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Santa Cruz Indymedia | Government & Elections | Health, Housing, and Public Services | Police State and PrisonsSanta Cruz spends more on police than comparable cities
We are clearly spending through the nose for police -- are they making the streets safer or more dangerous? An expose written by Good Times staff (apparently inspired by my Sentinel editorial), and then deep-sixed by editors and never published in the print edition. This is the question I want to see asked more often: We are clearly spending through the nose for police -- are they making the streets safer or more dangerous? Recent incidents in Oakland (nearly commonplace in cities with large minority populations) would suggest an answer. When will we be courageous enough to stand up to powerful forces and start taking cops off of our streets locally? Santa Cruz spends more on police, more on parks than comparable citiesWritten by Chris J. Magyar, Good Times StaffMonday, 15 December 2008 GT has conducted a study of the 10 California cities (and, UPDATE, Davis) with the nearest total population to the city of Santa Cruz, comparing each municipality's general fund expenditures by department to see how Surf City stacks up in budgetary priorities. While comparing city budgets is no simple task -- it's red apples to green apples to apple blossoms -- every effort was made to examine the cities' line items to group budgetary expenditures in a way similar to Santa Cruz's categories. When some cities with close populations (such as Rosemead and Paramount) had radically different spending patterns (in both cases due to contracting with their counties for police service), their budgets were ignored. After the jump, there are tables comparing where Santa Cruz ranks in expenditures with each of the 10 study cities, and pie charts for a visual look at our city's priorities. Our city's numbers are from the budget currently posted on the Santa Cruz site, and do not reflect the proposed cuts made at the Dec. 9 city council meeting, nor the Phase 8 cuts made a few months ago. The most obvious difference is that Santa Cruz spends a higher percentage of its General Fund on parks and recreation than any other city with approximately 50,000 to 60,000 residents except for Palo Alto, which happens to be the richest city in this group. It is also near the top in police spending, matching Gardena and Fountain Valley, and trailing only National City in San Diego County. However, most cities spend in the 30 percent to 40 percent range on police services, with only Palo Alto underneath that range. The category of Public Works (general fund expenditures on infrastructure, which often do not include water and sewer, since those are usually enterprise funds) was the most difficult to compare across cities, as each government had a slightly different structure for infrastructure, and different cooperations with water and trash agencies. However, Santa Cruz spends very little on this category compared to all the study cities except for Woodland in Yolo County. Some cities included library services in their Parks & Recreation budget, some did not, and some had no library funding. We decided to put library costs in with that budget. City Core encompasses expenses for administrative departments, city executives, city councils, and miscellaneous expenditures. All numbers were pulled from the respective city's public websites. In a purely subjective measure, GT found that Santa Cruz is about middle-of-the-pack in terms of crafting budget PDFs that are easy to understand and graphically pleasing. Also, Palo Alto has one awesome website ... go figure. Here are the charts: Size of General Fund, and list of study cities
Populations are based on 2007 estimates. Percentage spent on police
Percentage spent on fire and emergency
Percentage spent on parks and recreation, including library
Percentage spent on public works
Percentage spent on planning and community development
Percentage spent on city core administration and personnel, including city council
Pie chart comparisons of general fund expenditures by categoryLegend: blue = police, red = fire, yellow = parks and recreation and library, green = city core, purple = public works, orange = planning  Santa Cruz  Davis  Fountain Valley  Gardena  La Mesa  National City  Palo Alto  Perris  Petaluma  San Rafael  Tulare  Woodland |
and this is just my personal opinion, your mileage may vary -- when I say "When will we... start taking cops OFF of our streets locally?" I mean that in the peaceful sense and with no personal disrespect to the individuals who no doubt believe they are doing good things in society.
For example, the Davis to Santa Cruz comparison that I saw used earlier. So we spend more on police than Davis. But we also spend twice as much on public works. Well, we're not Davis. We have different crime rates, and different environments.
-Davis doesn't see its population double and triple on summer weekends like we do.
2003 FBI statistics:
-Davis had 28 rapes, Santa Cruz had 48.
And so personally, in answer to your question, I'm willing to be brave enough to take our cops off the streets when our streets become less dangerous.
And in answer to your question: I think the cops make our streets a LOT safer, not more dangerous.
-Davis had 140 aggrevated assaults, Santa Cruz had 346.
-Davis had 1,631 larceny or theft, Santa Cruz had 2,420.
-Davis had 0 murders, Santa Cruz had 4.
http://www.cityrating.com/crimestatistics.asp
National City had more murders, and more robberies.
Santa Cruz had more rapes, more theft, more arson, and nearly identical robbery.
In order to make sense of this it's good to put Santa Cruz in context. A post above implies that Santa Cruz needs to spend more on police than Davis because Santa Cruz sees huge influxes of tourist during the summer. True enough.
Santa Cruz's economy is based on two things: tourism and the university.
The surrounding county has a lot of agricultural work. Some elites up at the University would like to colonize the town with high-tech firms ("Silicon Beach"), but this probably isn't going to happen.
The tourism economy is highly exploitative. It pays low wages. It demands that the city put money and attention into amenities and economic development schemes that are designed to bring in more tourists and make the business community happy. Locals lose out in many respects, especially the Latino working class. The redevelopment of the downtown after Loma Prieta is a great example of this inequality in action.
The agriculture in surrounding areas is also very exploitative, needless to say.
