Angry Poodle
Thursday, April 23, 2009
YA FEEL ME:It’s election season and that means candidates for higher office are on the prowl, in search of other people’s pain to feel.
Late this Monday afternoon at a West Beach park just off Cabrillo Boulevard—once the site of the most magnificent, grand hotel in the city’s history—Santa Barbara mayoral candidate and current City Councilmember Iya Falcone was hard at work. About 40 people had congregated at the park, sitting on the grass or on lightweight collapsible lawn chairs, fuming about, in the words of one hotel owner, “all the smelly destitute people all over town.”
Angry Poodle
Despite the intruding golden glow cast by the setting sun and a balmy tropical breeze, these people were not to be distracted by the ridiculous beauty of their surroundings. Throughout the two-hour vent fest, they complained about the hoboes, bums, derelicts, tramps, vagrants, and transients who strip-mine their trash cans for recyclable materials, knock on hotel doors to panhandle guests, park their big, hulking rust buckets on city streets, and congregate at Pershing Park to receive the free food doled out every Sunday morning by a religiously inspired insurance agent who believes himself to be the prophet Daniel. High on the list of everyone’s complaints were accounts of public pooping and peeing. One especially aggrieved man recounted in vivid detail being startled on his way home by a pair of naked human buttocks protruding from some nearby bushes then in the act of defecation. These people wanted action, citations, and arrests. They did not want to hear about 12-point programs or 10-year plans to deal with the chronically homeless. They wanted new three-strike laws targeting vagrants; they wanted people who relieved themselves in public to be branded registered sex offenders. To the extent anyone mentioned mental illness as a contributing factor, it was brushed aside as an excuse for miscreants behaving badly.
Falcone was accompanied by two of Santa Barbara’s finest, who showed up to answer questions. One was a sweet young kid with close-cropped hair who said nothing other than to spell his last name. The other did all the talking. He was strong, handsome, and overflowing with that cheerful can-do spirit one wishes for in all public servants. When a few members of the crowd expressed exasperation with a lack of responsiveness by the police department, he was reassuring. “I am here 40 hours a week to serve you,” he told the assembled. “Say the word and I’m here.” The cops were on hand, he explained, upon the instructions of their patrol supervisor. And he wanted to show up to “support Iya,” he said. “She always supports us.”
The cops union and Iya have always been tight. If the cops helped Iya project the sort of tough leadership the West Beach crowd wanted, she, in turn, allowed the cops to shine at a time when budget constraints are forcing 78 officers to surrender their cell phones. Given the fiscal realities, the department would be lucky to maintain 140 officers. But Falcone said she wants 150. Dramatizing Falcone’s point, the more talkative officer noted there were only six cops assigned to patrol the entire city during daylight hours. “Six!” he exclaimed. That gave me pause. With one-third of the department’s deployed force fielding complaints about bums for two full hours, what kind of crime waves could be occurring elsewhere? I was greatly relieved to find out later there actually were 14 officers on the street at that time—seven on patrol and the rest working gangs, canine, traffic, tactical patrol, or State Street.
The only contrary opinion was expressed by a beleaguered older gentleman, gray hair swept back, who pointed to the RV in which he lives with his five-year-old son. He explained how he tried and failed to find help for his older son afflicted with a crippling mental illness. “I think the Golden Rule is still what you should go by,” said the man, who identified himself as a 62-year-old retired veterinarian. He threw a little Jesus at them, too, the line about, “What you do unto the least of us, you do unto me.”
It would be convenient, maybe, to lock up all the “smelly destitute people” and keep them where they cannot inflict olfactory offense. There is not, however, room in the jail to fit them all. The inconvenient truth is most of the chronically homeless—the repeat offenders—are mentally ill. As we speak, mental health budgets are being ripped asunder by the State of California, struggling with a colossal budget crisis. Locally, the mental health funding picture is even worse. Obviously, it’s good politics to feel the pain of people upset about public defecators. But unless you’re banging the gong for mental health services with equal vigor, you ain’t even whistling Dixie.
It turns out that Falcone—in her capacity as chairperson of a powerful committee with the League of California Cities—just voted for a package of ballot initiatives, one of which would gut funding guaranteed to the state’s 58 counties for mental health programs. If approved by the voters on May 19, this item—known obliquely as Proposition IE—would cost Santa Barbara County $11 million a year in mental health funding. In a testy exchange with Mayor Marty Blum this Tuesday, Falcone defended her vote, saying the league wanted the state to address its budget nightmare by rearranging how it spends state dollars, and not by raiding the coffers of city governments, as has historically happened. The mental health dollars in question, she pointed out, are state funds. Her league vote not withstanding, Falcone insisted she could take whatever action she wanted back home. This Thursday, for example, Falcone plans to attend a press conference decrying the very cuts she already voted to support. This apparent schizophrenia will cost Falcone dearly with Santa Barbara’s legion of desperate, organized, and angry mental health advocates. They will line up solidly behind Falcone’s chief rival, City Councilmember Helene Schneider, who has been toiling in the trenches on mental health issues almost since first getting elected. Schneider, they know, has felt their pain. And in this instance, she didn’t even have to look.