So true, and the question that has been being asked for many years, “Where is the public leadership who will begin to take responsibility for the city?”
Marcos Bretón: City's core a caldron of neglect
By Marcos Bretón - Bee Columnist
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, October 7, 2007
Spend just two hours watching Sacramento police officers work, and their role in our city becomes abundantly clear:
We expect cops to clean up our failures. We expect them to control a preposterous concentration of low- income hotels downtown, places where people live in conditions that can't even be described as squalor.
If you have no clue that your teenager rides the light rail downtown to loiter instead of going to school, the police will do your job for you.
Then, there's the political failures that become police problems.
For example, what do you think happens when buildings remain boarded up for years? Or are populated with questionable tenants?
Would you believe they actually attract criminal elements? I know. I was shocked, too.
But there it was. One minute I'm talking to a cop in front of the Greyhound station on L Street, and the next we had a felony arrest.
A young woman was picking up her girlfriend at Greyhound while blaring the stereo in her yellow convertible. The music was so loud, West Sacramento undoubtedly heard it.
She was oblivious to several shouts to turn it down, and got a ticket for her trouble. A simple background check found an outstanding warrant on the young woman who had just gotten off the bus.
Off she went in handcuffs, while a resident of the Berry Hotel next door invited us to see his room.
Up we went, traversing stairs that moved as you stepped on them. To call it a tenement would be an insult to tenements. The smell of the hallways made you dizzy. The ceiling panels were torn and frayed.
People were paying more than $400 a month for these places.
At the Marshall Hotel on Seventh Street, I met an amiable man who told police he was a registered sex offender.
Another man showed us his hovel of a room, the floor water-damaged, walls with black mold -- and spoke of mice infestations.
There are proposals to turn the Marshall into a "boutique" hotel. The Berry is supposed to be cleaned up. The Greyhound station is supposed to be moved.
Blah, blah, blah. They are what happens when bad property owners meet bumbling city officials.
