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POST JUNETEENTH - I am deeply troubled by the seemingly daily homicides in the City of LA. I know what BLM is supposed to do with the police. What BLM means to me is the senseless killing of black and brown (after all, LA is over half Latino/a now) people in drive-by shootings and the like needs to end. You know how the media cares when a young white woman gets killed. They should also care when black and brown people are gunned down in the poorer parts of town. Black (and Brown) Lives Matter. The senseless killing has no place in the new millennium. Even if you don't live in an affluent hood, you should not have to worry about senseless violent crime and gang violence. Oftentimes, LAPD uses gang violence as an excuse. Homicide and if it's “likely gang-related”, LAPD gets a pass. Well, first of all, it's not ok to assume it's gang-related, but even if it is, that should not give them a pass, like it doesn't count. And what's up with those standard 50k rewards from the City Council. Is that what a life is worth? Is that all it's worth to get a killer(s), who will likely kill again (and may have killed others in the past), off the streets? Witnesses are scared and won't come forward for just 50k. You guys have to do a lot better than that, and frankly with your multi-Billion dollar annual budget, you can do a lot better than that.
BTW, if you read about crime in Studio City or Panorama City (as I did over the weekend), those are neighborhoods in the City of LA (so is Century City). That's how humongous the City of LA is...we actually have multiple neighborhoods that are called cities but are not cities. And, as I'm writing this, I just discovered a fresh homicide (and 2 other people critically injured) in Valley Glen during a car-to- car shooting at Coldwater & Victory at around 10 PM on Juneteenth...that's not too far from my high school, Harvard-Westlake (which I will touch upon again later in this column).
One of the reasons that we have seemingly daily killings in the City of LA is horrible police response times. Almost every time I call LAPD, it's multiple calls and multiple hours. The other day, my neighbor saw a gun in the tall grass in front of the building next door before 6 AM while he was walking the dogs...and I live in a good hood. He had to go to work, so I stayed by the gun (worried about children or homeless getting to it) and called the police for almost two hours. I was babysitting the gun for almost two hours. At one point, dispatch told me the delay was due to a shift change and I was waiting for the next shift. I wondered whether I was calling LAPD or a Walmart. So, the guys that finally came out, they're great...they've helped me twice before. Turned out it was a real gun, fully loaded, right next to the sidewalk where children and homeless people walk by. LAPD response times are notoriously horrible, which is why Defund the Police is a bad joke. I know there is a lot of personnel mismanagement, overtime abuse, and pension abuse at LAPD. That should definitely be fixed so that we can start getting some reasonable response times. By comparison, the City of
Beverly Hills, next door to my hood, is known for response times in minutes, not hours. City of LA takes so long to respond that evidence is gone, witnesses are gone, victims are gone, and bodies are cold by the time they show up. Completely unacceptable. And LAPD officers should NOT be pulling Overtime shifts patrolling Metro (primarily Rail). Being an LAPD officer is ENOUGH. If they're moonlighting at Metro, their work somewhere (or, more likely, at both places) is suffering. No wonder I would repeatedly read about violent crime at Metro Rail stations with the perp getting away. That Metro LAPD contract should NOT have been extended. Janice Hahn and her fellow LA politicians on the Metro Board that voted for it were WRONG.
Back to Juneteenth. You know what I learned yesterday from USA Today. They had a colorful map (you can google it). I was shocked. Over half the states, including TEXAS, were colored pink, meaning it's a Permanent State Holiday (state workers get a paid day off). CALIFORNIA was purple! What does that mean? It's NOT a State Paid Holiday in “Bluest of the Blue”, “Most Liberal” CA. It IS for the Feds and More than Half the States. Well, I have an idea. The State Legislature should calculate what it would cost to make it a State Holiday...that's A LOT OF $$$ (which, I imagine, is why it has not been made a State Paid Holiday)...and use all that money for Reparations, while keeping it as a Day of Observance.
Continuing on the subject of the CA State Government being cheap, and hypocritically so, one of my pet peeves is the way we (don't) compensate JURY DUTY here in California. CA keeps pushing minimum wages higher for businesses and we're very pro-Union. Sometimes, there seems to be a double standard, where government wants the private sector to pay more to workers, but doesn't want that to apply to government-funded or public workers. People who serve jury duty LOSE MONEY...the pay is BELOW MINIMUM WAGE. You are taking food off their table and calling it “civic duty.” Compensation is a joke, and that's why people avoid it and a few people end up repeatedly serving. If you properly compensated people for their time (and fuel and parking costs), you would have a line around the block of people wanting to work jury duty, even people wanting to be professional jurors. Jurors need a Union representing them in Sacramento. Unite Here should look into that!
