If you've got walls, gates, and private armed security guards, who needs cops?
/
March 19, 2022 :Crime in West Hollywood skyrockets 137 percent in one year
Last month saw 250 major crimes as compared to 105 the same time last year, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department reports
Mayor Pro Tem Sepi Shyne amended the budgets to re-allocate funds for sheriff's deputies to the Block by Block program, which staffs unarmed security ambassadors who provide the city with supplemental law enforcement services.
"We have all talked for two years about re-imagining policing and reimagining policing means reallocating funding and that's exactly what that means – you can't just say it without actually doing it. Period," Mayor Pro Tempore Sepi Shyne said.
Not all are happy about this vote, including Mayor Lauren Meister:
"Most of the residents and businesses I have heard from are opposed to cutting the Sheriff’s budget," Meister told Fox News in a statement. "They are outraged that people and organizations from outside our city are dictating to Council how to run our city. The narrative that we can have 'either Sheriff's or social services,' or 'either Sheriff's or unarmed security teams' is false."
According to her official biography, Shyne is an Iranian lesbian civil rights activist who claims to be a “person of color” because she’s Persian, and who “ lives in the Mid-City area of the City of West Hollywood with her wife and their fur-babies”. She was delighted with the result of the vote:
Not all is bad news for West Hollywood’s residents, though:
Despite the reduction in law enforcement funds, the council also voted to give $14,000 more to the Russian Arts festival for an increase to $50,000.
