AnonymousSource: Santa Barbara Police Department
On Friday, January 8, 2020 at approximately 9:15 P.M., the Santa Barbara Police Department was dispatched to the Amtrak Station on a report of a battery-in-progress.
Officers found a transient male in medical distress and started to provide aid until Santa Barbara Fire and medics arrived.
Police quickly associated another transient male, Steve Laurence Malec, age 50, in connection to the violent assault that had just occurred.
The victim was transported to the hospital to be treated for injuries consistent with a violent battery.
Malec was arrested and charged with assault with force causing great bodily harm, attempted murder and mayhem. He is in Santa Barbara County Jail. Bail is set at over $1M.
The investigation remains ongoing.
Light fires, assaulting people, stabbing on the Westside last week, attempted murder…. These vargrants (transients) bring so to the community.
Just like those good people who tried to take the capitol dirt bags.
We could take everyone living on the streets into custody and treat their addiction and mental health issues. Our community would be cleaner and safer, and pour souls like the fellows described in this article could live in healthy and humane conditions. Of course that will never happen in California. Instead, incidents like this will occur with increasing frequency. The zombie invasion continues…
Not everyone had the privilege of favorable genetics, money, love, and stability. How about helping them to recover from traumas and other unfortunate problems of life?
Yes, let’s raise taxes to pay for this care. I’ll bet the non-left on this site will totally be on board with that. They LOVE to pay taxes.
I have too…maybe 4 nature, Pollyanna, can take them in !
Thank the ACLU and our political “leaders” who’s Party has been in complete control of the State for the last 25 yrs.
PITMIX i don’t mind paying taxes when there used wisely. When I travel and see the condition of the roads and how clean they are compared to CA I’m quite disappointed. Our gas tax and DMV fees are some of the highest in the nation. Are our road in better condition than the rest of the nation? NO!! Constantly raising Sales tax, Property taxes and bonds to help the schools? I remember the lottery was going to be an end all stream of money for our schools, Now there some of the worst in the nation and they want more money. More money wont fix the homeless mental illness problem. Spending wisely will be a good start.
Two years ago, I was assaulted by a transient who was camped next to the station. The police arrested the person and several months later I received a notification to the victim (me) that the person had been released. Obviously, I would never go to that station again and avoid downtown.
Pretty sad what the enablers have created here in Santa Barbara
No one has pooped in their front yard, have they? LOL
It’s confusing to see some people make this political when they don’t realize what the roots of the problem are. My uncle was SBPD in the 1960’s to late 80’s and said the violent homeless people started showing up after Reagan and Republicans shut down the state mental hospitals. Families couldn’t or didn’t want to take care of the released patients, they couldn’t stay sober or keep a job, so they just bumped around between petty crime and jail. There is still nowhere for the violent, mentally ill except jail in our society. Now that mental healthcare doesn’t consist of electric shocks and cruel confinement, the state and local governments should consider a better form of institutionalization than having nearly half of county jail populations consist of people with mental problems. In the long term, it would save money and give homeless mentally ill people better lives.
I see this mistruth a lot. I’m sure you didn’t mean to intentionally mislead. But Reagan and “the Republicans” are not responsible for this. A 1972 CA bill called the Lanterman Petris Short Act – sponsored by one Republican and two Democrats – is. Yes, Reagan signed it into law, after it passed legislation with bi-partisan approval. The ACLU also later filed suits which pushed the act further to the place we find ourselves today – we basically can do almost nothing about the endless numbers of druggies and mentally ill people who are seriously in need of help and roaming our streets. If people think that leniency in terms of how these people can be treated with regard to arrest, incarceration, forced participation in rehabilitation programs, and holding in mental institutions (which did seriously need reform, but now hardly exist) is not a draw for bums from all over the place, they are wrong. People know where to flock in order to do their drugs and live a vagrant life on the streets. There is hard data showing that 90% of these people suffer from addiction issues, and usually co-morbid and addiction induced mental illness, and there is hardly a d*mn thing any of us can do about it. No amount of taxation or programs can help people who do not want to help themselves, and according to law, there is nothing we can do to force any of these to try.
CHILLINGRILLIN, well done. You belong in justice movements. I try explaining that DEFUND the police means REFUND social services to channel that necessary work away from the street and prison–but enabling legislation to PAY for the work never gets the full throated support, does it? You have exposed that pattern: “It’s the typical conservative playbook: push problems down to the local level and cut public funding. Then leave a jumble of under-equipped uncoordinated nonprofits to put a bandaid on things so ambitious politicians can say they cut the budget and big bad government and the wealthy can get tax writeoffs and pats on the back for donations”. Never stop telling that truth.
So…Time to adopt a new slogan!! Stop saying “defund the police” and start saying “fund social services” if that’s what you are aiming for. Odd concept perhaps, but how about we try and use words that actually mean what we’re trying to say. And as for the homeless, that’s a problem that spans both political parties policies. Locally though, it sure seems like our plan of continually funding and enabling isn’t really working out all that well…