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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/19/us/years-of-unraveling-then-bankruptcy-for-a-city.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
Years of Unraveling, Then Bankruptcy for a City
Max Whittaker for The New York Times
STOCKTON, Calif. — This inland port on the San Joaquin River recently became the largest city in the country to declare bankruptcy, but evidence of its unraveling has been mounting for years.
It is visible in the rising domestic violence rates, booming private security businesses and a seemingly unstoppable stream of foreclosures. And it can be seen in smaller form too — at a struggling piñata shop, on the once-yellow fire hydrants faded to gray, in a case of stolen koi.
“The police don’t respond to anything unless there’s blood involved,” said Marlene Hinson, 51, who, after living here for 22 years without incident, was burglarized three times in four months, including the fish theft from her pond in a neighborhood of lush lawns and towering shade trees.
Even as some parts of the country are tentatively emerging from the worst downturn since the Great Depression, this city cannot seem to find solid ground.
While 50 miles to the north, in Sacramento, a bankruptcy judge and lawyers for Stockton and its 18 creditors have begun to sort out who owes what to whom, Stockton’s 292,000 residents have been left trying to hold together some semblance of order and respect for themselves.
The indignities have piled up and compounded in ways few could have imagined. After housing prices shot up in the early 2000s, when commuters from the San Francisco Bay area bought and built up homes here, the median home price plummeted by more than 60 percent in the last five years. In the first half of this year, the city had the highest foreclosure rate of any in the country, according to RealtyTrac, a company that collects foreclosure data. While it has come down a few points in recent months, for the last few years the unemployment rate hovered around 17 percent, nearly double the national average.
While Stockton’s bankruptcy troubles can be traced in part to the collapse of the housing market and the subsequent erosion of the city’s tax base, for years city leaders also mismanaged and overspent funds, pushing the city into financial peril, analysts and current city officials say. Stockton cannot afford the $417 million it owes for retiree health benefits, city officials say, and this year a bank repossessed city-owned parking garages and a $40 million building the city had bought with plans for an upgraded City Hall.
Since 2009, the city has cut 25 percent of its police officers, 30 percent of its Fire Department and over 40 percent of all other city employees. And while the Police Department has started hiring again, much ground has already been lost. Last year, there were 58 homicides here, a record. Halfway through 2012, there have already been 35. Other cities across the state are also teetering. On Wednesday night, city leaders in San Bernardino, Calif., voted to declare a fiscal emergency, which would allow the city to file for bankruptcy within 30 days.
After the three burglaries, Ms. Hinson and her husband, John Hinson, 68, a retired city finance director, installed an alarm system, video cameras and a locking gate at their home. But when the alarm goes off, which it has on several occasions, they say the police do not come. “They used to serve and protect, but now they can’t protect us anymore,” said Ms. Hinson, who works for a company that manages homeowner associations. “We have to protect ourselves.”
To that end, the Hinsons joined their neighborhood watch group and have started patrolling the city park adjoining their house. Stockton now has about 100 neighborhood watch groups, and more are forming all the time as concern over rising crime spreads, according to police officials.
Some predict the city will see a boom in self-policing efforts similar to the one that occurred in nearby Vallejo, which experienced a 40-fold increase in neighborhood watch groups since it filed for bankruptcy in 2008.
Cuts at the Stockton Police Department have improved the fortunes of private security companies. Delta Hawkeye Security Services, the largest private security company in the city, has seen an 80 percent increase in business since 2009, according to Ron Cancio, the company’s manager. Homeowner associations, landlords and businesses hire officers for $18 to $25 an hour (with or without a gun) to do work that until recently was done by city police.
“People call us before they call the police because we respond quicker,” Mr. Cancio said.
This year, the increase in crime and clients prompted Delta Hawkeye to have 10 of its 75 officers certified to carry firearms and Tasers. The company intends to triple the number of armed officers by next summer, Mr. Cancio said.
Darien Wilson, 19, carries a gun during his graveyard shift, while he zigzags around town in his company-issued Hyundai, checking on dozens of foreclosed houses and responding to everything from domestic violence calls to reports of fistfights. If he sees a violent crime in progress, he calls the police. But he also uses his Taser and pepper spray and can handcuff people until the police arrive. He says most often the sight of an armed officer sends people running.
“Not very many 19-year-olds can say they’re armed and working security on the streets of one of the most dangerous cities in America,” Mr. Wilson said.