Getting back to Juneteenth again, another pet peeve of mine is how horrible the El Segundo Times (aka the LA Times) is...a Juneteenth City Beat article that I read. In case you didn't know, most LA Times articles are now available for free on Yahoo...and elsewhere (that was true during the last City/County Election Cycle too, which helped their horrible endorsements reach more eyeballs). I just googled the article and apparently Yahoo News is now called “Currently from AT&T”?? Anyhoo, the article is entitled “LA formally makes Juneteenth a holiday for all city workers” and the first line states “The LA City Council voted Friday [June 9] to establish Juneteenth as a permanent paid holiday for City employees...” The article says that the City has “tens of thousands” of employees. The holiday will be observed on whatever day June 19th falls on, unless it's the weekend, in which case it will be observed either Monday or Friday. So what's missing from this article? How about THE FINANCIAL COST TO THE CITY. Usually that's included in the documents for the City Council vote being reported on...Also, will there be Overtime Pay for those employees who work on Juneteenth. What is the Pension impact. This is a City that has been on the VERGE OF BANKRUPTCY in the past. These things matter. This City has horrible basic services. When I called and asked for a tree to be trimmed, they told me “We trim the trees every 14 years.” (By comparison, small cities like BH trim all their trees annually) I can't put my trash cans out at my curb because the curb is missing. The City doesn't fix with concrete...they come and pour some black asphalt on the spot. Unless you live in Hancock Park, in which case you get a “Pilot Program” using concrete to fix your streets...more on Hancock Park below...in a bit.
Also (of great concern), will the half dozen City (and County) animal shelters be open on Juneteenth for adoptions. Are helpless kittens and puppies going to be killed so that LA politicians can make their Union backers happy?...and because the animals at our “shelters” are seemingly the lowest budgeting priority for our very wasteful and shady politicians. Speaking of shady, did you see that another LA City Council Member got taken down, this time not by the Feds, but by the County DA. For those of you who don't remember, the County DA's office has a Public Integrity Division. Gascon must be really desperate about his election prospects going after a Black politician right before Juneteenth (Just read about an LA County Prosecutor winning 1.5M from the County for retaliation and nearly TWENTY other similar cases waiting in the wings). Not that Curren Price didn't deserve it. Daniel Guss exposed him way back in 2017 in multiple articles right here in CityWatch. Not that the El Segundo Times will give him proper credit for that. Would be absolutely shameful if they win another round of Pulitzer Prizes and Guss is left empty-handed. He can share a drink with Jon Peltz (who KNX News cited in their Nury Martinez Scandal coverage) at the local bar and they can commiserate with each other.
Getting back to Juneteenth again, and the El Segundo Times, I want to know the cost because (same light bulb idea as for the State of CA) ALL THAT MONEY could be used for REPARATIONS instead of a paid day off (or Overtime Pay) for City workers. It's always funny to me how they call them the “City Family.” I mean, I love City workers, but most of them are smart enough not to live here. It's a great place to work, but not to live, and City workers know that better than anybody. I always knew that City workers lived in other cities and other counties. But the best was when Steve Lopez discovered that City Firefighters (LAFD) were commuting from OTHER STATES. He should have won a Pulitzer for that...and he should have followed that up with “Where do LAPD officers live?” Because, in my mind, and this is getting back to my version of BLM, cops care more about their job when they live in the City that they police. And I would imagine few LAPD officers live in the City of LA. You know that they can work 4 day weeks and take long weekends every weekend, right? I even saw that on a recruitment poster in a Metro Rail car once. So that makes it easier to live out of town. Former City Council Member (and Police Chief) Bernard Parks took issue with that. I personally think that being a full time LAPD cop is hard enough...no moonlighting...no longer days needed. An EIGHT HOUR day for a cop is enough! I also think we should be offering incentives for LAPD officers to actually live in the City which they police.
There's always so much to report on, but we do have to wrap this up. So, you can look forward to my Post Juneteenth Column, Part II in the near future.
(“An Angry Angeleno” is the nom de plume of Yuval Kremer, a former ballot candidate for both LA County Supervisor and LA Mayor)
