Posted by Craig, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Dec 10, 2007 at 12:07 pm

This is terrible. There's a war going on next door to our city, but our civic leaders are talking about a war in Iran that hasn't and may never start. How many hours of tutoring, teaching, counseling, and rehabilitation could your "carbon offsets" buy?

Posted by Craig, C, a resident of the Downtown North neighborhood, on Dec 12, 2007 at 12:08 pm

I wouldn't call it a war. It is just survival of the fittest. Young people with little knowledge of what adult life consists of. I don't know the percentage of high school graduates and college graduates. Then take in to account the rates of people with parents who went through college and high school and the rates that their children have and the extremely lower rates of those who didn't have that example and foundation. Look at the wages of people without formal education and those with. Compare these statistics with Palo Alto. How many jobs are there in EPA vs PA. Population vs surface area and jobs per sq mile. What percentage of people living in EPA work in EPA or PA? Are 80% of those service positions that are usually within a range of minimum wage all the way up to maybe 10 dollars an hour. Ask EPA residents if the walked up University Ave to PA 10 times how many times they would get stopped? We are in a finacially strapped time, however EPA developmentally, structurally and politically is still in its infancy. They just hired a detective division within the last 18 - 24 months. With the value of money thinning and population increasing, inevitably legal opportunities become scarce and crime becomes vibrant. I am not saying that is right but, if you think of all the factors that can attribute to better communities and less crime, it will always be cash, survival and instang gratification as the factor to deter someone to a less conventional method of bread winning even if it is dangerous lifestlye.

Posted by mike, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Dec 12, 2007 at 1:32 pm

The main issue is how we stop this activity spilling over into our community which seems to be happening in the recent flood of armed robberies.

Some level of profiling makes sense- these violent acts are not committed by senior citizens - for example- therefore there is no value in stopping and watching seniors on University Ave.

We need to make some clear trade offs between public safty and political correctness