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L.A.
needs to stop trumpeting rosy statistics and get tougher on crime and
illegal immigrants.
By Curtis Sliwa
July 18,
2008
I applaud
The Times for running the editorial "L.A.'s
gang emergency." The first step on the road to recovery is admitting you
have a problem -- the second step is actually taking action to correct it.
For the last three decades, I have headed the largest civilian anti-crime
patrol in the world, the Guardian Angels. In that capacity, my fellow angels
and I have spent many nights on the streets of Los Angeles and personally battled the
criminals who stalk the streets. Over the last 20 years, I have advocated
for a larger and stronger Los Angeles Police Department. Those calls still
need to be answered.
The City of
Angels
is being overrun by the devils, and it is afraid to take the action needed
to make the streets safer. Even Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is in denial,
declaring during his State of the City
address that "L.A.
is the safest it has been since the 1950s." I know he said it because I play
it every chance I get while hosting a radio show at KABC. The irony of the
mayor speaking from the safe, cushy confines of police headquarters was not
lost on me. Instead of speaking at police headquarters, he should have tried
to give the same speech on the streets of Van Nuys or
South L.A.
No matter how it is spun, the city of
Los Angeles still sees great levels of violence that
is no longer confined to South Central. This year has been one of the
bloodiest ones in the Valley, with the LAPD losing its first
SWAT
member since the unit's founding in 1969. The Shaw family knows the city
is more dangerous -- 17-year-old
Jamiel Shaw was gunned down allegedly by an illegal alien who had been
released from jail hours earlier. What was the gang problem on
Catalina Island in the 1950s? Were there members of the deadly
Florencia 13 street gang terrorizing residents? All of this is happening
now, during these renewed Ozzie-and-Harriet days in
Los Angeles.
This is the core problem with the
city's approach to policing: It wants to understand its enemies. What it
needs to do is to arrest and jail them. These thugs and criminals who are
killing, raping and maiming your friends and families only understand one
thing -- the power of a well-supported, aggressive police force.
Los Angeles
doesn't support the LAPD. Every week, we hear about a new investigation or
punishment meted out in the wake of the MacArthur Park
riot or some other incident. Police Chief William J. Bratton is not being
supported with enough money, manpower or political will. He did great things
on the streets of New York.
I was optimistic when Los Angeles
hired him, but I have been disappointed in how he has been used as a
political pawn by a mayor more concerned about the needs of criminal aliens
over the needs of taxpayers. Los
Angeles
needs to take its streets back. I offered to help a year ago by volunteering
to serve as a gang czar, but the offer was declined. Instead, bureaucrats
continue to meet and get paid while good kids die. Let me repeat this, you
cannot make your streets safer by understanding murderers, drug dealers and
rapists -- it only emboldens them.
The Times is right to acknowledge
its current emergency. Sadly, the mayor doesn't see it this way.
____________________________________
Curtis Sliwa is the founder and
president of the Guardian Angels and a talk show host at KABC-AM (790).
Los
Angeles Times Opinion article at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-sliwa18-2008jul18,0,734728.story?track=ntothtml
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