By Rodney Thilliampalam Santa Monica
In response to Carlos Pineiro’s letter (“Where are the Cops,” page 4, July 21), I have to take a certain amount of umbrage to his letter. As an employee of one of the many businesses in Santa Monica, I have seen the officers respond promptly to our calls of disorderly conduct on our premises. I have also seen them issue citations for public intoxication, and write tickets for traffic violations. I have seen them respond to silent alarms, and did so with the utmost professionalism. I personally have called them on a couple of occasions when I saw someone behaving erratically on our streets.
What Mr. Pineiro fails to realize is that the police cannot be everywhere all the time. Nor can they enforce laws if they are not informed laws are being broken. Unless Mr. Pineiro wants a Big Brother city with closed-circuit cameras all over the city, he should do the simple alternative of picking up the phone and calling in the problem. It’s a simple matter of being interactive with the police department. If not, then some of the fault belongs with him for not performing his civic duty as a resident of this city.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 23, 2008. Read the original PDF.