Mother Nature is the Ultimate Deterrent
Mother nature can’t just move mountains, it also works pretty well at moving mountains of homeless who refuse to accept the many indoor shelter options offered by the city and the county. And this week brought the first real winter storms of the year to Santa Cruz, slamming the area on Tuesday and Wednesday with lots of cold, wet rain and wind. I don’t like seeing people living outside in these conditions, yet there’s no shortage of dumbass grifters here wanting to prop up some Lord of the Flies Bum Camp. Didn’t we learn our lesson last year? It was right about this time that fiasco of city hall failure (“Camp Bernal”) began. Multiple people died in that shithole before the city grew a sack and evicted them some 6 months or so later. Millions of dollars in HAZMAT clean up was spent to fix the mess they left behind. I know Brent is doing good work here to help keep the local homeless warm and dry. The Santa Cruz Chapter of the Homeless Grifter’s Union (and their goofball attorney) can eat a bag of dicks. All they do is run their mouth and grift the homeless.
Wild Turkey Rescued From Local Homeless Camp
This past Tuesday, Santa Cruz Animal Control officers and rangers from SCPD found and rescued a neglected wild turkey that had been forced to live in a tent at a local homeless camp near the San Lorenzo River. It is now being cared for at the animal shelter.
Will it Go Round in Circles?
Saturday night, SCPD arrested William Swanson for DUI after he drove his car onto the roundabout at Beach & Pacific. The passenger in the vehicle was also sufficiently inebriated to get arrested for public intoxication.
Take Off Eh?
Tuesday night just after midnight, SCPD responded to West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz where they arrested a 57 year old woman for being drunk in public, resisting arrest, and battery on a peace officer. in a kind of unusual twist, this person doesn’t seem to be a local recidivist. They actually seem to be a drunk tourist from Canada. Go figure!
You Can’t Hide Your Prying Eyes
Early Wednesday morning, SCPD was conducting a random patrol on upper Ocean Street when a police sergeant noticed a man crouched behind a propane storage box near the front doors of the Valero Station. Just coincidentally, one of the front doors to the business appeared to be pried partially open. After stopping and detaining the suspected prowler, the man admitted to attempting to open the doors and was arrested for prowling and attempted burglary. The suspect also had pry bars, a glass cutter, and a large rock in his possession at the time.
Van on the Run
Last Friday night, a Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s deputy observed a white Ford Van which had been reported stolen from Ben Lomond earlier in the day driving along Highway 9 in Felton. As soon as the driver saw the deputy, he pulled into a nearby QuikStop and ran away on foot. Deputies chased the suspect as he hopped a fence into a nearby backyard before being taken into custody. He was arrested for a felony warrant, vehicle theft, driving on a suspended license and other charges.
City Votes on Recall
In what had to be a pretty uncomfortable moment for both Chris Krohn and Drew Glover, the city council voted on Tuesday to formalize their recall. It was the usual circus. It took them a while to get to the actual item and vote, due to the usual grandstanding by Glover. Then when it was time for the item, Glover had the usual cast of misfits come up and stroke his balls and ego, as if it makes any difference what anyone thinks of him. Then after the parade of tears, it was time to vote on it but poor, innocent Glover wanted everyone to not vote on the issue, stating voting on it was a way of validating it. And that’s when Justin Cummings stepped up and made a motion to set the date and vote on it. That’s all Watkins, Meyers, and Mathews needed to hear so when a call for the vote was made, it was done. Coming to a local election ballot in March of 2020. The meeting itself took over 12 hours but probably half of that time was taken by Glover pontificating or his friends whining. And to cap the meeting off, the city council voted to make Cummings the next mayor and Meyers the next vice mayor. Of course that made poor Drew even angrier (since he wanted Sandy Brown and she declined it). So Glover was the lone dissenting vote on Meyers. He just doesn’t get it. Doubling down on his shitty, divisive attitude is definitely going to get him recalled. So while Krohn tries to make new friends, Glover just keeps making new enemies.
