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# Chiefly speaking, there’s work to do
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/chiefly-speaking-theres-work-to-do/
- Published: 2006-06-03T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T18:14:27.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Crime, Promenade, #archive-import, Homeless

This past week, Q-line asked: “What advice would you give the city’s new chief of police? What areas or issues would you like the new chief to focus on initially?” Here are your responses: ✆ “I think it is utterly ridiculous to look nationwide for a replacement for Chief Butts. What is the matter with hiring from within? From men who already are well aware of the city’s problems, and have been under the direction and example of a great chief for all these years. The new chief needs to concentrate on ridding this city of all the escalating bum population, cluttering up our parks, streets, stores, beach — in other words, reverse our skid row image.” ✆ “Well there are lots of problems in our city, as we all know, but just a thought here: Since parking and traffic are such big issues in this city, the new chief should investigate all the transients moving into the city and living on our residential streets in their vans and cars, taking up spaces on a continuing basis that should go to residents and their visitors. We are turning into a trailer park.” ✆ “The majority of calls that the Santa Monica Daily Press will receive on this week’s question will be regarding the homeless situation that is more the city manager’s responsibility than that of the chief of police. Chiefs of police are cut from the same cloth and their responsibility is to regiment and discipline the rank and file officers under their command, whose responsibilities are to investigate crime, write traffic citations, and display a police presence when and where needed — a simple formula that requires a great deal of hard and sometimes dangerous effort.” ✆ “Stop hiring our managers, superintendents, or police chiefs from anywhere other than here. We keep hiring other cities’ crooks. We have many qualified people from Santa Monica to fill these major positions. Only people from our city understand the special needs and problems we have. For a starter, the new chief should follow proposition 215 and agree to follow our city laws, including, if passed, our lowest priority pot law.” ✆ “The advice I’d give to the new chief is ‘quit.’ You’re dealing with bunch of idiots on the City Council, and you’re dealing with a bunch of bums running around the city making messes and stinking everything up, and if you try to do something about that all the do-gooders will complain, but that is the main function of the police department is to clean up the city; if that means arresting every bum with a shopping cart, so be it. But you’re gonna find that it’s not gonna be easy, and you’ve got a few gangs to deal with too; that’s another major problem.” ✆ “The new police chief should have the officers cite and ticket the unsafe drivers; those who drive at high speeds and those who make unsafe maneuvers on the road. There are way too many of them here in Santa Monica. Let’s hope the new police chief will enforce safe driving regulations.” ✆ “The new chief should concentrate more on pedestrians, because there are constant jaywalkers and bicycles and stuff like that.” ✆ “I think it’s an optimal necessity for the new chief of police to regard people with disabilities on a grander scale than they’re doing now, thank you very much, because we need help, like a lot. We need to get the streets repaved so that those of us who are in wheel-chairs that are disabled can use them. And also get more busses to work on the dial-a-ride program.” ✆ “The new city police chief should stop all the harassment by the bums and derelicts. They are too lazy to work or too lazy to go get help and not even bright enough to go apply for medical or anything else. I’m disabled and I’m tired of people hassling me every day, every day, every day. It’s really not a good situation. They got the new $100 million mental health bill going through, they ought to pick them up, put them in to get help, or at least do something for them to get off the streets.” ✆ “My advice to the new police chief is twofold: No. 1 is find out from Chief Butts how despite a steady increase in homeless people, there’s a steady decrease in crime, and secondly that he should double or perhaps triple the number of police on the street. I’m sure the law-abiding citizens and residents of Santa Monica would not mind living in a police state. This may further help the economy, which is booming. We certainly have the money, and I have no fear of policeman on every corner — sounds wonderful.” ✆ “I would like to give the advice to the new police chief to have a thick skin and a strong backbone because he or she is gonna need it, and the main issue that they need to focus on immediately is the homeless problem and all the crime and the issues that come along with it. It’s absolutely disgusting walking down the Third Street Promenade or down at the park or anywhere in these areas, and I’m embarrassed when friends and family come and tourists come to this area. So the homeless issue is the No. 1 issue.” ✆ “Progressive thought in this town requires that the next chief be hired through social promotion, in all probability a woman of color. Whoever it is needs a strong backbone and a tough resume to deal with the weak knees on the City Council. Someone like LA Chief Bratton — big on community policing, putting more officers walking a beat. Bratton believes in no-window-broken theory — fix the small problems right away. The new police chief needs to fix the attitudes of some of our progressives who have a superior mindset: The number of people who walk against the red light, loud car stereos, extremely loud motorcycles down from the beach and schools, people who jog down busy streets, bicyclists who ride through stop signs, and the very difficult task of keeping us safe from the criminals and policing the small life quality things.” ✆ “The new chief should concentrate on ridding the city of homeless. Read the crime report in Friday’s Santa Monica Daily Press. Nine out of the 10 of the arrests that were made are transients. It’s about time we stop helping the problem when we should get rid of the problem. No more homeless in Santa Monica — I think we’ve all had enough.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 3, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/060306.pdf?ref=smdp.com)