Dear Editor,
I’m a Republican living in Santa Monica, a rara avis in these parts, but I am supporting Phil Brock, Oscar de la Torre, John Putnuam and Dr. Vivian Roknian for city council.
The other day I woke up to find a homeless person sprawled in my driveway, where he slept for four hours, surrounded by a grocery bag and food. When he finally left, he didn’t clean up his mess. In fact, he returned later in the day to sit amongst his trash and get a little more shuteye. After the vagrant left again, one of the neighbors threw out his trash, and the vagrant didn’t return.
It is unacceptable to have homeless people sleeping in private driveways or in public driveways, for that matter. The next thing you know, that vagrant might return to my driveway and start shooting up.
The Brock team of candidates is against having people camping and sleeping in public spaces. The Brock team also wants to stop neighboring jurisdictions from pushing their homeless populations on Santa Monica. They also want to end needle distribution in Reed Park. These are all good ideas to help prevent crime. The “status quo” team of candidates for city council want to keep needle distribution, and they refuse to ban people from sleeping overnight in public areas.
Now if we can only get rid of our soft-on-crime DA George Gascon and replace him with Nathan Hochman, hopefully crime will go down.
Bryan Cassiday, Santa Monica
