On Our Side Blog
Updates Directly from our Team
Recent Updates
A strange thing happened on June 7th when I took a stroll down the Venice boardwalk. Homeless encampments, transients in various degrees of intoxication, and tents crammed together covered the length of the boardwalk. There was a woman screaming at herself, dragging a heavy chunk of metal by a strand of wire across the boardwalk. She then threw three bar stools at another homeless man who was standing several yards away, one by one, as if to emphasize a point only she understood. Not exactly enhancing the tourism industry in Venice that is struggling to stay afloat…
As the elected Sheriff providing safety to over ten million residents, I have been inundated with calls for action by residents from all over the County regarding our homeless crisis. Residents are frustrated with government failures to reduce homelessness and its impacts. Aside from the disastrous public safety and health effects, residents are fed up with the related rise in crime, and the takeover of many public spaces by homeless encampments. I wrote to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, urging them to declare a local state of emergency only to receive a letter from county counsel claiming to already have “robust” programs in place.
We're a City in Denial About Race
This is the racist cartoon in the LA Times published depicting Ret. California State Senator Richard Polanco in Aztec regalia standing over a White child with a dagger. The cartoon featured in the editorial section of the LA Times in 1999 insinuates that Senator Polanco’s defense of then Superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District Ruben Zacarias amounted to blood thirsty sacrificing of White students. As LA Times columnist recently noted, they did apologize.
We will not be submitting to the LA Times anymore. We will post our articles on this blog.
Direct articles from Exterior sources
Read our Ads in the
LA Sentinel and La Opinión
Sheriff Alex Villanueva on Los Angeles Sentinel
I was elected because of distrust in a department wrapped in many scandals regarding racial profiling, rising crime, a lack of transparency, and a failure to weed out unethical leadership. All of this was overshadowed by an unpopular collaboration with federal immigration agencies.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva on La Opinion
Fui elegido porque en el departamento habia desconfianza y escandalos con respecto a los perfiles raciales, el aumento de la delincuencia, la falta de transparencia y la incapacidad de eliminar el liderazgo no etico. Todo esto se vio ensombrecido por una colaboracion impopular con las agencias federales de inmigracion.