While the city’s financial morass has allowed Mr. Wilson’s ilk more responsibility and swagger, it has left a multitude of others in need of refuge, a roof and a hot meal.
In 2008, 716 battered women received counseling at the Women’s Center Youth & Family Services, a nonprofit here serving victims of domestic violence. Last year that number had jumped to 3,347. The center’s shelters are over-capacity, said Joelle Gomez, the center’s executive director. “We’ve never seen anything like the increases we’ve seen in the last four to five years in calls to our helplines, our emergency shelter, counseling services and requests for restraining orders,” Ms. Gomez added. They also arrive more brutalized. “The nature of the domestic violence that is occurring is more violent than we’ve seen before,” Ms. Gomez said. “People have lost their sense of hope and stability, and with that comes a lot of anger.”
The city’s homeless shelters are operating at 125 percent capacity and have been since 2009 when foreclosures left many, particularly renters, with nowhere to go, said John Reynolds, executive director of Stockton Shelter for the Homeless, a nonprofit with multiple shelters throughout city.
The hardships here are hardly limited to those already at the margins of poverty. The women’s shelter has seen more middle- and upper-middle-class battered women. “These days almost every person I see has been through foreclosure or their mortgages are seriously underwater,” said Timothy Miller, a psychologist who has served wealthier Stocktonians for 30 years. “People feel absolutely crushed by that pressure.”
Even the city’s cats, dogs and parakeets have become orphans of economic adversity. Officials at the Delta Humane Society & S.P.C.A. said the shelter was 60 percent over capacity, forced to turn away those who try to drop pets off they cannot afford, or animals that, along with their owners, lost homes to foreclosure.
“People are dropping off boxes of kittens at the gate during the night,” said Patrice Davidson, the executive director. “We’ve got kittens in the bathroom and cat cages in the lobby.”
Stocktonians disagree on whether bankruptcy will, in the end, help or harm their city. Some say Chapter 9 is a stain the city will never be rid of while others swear it is the last chance to crawl back from insolvency and tough luck.
Regardless of where they fall on that spectrum, many residents’ misfortunes track with the city’s own.
Yuri Campos’s grandparents first arrived here as farm workers from Mexico 50 years ago. As the city grew from an agricultural town into what was, until recently, a rapidly expanding exurb, Ms. Campos’ family grew with it. She bought a house, had a son and opened a shop called Party Barn specializing in handmade piñatas. But these days few here have the means, or the will, for parties.
As the city stumbled into financial ruin, Ms. Campos, 30, and her family fell with it. By last November, the bank had foreclosed on her house and the homes of three other family members in town.
Ms. Campos started looking at rental listings in Southern California cities like Oxnard and Long Beach. One of her aunts decamped for Arizona.
Then in March, Ms. Campos was at a bar when a fight broke out and a man was shot and killed. When she tried to contact the police with information about what happened, she says no one at the Police Department would meet with her or call her back.
By the end of June, the city’s bankruptcy made national headlines and for the first time in her life, Ms. Campos began to feel something akin to shame.
“People will ask me, ‘Where are you from?’ ” she said. “Sometime I hesitate to say. I just feel like they’ll think I’m a violent person. They’ll look at me like I might hurt them.”
A version of this article appeared in print on July 19, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Years of Unraveling, Then Bankruptcy for a City.
barracuda wrote:^^For somebody who rails pretty hard against conspiracy-culture fear-mongering, you seem to have bought into that civil war theme rather deeply.
barracuda wrote:Yes, I read it. It's southern white rhetoric that's been promulgated to successfully swing vote blocs since about 1870. What's new?
barracuda wrote:CLK wrote:I have thought for some time that there is a deliberate program at work to polarize the country, to make it ungovernable.
Yes, but that's exactly what Alex Jones thinks as well. You seem to be approaching the same conclusion from a different angle.Take your pick as to what the endgame of that strategy is.
Well, that's part of my problem with your thesis. In my experience, the goal of any game in this arena is money. And at the present time, the income source for the mil-industrial complex and their political sycophants pretty much hinges upon the continuity of contributions from the US tax base, so ungovernable chaos and civil war doesn't easily figure into that scenario as providing a viable ROI. Who wants to jeopardize two trillion yearly dollars in reliable income? Perhaps the advent of further security theater and militarized police forces could provide a revenue stream, I suppose. But again, those things are paid for by taxes. Largely.
