A Little Cause and Effect - Daily Sound Thursday Oct 4, 2007

The turtles woke up in the middle of the night to a rustling noise, some yelling, and the sounds of a group of teens running away in the darkness. At the first light of dawn, we saw that one of the turtles had gang symbols carved on his shell. We had always felt safe in our pond, until recently.

Many of us have seen the changes to Santa Barbara, we now wake up to freshly scrawled graffiti where there once was none; the tables at fast food restaurants, the rest room mirrors, the stop sign outside our house, the neighbors fence. We hear of the stabbings and killings where once these were rare events, usually attributed to “visiting” gang members from other cities. Now they live here.

The city has problems, many of them. The number one problem, and that which should receive the most attention from the City Government is public safety. Yet, anyone that has lived here for more than ten to twenty years will tell you that public safety is dramatically on the decline. A lot has changed, and where there is change, there is also a cause, usually with many contributing factors.

But during the term that public safety has been on the decline, have we elected leaders or have we elected politicians? Politicians care much less about solving problems than they do about re-election or advancing their political career. They will do what it takes to give off the “impression” of caring about problems, while being bound by avoiding “offending” any particular faction.

Leaders, on the other hand, are problem solvers. They do not act based on the popularity of the action, they act based on the probability that the action will be effective in solving or minimizing the problem. Leaders do not attack a partial set of contributing causes and then proclaim that “we have done all that we can do”, and then place the blame elsewhere without the problem being resolved.

Many of the Turtles are engineers, business persons and scientists.
In these professions, problem solving is a daily task. It is so important to survival in any competitive business, that tools and procedures have evolved to assist in the methodical approach of arriving at a solution.

One such tool is Root Cause Analysis or RCA. The practice of RCA is predicated on the belief that problems are best solved by attempting to correct or eliminate root causes, as opposed to merely addressing the immediately obvious symptoms. The first step in RCA is to identify and consider ALL causes, including the politically untouchable ones.

As such, let’s attempt to identify possible contributing causes to the increased gang crime problem. The contributing factor of each cause, might range anywhere from zero to 100, but regardless of the contributing weight of each, before proceeding it is important to identify ALL possible contributors. The next step would be to assign a weight by means of facts, records, and research, which we suspect has not been done by the City Officials.

It may help to think about what has changed in the last ten years, which causes have been addressed, and which haven’t.

Here is the Turtle List of POSSIBLE contributing factors, broken into two groups, beginning with the politically “safe” possible causes which are acknowledged, blamed, and addressed by the City. Don’t get us wrong, these also should be considered as contributors, but they should by no means be considered as the only or most significant contributors.

The second list contains possible causes that have been pretty much ignored by City Officials we suspect, because of the possibility of offending a voting faction or suggesting anything that might be deemed to be “politically incorrect” or politically damaging to the politician. A sincere and scientific problem solving procedure never leaves out a single possible contributing factor and always weighs its significance.

Politically “safe” contributing factors:

>Youth boredom – lack of productive things to do.
>Lack of opportunities, education and jobs – Youth Programs
>Insufficient or ineffective parenting – single parents, those working multiple jobs
>Insufficient or ineffective education, mentoring, counseling
>Motivation
>Discrimination
>Poverty
>Law enforcement or (lack thereof)

Politically “risky” contributing factors:

>Political Leadership (or lack thereof)
>Lack of Discipline
>Cultural role models – glorification and worship of gang mentality in media
>Prison culture and gangs - Mexican mafia recruitment
>Drug use and distribution (medical marijuana, other)
>Overcrowded prisons
>Graffiti
>Illegal Immigration


As columnists, we can only make observations, identify problems, and raise questions. It is up to reporters and the public to ask these questions of their elected leaders and city officials. This will provide information to characterize the cause of the problem and help identify solutions. It is up to the elected leaders to implement solutions, because they have that responsibility and duty. They have access to the information to answer questions and the power to find and implement solutions, using the many resources available to them.

Since turtles are humble creatures who have no political aspirations and are independent of any political interest groups, we are in the unique position of being able to discuss the “politically risky” causes and solutions.

Local degradation of public safety is the foremost issue for Turtles, and it is the issue we will deal with until the problem is under control. It is critically important not only to our well being as a community, but also to our reputation as a City. In future articles we will be using your feedback and provided information to discuss these contributing factors in further detail. We will be hosting constructive commentary on any of these on the Conservative Turtle Blog. We invite any current or future leader (not politician) that truly feels public safety to be the city’s highest priority to pay attention and/or participate.


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