What $160,000 dollars a year buys in contracts to ‘First Alarm’

Should get up and force the *private* goon to fuck off. Personal space, you know...

It's up to the individual, a nonviolent, non-criminal individual just sitting there in this case.

While the blackshirt you see overbearing the gent on the lawn is about 6' 4'' and built like a football player.

But even without a direct threat of physical confrontation, they have been known to call the police *without* a legitimate reason (as I've seen in the case of a bike with it's owner on the lawn... Just like the jackass at city hall did twice to me at that location), therefore increasing "Police Calls To Louden Nelson Park" and in the process creating police statistics that 'validate' their raison d' etre.

These blackshirts help create the statistics that ensure their continued employment.

Since they are contractors, not government employees, who can be held accountable when a 1st Alarm security guard violates someone's civil rights, as RR pointed out they often do?

I would be interested to look at the 1st Alarm contract with the City of Santa Cruz. Can someone post it? If not, I'll make a public records request for it.

These 1st Alarm thugs must be held accountable for their harassment and civil rights violations. Let's put 1st Alarm out of business.

Get in the security guard's face with your camera, ask him his name, ask him for some ID, ask who he works for, how much he's getting paid? Ask him cogently and politely -as many questions as you can, and film his reactions.

Ask him why he's standing there, seemingly harassing another person? Ask him if that's his intention, if he was trained to do this? Who trained him? Ask how he would like it? Etc, etc.

And be sure to have the camera rolling, and put it up on You Tube.

Please.

when private actors are hired by the government to protect government interests, those private actors become state actors. the government can't escape liability for civil rights violations merely by hiring brown shirts.

It's a fallacy to claim that the local housing market and its prices are dictated by the student population. Talk to any realtor, look at any price index, and you'll see that Santa Clara dictates this market.

We're a small community of 60,000; they're a large community of 1.8 million. We have a median income of $62K they have one of $87K. We have a median house price of $483K , they have one of $615K.

The evidence is all there. Santa Clara house prices rise, and 3-6 months later, Santa Cruz follows, as the Santa Claran's who've been outbit a half dozen times start looking over the hill because their purchasing power is stronger here. So our prices go up.

Blaming the campus is an excuse.

I didn't say the student population dictated the price of housing. I said the UC REGENTS (in collusion with the city of Santa Cruz and property interests) does.

There's a difference. Like the difference between blaming a victim (of a trashy high priced UC ejumakashun they're trained to believe they need) and naming the REAL CULPRITS.

The City.
In collusion with the UC Regents.
In collusion with out of town property interests.

No matter how much whining the city does about UCSC, it boils down to "Whose gonna pay the tab? now that the city spread it's legs and allowed the regents to have their way with our community's jobs and housing.

The old redneck right around here always blamed the students for the change... But THAT change they spoke of was in relation to the political texture of the town in regard to 'liberalism' and shit like that.

In reality, much like Sarah Palin and the Energy Sector crowd who came to Alaska at the same time and managed to gerrymander Alaska's political structure, so too, have the so-called "Progressives" of Santa Cruz.

But there's been no real social change in any progressive direction, except progressively economically running the city into the ground with it's ass-in-the air to be pimped to corporate chain stores and typically out-of-town commercial property interests..

I remember the very first HARD CORE "Police Sweep" in Santa Cruz a year or so after Zocolli's opened for business at their current location. All the action was across the street in front of the Market Deli and United Cigar (a building still on long term lease to that store's owner) because the Market Deli, despite INCREDIBLE PRESSURE by the city, sold food for food stamps at a time when the only other place downtown was Albertson's supermarket (at the current location of Trader Joes), which was known for falsely accusing traveler types of being shoplifters and thugging them before the police arrived.

(Eventually that Big Blond Football player bag boy met HIS fate at the hands of a falsely accused UCSC student, who also happened to be a Karate Black Belt and wiped the sidewalk with him outside the store until the police arrived. There IS justice in the world.

During that sweep (has to be late 70s), with a police car rolling down Pacific every 5 or 10 minutes, the Chief of Police used then fledgling Zocolli's as a Forward Operating Base, staring iut the window watching the operation all day for the two or three days it lasted, an accomplished nothing.

When I see the name Zocolli on the public "Safety" commission board, I think back to those days, before the Code Blue thugs caused their whole crooked SCPD 'police' operation to crash.

RR: you have a lot of unique knowledge about Santa Cruz history because of your long ties to this place. Your analysis is spot on. People always blame the victims not the real culprits. That's how the real criminals get away with their monstrous deeds. But people buy into these stories. I didn't know about all this past SCPD shenanigans, especially using Zoccolis.

That's so petty of the SCPD. But the people running the SCPD are very petty and small minded — they're cowards. Vogel is vacuously callous while Clerk is a jerk. That's why they pick on the most vulnerable. They're afraid of real (dangerous) criminals, like well armed Noreño and Surteño gang members. It seems like many SCPD officers are small minded bullies. It's pathetic.

You should write a book which could serve as a counterpoint to Geoffrey Dunn's lauding a mythological Santa Cruz.

Is that the city is ALL SET to declare an "Emergency" that would allow them to limit how many (middle age or teen male) humans can congregate on a street corner, and I DO remember NY city doing it with three or more during the Vietnam war because any time a crowd developed a riot ensued. (giggle)

But I say there IS an emergency in Santa Cruz. A housing AND job emergency that HORRIBLY IMPACTS THE FUTURE OF CHILDREN here (let's focus on that aspect.. the future homeless and drug addicts of Santa Cruz) and an "Emergency Order" limiting how many students can be employed by a business, and also limiting the flooding of the housing market by CHARGING A SURCHARGE on students from out-of-the-area who choose not to live in the Slums UC has provided for them on campus further forcing the students into the local rental market.

I think a surcharge is MORE than fair considering that housing while away from home at a college can be somewhat deducted from a person's taxes giving the transient student a direct economic advantage over a local youth in the areadry fucked up beyond all recognition local housing market

On the OTHER hand... I ♥ the idea of a 'congregation' emergency order because it will, in short order, lead to overview by a state or federal court as to WHY the city of Santa Cruz NEEDS to implement such dramatic suppression of our constitutional right to simply assemble in a public place for no particular reason.

I expect a "Jone"-like decision and a rescinding of that 'emergency order' to result.

i've noticed some Senile posters calling for a State of Emergency in Santa Cruz advocating that the SCPD employ stop & frisk tactics on latino residents (claiming they are all dangerous gang members). something like this happened in Arizona.

will SCPD Assistant Chief Steve Clerk become the next Joe Arpaio? hopefully the Northern California ACLU will litigate to prevent Clerk from doing that here:

http://www.aclu.org/blog/content/police-state