If you live in Santa Ana then it should come as no surprise violent crime increased in our city during the first half of 2016, according to a new FBI report.
Violent crime also increased in Orange, Costa Mesa, and Irvine, but it dropped in Anaheim, Huntington Beach and Garden Grove. Continue reading
Benavides and Tinajero left the Public Safety Committee meeting early to go hang out with Gavin Newsom
Did you know that our Santa Ana City Council Members rarely show up for their own public Committee meetings? The Voice of OC published an expose about this here. In that post they revealed that the Santa Ana Public Safety and Neighborhood Improvement Committee meetings on March 22, May 24 and July 26 were all canceled. This in a city that is in the grips of an unprecedented rise in violent crime!
The members of that Committee, which includes Council Members Sal Tinajero and David Benavides, finally held a Public Safety and Neighborhood Improvement Committee meeting yesterday. Incredibly they had not held a meeting of this Committee since January of this year. Their excuse is that they don’t have time for these meetings because they are a part-time City Council. (Their solution is their Measure PP – which will give them a 700% pay raise). Continue reading
Violent crime fell in Santa Ana last year, according to the new FBI Uniform Crime Report. In fact the new crime figures show that robberies, aggravated assaults, property crimes, burglaries and motor vehicle thefts all went down in Santa Ana last year.
Violent crimes rates were higher last year in several California cities with comparable populations, including Bakersfield, Long Beach, Oakland and Sacramento, as you can see in the chart above.
Forensic science colleges are an option for people who want to learn the skills they would need to help the police to solve crimes. People who search for answers and want to solve problems are good candidates to start forensics careers and help their communities.
Kudos to the SAPD and Police Chief/Interim City Manager Paul Walters for reducing crime while dealing with budget cuts and the economic crisis.
Incidentally, the SAPD is holding their annual Employee Recognition and Awards Ceremony tomorrow night, on May 25, from 6:30 pm to 9 pm, at the Doubletree Hotel, located at 201 East MacArthur Bl., in Santa Ana. Kudos to all the men and women who work hard to keep us safe here in Santa Ana!
An irresponsible O.C. blogger, who regrettably has joined the Amezcua cult, has been advancing the notion that violent crime has not gone down in Santa Ana.
In 2009, according to the FBI, there were 1,726 violent crimes in Santa Ana. The same amount of violent crimes happened in 2008, again according to the FBI.
A few differences should be noted. There were 30 murders in Santa Ana in 2008 – and only 25 murders in 2009. Statistically that is quite a drop.
And there were 788 aggravated assaults in Santa Ana, in 2008, but only 755 such assaults in 2009. Again, that is a substantial drop in number. And it dropped even more when you consider that in 2007, there were 1,080 such assaults in Santa Ana, according to the FBI. That is a thirty percent drop compared to 2009!
In 2006, there were 1,998 acts of violent crime in Santa Ana, according to the FBI. That same year there were 126 acts of violent crime in Irvine. Guess what? In 2009 there were 153 violent crimes in Irvine. That’s right. Violent crime is going UP in Irvine while Santa Ana has seen a drop in violent crime in the same timespan!
Our local newspapers focus primarily on reporting crime. They fail utterly to report all the good things happening in Santa Ana. We try, very hard, to make up for that. The truth is that we are improving as a city, not going backwards.
Racists often attack our residents and blame them for things they have not done. This is due in part to the newspapers and to the actions of a few irresponsible bloggers who rather focus on what is bad while ignoring the ongoing improvements in Santa Ana.
The same blogger I have referenced here also attacked our Mayor, Miguel Pulido, because of the problems with education in our city. That is just beyond ridiculous. Pulido is not in charge of our schools. And the fact is that we have a lot of great non-profits in town, such as the Santa Ana Police Officers Athletic League and Think Together, who are making a real difference with regard to education.
We are all working together to try to fix this mess, and in the meantime local Democratic leaders keep backing the SAUSD Trustees who have created this mess. Both Jose Solorio and Lou Correa endorsed SAUSD Trustee Audrey Yamagata Noji this year. Blame them when she inevitably makes things worse in the next four years.
I intend to continue to focus on the good things happening in town. If other bloggers want to twist statistics and focus on being negative, good for them – but that won’t happen here on this blog.
The FBI issued their latest violent crime report – and the findings were a bit of a mixed bag for Santa Ana, which is the County Seat here in Orange County.
On the plus side, “Anaheim, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Orange and Santa Ana all reported a decrease in violent crime during the first six months of the year,” according to the O.C. Register.
After a year of turmoil in Irvine, between the City Council and their police union, they held on to the lowest violent crime figure in the County, but violent crime went up in Irvine by 42%. No other city had such a vast increase in violent crime.
Violent crime went up in Costa Mesa and Fullerton too. In fact it went up by 40% in Fullerton. Continue reading