Yet, incredibly, implausibly and idiotically, it was announced last week that the proposed budget by Mayor Robert Garcia featured stripping his already understaffed police force of 50 officers and adding 30 unarmed, yet uniformed people to be laughingly known as "ambassadors" to carry out non-violent assignments that on occasion can turn out to be quite violent.

Even worse, the elected leadership here keeps saying it plans to reimagine how the LBPD will henceforth conduct its business, classic doublespeak for saying how it plans to soften its aggressiveness towards criminal behavior and demand it take a more kindly, see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, arrest-no-evil approach to crime, an approach that has, well, been such a staggering success in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, St. Louis, and Washington D.C.

Who in tarnation comes up with such a maddeningly bizarre course of action?

Is there one person in our elected leadership- -- from Mr. Garcia to City Manager Tom Modica to the members of the City Council --- who can look into a mirror and say with heartfelt sincerity, honesty and truthfulness, "This reimagining of our police department is a superb idea! Just look how wonderful such tactics are working in our great cities around the country. The crime rates and homicides are decreasing everywhere. We're definitely all going to be safer with a thinner, kindlier police department. We're all going to be happier with less cops around to respond promptly to emergency home invasion calls and other such innocuous violations. Just look how swimmingly everything has gone since our 22-officer field gang unit was disbanded. Gang shootings are way down! Our next target to disband will be, of course, our homicide squad, and our long range goal in our reimagining campaign will be to disarm our cops like the Bobbies are in England. Our ultimate goal is to have a kinder, sweeter, softer, more hands-off police department. We plan to rename it Goodwill Ambassadors of Long Beach."

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But why listen to what we think.

I mean, I thought the police department's deportment on the Great Memorial Day Plunder and Pillage Festival was abominable, although an asterisk should be placed next to its failing grade because there is overwhelming evidence to indicate it was told to stand down by those running the proceedings at City Hall.

And, natch, it was the latter individuals who afterwards were the only ones to praise the LB police's pacifistic approach to the looting frenzy, which, alas, tells you a lot about what direction this city is headed...

It looks like the World's Luckiest Man, the worst coach in major college football, USC's ghastly Clay Helton, will make it through yet another year without deservedly being fired. This time he won't even embarrass himself, as would have been the certain case had his team's game with Alabama not been canceled. And now he will go the entire autumn without embarrassing himself as the Pac-12 has postponed its season....

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Previously by Mr. Krikorian: