I mentioned casually the other day to someone passionate about Jamiel's Law that it was typical of L.A. that we've started making everyone who plays golf at a city course offer valid proof of identity and residency but we don't do the same thing to illegal immigrants even if they're gangsters or criminal suspects.
"Nobody cares about golfers,'' the person responded quickly.
Over the weekend, I mentioned this conversation to an official in charge of one of the city courses and he said the recent 10 percent hike in golf fees (and even bigger hikes for golfers over 65 and even higher than that for non-residents) and he told me to stop bitching. The higher fees were driving away golfers like mad but still bringing in more money to thecity so a lot of golfers were saying play was faster and the courses weren't as chewed up.
So the unintended consequence of demanding identification was that the quality of golf was better for those who could afford to play here and the courses were less crowded.
Applying that to Jamiel's Law which would crack down on
illegal immigrant criminals and you get the corollary: The quality of life in LA. would be better and the city less crowded if we stopped treating illegal residents the same as legal residents and stopped acting like we owe everyone a place to live even if they can't afford to live here.
OK, that oversimplifies a complex issue. But it does make the case I think that Jamiel's Law deserves to be taken out of City Council hell and brought forward for public debate.
Illegal immigration is a major problem and can only be solved by the federal government. But the failure of the city to draw any distinction between legal residents, immigrants or citizens, and illegal residents even those engaged in criminal activity is the single most divisive issue today in our community.
Mainstream media almost entirely ignore the issue while talk radio and bloggers hit it hard over and over. The politicians run from the issue while ordinary people get angrier and turn their anger toward all immigrants.
I accept that nobody cares about the plight of golfers but I don't accept that an issue that inflames the public passions and is tied to so many of our problems doesn't even deserve to be debated in public by our city's leaders.
How can they ask property owners on the November ballot to pay a flat $36 a year parcel tax in perpetuity -- the most regressive form of taxation -- to fund gang programs if they won't even ask street gang members engaged in criminal activity to show some valid identification?
"Nobody cares about golfers,'' the person responded quickly.
Over the weekend, I mentioned this conversation to an official in charge of one of the city courses and he said the recent 10 percent hike in golf fees (and even bigger hikes for golfers over 65 and even higher than that for non-residents) and he told me to stop bitching. The higher fees were driving away golfers like mad but still bringing in more money to thecity so a lot of golfers were saying play was faster and the courses weren't as chewed up.
So the unintended consequence of demanding identification was that the quality of golf was better for those who could afford to play here and the courses were less crowded.
Applying that to Jamiel's Law which would crack down on
illegal immigrant criminals and you get the corollary: The quality of life in LA. would be better and the city less crowded if we stopped treating illegal residents the same as legal residents and stopped acting like we owe everyone a place to live even if they can't afford to live here.OK, that oversimplifies a complex issue. But it does make the case I think that Jamiel's Law deserves to be taken out of City Council hell and brought forward for public debate.
Illegal immigration is a major problem and can only be solved by the federal government. But the failure of the city to draw any distinction between legal residents, immigrants or citizens, and illegal residents even those engaged in criminal activity is the single most divisive issue today in our community.
Mainstream media almost entirely ignore the issue while talk radio and bloggers hit it hard over and over. The politicians run from the issue while ordinary people get angrier and turn their anger toward all immigrants.
I accept that nobody cares about the plight of golfers but I don't accept that an issue that inflames the public passions and is tied to so many of our problems doesn't even deserve to be debated in public by our city's leaders.
How can they ask property owners on the November ballot to pay a flat $36 a year parcel tax in perpetuity -- the most regressive form of taxation -- to fund gang programs if they won't even ask street gang members engaged in criminal activity to show some valid identification?
Ron Kaye is the former editor of the Los Angeles Daily News where he spent 23 years helping to make the newspaper the voice of the San Fernando Valley and fighting for a city government that serves the people and not special interests.
Twice in recent years, Los Angeles Magazine listed Kaye among the city’s most influential people, specifically in the area of politics. Kaye has been variously described in the media as the “accidental anarchist,” “the Patrick Henry of the San Fernando Valley” and a “passionate populist.” He is now committed to
carrying on his crusade for a greater Los Angeles as an ordinary citizen. Previously, Ron worked at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner,
Associated Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Australian as well as papers
in Fairbanks, Alaska and Yakima, Wash. He also wrote for Newsweek magazine, The Guardian in London and the National Enquirer.
Spot on, Ron!
Complicated topic with many shades of ifs, ands and buts, nonetheless a vital topic that needs to be opened to public discussion, and not limited to letters to the editor and comments in both L.A. daily newspapers.
Submitting a comment anonymously is one thing, but forgetting to fill in a name (comment submited one minute ago) is ridiculous. And I've already had one cup of coffee.
Wow, Gentrification of the golf courses through one simple city council action. I could be sarcastic and say that if golf were the favorite recreation- and I can't call it a "sport" based on what I see is involved- of a particular contingent of the population waiting for passage of an amnesty provision to be passed had objected to the fee hike, taking their grievance literally to the council chambers. It would be even more lively a situation if, let’s say, golf just happened also to be the national sport of the countries of origin for this contingent of the Los Angeles population. Well, you can envision how the rest of this might or would turn out if you pay any attention to city council's own patterns and practices.
But I won't be sarcastic; I’ll just say I wouldn’t be surprised if the city golf course fees might even be reduced or selectively waived. And could that be called "de-gentrification"?
An idea was aired at the SLAP Saturday meeting that advocated opening up LAUSD property to public uses where it is not done now. I already know one area where this is still urged and that is with the athletic fields. A high school where I got a good bit of education during my teaching stint with the LAUSD is one example that gives me a preview to this extended access objective. There was time available for its usage but it had to be approved and there may have been some payment of fees involved. There was some controlled use for the local youth sports teams to some extent, but still not as much as sports-involved people wanted.
The field for this particular school was located in an out-of-the-way place, not easily observable without actually traveling up a small hill. Often there would be soccer players using it on weekends, without authorization. The result was a heavily worn field for the football players to use that needed attention for the battering it took over the weekend. My personal knowledge is from several years back and I don't know if circumstances changed for the better or worse since then.
This is the other direction that things take when access is extended; things do get used more and require more maintenance. Fortunately, this athletic field example is more a unique example and meeting rooms and classrooms would not be as susceptible to the same level of wear and tear as a field. But access or use of the classrooms doesn't seem to be demanded by the community elements to any degree approaching that for an athletic field. It would be encouraging from an anthropological standpoint if that condition were reversed.
Asking for proof of residency at a golf course is for YOUR benefit, Ron -- municipal courses have been swamped by people from out of the cuonty because they're so cheap, and the goal is just to give residents primary access. (Can non-residents play at a "Second Tier" basis? E.g, making reservations only later than residents, and paying a higher fee? That's excactly what happens at Beverly Hills Tennis Courts, and ALL their Parks $ Recs programs, from kids' classes to senior outings. In fact, some programs, like preschool and senior center lunches, are ONLY for residents. Many cities do this to give preference to local taxpayers, and it's a BENEFIT to you, Ron. -- Now, if they copy down the whole thing with DOB, I'd object to privacy loss, but just looking at you DL to establish local address is long overdue to allow residents more access to the courses.)
Jamiel's Law, sigh, is utterly ignorantly framed. Even nucklehead Zine's motion -- no legal mind, he, look at his "paparazzi law," laughed at by every lawyer, constitutional and otherwise, as ass-backwards in being designed to give special protections to celebrities who seek out and profit from paps when it suits them, not written to protect their neighbors and unaware drivers caught in the way -- acknowledges that the fault in letting out Pedro Espinoza lies with the Sheriff's dept.
As Zine's motion notes, it was the Sheriff's dept. which failed in its duty to determine whether Espinoza was illegal or not. And what Zine doesn't mention -- since DA Steve Cooley is apparently his friend, or Zine is trying to suck up to him and get him to be, as another fat old provincial Republican no less prey to temptations of the flesh than the Democrats they vilify -- is that as the DA, it's Cooley's job to prosecute FELONS including and especially illegal ones.
And as both of Cooley's otherwise unconnected opponents made clear during the elections, Cooley has hundreds of overpaid inspectors on staff in addition to over a thousand attorneys, whose job and DUTY it is to ID and prosecute illegals while they're in jail, in cooperation with Baca's staff. (Baca claims he's too understaffed to do this himself.) But Cooley plea-bargains them out as he did Espinoza, who got out after being in County jail for months that last time around (after many former "visits" to county jail) just by lying that he was "born in the USA!"
(Cooley's office seems to make a lot of "mistakes" like letting out the husband in prison because his wife had a restraining order on him for trying to kill her -- violating the conditions of his deal with her, Cooley let out the husband who promptly killed her, right before the elections. But he covered this up until two days AFTER the election, claiming he'd been home with "a bad head cold." And you give this scumbag a total pass, when his list of derelections of duty on everything from failing to prosecute the Mexican Mafia-connected electeds in the 8 South of LA Cities like Cudahy, Bell, as he promised when he ran 8 years ago -- CityBeat under Alan Mittelstadt detailed his failures -- and his Asst. DA's allege that he won't let them go after friends of his skiming county recyclables for millions of profit that WE're entitled to. The list goes on...)
With some inkling of understanding of this, Zine's motion asks for a report to City Council of why "appropriate law enforcement" did nothing to identify and hold Espinoza in jail. That would be the Sheriff's and DA's depts.
As for Jamiel's Law -- it's written even more narrowly and ignorantly than Zine's motion, laying the blame solely on LAPD, Bratton, the Mayor, instead of where it belongs by jurisdiction and nature of the crime. I'd agree that Bratton could make good on his promise to be more explicit to his troops that SO40 DOES allow them to report suspects to ICE when stopped for another infraction, and he's apparently done that. But he has a point that a lot of what the cops deal with are misdemeanors like domestic crime, and if a wife thought the husband/ breadwinner would be deported or she would too, she wouldn't report the crime. Whether or not the same holds true in serious cases involving gangbangers is debatable, but if I were Bratton, the Mayor's office and Weiss, I wouldn't let the bunch behind the ignorantly framed and politically- motivated Jamiel's Law frame my debate, either. It's indisputable that the LAPD is still way to small in numbers to even police the city for basic crimes like aggravated assault and burglary, as we've seen from the spate of robberies on elderly ladies on the Westside, and a few months earlier, from the spate of hillside burglaries. The cops can't be stretched further to play ICE enforcers. (Not to mention, that Zine's public criticisms of Bratton and Weiss for years, when he's a legal ignoramus with no education while both of them have advanced and/or legal degrees, has to rankle them -- as we saw in Bratton's public response to Zine last week.)
The attack on our city officials gets even stupider when the right-wing Talk Show Bobbleheads jump in: the endless drumbeats of KKFI and Doug McIntyre mainly. McIntyre's even laying the blame for the San Francisco Balogna case at the feet of our local electeds, especially Weiss, which is so utterly stupid it boggles the mind. NEVER a mention of the law enforcement agencies who messed up and where blame belongs: Republicans stick together even in the fact of abject stupidity. (The fact that these ratings-driven rabble-rousers link together cases across the state shows that it's really a STATE issue -- the Assembly has to come up with something applicable to the whole state, which can override San Fran's policies, for example. By contrast, L A is NOT a "sanctuary city" and hundreds of illegals ARE quietly turned over to
the ICE every year by LAPD.)
This, Ron, is where you've lost me: your taking the politically biased, and provincially-biased (and equally ignorant, I dare say) positions on this Jamiel's Law case, as well as when it comes to opposing mass transit on the westside as "stealing from the VAlley," when the westside is the most underserved and has the most drive-thru commuter traffic of any area in the entire Western US (along with the Downtown-Santa Monica corridor, of which is also lies in the middle). These people are largely from the Valley, e.g. along the 405/101, and every canyon from Laurel/Coldwater/Benedict/Beverly Glen is a bottleneck most of the day because of the Valley. Yet prop values are about twice the valley, taxes too, yet the provincials who already have transit for their local commutes are whining -- making odd bedfellows between the ethnocentric panderers of East L A (like Glorias Molina & Romero) and that other old, fat, provincial, reactionary and City-Hating Republican, Antonovich. (Who's also in bed with Cooley and happily blames the LAPD and LA City instead of the COUNTY which he's supposed to oversee.)
Much as I don't like the Alarcon/Reyes/Padilla/ Cedillo/ "the Glorias" faction, your comments on everything from Jamiel's Law to mass transit/MTA are so politically biased and provincial, they lead the public astray as much as do those idiot talk-show hosts. But because of your years as a newspaper editor (albeit for a notoriously provincial, pro-Valley and anti-"metro" paper, which you used as an instrument of pro-Secession) you carry a lot more weight and can therefore be a lot more dangerous. IF ONLY you could see the forest instead of flailing at the more close-in target of every tree, you could do good instead.
12:11...as always you are informed, thoughtful and provocative...you are right, of course, i am being political but then so are you...suggesting that the city council put zine's motion on the table and actually state honestly what they believe isn't unfairly political...special order 40 was intended to protect people who were victims of crime, not the criminals, in practice both by lapd and sheriff it's applied against the few, leaving illegal immigrants who are engaged in crime to walk free in most cases. my goal is to get people talking about these things so that the politicians have to talk about them...your remarks are as important as anybody's and i believe we would have better policies and a better city if these conversations went on more publicly and involved more people...feel free to comment or email me anytime
I agree with you, Ron, about wanting to foster open, intelligent and meaningful dialogue about illegal immigrants and crime, and how to deal with them ACROSS political and law enforcement jurisdictions: handled from the state level down it would seem to me. However, that's not happening now with the sorts of ignorant linkages and political biases I noted above.
Also, unfortunately, Jamiel's Law has become the umbrella for ALL THINGS TO DO WITH ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: If you look at your own Para 5 in your article, you'll see that's how you phrased the Jamiel's Law issue yourself. (About how "we" -- city, county, state, nation -- need to distinguish between legal/ illegal residents and what protections and services they're entitled to.)
THAT takes it way out of the scope of Public Safety Committee and Jack Weiss, the guy everyone's blaming for everything to do with illegal immigration in general, even crimes committed by illegals in S. F., for Pete's sake! Start with Baca and Cooley, who dropped the ball as usual, then if you want to move it into City Hall, that issue would be the purview of another committee, if at all. Of course, Rosendhal, Zine, Hahn, Alarcon/ Reyes etc. speak on anything whether it's in their jurisdiction or not, but that legal sloppiness isn't how Weiss appears to operate.
Speaking of Petes and ball metaphors: Pete Carroll's march this weekend looks to have been a success -- but he had that carpetbagging snake Gavin Newsom as a guest pretending to be concerned about victims of gang crime, and the role of illegal gangbangers!