Anonymous
Source: Santa Barbara Police Department
With recent COVID restrictions lifting, The Santa Barbara Police Department is anticipating an increase in activity in the downtown corridor and State Street Promenade. Starting immediately, there will be additional Officers directly assigned to these areas on an indefinite basis. These Officers will be assigned to foot patrol, bicycle patrol, and/or motorcycle patrol to improve safety for all community members.
Officers will be on duty in the downtown corridor 7 days a week, between the hours of 10:00am – 8:00pm Sunday through Tuesday, and 10:00am – 3:00am Wednesday through Saturday. Officers assigned to work during the evening hours will be primarily responsible for handling night life issues that may stem from the re-opening of many bars, nightclubs, and restaurants.
Public safety is our number one goal, we want everyone to enjoy Downtown and the Promenade, now that most pandemic restrictions have been lifted and a sense of normalcy is returning to our community.
Get em boys and girls! Love seeing the folks in blue walking around keeping the peace.
For those of you that don’t know, almost 50% of our police budget is already spent on the drunk zones of State Street and the Funk Zone! Most of our residential areas, especially the foothills like the Riviera and Eucalyptus Hill have no police patrols. If there is a 911 call for police, especially on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays in the evening hours, the caller will be lucky to receive a timely police response, if at all! IT IS TIME FOR ALL THE BOOZE DISPENSERS TO PAY FOR THE POLICE PRESENCE THAT THEIR DRUNKS REQUIRE! If you believe that I am wrong, do yourself a favor and ask any local cop if what I write is true or false. I am not voting for any incumbent on the council this November; the worst council in my over 50-years of living in Santa Barbara. It is time for the residential neighborhoods to rise up and be counted and to be given the city services that we pay for and do not receive: Police presence and clean streets!
The current council is the fruit of “district elections”. Which is why we now have the worst city council on record, the second worst was the one preceeding it. District elections were tried in the past and failed. Now they are forced on us by law, and they fail again. Limon and Bennett need to make changes in the law in Sacramento and get rid of failed district elections. We were far better off when the city was run by those how actually showed up and voted for who they wanted running things. Now too many small turnout=full vote districts who are causing this town a lot of long-term damage. Thank Barry Capello and his strong arm CVRA heist of this once fine city into the sinkhole of marginally elected incompetents, thrust on us in by fundamentally unfair district elections. Bring back a single election day, hand counts and at large voting – if you don’t show up to vote you don’t get a full one vote for your district the way it is now. Takes thousands of votes in some “equal” districts to win a one seat vote, and only a few hundred in other “equal” districts to win another one full seat vote. Recipe for total mismanagement and no accountability. Even term limits did not rescue us from this district election malpractice.
Why patrol these downtown crimes if they never result in punishment and conviction. That would be one way for the drunk zones to start paying attention to what they are creating. Stop playing expensive police nanny for them. Residential neighborhoods are seeing increased crimes, break-ins, bike thefts, mailbox thefts, porch pirates, sidewalk merchants, trespass, and casing-out suspicious behavior. Live near a creek and you are in criminal camping central. Day and night. Even daytime car-jackings driving in your own neighborhood. Don’t even bother if your car gets stolen – call your insurance company is the official response in the suburbs. Yes, there should be patrols that cover every district in this town. That should also be the message we send out to anyone who thinks they can create crimes of opportunity knowing where they can get away with their criminal conduct. No criminal is safe anywhere in our city limits, is the only message they need to hear.
When Roger ran the daily police call roster, easily 50% were the top four exact same revolving door: (1) vagrants, (2) drunks, (3) drugs, (4) gangs, with only the occasional domestic violence. It never changed. It should have. But city councils have long ignored these big four, which are now spreading well beyond down town. One can only conclude “community based policing” has failed and most likely exacerbated what we are facing now all over town. Moving illegal vagrant camps into residential area parks widens the crime zones as was explained they like to “wander in an 8 block area” Mark that area out for every city park out tax dollars now maintain that has been taken over by vagrant camps. Don’t even bother with the “covid” excuse. There is no excuse for enabling crime.
The Kid, they do pay for the police service, more so than residential neighborhoods. Check out the City website on where their revenues come from. Though I do agree with your opinion on most of city council.
1st, pedestrians have the right of way and bikes (scooters and skaters) should be taking it slow and courteous in mixed use areas like this. 2nd, if you look at the pic, they’re at a choke point where there is barely a foot on either side of the bike path.
Does anyone know what VOR is talking about? Because he sure doesn’t. There are sidewalks on either side of that clearly marked bikeway where pedestrians most certainly do not have the right of way.
“Pedestrian promenade” The point is to have people walking where the street was, not turn it into a giant bike lane.
“not turn it into a giant bike lane” — it’s a short truncated bike lane, Voice of Prevarication.
“you were just telling us people should be walking on the sidewalk not the street…”
Like so much of the Voice of Prevarication writes, this is an intentional misrepresentation.