New council’s move won’t fix the problem

Using the first conservative majority Chico City Council session to make infractions punishable as misdemeanors is brilliant, yehaaaa the sheriff’s back in town, political theater. The deeper issue at play is Chico’s consistent failure to mitigate destitute people living in areas unfit for human habitation. It’s the continuation of lame responses that every city council has applied since I walked into Chico with my backpack in November of 2012. We no longer have a mere problem as we did in 2012, we have a catastrophe that policing simply won’t address, and has never addressed.

The shell game in play, once again, is to criminalize, cite and arrest people for being unfortunate enough to find themselves living in tents, cardboard boxes or simply lying on the ground. Moving people from one unfit area to another unfit area doesn’t magically make Chico cleaner and safer, housed or unhoused.

As for the classic discretionary tool jargon — If the issue is habitual offenders then the ordinance should have been written with this intent — when a person has been given multiple infractions for an offense and are charged, once again with the same offense, the courts shall have the jurisdiction to apply a criminal misdemeanor charge. Hey I get it, a few people comprise the vast majority of nuisance crimes, the houseless get it too.

Give the police more leeway with the petty few instead of giving them carte blanche authority to willynilly add a criminal offense to someone’s record.

All the best and then some,

— Bill (Guillermo) Mash,

Chico