McCullough's Secret Agenda. Part 2

Last time we reviewed the recent rants from Councilwoman McCullough in which she called a member of the public a “liar” and claimed he “distorted the truth”, but she never provided any evidence that disproved anything he said. Apparently, following her first rant, one of the Council members was concerned that McCullough had slandered a member of the public, and in the process, falsely accused him of lying and distorting the truth. The Council member asked the City Manager to produce a report that established whether the facts were correct or not. After all, if the facts were incorrect, he deserved a public chastisement. But if they were correct, then the apparent unethical slander from the dais, permitted by the Mayor and the City attorney, might put the City in jeopardy.

The City Manager, apparently, paid no attention to the Council member’s request and instead produced a report called “Murder Incidents in South Orange County” (E-mail me and I’ll be pleased to send you a copy.). That report made no direct mention of any of the 100+ facts in the original column, and instead focused on the murders in 12 South Orange County cities over the past 10 years. Mrs. McCullough mis-quoted the results of that study, so I’ll correct her in this column.

According to that report, among the 12 cities studied over the 10 year period, in terms of per capita murders, “Lake Forest ranked 4th”. The cities with higher murder rates were Laguna Woods, San Clemente, and San Juan Capistrano.

Having the 4th highest murder rate among 12 cities over the past 10 years is nothing to brag about.

Moreover, 2 of the 3 cities that have higher rates are beach cities, which have population explosions during the summertime, so any per capita study usually dis-advantages these cities. That wasn’t mentioned in the City’s report, but anyone who does demographic research would certainly make note of it.

What do we have? -

• My research showed that in the past 3 years, of the 10 cities patrolled by OC SD, Lake Forest had more murders (4) than all the rest of the 9 cities combined (3).
• The City's research showed that in the past 10 years, of the 10 cities patrolled by OC SD plus Irvine and Laguna Beach (hence 12 cities), Lake Forest had the 4th highest murder rate.

The bottom line is that whether you use my statistics or rely on the report McCullough claimed she commissioned, they both establish without a doubt that the murder rate in Lake Forest is something that should concern us, and establishes without a doubt that we are not “one of the safest cities in the U.S.” because we are not even one of the safest cities in South Orange County.

McCullough claims she is worried that if this research becomes well known, people will not want to move here and businesses will not want to open their doors. Her real concern should be with the fact that we have so many murders on a per capita basis, as well as other crimes, and instead of trying to hide this information, she should be pressing the Police to do a better job and come up with better ways to prevent crime from occurring.

Crime is not solved or prevented by denying the facts!

But asking the Police to do a better job won’t get you votes. Instead, McCullough would prefer to lie to the public about how “safe” we are, hide the real statistics, and then run for election once again  and tell people what a good job she’s doing keeping us “safe.”

Mrs. McCullough has announced that she is running for re-election again and it's obvious that she's prepared to say anything to stay in office, even if it includes lying to us about how safe we are. Of all her lies, this is the most foul, because it can cause people to seriously under-estimate the extent to which they should be on guard. That doesn't mean we need to buy shotguns and put bars on our windows, but we are not one of the safest cities in the U.S. and we are not even among the safest cities in South Orange County. The citizens need to know that and our Police need to start acting as if we do have a problem with crime in this City and be more aggressive in how they approach this problem.

For example, our City went for more than a year without someone coordinating the Neighborhood Watch (NW) program. NW is a major crime fighting tool. Allowing this valuable program to flounder for more than a year may be OK if you're one of the safest cities in the U.S., but if you're not, then this omission is unacceptable. And that's the crux of the situation. In her desperate attempt to cling to her position, McCullough actually may be harming the City she claims she loves so much.