When I am downtown, besides fond memories of visiting Grandma at the Police Station, and Dad and his staff at old and new city hall , boxing at the PCC and Seaside Gym, an Ocean with waves and clean water, and more, But I also recall a Summer job on the West side as a production machinist at age 13 and 14 .

We worked 10 , sweaty , itchy hours, no talking, no stopping , no A/C, no phone, one 10 minute break mid morning, a 30 minute lunch which meant no time to grab anything, a bag lunch or the roach coach, and a final 10 minutes in the afternoon. No bathroom, no drinks, no snacks, smoking, you remember. My concerns echo those of others with an eye towards busting your hump, productivity, effective use of time, and bang for the buck I suppose. Private sector stuff for sure, but that was how Dad rose in City Hall too., and then with us in the private sector.. He also worked until age 72 though he didn't need to.

Clearly, some rookies….you know…are rookies , which can make many dedicated professionals look a little bad, in some small way. But , over and over, you hear a lot of people who think, for example, that allowing officers to carry cell phones at times distracts them from gathering Probable Cause or investigating ?.. They have radios for business, and computers. Some of recall when a call box got the job fairly well done ?

But I am old school at times I suppose, clearly , because me and many friends think that Police and Fire , Department heads, and others, should still be required to live in the City. My Pa rose to being a big boss from starting deep in North Town, where I was born. Mom worked at the water department. They waited 9 years to start a family to save for a down payment. You can start with an Apartment and then a modest, small home around here, despite prior protestations. That used to really help transition neighborhoods ?

Please allow me to Irespond further , later because I am truly not trying to be hyper critical . But for clarity, some of my best friends are on this or that force. I also kind of held my home open as a sub station for many years too. 3 generations with the POA , but most importantly, absolute respect, pride and confidence in our Chief. I have hugged him . I was directing an inquiry to lower management, i.e., supervisors, commanders.

We have owned restaurants and bars too. If each vendor paid for 3 or 4 security guys out front, we kind of thought that this could help our valuable PD assets patrol more. . Clearly it is not easy . I spent years coming and going from St. Mary's late at night, and you see a lot. I have business in many venues too.

Times are tough, and it sets a good example for all of us too work as hard as we can.

My retired Police friends also say more, or bigger sub-stations are another productivity killer, any thoughts ? For example, some say that the East station is too small to change clothes in ? Then others reply, '' We all dress for work before we hit the door ?'' and wait to hit the shower when we get home ?

And my retired Captain neighbor thinks that his retirement check is so high, that he donates a ton of it to local charity ?

Thanks Again , JB .

Less do our part to try to build a better Long Beach, in some small way, again, soon.

And keep as many Andy's around as possible

I would encourage you to also remember that local law enforcement assets are deployed as the community that they serve ultimately dictates. In Long Beach, for example, we do, indeed, deploy officers to assigned beats or “sectors” as you put it. The additional officers you see assigned to Pine are just that, additional officers, whose assigned beat is, in fact, Pine, and who were assigned there in direct response to the problems that a developing Pine Ave ultimately generated.

In other words, as the local community insisted.

But we only have so many cops. Those that you see working on Pine are, necessarily, not working somewhere else where perhaps they may be more greatly needed.

Should more Beat cops step out of their cars more often and start walking the Beat again? Probably. But the trade off to that approach is to limit their mobility and to increase their response time to calls in their Beats that are not in the immediate area in which they are walking. This is why we started putting them in cars in the first place, again, as the local community insisted.

The Blue Line has obvious impacts in Long Beach, positive and negative. LASD has the law enforcement contract for the Blue Line and is as responsive as they can be to these “overflow” issues within our city but ultimately the city is ours, not theirs and thus, the responsibility for these overflow issues rests with us. The presence of the Blue Line downtown was also a contributing factor in assigning additional officers to Pine.

FI (field Interview) cards still exist in Long Beach and are still used as a valuable law enforcement tool. It could very well be (and I would opine that it is quite likely) that one or more of the thugs that robbed Andy and his wife have prior arrest or citation records or have had prior contact with the police that has been documented on an FI card. The Detective working Andy’s case is no doubt researching these possibilities as we speak.

Our Chief of Police, Dr. Tony Batts, is a very good man. He lives in this city and has spent his entire sworn law enforcement career on our streets, including Pine and the area immediately surrounding it. He has full discretion on how he deploys his officers, but his resources are not infinite. As you know, personnel and equipment costs money. Our Chief, like all other City Department heads, has only those funds to work with that the Council and the City Manager grant to him. By every objective measure he has been doing a great job…our crime rate has been trending downward consistently for over a decade.

As mentioned, however, this can be no comfort to Andy and his wife, or to anyone else who is victimized…who find themselves on the “Crimes Occurred” side of that ledger. Crime is down, but, because man is by nature evil, crime persists and always shall. The sad fact is that our cops cannot be everywhere at once.

Would that they could.

But if they were…if we had sufficient cops to assign one to every street in the city for instance…most crimes that occur in public places would be all but erased and many residents would then complain that we had too many officers and that their extremely costly deployment on every street was not supported by the crime rate. Funding would be cut, the number of cops would decrease, Beats would enlarge and we would have to put our cops in cars to cover their Beats more efficiently.

Sound familiar?

It’s a very tough balance for a local police department with limited resources to strike and to maintain. Our cops do a lot of good pro-active work in this city every day and every night, but they cannot possibly be everywhere and prevent every single crime, every single time.

Unfortunately, Andy and his wife recently had to learn that personally and painfully.

Again, Andy and Mrs. Andy, my sincerest regrets for that.

You may be right though. I could be living in a bubble.

But FYI, ' King Gary' celebrates at Tantalum, which we hear is owned by some of the guys who basically 'hired' him to do the bidding of the connected few ? Thus our boycott of that venue.

And recall that in his first major test in office, after the worst attendance record, was when he turned a blind eye to Democracy, and ignored a vast majority of 5,700 petition signatures, plus another 2,500 in an EIR , to side with Home Depot's consultant and her…'Influence peddlers', and …500 signatures ? Since then, he has persisted in trying to develop in, on, and around our Wetlands……and a whole lot more that you will be hearing about.

If you think he is popular, get away from the golf course, the chamber, the yacht club , and a few 'close to gone' PT editors, and start asking what people really think about him in the entire district , daily, like we have for 2 years . By far and away the highest negatives I have seen in nearly 4 decades , in and out of City Hall ?

Count the broken promises, the inside dealing, and an about 7 or 8 out of 10 negative opinion, upon a range of issues , and, well, we shall see.

Stay tuned, it's going to get interesting.

Also, as one more of many examples, please go onto the Chamber website and read his 2006 campaign pledge to 'Never increase any tax or fee upon business or residents''.

Better yet, read his divorce filings from wife one, and all the claims and allegations of ……….? Uh huh, will the real ''G.D.'' please stand up? Do some more homework Res.

As an aside, I'll bet you a $5 dinner that DeLong gets elected again. He's been very responsive to the 3rd district and I think it's a small vocal minority that doesn't like him. Just my opinion. We'll see I guess.