Plaza safety concerns demand strong response
Leaders of Santa Fe are receiving a clear, unmistakable message from downtown business owners: We do not feel safe. The merchants made their case first with a petition — 119 signatures collected over just two days — prompting the city to schedule meetings to hear concerns. The first meeting took place Tuesday with downtown merchants, and a second is scheduled at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center, this one with merchants from the Railyard and Guadalupe districts.
The problems — everything from brazen robberies, to panhandling, to the messes left by people living in the streets — are difficult to solve.
For one thing, the city is limited in what it can do about panhandling; asking for money is a protected right, with established constitutional law making it difficult to stop even aggressive beggars. It’s also not against the law to be homeless, and people who lack shelter also have the right to use the city streets.
As Mayor Alan Webber pointed out at the meeting with merchants, the city must deal with larger issues of substance abuse and mental health issues. To improve the atmosphere downtown, those issues must be tackled in a comprehensive manner.
Still, downtown merchants want a greater police presence, believing that having officers of the law visible will at least slow some of the troubling behavior.
One response by the city, a two-week enforcement effort called Operation Downtown Focus, brought four additional uniformed officers downtown from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. While the name is catchy, short-term solutions likely are not the answer. Still, the effort included outreach to businesses; gathering information is essential to find ways to address the problem.
To settle downtown, additional officers will need to be there on a more permanent basis, walking the streets and meeting with shopkeepers and others on a regular basis. More officers like Cecil Sena, in other words, who users of the Plaza area saw daily and whose presence made people feel safe.
With the Santa Fe Police Department perennially short-staffed, finding the people to walk downtown streets regularly could be difficult, though. Salary increases were designed to bring in more officers, and Webber said the city soon will implement a $250,000 hiring incentive to bring in additional officers.
That’s important, because other parts of the city also want and deserve police protection. Families who use parks in midtown complain regularly about needles on the ground, trash and the presence of transients. Residents decry auto burglaries and home break-ins. It is not just the folks downtown who don’t feel safe.
We think this response from Capt. Matthew Champlin, about whether statistics show crime is increasing downtown, applies to all of Santa Fe: “I don’t care what the number says if the citizens don’t feel safe.”
As Champlin put it: “The bottom line is getting in there, seeing what their concerns are and then doing something about it.”
Listening comes first. Then action, including bringing in police for patrols — come spring, the bicycle cops will be back — but also considering what social services could be placed close to needs. In other cities, for example, social workers are stationed at public libraries or city offices where those without resources congregate.
Webber also is promising more training for merchants so they can better identify criminal behavior and even set up their stores in ways to discourage shoplifting and petty theft. He hopes the Downtown Merchants Association is revitalized, with the businesses a stronger force.
The city itself can do more to discourage panhandling, too. Put up signs in stores, discouraging the practice and offer other ways for generous people to help. The city already has encouraged donations to Life Link of Santa Fe rather than individuals. In Durango, Colo., donation jars are placed by cash registers in stores to make giving easy. If panhandlers don’t make money, they might move on.
There’s a real possibility, too, that the people begging for money are not the same people who sleep in Santa Fe’s homeless shelters — the response to each likely needs to be different. As we said before, these challenges are complicated.
What is not complicated is this: People have a right to feel safe on the streets of their city, in their homes or while running a business. Right now, that’s not happening, even while crime statistics remain flat. So it appears we have a problem of perception as well as actual incidents — an aggressive panhandler, public urination or litter — all of which leaves people feeling depleted. Now, we must work together to fix this.