though. It’s awful down there and someone is going to get really hurt. SB Mayor needs to act.
Check out Seattle Is Dying (available on YouTube) and its follow up documentary from this year. Shocking stuff. I just got delivery of the new book San Fran-Sicko and have read about 30 pages so far. It’s pretty clear that a few things don’t work:
1) The neoliberal model of decentralizing responsibility and roles, resulting in the non-profit industrial complex: an army of dozens of local non-profits with little accountability or oversight
2) Progressive policies I used to support when I was younger (much like the author of San Fran-Sicko) like decriminalization of hardcore drugs, etc. This is not working. Any supporters are free to explain to me how allowing people to shoot up in public is good for anyone, especially those who are addicts. It’s one thing if you want to support something like forced in-patient treatment programs, but just allowing open-air drug use is seriously insane.
3) I never supported decriminalization of crime like theft, etc. but this is another part of “criminal justice reform” that is infecting our society leading to people committing crazy crimes and not even going to jail for it. Stuff like raising the level of misdemeanor theft to being able to steal nearly $1000 worth of stuff is crazy. I was at CVS on Calle Real a couple of months ago and due to these policies you cannot even buy a $2 nail file anymore without having to ask a clerk to come unlock it. It was crazy.
Crazy that people could downvote you.
The only way is to get new state legislators, who actually care about this and work hard to reform the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, (LPSA) because its current application is not working. Nor is the unaudited mess of the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) – passed decades ago, which is wasting billions of tax dollars every year. Real state legislators who cared about the destruction of their communities would have done this long ago. But our string of machine politic legislators let this problem grow out of hand and held no one accountable for the failed LPSA legislation and the misdirected MHSA funds. That means Limon and Bennet now, but H-B Jackson and Das Williams blew this necessary reform for too long as well. We have been very badly served for decades by our elected state representatives. They can do something, but they refuse. They do not deserve re-election.
Agree. One thing that the bleeding hearts need to accept is that these people are CHOOSING this for their life. Their body, their choice. With choices are consequences. But the bleeding hearts given them “clean needles” from OUR tax dollars. So, this co-dependent behavior allows those choosing self-destructive behavior to keep on doing it. I was in San Fran a couple weeks ago and saw a whole group in public using on the street and who walked by but two young ladies holding plastic needle bins feeling all good about themselves. In that moment it really struck me that this is an ultra sick cycle…the people using are sick and the people thinking they are “helping” them are sick. Ultimately, the answer resides in exiting from this cycle with a higher plan. We need innovative, disruptive thinking that truly changes things. There are some programs on the east coast that appear to be working.
No, obviously what he means is that it was better off as a regular parking lot. Not very intelligent of you, but we are used to that here.
This needs to stop. I am so tired of folks pretending that we just need to open our hearts a little more to fix this nonsense. It’s going to result in a tragedy.
Support programs exist. If folks don’t want to avail themselves of those opportunities, as some point you can’t keep taking money away from our schools and parks. What we are doing now is attracting and enabling.
It’s so often rich folks in their “well patrolled” neighborhoods telling us to be more compassionate. Kids in my neighborhood can’t safely walk to school. In a City Council meeting about the arson fire that nearly burned down the Westside, one member even said she could see it “from her view on the Riviera” … and “It was scary.” Hilarious. You can’t write this stuff. One Council Member suggested the gesture of using the City Hall lot for folks to camp. How brave to offer a building that you have to walk in/out of maybe twice a week. Courage! Who cares about the people who live by there, or the tourists that actually fund the jobs/economy for working class Santa Barbarans.
So tired of this. We now have kids getting assaulted on State Street. So sad in its predictability.
Enough of this bs – hello Cathy?? You ARE the mayor. If not you then who? And please folks, don’t gimme the knee jerk “Affordable housing” line!
Strickly economic: Clean needles are cheaper to the public than treating them the rest of their lives for disabilities dirty ones give them: Dialysis for kidney failure, Hepatitus C complications, etc. They eventually end up in ERs and from there into nursing homes.
Cathy thinks it’s ok. “At least we’re not as bad as LA” is her motto. Please for the love god people vote her out.
Honoring choices made instead of rescuing revolving door dysfunction is the better path. to take. These are not cries for help, because help is already there and has been repeatedly rejected. Three strikes on one is finally out. Play ball. It is honorable to let people go, when this is finally their own choice. Karma and the wheel of life absorbs this way of thinking as enlightened and humane. Grace comes with the dignity of personal choice. Continual rescuing is a con-game.
Karma and the wheel of life encourages honoring choice and letting go. There is a long spiritual tradition for this approach.
Santa Barbara rolled over and let the terrorists win a long time ago. Populace only take thumbs out of rears long enough to wring hands. Human rights and no accountability and a myopic vision of what society can achieve. Just set the bar so low that even a sloppy drunk who’s crapped in the doorway can still crawl over it while pushing himself.
Need to dip the city in hand sanitizer.