By Kenneth McCrae Santa Monica
Your article concerning Santa Monica’s low crime rate proves a point (SMDP, Jan. 22, page 1), the increase in the city’s homeless population has not brought more crime to the city.
Perhaps having so many homeless around is actually a deterrent to crime. After all, a criminal doesn’t want a lot of witnesses.
This also proves that all the vilification of homeless in the past few years has been incorrect — most homeless are not violent criminals to be shunned by law-abiding citizens. In fact, nearly all of the local crimes reported in your paper have been committed by housed Santa Monicans.
I do agree with your very funny and very clever editorial artist, Joe King (joking?) — Santa Monica Police Department Chief James T. Butts needs to get his facts straight — or grow more fingers to count with. It’s sort of like the report to the City Council where the number of people placed into permanent shelter last year was put at 620 — over half the number of homeless the city claims are clogging its parks and streets. At that rate, we should see the end of homelessness in the city by the end of this year. Yeah, right.
Hopefully the meeting to be held by Bring LA Home at the Civic Center will bring a breath of reality to the entire regional homeless situation.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 27, 2004. Read the original PDF.