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33 Responses
Yay Mother Nature ! Rain we need is here!
The 11 plus hours for a city council meeting is beyond ridiculous. I just don’t get it.
Crime might slow down with the rainy weather??? Maybe??
The city can save money with the recall by paying that worthless city attorney less by not having any more marathon 12 hour meetings. He probably bills the city $300/hr. to sit there and listen to Glover yap. Thanks Paige!
Glover is a classic narcissist, they never look in the mirror and blame others constantly. I wish we could vote for Mayor, but Cummings as Mayor is okay with me, I don’t like a lot of his politics but at least he is level headed for the most part. I am also glad that Meyers is the Vice Mayor. Maybe with new people on the council next Spring we can get some sanity back. I am also glad the turkey was rescued.
Thank you Ben as always for the report.
Thanks Gabrielle! I’m ok with Cummings as mayor. I don’t agree with a lot of his positions but I do feel he has the city’s overall best interest in mind (and not just the “special” interests Glover and Krohn coddle to). The fact a lot of the kooks like McMuffin and Noise have turned on him gives me hope. And I’m fine with Meyers too. She is the logical choice.
A 12 hour city council meeting really is ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as rescuing one lone turkey right before Thanksgiving. Sigh.
Thanks for the real local news Ben. Can’t wait for that recall!
Thanks Austin. Me too!
From now on, when SCPD dispatch asks if I see a weapon, I’ll reply that I see a turkey.Maybe then they will respond Maybe.
I still haven’t watched the whole council meeting, but the last part where individual council members were accused of being fascists and personally responsible for the deaths and misery of homeless people is beyond any stretch of acceptable. This public is beyond any definition of civil or reasonable discourse and makes whatever the council that exceed in some measure the boundaries of what we should expect in our civic leaders to represent look tame which it is not. It’s real bad also.
I’m not gonna flood this thread with what i really think, but who thinks this is gonna end well?
Thanks as usual Ben.
Hi Garrett, you are so very brave to watch all of that, I can’t anymore, I just can’t waste time on idiots. I feel for the good folks on the Council having to spend time with this ridiculous charade.
The more I watched, the worse it got. The lies, the smears, the food bomber king got thrown out, the in your face of the SJW’ers personal attacks, and of course, the ultra defective politics. Now the outrageous smears are because no one is outrageously leftish enough? I come on a little strong myself with the rhetoric, but I use logic and reason. Total outright lies are now standard issue and no one calls anyone out on any of this or if they do, it’s with even more lies and smears. Dang.
This is from something I wrote on nextdoor, hope it’s alright here. I assume a city council members name is ok as they are a public figure? Should be. I could have taken any agenda item and had equally worse things to say, but..
“Let me see, Glover frames regulating the homeless behavior which also applies to anyone actually as criminalization (never mind some are criminals, and homeless militant trespass/camp squatting isn’t really justified as an entitlement), then offered up to the homeless transitional encampments, the Kaiser building, Louden Nelson , Civic Auditorium, Freight building, Harvey West clubhouse, etc and I can’t believe he didn’t mention all the libraries, fire stations, public works facilities, and virtually every public asset under the sun as possible homeless home venues (with a condemning shame/blame attitude toward anyone with a different view). Jaw dropping unbelievable stuff while totally abandoning the absolute truth this issue is for higher civil authorities with the proper scope to deal with (like the County/State/Fed).
Cesspool stuff.
There is absolutely zero recognition, by anyone really, that Santa Cruz’s homeless ratio to population is 11-12 X worse than the national average, and that means … wait fo it… something is very wrong and these kind of ratios must be seen as positive proof something is wrong far in excess just here and is not just normal, that we should accept this as normal, and not look for special causes that are really just here and not elsewhere, and instead just treat symptoms and turn the city into a cesspool of government dependence. He would sacrifice all public resources, your money, your rights, your safety, your quality of life, for a very narrow class of individuals who contribute little if anything, in unlimited amounts no matter how many there are just because they walked across the city limits. There were even I assume homeless activists from Sacramento parading their little kinds around in front of the cameras with their expensive looking fist pump “power to the people” type Tee-shirts. WHO invited them?
