Improve Public Safety

By Ana Rebecca "Becky" Valencia-Verdin

I will focus on improving the Public Safety and Quality of Life of my constituents by offering unconditional support to our Law Enforcement Officers and a more inclusive strategy offering support to every corner of our city's population in order for all of us to enjoy a significant reduction in crime in a city where Community Oriented Policing celebrates positive contributions to our city: "civil obedience", harmony, and old town peace and security.

As your city council member, I will work to improve public safety by supporting our law enforcement staff, officers, and redesigning a clearly defined Community Oriented Policing System to ensure an efficient and effective results driven collaborative partnership which will further attest that there exists a direct correlation between community education and involvement, properly oriented police officers (in the group dynamics of the population being served), and a willful change in behavior, lifestyle, and how groups participate in society.

I will invest my team building skills as the transformational and people oriented leader that I am, to creating an independent Quality Assurance Commission, embodied by a well balanced and diverse group of advisors to our law enforcement organization, city council, and constituents. It is imperative that, as a city with an extremely diverse mix of citizens , Santa Ana revamp its bureaucratic and stringent task oriented law enforcement strategies that have proven ineffective in promoting changes in behavior and lifestyle amongst the more challenged sector of our city's population. Crimes culminating in apprehension of perpetrators alone, does not meet our city's long term goal of reducing crime. This is standard law enforcement meeting short term goals where the apprehended will be out by morning with no effective intervention, but a monetary citation, which will serve as a push factor in causing the individual to rebel and thus not respond as a positive contributor to society. A monetary citation, along with community service in a support group setting led by instructor police officers, where we can eventually extract data on how our police force is helping to promote changes in behavior and lifestyle is what we need.

A child's first hero are the adult figures participating in their innocent lives: parents, teachers, the police officer they wave at from their front yard, the police officer visiting their 1st grade class, the brave firemen they look up to when that oversized shiny red fire-engine truck pulls up next to their family wagon at a stop light. I know all of you have just gone back in time and had your own reflection and recollection of the aforementioned.

As this child I speak of grows older, with innocence to the stressors in life rapidly diminishing, comes reality and the dynamics of the inner-city . What is happening to the unguided youth in our inner cities? Let us move away from the term "At-Risk" and "Gangs". If you offer negative reinforcement you fortify the power of suggestion by telling them, " I don't believe in you, you are weak, you are "At-Risk" of joining a gang, doing drugs, and dropping out of school". I don't like the popular term that categorizes Santa Ana's children- "At-Risk". Let us promote positive reinforcement and tell the children, " I believe in you, you are strong, happy, safe, and intelligent, you have caring adults around you, a strong foundation, and say no to drugs, gangs, follow the rules, have pride in your school, what do you want to be when you grow up?, you can be all that you want to be, everything is possible!"

Let's intervene, let's make a difference. If you're reading this you're voting; you are contributing positively to your country, thanks to the caring adults you encountered as a child.

Our youth are our future. Santa Ana has good youth programs in place, let's expand them. Teachers don't want more authority to police our youth around. Teaching is the most noble profession and teachers care for our children most of their waking hours. Teachers want to mentor and protect our youth. We all need to work together to reduce crime, to instill trust in our police department not fear. I will work diligently to offer all the support that our law enforcement arm needs, beginning with helping them take care of home first with better pay, benefits worthy of the way they risk their lives for our safety and that of our families, homes, and local businesses. I will see to it that we hire more Police Officers in order to avoid over working our local heroes.

I am the first to commend our strong police force which is the best trained , led by a most qualified and credentialed police chief (Paul Walters) who holds a J.D from American University College of Law and a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Southern California (USC), yet both are left alone to answer to City Officials, Neighborhood Associations, and alienated citizens who cannot appreciate our police officers' hard work and long hours, as a result of the disservice they inadvertently accomplish as a result of the absence of expertise in group psychology and group dynamics of the more challenged sectors of our city's population. Expert advice and training in group psychology and group dynamics is necessary in order to promote willful and capable changes in behavior, lifestyle, the manner in which the segment of the population being served, responds to disadvantaged and unconventional climates (poverty, their environment's disruptive forces (peer pressure leading to gang activity, drugs, or other defiant disregard for authority and the law), and ultimately how they participate in society.

As your City Council Member, I will not allow the lack of adequate support we offer our police force. I will coordinate and oversee the formation of a Quality Assurance Commission comprised of citizens, community leaders, business leaders, city dignitaries, school board leaders, proactive parents, and law enforcement experts with the clearly defined objective of opening lines of communication in crime prevention and culturally and custom tailored intervention in promoting changes in behavior through positive reinforcement and needs assessment evaluation, root cause analysis of defiant behavior (tagging, petty theft, gang related activity,etc. ) in order to identify and align youth with social services needed, and increasing police officer involvement in mentoring services and interactive teaching via the use of more effective tools of communication such as having our police officers sponsor each and every class in Santa Ana. Santa Ana's youth deserve not only the traditional room parent but their very own Police Officer/role model as well. I will help instill in our children and youth, a voluntary and willful respect for the law. This in fact is group parenting and fulfills a new civic duty of community child rearing, which tells our city's youth, "You are not "At-Risk", we keep you safe, we believe in you, study hard, play hard, dream big, you are the antidote to "gangs" and "drugs"."