WEDNESDAY, JUNE 6, 2012
Volume 11 Issue 177
Santa Monica Daily Press
HOLDING SERVE AGAINST AGING SEE PAGE 8
We have you covered
THE DID YOU VOTE? ISSUE
Voters cast their ballots BY DAILY PRESS STAFF CITYWIDE Santa Monica voters headed to the polls Tuesday with much to decide. Aside from the presidential primary and a pair of propositions, voters were asked to cast ballots in the newly-drawn 50th Assembly District. Here are results available at presstime. 50TH ASSEMBLY DISTRICT
Richard Bloom: 28.1 percent Brad Torgan: 27.9 percent Betsy Butler: 24.6 percent Torie Osborn: 19.4 percent * 3.5 percent precincts reporting PROPOSITIONS
Prop. 28: 66.8 percent yes; 33.8 percent no Prop. 29: 53.5 percent yes; 46.5 percent no * 6.3 percent precincts reporting 33RD CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
Brandon Wise brandonw@smdp.com
EXERCISING THEIR RIGHTS: Voters cast ballots at Santa Monica’s City Hall on Tuesday. A local Assembly seat was up for grabs.
Henry Waxman: 44.4 percent Bill Bloomfield: 26.2 percent Christopher David: 16.6 percent Bruce Margolin: 4.5 percent * 2.4 percent of precincts reporting
Crime stats inconclusive on Common Ground Black Widow case returns to court
Nonprofit service provider’s impact on the neighborhood remains unknown BY ASHLEY ARCHIBALD Daily Press Staff Writer
LINCOLN BLVD Advocates of a nonprofit that provides HIV testing services cheered the release of 20 years of Santa Monica police statistics that indicated that their facility had little impact on crime rates, contrary to the claims of nearby residents. However, even Neighborhood Resource Officer Artis Williams, the man who read and compiled the 20 years worth of data, called the information inconclusive. Common Ground grabbed the attention of residents of Sunset Park and Ocean Park when it announced that it would move a few blocks from 2021 Lincoln Blvd. to a new location at 2401 Lincoln Blvd. Residents that attended a series of public
meetings about Common Ground’s move objected to the facility’s new location, saying that its programs brought crime and an element of danger to the neighborhood. They spoke of fights in parking lots, sexual harassment as they walked by the organization and finding piles of human excrement near their homes. There was only one way to see if fact lined up with the anecdotal evidence, and Williams got to work. Williams devoted time outside of his normal duties in Sunset Park to comb through 133 police reports that resulted from crimes reported on the 600 and 700 blocks of Bay Street between 2001 and 2011. It took him three months to make it through not only the reports after Common Ground arrived, but to compare those num-
Gary Limjap (310) 586-0339 In today’s real estate climate ...
Experience counts! garylimjap@gmail.com www.garylimjap.com
BY ASHLEY ARCHIBALD
bers to crimes committed in the decade before the program came to Santa Monica to see if there had been any increase. He sifted through the reports to find references to Common Ground in an attempt to establish whether or not its clientele had anything to do with the reported crimes on the street, which is next to the facility’s old location. “I was looking for anything that would correlate the crimes and Common Ground or the clients of Common Ground,” Williams said. At first, the results appear incontrovertible. Only three of the 133 crimes contained any reference to Common Ground, its
DOWNTOWN L.A. Oral arguments are expected to begin today before the California Supreme Court in the case of a former Santa Monica landlord who is serving a life sentence for the murders of two homeless men in Los Angeles. Helen Golay, 81, has been waiting for her day in court since December 2009 when the California Supreme Court agreed to take up her case. Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt, 79, were found guilty in 2008 of murdering Kenneth McDavid and Paul Vados by running them over with a car.
SEE STATS PAGE 10
SEE COURT PAGE 9
Daily Press Staff Writer
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