Again Jaw dropping civic cesspool stuff of defective politics. March 3’rd can’t come soon enough and sorry for such a long one but I’m almost at the limit of what I can witness.
Thanks Garrett! I appreciate your willingness to publicly not give a fuck at city council meetings. You hit a lot of pain points. My only constructive criticism is slow down dude! You always nail your talking points nicely but you try to pack so much in to your 2 minutes, it loses it’s punch. Instead of reading as much as you can fit in, cut the talking points in half and punctuate them with slower delivery and pauses. But keep doing what you do. I love your fearlessness of calling out the BS.
I agree. I been told that before, but what I have to say is usually a long story and very complicated stuff. Far more than 2 minutes worth. Reducing it to sound bytes might work to insult people or inflame emotions (not my thing, and I dislike that when Glover does it), but I just can’t get my actual point across in half the words. Those long sentences are a bit difficult to follow, probably because sometime I forget myself where I am going mid sentence. My delivery is poor and I am no public speaker. I’m a far better writer and that will have to do. Those speeches are actually re-written at least once moving my main points to the top, and each sentence examined to see if it is really what I want to say. That it could be re-written further is a given. They are all up loaded into the record (except Oral Communications which they throw away if you hand something in… it’s “oral”?) and can be examined (including the end parts that I don’t get to which sometimes is some pretty wild stuff!). Probably nobody reads those after a meeting is over, but they are there. I keep going because lies poison reality, truth is the antidote.
I think you do pretty good in a snarky, aloof, Andrew Dice Clay kind of way. I actually dig it. Keep calling stuff out as you see it.
maybe you could write speeches for one of the new city council candidates? or help them formulate responses ahead of time, to local debates…
sometimes the people who run need help with bullet points or anecdotal stories … if you tend to be overly detail oriented, that could help someone else to cover all their bases… help prepare someone for all the issues around. just an idea. i know a lot of politicians have speech writers.
im really thankful for this blog and all the people who post here. this forum helps people stay informed, educate themselves, and know that their neighbors have sanity and are not all radical communists! that is nice to see justin is willing to go with the flow and bring some order to the meetings. more grounded and practical than some of this madness around (12 hour meetings omg).
maybe someone should send the city council a box of recall donuts??? didnt drew win by handing out donuts for student votes? how shocking, the people running the recall didnt have to hand out any donuts! :0)
I’m surprised there was no “turnstile of the week”…? Maybe rain equals no bike riding… equals not as many bikes to steal… equals not being able to sell parts and feed the drug habits…?
Hoping this cold snap and rain will deter new transient criminals and druggies from taking up residence here- ar least for a couple months. Itd be nice to do some local xmas shopping with only minimal bum harrassment.
Good catch! I’m sure there was someone who could easily have won this week’s title but I was feeling a little soft hearted this week with thanksgiving and all. Just a little. Thanks!
Happy (Post) Thanksgiving! I’m grateful, Ben, that you have the spirit, the anger, and the cojones to keep this publication going strong, week after week.
Thanks for reading and commenting and Julie!
Nice to see the kind words about Brent. He was against the Ross Camp, BTW.
Would you support him if he ran for City Council?
Depends on who else is running but stranger things have happened! Thanks for reading and commenting.
Look again at Coral Street and tell me about the weather being a deterrent. All of those businesses across the highway complaining about camping at their back door. Try having them at your front door, scaring customers away, urinating, defecating, leaving trash, buying and selling every drug the street knows, smoking meth openly, screaming at anybody who is in earshot when the meth hits hard.
It’s gonna take more than a heavy rain to put out the block sized dumpster fire on Coral. It’s gonna take a paradigm shift.
I see that Councilman Glover has posted on his Facebook page that he spent an entire night sleeping on the sidewalk so he could truly understand the tragedy of living on the street:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/santa-cruz-city-councilmember-drew-glover/what-if-that-was-me-my-experience-sleeping-outside-in-santa-cruz-ca/2501453329924396/
It’s a 2,273 word diatribe that reeks of narcissism. On the other hand, it might be good training for someone who will soon be out of a job.
didnt enjoy that read. so anyone who disagrees with him is an elitist???
in the name of “decriminalizing homelessness” he would open the city up as a free for all even worse than it is already.
people as extreme as he is dont want a legal difference between voluntarily transient and actualy homeless. so if he got his way, any criminal could waltz into santa cruz, commit any number of crimes, and have their charges dropped the second they claim homelessness. i mean the way it is now they just let their charges pile up.
thats the problem with turning the claim of homeless into a free pass. anyone who actually wants to be a career criminal can use that as an excuse!! its ruining the social services for people who actually are homeless. its also ruining those services for the people who try to work and volunteer there. drew is an elitist for expecting people to put up with this aggression.
decriminalize so many types of criminal activity in the name of “decriminalizing homelessness,” and someone who wants to set up a meth shop can just claim homeless and then they are legally seen as a victim??? big pharma is evil, but the meth dealer renting a room off the books and claiming homeless is a victim? no that meth dealer is profiting from a drug that causes extreme violence, a massive fire hazard and many times death.
barely any women are on the homeless census. women make less than men for the same work. women also tend to occupy lower paying jobs in general. yet they still have the same high cost of living in california, and they arent homeless! one person who wanted to “decriminalize homelessness” told me “oh no women are homeless because they all find guys to support them.” well if thats true then how on earth are there so many single women raising kids alone on low paying “womens” jobs without falling into homelessness???
plenty of women in california are single working moms … supporting children on lower wages and working 24/7 as the breadwinner and the single parent. 50% of our population is female. 31% of children in california live in a household headed by a single parent. i found another stat that says 80% of single parent households in the usa are single mothers. i dont even want to run the numbers and find out how many millions of women and children that is in california.
these policies are trashing the parks and libraries that those single moms might like to take their kids to! all the women who work downtown in minimum wage jobs in retail and waiting tables, or the office clerks… jobs that are mostly held by females – they cant even walk from their car to their work without being on edge. i guess the alt left forgot womens rights in the name of public takeover of all the housing and property everywhere??? oh well gee a massive landgrab of california… i guess that is more enticing than equal rights for women.
those women and children arent showing up on the homeless census in droves. so the majority of women in california, including the single moms, can hang but a bunch of middle aged men cant? what a joke he claims his work is based on data. what a joke.
the alt leftists arent going to take every last inch of santa cruz, including the private property, and arbitrarily hand it out to any middle aged male who shoots up meth, breaks into a gas station and then refuses to provide a permanent address to the police. california isnt going to put up with this much longer. people are tired of the narrative and the extremism is forcing everyone else to do the job our elected officials were supposed to do.
everyday citizens and taxpayers are doing the research and pouring over the data and the alt left socialist story doesnt add up. people who actively participate in democracy, and demand represenation from their elected officials are not elitist, they are hard working and they add participating in democracy to their list of tasks.
people who think they can hand out some donuts for student votes, and then demand blind allegiance from all the other voters are elitist. he says he is proud of the recall well so are the voters.
All true, every word. Thanks.
All true except for the convenient omission of government policies relating to child support or default parent assumptions by courts/advocates.
Dollars to donuts says some of our local homeless are in such a predicament due to the actions of the Family Courts and the society-fracturing policies of no-fault divorce, the Duluth Model and welfare provisions that disincentivize marriage.
If anything, the single-motherhood as accepted status quo paradigm is likely to create more honelessness in subsequent generations.
Just calling it like I’ve seen and experienced it. Please no bully.
Kris,
Come on man, are you serious with this women and children vs. men stuff?
Women and their children are both de jure and de facto considered as a protected class of people and are subject to more state protection than men. This is American Civics 101 and should be considered required knowledge for engaging in these discussions.
