By Sharon Byrne, as featured in today’s Santa Babara Sentinel
I live downtown because I wanted an urban lifestyle. I wanted to walk everywhere, take the dog out for strolls, and be in the center of all the excitement, such as there is. My derriere has long been trying to expand into its own zip code, so I figured burning calories by walking would reign that in a bit.
I walk down State and along the beach between 6 and 7 AM daily. The winter sunrises are spectacular, but you also see a very different side of our city at that hour in the morning. For this student of humanity, it’s sometimes revelatory.
On my Sunday morning walk, I encountered a dump on Gutierrez.
Annoying?
Absolutely.
Illegal?
Totally.
There’s a massive difference between that peculiar form of urban recycling where one puts out a useable item that will be snatched up immediately, and dumping piles of refuse from a recent move-out. Too much of the latter activity goes on around this city.
I took pictures, and sent them off to Sue Sadler, the city’s code enforcement officer. Sue has educated many of us on illegal dumping, and asks us to report it so she can enforce. Identifying offenders (especially those midnight-dumpers) is hard. We have some ‘suspect’ properties, where tenant turnover is high and dumping nearby frequent, but unless there’s a witness, or evidence, the city can’t prosecute.
Illegal dumping on Gutierrez
I stacked the pile for easier pick-up, and a clump of mail fell out, all addressed to one individual at a nearby residence.
Busted!
This is how the city catches many illegal dumpers, believe it or not.
At sunrise, the homeless are often the only people moving around, giving the city a strange, post-apocalyptic feel, especially in fog. Interesting urban juxtaposition: at 6 AM, the liquor stores open and the Salvation Army hands out sack lunches. This is rush hour for the homeless.
SBPD contacts a homeless camper at East Beach
On return from Tuesday’s walk, at 6:50 AM, I was surprised to see two cholo types walking down my street.
Hmmm… either gang shift started really early today, or the vandalism crew is clocking out after a long night.
I hadn’t seen them before, and then I realized their uniforms were off. They were in all black, with serious neck bling… straight from Central Casting for LA gang members.
Not locals.
My internal alarms went off.
My boyfriend texted me: BOLO – be on the lookout. He’d passed them on his way to work minutes earlier, and got the same feeling I did.
30 minutes later, the police arrived. A neighbor started his car to warm it up, went in to get his work mate, and came back out to find the car gone. I told the responding officer about the sunrise cholos, and sent out an email warning to my neighbors. Don’t be an easy victim. One neighbor responded that a black car was crawling through the neighborhood the night before, probably casing the area. Our beat cop wrote back immediately from his smartphone, and encouraged us to keep watch. We’ve been safe for a while, but complacency creates fertile ground for crime, I guess.
On Wednesday’s walk, I went up the east side of State back to the house. I normally come up the west side of the street, and then head left on Gutierrez. I waved hello to my homeless friend across the street at the train station. He lost his beloved chow-chow to old age a year ago, around the same time my old German shepherd passed on. We each feel we had The Best Dog That Ever Lived, and you never really get over losing that dog. He lavishes my exuberant puppy with affection, but a taste of bittersweet always hovers in the background.
I waited for the Gutierrez light, and entered the crosswalk when I had the signal. Halfway across State, someone took a baseball bat to the back of my left calf. Stunned, I barely processed that a car was going down State, having just completed a left turn off Gutierrez.
I’d been hit by that car.
The homeless crowd on the corner was screaming. I had enough sense to try to burn the license plate into memory. The driver stopped the car and jumped out. He was very young, and totally distraught. I moved immediately from shock to anger, like a total possession by the Furies of Greek myth. DUDE!!!! You have to wait until the pedestrian CLEARS the lane before you turn into it! What were you thinking???? You couldn’t wait one more freaking second for me to make it across?????
The homeless rushed over to see if I was ok, and then exhorted me to sue the pants off him. I was relieved that a) I didn’t face-plant into the concrete, lose a leg, or heck, die and b) my pup wasn’t running amok in the intersection. One of the homeless guys got hold of his leash for me.
