Established in 1953, we are proud of our long, storied history of being your voice to champion the civic, commercial, educational, and political issues that have come before us. If you'd like to have your concerns or issues heard, post a topic in our Community Forum: ClairemontOnline.com/Discuss.
As we swear-in our incoming 2013 Board of Directors, we look to initiate and tackle new challenges and issues in the year ahead, which include: establishing Tavares Family Park, addressing the homelessness issue, duplicating the success of our Clairemont Garden Tour & Expo, form and create a new Clairemont event for Fall 2013, and initiate our concerns in the infrastructure debate that has started within the City of San Diego, among other projects.
Clairemont's "newest" Councilman Kevin Faulconer and Mayor Bob Filner have confirmed their attendance for our 2013 Inaugural Meeting, and will speak about their legislative and governing plans moving forward. We're also expecting to meet our new Clairemont representatives from Assemblymembers Toni Atkins and Brian Maienschien, State Senator Marty Block, and Congressman Scott Peters.
Until then, we look forward to seeing you at our 2013 Inaugural Meeting on Thursday, January 3rd. Don't forget, we will be meeting at Cadman Elementary School this year (4370 Kamloop Ave).
Working for you, Clairemont!
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| Ryan Trabuco CTC President |
A couple of years ago, I read in Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference": Some of the best new ideas in preventing violence borrow heavily from the principles of epidemic theory. Take, for example, the so-called "broken window" hypothesis that has been used around the country as the justification for cracking down on "quality of life" crimes like public urination and drinking. In a famous experiment conducted twenty-seven years ago by the Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo, a car was parked on a street in Palo Alto, where it sat untouched for a week. At the same time, Zimbardo had an identical car parked in a roughly comparable neighborhood in the Bronx, only in this case the license plates were removed and the hood was propped open. Within a day, it was stripped. Then, in a final twist, Zimbardo smashed one of the Palo Alto car's windows with a sledgehammer. Within a few hours, that car, too, was destroyed. Zimbardo's point was that disorder invites even more disorder-that a small deviation from the norm can set into motion a cascade of vandalism and criminality. The broken window was the tipping point.
ReplyDeleteThe broken-window hypothesis was the inspiration for the cleanup of the subway system conducted by the New York City Transit Authority in the late eighties and early nineties. Why was the Transit Authority so intent on removing graffiti from every car and cracking down on the people who leaped over turnstiles without paying? Because those two "trivial" problems were thought to be tipping points-broken windows-that invited far more serious crimes. It is worth noting that not only did this strategy seem to work-since 1990, felonies have fallen more than fifty per cent-but one of its architects was the then chief of the Transit Police, William Bratton, who was later to take his ideas about preventing crime to the city as a whole when he became head of the New York Police Department.
If you believe that there is a graffiti-crime correlation, or even think that graffiti is an eye sore and negatively impacts the face of what we want Clairemont to look and feel like, it seems to me that we should have a graffiti task force in place, with concerned citizens on the look out for graffiti-I offer to chair such a task force or committee. Also, included in "Clairemont beautification plans, should be road side and canyon trash removal, and if we successfully put an end to graffiti-works of art." Thank you for your consideration. Lori Mendez, Esq.