The City continues to struggle with a budget pitfall and no money for essential things. Forbes has listed the City of Stockton as the second most miserable Cities to live in the United States.
The Major reasons for being recognized as second most miserable spot to live is because of the high crime rate, according to Forbes out of the two hundred Cities surveyed both Cleveland OH, and Stockton held the dubious title of being ranked second for the crime rate. Out of 198 other cities are little City when compared to LA, or New York, Chicago, had a higher crime rate.
Unbelievable. Mayor Ann Johnston response to the crime rate issue was, that the City did make a one percent cut in our crime rate; first I do not believe it, I believe the staticians at the Police Department or City Hall lowered the threshold of some crimes that would be considered as violent offenses such as the ones the FBI uses to classify criminal statistics, for instance will take simple battery or assault and will place it in the lower threshold;
Of course I have no proof, but the one thing I do have is history and if you were to sit down and look at every days paper, for the 365 days you would notice something changed. What changed is the amount of violent crimes increased last years, shootings, stabbings, robberies, we held another dubious title of being ranked near Oakland for our Murder rate. So I do not think the Mayor Johnston's response to Forbes about certain things were accurate, when there is factual evidence put before you that is negative, and has the ability to impact economic growth, make people not want to live in Stockton, or cause a burden upon the City, You of course get a defensive answer that inflates what is truth, and deflects what is reality.
During of this dubious title placed upon our city by Forbes were in the middle of a budget crisis, there are talks of thirty or more Police Officers being laid off, cutting of services that are not essential in the sense to everyone, but to some they are essential. All the money our City poured into the down revitalization's, has not produced the desired result, there have been no new big companies moving to our City, the crime that used to contained in with the are has been pushed out to other areas, they staff full time Police Officers, to patrol the Movie theater complex and other areas of downtown, in addition to this cameras everywhere, you cannot pick your nose without being recorded and you would never know it unless you looked up and seen the massive surveillance. For any person who things the moving towards our city's being under surveillance is ignorant of the consequences, and I wont even take the time to tell you why, because you are already ignorant.
According to Forbes some of the other reasons for the listing was because of our unemployment level which at the time of the video was 18.5 percent, which I am for certain it is higher, or just slightly lower. Again the Cities response to this, was we are an agricultural area, and the jobs work in seasons, is the inference I understood by the comment. But wait a minute now, we are surrounded by tons of land of agriculture, we grow tomatoes, walnuts, almonds, cherries, sugar pines, peppers, and several other things that are parts of our food groups and a major contributor to our economy.
Hey what is going to happen when we kick out all the Hispanic people, or make a law like Arizona, which by the way is unconstitutional, and if you differ with me because of the immigration issue, I saw we got our priorities wrong, but here is the real caveat, if we can allow one group of people to be stopped by the police, treated differently, placed in a lower class, disallowed from getting, help; What makes you think that it wont happen again, you see once you break the foundation down just a little, remember our foundation is guaranteed under the Constitutions its protection, you let the break the foundation for one group good or bad, pretty soon the whole thing will crumble.
I am sorry I know I ran off a little and went into other areas when I should have stayed on topic, but hey this is a blog, everything goes on a blog! In closing we need to insist that our city do more to protect everyone, even the idiots that are the ones that are killing each other, we need to demand that the police stay as it is, cutting of the library hours to 17 hours in a week to me seemed really drastic, and sad, but I forgot that most every home or person has access to the Internet, the Internet is one big library of any kind of information you want. Still libraries are essential tools, but that was a hard decision to make, but it was the right one to make, instead of cutting emergency services, or cutting back on hours.
The other thing that should never happen is no one should ever be willing to give up their civil liberties to or walk, play, go to the park, and have to be violated by someone whom you have no idea is watching you, NO MORE WASTING MONEY ON INVASIVE SURRVELLIANCE CAMMERAS THAT VIOLATE THE CIVIL LIBERTIES OF THE CITIZENS EVERYDAY--JUST LISTEN TO THE POLICE SCANNER YOU WILL HEAR IT HAPPEN, PROFILING, AND OTHER SUCH THINGS.
This is not going to fixes our crime issues, Education, Early Learning, Interventions, Employment Opportunities all can be ways of leading us back into the sunlight and keeping hope alive, instead of whats going one which feels like were walking into the darkness with the uncertainty one has when the go into a room that is dark.
Forbes Video of Mayor Ann Johnston Speaking
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