Homeless stabbing in Santa Monica park offers preview of police-free world

Three days earlier, private city “ambassadors” attempted to break up a violent altercation

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UPDATE (8/7/2020): The Santa Monica Daily Press reported this morning that Santa Monica police arrested an individual in connection with the stabbing. John James allegedly stabbed an individual who was lying on the ground and then fled. A Santa Monica “ambassador” called SMPD, who subdued Mr. James with a taser after a short chase. He has been charged with attempted murder. The victim was transported to a local hospital for surgery and is expected to survive.

Some Santa Monicans awoke this morning to the now-familiar sound of police cars speeding Code 3 through the city. Their destination was also familiar: Christine Emerson Reed Park, which has been transformed from a place of family gatherings and recreation to the city’s foremost vagrant hangout.

Even as city officials have literally physically disabled the park’s playground and basketball courts – because covid – scores of homeless, addicts, and criminals continue to make the park home, gathering in large groups in close quarters all day, every day. They shout, carouse, fight, and blast music at all hours. A continuous progression of people in busted up cars and motorcycles deliver food, alcohol, and drugs. Yesterday morning at around 9am a man was observed climbing out of a car with a bottle of bargain vodka. He took a long swig, walked over to the grass, and promptly passed out. Fights are near daily occurrences. Needless to say, none of them wear masks or practice social distancing.

In other words, Santa Monica’s Reed Park is a petri dish for what’s going to happen across Los Angeles and indeed the country if depolicing becomes accepted policy. Early results are frightening, indeed.

Untrained, unarmed “ambassadors” being asked to break up fights among mentally ill and intoxicated vagrants

A fight among homeless people broke out Monday afternoon. A woman who is a known aggressor among the park’s regulars started screaming at and hitting two men at a picnic table, one of whom already was bleeding. Two other homeless men several times her size tried to calm her down. She struck one of them and he restrained her, at which point two turquoise-shirted ambassadors attempted to intervene, resulting in a screaming argument between one of the ambassadors and the woman. The two other homeless men broke up the fight, one of them standing between the ambassadors and the woman to prevent escalation. This is how things work in Santa Monica these days. Fortunately, no one was hurt worse than the bleeding man.

This was no mere coincidence: Ambassadors are the city’s alternative to a full-time police presence at the park, which residents have requested for years. Moreover, ambassadors are not city employees: They work for a private company misleadingly called Downtown Santa Monica, Inc. The company deploys them in pairs during daylight hours. Inexplicably the contract costs Santa Monica more than $500,000 a year, meaning either they’re the best-paid park ambassadors in the world or someone’s running a scam.

The point is, the lack of a meaningful police presence at a known hive of criminal activity and violence puts everyone at risk, not least of all the homeless themselves. That risk unfortunately became reality less than three days after the fight: The police this morning were responding to a double stabbing in the park. Two homeless people got into a fight, and according to sources one was stabbed in the face and the other in the stomach. While early reports indicated both are expected to survive, homicide detectives arrived on the scene.

To be sure, police are not the ideal response to fights among intoxicated and insane vagrants. The problem is, right now they’re the only solution that even remotely works. As this week’s events prove, unarmed and untrained civilian workers simply are not effective, and often only make situations more dangerous. Unless and until the political classes in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, and California craft policies that get the homeless the help they need and in many cases deserve, our streets will continue to devolve into mere anarchy.

This is what happens when a city telegraphs a message of tolerance, even indulgence, to violent lawbreakers. As usual, the people who suffer the most under those allegedly “progressive” policies are the homeless and the lawbreakers themselves. Of course the park’s inhabitants and regulars are a threat to the whole neighborhood, but unlike them other people at least can avoid Emerson Park and minimize the immediate danger.

For the homeless themselves, depolicing is just another fire in the Hell into which people like Gavin Newsom and Kevin McKeown have condemned them.