City Council Aims to Stymie Gang Involvement

Any of you watch "The Wire". If so you will realize how difficult it is to prevent kids from joining gangs. The various schemes have little or no chance of success. Major changes in our social system, school system and economic system would be required. A few after school programs, a few poorly funded research studies here and there will have little or no effect. The News-Suppress has run a few tirades masquerading as editorials criticizing the SB City Council for not doing enough to fight the gang problem but the the real problem is that nobody really knows what to do.

If it wasn't for drugs being illegal, I'm pretty sure that gangs would just be some dudes that hang out together. Perhaps they would be figuring out a source of legitimate income. If not, there still might be some stealing, but at least there wouldn't be much stealing for drugs because they would be really cheap.

Since drugs are illegal, there is an extremely high profit margin for selling them. If they were legal, then the profit margin would decrease substantially and you would find that most criminals become disinterested in selling them because now anybody can.

The War on (some) Drugs is the most racist, classist legislation we have in this country. Ironically, George Bush Sr. and former President Clinton were involved in the Iran Contra scandal. Iran Contra involved the CIA giving weapons to third world countries in trade for drugs, which they pushed onto our impoverished cities in order to fund their clandestine activities. Bill Clinton was the governor of Arkansas during Iran Contra, and it has been proven that thousands of tons of drugs came into the small airport at Mena, Arkansas and that the money was laundered through Hillary Clinton's Rose Law Firm with government bonds. In other words, with Hillary Clinton as our likely soon to be President, this war is going to be difficult to stop.

The best thing to do is to put a stop to local law enforcement enforcing these stupid laws, and stop cooperating with the DEA. Unfortunately this would create havens for drugs in certain areas, so no local community wants to do it. On the other hand, it's the only right thing to do.

loonpt... nice tirade but local gangs are not tied to selling drugs. You make an assumption that is not true. While a lot of gang members use drugs this is not like LA where they are an organized enterprise. They are turf or territory affiliated. They are uneducated and must often poor. Prescribing to what you suggest would just cause havoc on society, but somehow I think all you are interested in is getting high and screwing society.

If parents were home instead of working 3 jobs to pay over-priced rents the gang problem would be less severe in my opinion.

InTheKnow, you couldn't be more wrong. For one thing, I don't even do drugs. I really hope that you educate yourself on this topic, because it is the illegality of drugs that has brought the havoc into our society. This can be found easily both by looking at statistics and thinking about it logically and rationally.

Also, I was good friends and neighbors with a westside elder for some time, so don't try and tell me what these gangs stem from or what they are tied to. This article is about finding the answer to gang problems in general. I just gave the answer.

The only point I disagree with here is when InTheKnow states that there isn't a connection between the drug war and gangs--but my disagreement is a subtle one.

Perhas ITN is correct at this point in time, but given the fact that the L.A. scene has been marching into S.B. like ants descending on an open picnic basket, I have no reason to believe that better organized gangs won't end up in Paradise.

Let's face it, gang members are like anyone else. If they live in L.A. and are sophisticated and high up the food chain, they will look at S.B. and see it's smaller and more desirable and want to come up here.

As for the drug war, having drugs being illegal pushes it's Black Market value way up and thus gives pushers an incentive to sell their contraband. My opinion is that the drug war--like prohibition--is a failure, but I could be wrong about that and welcome any criticism on that point.

I think Georgy hits a home run on the point he/she makes. I remember a woman I worked with a few years back and long into short she was from Zacatecas and was so far removed from the gang mentality it wasn't even funny. Nonetheless, her nice, happy ten year old boy was running with gangs by the time he was twelve. Reason being?...she and her husband were working non-stop and this is an example why our government is spitting into the wind when it thinks it will solve the gang problem.

"The News-Suppress has run a few tirades masquerading as editorials criticizing the SB City Council for not doing enough to fight the gang problem but the the real problem is that nobody really knows what to do."

Noletaman is right, but I think the solution is to look into the past.

What were we doing as a society BEFORE this gang problem went mainstream?

There is a mentality that is prevalent where the masses simply accept the idea that Mexico will always be a poor dysfunctional country that is incapable of fixing its problems and as such the U.S. must be its refugee camp.

We have an economy based on the idea that cheap illegal labor is the way to go, bolstered by the current president of the United States tacitly supporting it by repeating the cliche "They do the work Americans won't do", while his counterparts on the left are loathe to offend La Raza activists by suggesting we simply cannot take everyone in.

So the chickens are coming home to roost yet none of these Santa Barbara leaders would dare suggest that our encouragement of a cheap labor economy is at the root of the problem and that it cannot be resolved by treating the symptoms.

So the evil bind of Big Business on The Right and Political Correctness on The Left have combined to create this explosive situation while the News-Press talks about getting tough on this problem. (By the way, are their janitors here legally?...hmmm....and what are they paying them?) Then those in our city government want social programs. All the while the problem gets worse.

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