Also, legalities and policies aside, consider the reactions of strangers to the site of a crying woman on the side of the road versus a crying man. There is a reason hitchhiking couples put the female out to thumb while the guy hides out of sight. In general, men are considered more expendable and in-surplus than women.
It’s simply not as simple as “why can’t these guys hang and keep up with these single moms?” Also, that line of rhetoric plays into a lot of tired gender cliches that are of little use in addressing these issues.
Love reading your comments though, Kris. We’re all just working to make sense of this mess.
I don’t really have much to say about it except homelessness is mostly a male problem. 60+% of homeless are men, and women have better services than men. That’s a 50% bigger problem for men than women. No one really speaks for men who are homeless. They are the dregs of society. Anyway, some acknowledgement of this might help somehow. How got me, I’ll think about it.
in los angeles 70% is male
just from personal experience.. when my mom left my “dad” i havent called him that in over a decade… the only way she was able to take us out of the state was to let him keep all his money. he barely had to pay any child support… she didnt get alimony. she was the breadwinner and the single parent. she got harassed in the workplace multiple times and just stayed quiet and kept working because of her children. she also has a preexisting medical condition and could only get health insurance by working at a medium to large size corporation.
are you aware of the fact that women for the most part have only been working full time and as a sole breadwinner since after world war 2??? or how about the fact that women werent allowed to own private property for so long??
this is absolutely hilarious to me. you can look at a homeless census that shows mostly 35-45 year old males with the only disability as drugs and alcohol.. mostly none of them are of a minority race.. and you can blame that on divorce or child support or alimony payments???
you saw the guy who had claimed homeless in 2 counties and then bought a 1M pad in scotts valley for cash with the drug money. no one took child support or alimony payments from that cash.
plenty of cash construction work… if a guy were really destitute due to child support payments he could just work for cash. and i dont buy that anyway. the construction industry still pays extremely well and its still 90% or more dominated by male employees. the data shows men still make way more than women.
you are in denial dude. california has a bunch of drug store cowboys and its trashing the whole state.
im telling you im not going to vote for anyone who tells me im obligated to pay for a house for these guys. and you must be joking that it is easier for a woman to be on the streets or hitch a ride we all know what happens to those women. and the horror stories are such a deterrent it probably helps as a motivator to make sure they never end up there. compared to that type of assault, a women will put up with crappy wages and all kinds of crap.
im not buying these guys a house hell no.
and according to your logic,all those women arent receiving any child support payments because the fathers are on the streets. yet the women are still not homeless! women do not have better services…
there are safety nets for health insurance, and welfare, and renting a room does not cost that much. this is criminal abuse of the welfare system. im really shocked if people are willing to look at that census and claim the men have no other abilities or option. this is mass scale enabling. one google search shows a break down of what people are paid based on gender and race.. and the demographics of this census do not add up with that.
I’m spreading the word about the Weekly dump/Santa Mierda I’m seeing people’s eyes open and jaws drop. I also got the few cleaners,janitors maids ect ect on board as well. It never amazes me the input I get from that group most of it though is disturbing to heartbreaking. I got some of them to go on Santa Cruz mug shots .com and HOLY CRAP they recognized so many of our lovely REPEAT OFFENDERS but I’m not surprised. They all started telling me stories most were witnesses by more then a few people. These hard working people get physically assaulted by these scum all the time cause it’s the janitors and cleaners And maids( mostly female ) who often find these scum bags hidden away were they shouldn’t be. It seems all PD does in those situations is just get the scum or scums away and that’s about it. Most of these folk have been maintaining the same buildings for 10+ years some make it a family affair and have there sons and daughters in training to take over one day but with how it’s getting one or the fathers told me he’s making his kids do ANYTHING besides work in downtown SC being any kind of cleaner/maid.
I don’t comment this week cause so many people were saying what I would say anyhow. It’s nice to have a place to vent and get inside news that we can’t ger anywhere else. As always THANKS BEN!!
Thanks for all you’re doing Dave!