A Vegetable Garden Is Not A Substitute For Enough Cops

Here's the text that accompanies it:

City of Long Beach 6th District Councilman Dee Andrews, Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS) Weed & Seed Program, Department of Parks, Recreation & Marine, Neighborhood Services Bureau, Central Neighborhood Advisory Committee (CNAC), the South Wrigley Neighborhood Advisory Group (NAG) and the Peace Garden Leadership Group opened the MLK Peace Garden Saturday, August 28, 2010 from 10 a.m. -- 12 pm, at Martin Luther King Jr. Park, DHHS Central Facilities Center.

Located in the heart of Long Beach, the Peace Garden is a community grass roots project that Councilman Andrews brought to fruition in January of 2010, as a part of the Annual Long Beach Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Week. The recognition ceremony will focus on the neighborhood partner's and the volunteers that assisted in creating the community project. "When businesses and neighbors get involved with their local communities, we can really make things happen", said Councilman Dee Andrews. "This Peace Garden has created opportunities for community ties and these efforts are an excellent example for neighborhoods across the country to follow because together we can do anything".

Here's a City Hall release that preceded it:

City of Long Beach 6th District Councilman Dee Andrews, Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS) Weed & Seed Program, Department of Parks, Recreation & Marine, Neighborhood Services Bureau, Central Neighborhood Advisory Committee (CNAC), the South Wrigley Neighborhood Advisory Group (NAG) and the Peace Garden Leadership Group cordially invites you to the Peace Garden recognition ceremony on Saturday, August 28, 2010 from 10 a.m. - 12 pm, at Martin Luther King Jr. Park, DHHS Central Facilities Center, 1133 Rhea Street.

Located in the heart of Long Beach, the Peace Garden is a community grass roots project that Councilman Andrews brought to fruition in January of 2010, as a part of the Annual Long Beach Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Week. The recognition ceremony will focus on the neighborhood partner's and the volunteer, who assisted in creating this community project, which has been created with the intention to be a model for community gardens in all parks. "When businesses and neighbors get involved with their local communities, we can really make things happen", said Councilman Dee Andrews. "This Peace Garden has created opportunities for community ties and these efforts are an excellent example for neighborhoods across the country to follow because together we can do anything."

The honorees include the Peace Garden Leadership Group, a youth group that has been working diligently on completing the project and the Neighborhood Services Bureau's Neighborhood Partners Program, that provided a matching grant of $5,000 in goods and services to Central Neighborhood Advisory Committee and South Wrigley Neighborhood Advisory Group to purchase tool shed, hoses and tools to maintain the garden, garden design services, and lumber. Other honorees include LB GRIP, Timothy Collier-The Green Plumber, Pacific Gateway Workforce Investment Network/Youth Opportunity Center, Azteca Landscape, Sully Miller Company Inc., Home Depot, State Farm Insurance, Connected Corridor, Sasha Sanno/Wrigley Garden/Long Beach Local, Stephen Duprey of DuPrey’s Garden & Design, Silvano Ponce- Handyman, Deborah Kearn- Long Beach Unified School District Educator, Long Beach City College Sheetmetal Department and Ganahl Lumber Company.

LBReport.com has covered events like this previously in conventional fashion but we plan to cover them differently now because circumstances are different now.

One year ago in September 2009, the LB City Council voted 9-0 to cut LB budgeted sworn officers for taxpayers for deployment citywide by 76 sworn positions (59 sworn + 17 recruits from an erased replenishment Academy class).

That came after City Manager Pat West proposed, without dissent from Mayor Bob Foster, to cut LB's sworn police level by 88 officers; the Council's response was to cut "only" 76 officers. Two Councilmembers who voted for that are now gone, replaced by Councilmembers James Johnson and Steve Neal.

In the next two weeks, the new Council is scheduled to vote on a proposal by City Manager West, advanced without dissent by Mayor Foster, that the City Council cut 27 more sworn officer positions (four civilianized) if city employee unions agree to modify contracts City Hall negotiated with them (that the unions modified last year that City Hall wants modified again by September 15).

If the unions don't agree to this, West and Foster propose that the Council cut 49 more sworn officer positions (on top of the 27 they're already proposing to cut). That would leave LB with 76 fewer officers budgeted for taxpayers for citywide deployment in FY11 than in FY10, when the Council slashed 76 officers from FY09's level.

With all due respect, a vegetable garden is no way to respond to this.

The Foster/West "best case" would leave LB taxpayer with roughly 100 fewer budgeted officers than last year (76 + 27 = 103) while their worst case ("Plan B") would leave LB with roughly 150 officers (103 + 49 = 152).

That would leave Long Beach with a per capita budgeted officer level for citywide deployment roughly equivalent to cutting L.A.P.D's level by roughly 25% (and think closer to 30%).

L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa hasn't proposed this. No L.A. Councilmember has proposed this. And LBPD Police Chief Jim McDonnell didn't propose this when he was L.A.'s Assistant Police Chief.

In Long Beach, it's the culmination of years of evasions, including another of City Hall's famously non-binding (eventually ignored) "plans" that recommended 1,023 officers by FY2000. Taxpayers never received those officers, not in 2000 or at any time subsequent.

At one point, the City Council budgeted 1,020 total officers but that included nearly 60 officers who weren't available for citywide neighborhood deployment because they're contracted to handle tasks at the Port/Airport/LBCC/LBUSD, paid by those entities and not by the Council's General Fund.

At its maximum, LB's neighborood/citywide police level budgeted by the Council's General Fund barely reached 960, which was thinned by City Hall's failure to provide a replenishment police academy class to replace retiring/exiting officers, then slashed by the Council in Sept. 09 by 76 budgeted sworn officer positions and now thinned further by over two dozen sworn officer positions budgeted on paper left unfilled on the street.

That is the level from which LB city management and the Mayor have proposed that the Council cut police still further, from 27 to 76 more officers. By our rough reckoning, that would leave LB below 850 officers and headed toward 810. These were the types of police levels that LB City Hall itself acknowledged over a decade and a half ago should be increased...and that was at a time when LB was smaller and gangs were less entrenched.

LBReport.com has never objected to gardens, neighborhood clean-ups and the like. There is evidence that when coupled with sufficient police, they can reduce crime. We have never objected to reading and re-reading the words of King and Gandhi. There is always a chance that reading their great words will turn a hardened heart.

But to pretend that a vegetable garden will make Long Beach safer in the face of what is proposed for Council action in the next two weeks is in our opinion dangerous and delusional.

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