Death to 2013 Police Academy Class

by Dan Pressburg

Mr. Pressburg, a longtime NLB community advocate and volunteer, was a 9th district City Council candidate in 2010 until sidelined by health issues, now resolved.

(Mar. 12, 2012) -- Here we go again and it makes you want to go HMMMMM!

On March, 6, City Hall held a discussion of budget and fiscal matters -- that included public safety -- at 3:30 p.m., an afternoon session that wouldn't be seen in prime time.

LBReport.com carried it live and reported it; others treated it as budgetary subject matter; some didn't mention it at all.

What took place showed that City Hall has no plan -- apart from seeking "revenue raising options" (translation: higher taxes) -- to provide taxpayers with basic core services including what should be its first priority: police protection. Instead, over the past three years, the same Council has slashed police services to enable what Mayor Foster calls "proportional spending" on everything else.

Some inside City Hall may consider the cuts "proportional" but in the real world, they've been insane. No replacements for the retiring of almost 60 officers last November and December. No Police Academy class in sight.

City Hall has created "balanced budgets" by slashing roughly 150 police officer positions over the past three years and siphoning Redevelopment "blight fighting" money for things that other cities pay for from their General Fund (while still managing to deliver adequate police and other services for their taxpayers). Los Angeles and Signal Hill haven't done what Long Beach did, even though they face the same bad economy and Sacramento problems.

It's painful to say it but in Long Beach, it's not simply money; it's actions by those who've had decision-making power over spending it: ultimately, a City Council majority.

For some, a multi-million dollar tunnel connecting to LB's jail (omitted from a new courthouse) and non-essential technology (including website amenities) are of greater importance. Burglaries are up. Sacramento dumps so-called "non-violent" offenders on us. I have screamed about the lower police levels and lack of a replenishment academy for the past four years.

At some point, there will be no collective memory of what policing and police training in Long Beach used to be because senior officers who knew that will be gone.

This writer is especially tired of hearing this blamed on Sacramento's grab of local Redevelopment money when City Hall grabbed part of North Redevelopment's money to repay the Port for covering debt bonds that the "Aquarium of the Pacific" was supposed to be able to pay on its own. Long Beach is "one city" when some want our money, but it's a "Tale of Two Cities" when it comes to public safety, as seen on LBReport.com's map of 2011 shootings endured by parts of Central Long Beach and now, after a period of relative calm, North Long Beach.

It's been six months since six Councilmembers called millions of dollars in accrued, and effectively continuing, oil revenue "one time money" as a way to justify spending it on items that don't include replenishing police officers that Long Beach needs and deserves.

Of course some at City Hall want taxpayers to forget all this. Each Tuesday, they consume public time and resources on various pet pork and social projects.

Sadly, when it came down to doing something about what should be their first priority, the best LB Council members could do (9-0) on the afternoon of March 6, 2012 was to direct city management to devise ways to enable the Council to continue its current spending and hold public safety hostage to higher taxes.

Makes you hmmm, doesn't it?