From day one the university attracted young radicals and counter culture elements to SC. The old establishment in the 1960s was very upset at this as they saw it as a threat to the social order. Still today there's a strong lobby in the city to keep the "hippies" and "anarchists" under control. Thus the cops are always expending resources and firepower on the gutter punks, traveler kids, homeless, squatters, and anyone who identifies with them. The cops break up drum circles, there's a sleeping ban, and a slew of ridiculous downtown ordinances, all designed to keep the "undesirables" away. Of course the hippie aesthetic is now a major part of the SC tourism economy and much of what was formerly counter culture has been co-opted by business and city booster crowd, but that's another story.
The point of the police force in Santa Cruz is to keep the tourism business running smoothly, keep the counter culture types from messing things up too bad, keep the working class Latino youth under watch, etc. Many US cities are just like this. Tourism is an illness that retards the growth of communities and skews the economy in favor of a tiny minority. It drives up real estate prices and engenders a city image as commodity in the eyes of the consumers who flock to the Boardwalk, Pacific Ave., etc.
It doesn't have to be this way. If SC had a more equitable political economy there there would be much less crime. If the city wasn't so obsessed with boosting the tourism revenues and paid more attention to locals needs the town could be a lot different. And if the working class Latinos in the county at large weren't ghettoized into Watsonville, the Beach Flats, and paid less than living wages, there would be far fewer crimes committed in their communities.
Don't expect the established political players (the Mayor et al. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Coonerty) to pursue this agenda. They represent the tourism-centered economy and are constantly negotiating with the university leadership in casting development strategy for the town as a whole.
-While making some nice, and accurate points, you fail to put forward any vision of how you would see things change. You say "more equitable political economy", but give us no idea what that entails. OK, so no agriculture, no tourism, what do you see the economy based on? What would you replace the tax income from tourism with?
It's too simple to say that only the University wants to bring high-tech jobs here; that agriculture and tourism exploit Hispanics. And I find particular irony in your acknowledgment that the Uni. is responsible for anarchists being here, but now the anarchists want the Uni. out. With the Uni. gone, anarchists would be cannon-fodder. Without the liberal student base to use as recruits and support their shenanigans, the anarchist population of Santa Cruz would have been run out of town on a rail loooong ago.
I agree with diy Dave: you have complaints but no solutions. So okay, take away tourism, agriculture, the University, and keep siliconbeach jobs out of here.
What's left, other than a subrosa pipe dream?
As per the university-"anarchist" dynamic - if that's how you want to frame it - read some dialectical theory. Things tend to create their own antithesis. Although universities are big parastatal corporations, real estate developers, military contractors, and apologists of the social order, they also tend to harbor deeply contradictory tendencies, and within and around them gather counter-cultural intellectuals and even whole communities. Nothing new or confusing in this.
Yes, things are complex. But give me a break, I'm commenting on an indymedia post. You want a book on the subject? Here, read this: http://friendlyfirecollective.info/articles/58/the-university-is-unsustainable
I don't know, I'd say Santa Cruz is probably what allows tourism for much of the bay area... A day trip to the boardwalk... Compared with Santa Barbara or Monterey, Santa Cruz is pretty ghetto...
-OK, name one that can fill the hole left in our economy if your "skeletal diagram" is put into effect and we stop relying on tourism, ag, and the university.
And with no vision of how to replace it, you have no promise that the replacement will be any less oppressive, or more rewarding, to underrepresented people than the current situation.
If you think that watching whats going on in the streets is going to convince me that that's a better alternative, you're mistaken. I'm saddened by the lack of vision and the sense of entitlement I see on the streets by "activists" in this town. It strikes me as being so far limited to little more than self-congratulatory vandalism.
My critique of the city's political economy still stands. How about you guys deal with that?
Skeptic, I think you're missing my point. I'm not advocating a "skeletal diagram." I use this phrase in reference to the economic and political structure that currently exists in Santa Cruz, the one I am criticizing with a very provisional and incomplete sketch. I have no skeletal diagram to "put into effect," and that you would call me out on such leads me to think you are confused. Please read my posts more carefully and I will try to write more carefully and clearly in the future.
My last comment on this subject: there are many alternative development visions out there, ones that promise much more equal and liberated forms of production and governance. If you can't see them it's probably because you're too comfortable and privileged by the current development paradigm, even if you're not entirely confident in it. Is it any surprise then that you reactively attack those who criticize the system you currently have?
-OK. I agree, our economy needs more diversity. I support the Salz Tannery project. I also support the new development on Delaware, though many people on Indybay don't. Do you support those projects? What would you advocate?
" I have no skeletal diagram to "put into effect," and that you would call me out on such leads me to think you are confused. Please read my posts more carefully and I will try to write more carefully and clearly in the future."
-Great, will do. However, you should consider that when you post the longest post on a thread, with MULTIPLE strong opinions, people might ASK you about those opinions? It's called a "discussion". It's not an attack. So far, you really haven't addressed anybody's questions, which makes your post look like a "pipe dream".
"My last comment on this subject: there are many alternative development visions out there, ones that promise much more equal and liberated forms of production and governance. "
-OK, name one. Seriously, I would like to hear your ideas.
"If you can't see them it's probably because you're too comfortable and privileged by the current development paradigm, even if you're not entirely confident in it. Is it any surprise then that you reactively attack those who criticize the system you currently have?"
-Now here comes the personal attacks, as you've run out of ammo for an actual "debate". No, I'm not privileged at all. I am VERY unhappy with the general status quo in this country, particularly the economy. However, it is not "reactively attacking" to question someone who made some pretty strong statements, but without much meat on the bone. Again, your post seems to be arguing for a SC economy NOT based on tourism, ag, or the UC, YET makes no effort to discuss alternatives to replace the income from those industries! You can't even name ONE thing that could replace those industries.