My daughter later asked me, in her elder stateswoman affectation, “So, Mom, what have you learned this week?”
Sometimes I have this distinctly odd sense that I might be the child around here…
But I’m not giving up those walks!
Hi Sharon,
How do I get the direct contact information for my local beat cop? The fact is, I have never seen an officer here in San Roque, so it may not be possible, but we have had several midnight burglaries, including some with warning signs. Calling dispatch on a cell phone is a confusing dance of transfers from Ventura to SB, etc.
Smurf – you are in beat 5, so that’s Officer Reyes. You can email him at jreyes@sbpd.com. He shares my district with Kasi Beutel, and they’re both super responsive. We walked them on a tour of West Downtown last year and pointed out our problem spots. You might host a meeting with them in San Roque, see if you can use Peabody school to host it, and invite your neighbors. I am in touch with some of your neighbors, and they seem pretty connected via email and Nextdoor.
At least you didn’t find any bodies like the one on East Beach back in September where the man was shot in the back of the head and the police have yet to find the killer… What is going on in this town?
I guess Santa Barbara is not all sunsets and palm trees. The under belly of SB.
Sweep it under the rug I say! Need sunshine journalism for all mighty tourist dollar.
Thank you Sharon for passing on my information. As a beat coordinator I help in addressing quality of life issues in your community. I am very interested in any questions you have. If its a concern you have about something please let me know and I will look into it. Please get in contact with me and I will provide a dispatch telephone number to you to program into your cell phones (faster than calling 911!) You’re right, 911 will bounce you to the closest cell tower, and if that cell tower is along the freeway they may connect you to CHP, if its in the county-SBSO, etc. How to get ahold of me:
I work Tues-Fri during the day. My office number is (805) 897-3748, and you can always email me at jreyes@sbpd.com
Talk to you soon!
Ofc. Jon Reyes, beat coordinator SBPD
897-2410?
Its sad the way we treat people who look different.
yeah… some feel it’s there God given right to take advantage of SB. “I live downtown because I wanted”. Pretty obvious every homeless person can say the same thing…. They just don’t have as good a relationship with SBPD as the writer does.
i find her approach as one sided as the rest of SB media. Always stirring the pot, always directing hate towards the people they say they are so concerned about.
All I ask is impartiality. Crimes in this tow go unreported, while homelessness is reported as often as possible.
Maybe the corrupt that run this city will be facing the Karma they’ve earned real soon!
So says the pot-stirrer living in his RV in our town. Your God-given right, BB?
I have been homeless in Santa Barbara area a number of times. 1.3 million for a condo? No prob, right?
And illegal dumping?
When I had a truck, I slept in the parking lot of a Vons store. I took baths (such as they were) out of an ice chest in the bathroom of a laundromat early in the morning when nobody was around.
One morning, I heard a knocking on my window. It was a policeman, or highway patrol, maybe.
He said I couldn’t sleep there.
I said “Why not? The parking lot is private property and so is my truck.”
He said there had been some vandalism in the parking lot.
I said “Who in their right mind would vandalize a parking lot if they new someone was sleeping there?”
And as the words left my mouth I suddenly had an epiphany, as it were.
He said, “It doesn’t matter. You can’t sleep here.”
So, I quit sleeping there.
But I continued to bathe at the laundromat. And one night I saw the vandals. It was the stock boys who got drunk after work and went around smashing up shopping carts.
Know what my epiphany was?
Wasted manpower. I’m sure many would be willing to keep an eye on things… just for a place to sleep where they won’t get told to move on… move on… move on… no place to rest.
One day I was walking along the road with my guitar over my shoulder. That same car drove by and hit me with an egg.
That was, I think on Camino Corto in Goleta.
I recognized the car.
The egg hurt when it hit me in the shoulder. It wasn’t hard boiled, it was just travelling at the speed of a fastball.
A Different Voice,
Rainbow Sally
“Cholo types”?
Really? Look within as a source of the problems.