Early this morning, shortly after midnight, Santa Ana police officers responded to the area of 1300 South Magnolia on a call of a shooting. Minutes later, an adult male victim arrived at a local hospital suffering from a gunshot wound to the leg. A vehicle that was parked on Magnolia Street was struck by gunfire through the windshield.
Ironically, this comes the day after our overpaid (and oversexed) City Manager, David Cavazos, and our inept and inexperienced SAPD Police Chief Carlos Rojas released a ridiculous puff piece stating Santa Ana is one of the safest cities in the United States – yes, but that was way back in 2011!
The lame press release they published only served to illustrate how our former SAPD Police Chief, Paul Walters, did a phenomenal job reducing crime during his long tenure. Instead of taking credit for the outstanding job our previous Police Chief did, along with our rank and file police officers, why don’t they publish the “true” statistics that are current (2015 & 2016) which will be a current crime picture and fact pattern on how Cavazos and Rojas have failed the city and innocent families of Santa Ana? In truth shootings are up 556% since Cavazos and Rojas took power!
This latest brazen shooting happened just north of Mater Dei High School, in Santa Ana’s Ward 2, which is represented by Council Member Michele Martinez.
The press release was beyond ridiculous.
Why are we using 30 year old statistics to get decreased crime rate numbers and why do the numbers stop at June 2015. We have numbers available for 2016, and why not use statistics for the last five years? Were the numbers too bad to publish?
Also, why are we using hiring stats from 2012, during the city-wide hiring freeze, to emphasize the 733% increase in hiring since then? How many officers do we have now as compared to 2012 when we had over 400 officers? I believe the numbers are closer to 365 now.
This looks like a propaganda piece put out by the city to address the growing complaints about the understaffed and overworked police department. And something for the council to use to say crime is down, not from last year or two years ago, but from 1987.
I’m sure the Santa Ana Police Officers Association will have some different numbers that strongly contridict this letter.
This is exactly why citizens are upset and asking for change. This is the reason why I am running for City Council in Ward 3, to call BS when stuff like this is published and put out by the city. See more information on my website.
Shane Barrows
http://www.shanebarrows.com
Thank you for running again Shane!
There’s also a book called “How To Lie With Statistics” sold on google and any other book store. I’m sure that’s how they got their stats to fit their preliminary bonus coming down in the near future.