Hi neighbor! Like RexDart I only live a couple of blocks away on Morrissey, the convoys of police, helicopters and blockade of Hwy 1 were more excitement than I like to see in Santa Cruz. It's been a rough start to 2013, we were already wondering what was up with all the sudden gun violence, this just took it to a whole new level.
I am dong some soul searching too. I believe in the "Keep Santa Cruz Weird" effort, but I also understand that SC is way too fond of it's drugs. Though they shouldn't be, drugs are illegal right now so there is a supply chain staffed entirely with criminals. Just like prohibition the drug wars have created a ruthless corpratized infrastructure of gangs. SC not only has an indigenous community very into it's drugs, but also a somewhat welcoming attitude to the homeless that also have mental and addiction problems. Thanks to the Agri business serfdom in the central valley we also have serious gang issues fermenting within our close neighbor Watsonville. Lately they seem to like coming up to the not-big city to do their partying and taking shots at people they mistake for their rivals.
It's not going in a good direction.
What do we do? I believe in needle exchanges, I believe in treating addiction as a disease and I believe in supply and demand. We have a disproportionate demand for drugs now in SC and I don't like the look of the suppliers moving in to meet it.
I realize a lot of what I said above is not relevant to the nut who killed the officers. He had a history of unstable violence, voyeurism that got him prison time and had just been caught breaking into a female work mates apartment a couple of days before. Nothing here that would prevent him from owning guns of course, but at least this doesn't appear to be drug related. He did move here from somewhere else though and I think we have a reputation for being too slack at enforcing laws, drug or otherwise and that is making us attractive to the wrong kind of people.
In many ways SC is still Old America. Kids play baseball in the street, they walk to school and my neighbors talk to me. Some of them are weird, not as weird as me but I like that we are so very different to our neighbors in Silicon Valley. Something has gone wrong though and I would like to understand what it might be so we can stop.
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