Suspected Gang Members Attack Teen

One of the results of:
(1) importing millions of poor, uneducated, illegal immigrants (and their children or resulting children) combined with
(2) parents that culturally place a low value on education and/or cannot afford to be home with/supervise their children and
(3) a massive welfare state that discourages fathers from taking responsibility for their children/families by allows mothers to become dependent on welfare benefits as the "father".

is that you get:
- innocent children being beat up in public.
- criminal records for young offenders like these boys.
- a soft view on the value of our laws, such as our immigration laws, more government programs funded by borrowed money from China and a culture of dependence.

Legal Immigration = Good (we're a nation built on *legal* immigration)
Illegal Immigration = Bad

Gangs and homeless have been allowed to take over our town and for those of us that are law abiding and trying to raise our kids right, we have to cope with outrageously high cost of living. SB has turned to garbage, it used to be beautiful and now it smells. If you walk down State Street between Victoria and Figueroa it smells like dead rats are rotting and if you walk down the side streets off of State you can smell the human urine & excrement in the bushes where the homeless people like to toilet. It is dirty, unsafe and depressing... I cannot believe that this is a tourist destination anymore, it's becoming so gross!

I don't how far you go back, but downtown SB used to be biker and stripper bars, back in the day. What you see now is definitely an improvement to the SB of the 70's and 80's, heck even the 90's.

I am a native and have lived here for all of my 40 years. I spent a great deal of my youth downtown in the same area where I now work and maybe I just didn't notice how unsafe it was then because I wasn't a parent of teenagers, not sure, but I don't want my teens downtown without an adult, period.

Well then you must remember that the downtown area was always rowdy. Not only that, but it was poorly lit, and there was always a bad crowd hanging around certain spots. I think the reason it wasn't a big deal before was because the media didn't make a big deal about it. There weren't big out of town interest sterilizing it either. It might not have been Disneyland, but the flavor was good.

@willy- I hear what you are saying, but why don't we take it a little further? How about giving credit where credit is due, and giving the reason why people travel all those miles through the grittiest, grimiest of lands to get here to be welcomed like a red-headed step child? Or in this case a brown skinned step child? Believe me, welfare is not worth all that, and while the ghettos here are nicer, they are still ghettos.

Lower State Street may have been a little rough in 70 and 80's but kids didn't have much to fear. Also, the rough areas of town didn't bother kids. If gangs are now running SB, it is because the town has let them. It's a choice.

This town had shot callers from prison gangs who were from this town in the 70's and 80's, meaning they were stone cold killers. I didn't go to Ortega park or Haley street as a kid, because they were dangerous places.

AZ2SB: I will take it to the next step. Businesses hire these people at cheap wages and crappy conditions, the welfare state in many cases subsidizes this so that these businesses can make maximum profit from these exploited workers. People assume--and reflexively argue--that this cheap labor saves us money but nobody dares to ask if these businesses are passing their savings onto us. Even if the parents are good people, we have the public schools raising these kids where no true family structure exists (while the parents are working their 2-3 jobs) so as the kids grow up without parents the gang problem exists.

What no politicians talks about (either due to lack of knowledge, or lack of courage) is the pressure put on Mexican kids to conform to the gang culture. This attack proves this point.

I can tell you that while the savings might not be passed on to us, this cheap labor has kept some industries in the black, the biggest example being agriculture. While it isn't a job that nobody else will do in this country, it is a job that most people would rather not do, and for good reason. The wages aren't great, and the work is very taxing on the body. Then there are the chemicals, and the work conditions. While you might encounter that in construction, you will at least get paid a somewhat decent wage for your troubles.

State is definitely smelly and trashed. We live near downtown and my wife has seen (in the past 3 months): homeless man opening masturbating, Human feces on the bench in front of McDonald's, urine and "rotting smell" odors from Victoria to Fig (reliably smelly) and various other overwhelming smells throughout lower State - all times of the day or night. Maybe there is a sewer issue (?)... but also aggressive panhandling, homeless "encampments" of blankets, wagons, grocery carts, bedding, cardboard, etc. I've seen diners yelled at by transients. It's shameful and disappointing. Just because it may have been bikers and strip clubs at some point in the past doesn't make what's going on now OK.

every time there is a fight among young latinos is now considered gang related? give me a break! Not every latino in santa barbara is undocumented. y'all want to make a change then go out there and take actions! cowards!

For what it's worth I started to notice the change downtown in 1980. I remember walking down the street one evening, looking at the seedy street-hustler types, and realize that the change had come.

Now I go out of my way to avoid that area. Way too much desperate, angry, and depressing energy made all the worse by its being juxtaposed against the garish opulence of the place.

Just... can't... resist... AAAAGH! GANG INJUNCTION NOW! There, feeling much better, enough said :) henry

There is a sewer issue, you have to remember that everything in the downtown area is old. The newest structure is Paseo Nuevo, and that is from the 90's. Also, the police have been made impotent by local activist against the homeless and panhandlers to the point that they can't or won't do anything more about it. I bet you if they could aggressively cite panhandlers, the problem would subside.

I'm sure the same complaints were common among the citizens of every city that's ever been founded, from Ur to Rome to London to New York: Those damn (add nationality) street-gangs and those damn poor people are ruining our city! Of course, nobody ever seriously addressed the underlying issues that gave birth to the problems, they only shouted for more cops (which gave birth to another problem: out of control, fascist-style cops). Santa Barbara: Suck it up, it's only going to get worse.

Uh duh, I'd say if they're flashing gang signs as they taunt and beat their victims, then yeah, it's gang related. And I'd say the "cowards" are the gangster thugs, not the law-abiding citizens of SB. But guess I've got it all backwards, huh Killuminati? Darn if we just had more fun, government-run social programs available for our youth on a Saturday morning, this wouldn't have happened.

right on killuminati! that was a genius post. keep em coming. the world needs to hear your "non" ignorant thoughts.

Scooter, as a person of Latino ethnicity/affiliation/persuasion/whatever the pc term is, I am shocked & awed that you actually make sense by saying that gangs know no racial boundary & that it is a behavior not dependent on ethnicity/affiliation/persuasion/whatever the pc term is. How dare you?!
I thought us Latinos had the lock on gangster thug behavior? It is in our genetic code & we know no other way to behave as a result of this.
You're making too much sense here, time to stop such rational behavior & take a time out from reality.
Blame it on the cops all you want kiddies, even though we got more cops now they have more rules to tie their hands than they have ZipTies to cuff the bad guys.
Those so-called "out of control fascist-style cops" I see mentioned on here, quite the opposite.
They're too nice now & have a catch & release program sanctioned by the State of CA & the "progressive" leadership.
The "out of control fascist-style" of policing has been long gone for some time now & maybe that's the problem.
When we had REAL "out of control fascist-style cops" they had no reservations about cracking some heads, something that kept thugs in line.
Sure, an innocent person could get roughed up by them (usually a case of "wrong place/wrong time), but all was forgiven & forgotten & the thugs knew what to expect if they got out of line.
Now I'm NOT saying that a return to that style of policing the streets is the way to go, but somehow it just seemed safer when the cops were actually ALLOWED to do their job effectively.
As it stands these days, the inmates (gangs, BUMS (not homeless), their supporters) run the asylum & the asylum staff (police, sherrif, fire dept.) is always on the defensive :) henry

I am surprised that not one of the responders had anything to say about the person who intervened by saying the police were being called. Without that help the injury could have been much worse. We should all be thanking him/her.
Having citizens who are willing to intervene is a good part of what makes a city desieable