by Jack Lee
While the liberals dream up clever ways to take away guns from law abiding citizens, Chico racks up it’s 33rd stabbing since January 1st. This latest knifing happened in a nice residential area called Verbeena Fields. This is neighborhood park that starts at the intersection of Verbeena Avenue and East First Avenue. And like several other recent stabbings, this one was done by a transient hitting on somebody for their spare change. When the victim refused – out came the knife. Stab, stab, stab and off the bum runs off, just like the stabbing in the Raley’s Parking lot, remember that one?
Verbeena Fields park is basically an open field with a split rail fence around it. This dry, sticker infested ground, is supposed to attract dog owners, bicycle riders, and kids, but it’s also been a magnet for bums looking for a place to camp… out of view of the cops. During the day the bums create hidden campsites among the cottonwood trees nearby and at night they are free to roam. This area is better than Bidwell Park for several reasons, first, too many people use Bidwell park and the bum camps are too quickly discovered thanks to the toilet paper all over and the stink, plus the cops patrol that area, unlike Verbeena Fields that is more off the beaten path. Verbeena Fields is also good because at night when it’s time to prowl they’re already right in the middle of nice homes. The dry creek provides a good escape path to the east and west.
Not long ago (I believe within the last 60 days), a transient man and woman were busted for possession of stolen property after they broke into several parked vehicles in my
general area or so I was advised by my neighbors. In their last caper they looted what they could carry from an expensive motor home near Volombrosa and sometime later the cops got a tip where they could be found with this stolen property. They were busted for possession, but not before most of the stolen items had been sold off.
I believe I’ve seen this filthy grungy looking pair riding their mountain bikes around my neighborhood just a few day ago. And prior to this, I’ve notice the same pair poking around in garbage bins looking for aluminum cans. Because of the frequency that I have seen them I figured they were camping somewhere in upper park, which is only a few minutes away from Veerbeena Fields. Upper park has been a popular camping area too, despite the city ordinance against it.
The answer to this problem is to build daycare centers and another new homeless shelter or so says our Homeless Task Force. If we will only build these things peace will be restored and like a 1930’s Disney cartoon, the birds will come out to sing, our bums will all play nice and life will be good. Then our liberals can feel really good, and they will have created new monuments (the new bum dormitories) as a testament to their caring and generosity even though they did it with your money. And no, the new no rules (anything goes0 wet-shelter and the two daycare centers will not attract more bums… or so we are told.
Jack, I know comments are encouraged, however this needs to addressed by the entire Chico City administration and City Council, not just a meeting or two to kick the can around until forgotten.
When you read different articles about these assorted stabbing, there is a now a alarming common thread to most; “Transient Bums” !
Possibly the City council needs to conduct their meetings in City Plaza to begin to understand the social, cultural, ideological, or economic difficulties caused by such a group.
Harmless and unfortunates, I’ll beg to differ on that point. And creating more Non profit groups,(that does actually profit from them being encouraged to dwell in Chico) need to realize that feeding and sheltering them has become counter productive, and so far, all their efforts have only produced more crime and more numbers of the same ilk.
Harold, you know what is so disheartening? It’s not the stabbings, althought they’re bad enough for this little community, it’s the fact that we have seriously mentally ill people wandering the streets and they get no help despite proposition 63 that was supposed to help them. The people of CA passed a special tax on the wealthy in 2006, and over 7.4 billion…that’s 7.4 billion dollars has been raised and spent allegedly to help the mentally ill on the streets, but nobody really knows who it helped? We deserve to know. We deserve to know where the money went! What been it’s impact? AND NOBODY seems to know. That makes me sick. The billions in taxes were for the truely needy and now it’s gone.
We need an audit and Assemblyman Dan Logue has called for one and so did the minority speaker, but whether it will happen is also unknown. What I do know is not one more dime of Prop 63 money should be given over to government tp spend until we get a full accounting of where these billions went and who has it helped? I’m thinking it’s been a total failure, I’m thinking we’ve been virtually swindled and the billions in tax money has been pissed away. And it looks like almost none of that money went to help these mentally ill people who are in real need!