Suspects in Louisiana deputy shootings tied to ‘sovereign citizen’ movement
By Arturo Garcia | Monday, August 20, 2012 11:36 EDT
Police say at least two of the seven suspects arrested for the fatal shooting of two Louisiana sheriffs deputies last Thursday are connected to the anti-government “sovereign citizen” movement.
According to WBRZ-TV, 28-year-old Kyle Joekel and 44-year-old Terry Smith had identified themselves as part of the movement, which was classified as a domestic terror group last year by the FBI.
Joekel and Smith, along with several members of Smith’s family and other associates, were arrested following an ambush on authorities in LaPlace, Louisiana, about 25 miles west of New Orleans. Deputies Brandon Nielsen and Jeremy Triche were killed in the ensuing shootout. Two more deputies were wounded.
Smith’s son, Brian Lyn Smith, 24, has been charged with first-degree murder. Arrested as principals to attempted first-degree murder were Derrick Smith, 22, and 21-year-old Teniecha Bright. Terry Smith’s wife, 37-year-old Chanel Skains, and 23-year-old Britney Keith, Bryan Smith’s girlfriend, were arrested and charged as accessories to the crime.
According to The New Orleans Time-Picayune the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which regularly monitors hate group activity, estimates that the sovereign movement is on the rise, with an estimated 300,000 members. A training video produced by the SPLC for law enforcement agencies has received about 80,000 orders.
“Sovereigns believe that they — not judges, juries, law enforcement or elected officials — get to decide which laws to obey and which to ignore, and they don’t think they should have to pay taxes,” the SPLC explains in a report on the group. “Sovereigns are clogging up the courts with indecipherable filings and when cornered, many of them lash out in rage, frustration and, in the most extreme cases, acts of deadly violence, usually directed against government officials.”
8bitagent wrote:He seems to rallying around idiot conspiracy theory beliefs. moon landing was a hoax/global warming is a hoax/missile hit the pentagon/illuminati has symbolism in pop videos/every event that happens is a CIA black op/Zionists did it/Masons did it/government wants our guns. That sort of thing.
I get what he's saying about everything. Though to me the unease in 2012 is real. 2008, like 2007, like 2009, 2010, like 2006, etc was all talk.
8bitagent wrote:How is pointing out a sharp rise in the last few years of loaded right wing rhetoric, violence, plots, soaring gun sales, flame stoking with conservative radio, etc BS?
barracuda wrote:8bitagent wrote:He seems to rallying around idiot conspiracy theory beliefs. moon landing was a hoax/global warming is a hoax/missile hit the pentagon/illuminati has symbolism in pop videos/every event that happens is a CIA black op/Zionists did it/Masons did it/government wants our guns. That sort of thing.
Yes, I know. But he's also pointing you toward a grand conspiracy in which a variety of seemingly disparate spree killings may have their genesis in right wing secessionist fantasies that are, imho, nothing more than political rhetoric designed to get out the racist vote, as opposed to any possible real threat of civil war.I get what he's saying about everything. Though to me the unease in 2012 is real. 2008, like 2007, like 2009, 2010, like 2006, etc was all talk.
Whoa, hold it right there, fella - you've been going on about how "something really weird is in the air this time for sure" for about the last six years as far as I can remember. Someday you just might be right.8bitagent wrote:How is pointing out a sharp rise in the last few years of loaded right wing rhetoric, violence, plots, soaring gun sales, flame stoking with conservative radio, etc BS?
Clearly you weren't alive during the Raygun presidency. But I'm not suggesting that to point out those things is wrong. I'm specifically trying to look closely at his theory of spree-killings and their relationship to national party politics and see what's really there. I'm asking, what are the specific issues within the districts "targeted" by these killings might in fact be affected here.
Yes, Alex Jones bullshit about 'bama stoking a race war is nonsense. Alex Jones is a farce, yes. But if you're going to put forth the theory that there is a concerted effort underway by the elites to destabilize the US and make it ungovernable, then I'm gonna look for a few cui bonos and some particulars, otherwise I begin to find the overall distinction between AJ's nonsense and CLK's warnings to be without much of a difference, regardless of matters of agenda. Because I feel pretty sure CLK doesn't have much of an agenda beyond figuring shit out the best he can. The end result is the same: give people the sneaking unease that civil war is around the corner.
justdrew wrote:well, from the Emory perspective the only forces likely behind this movement, and only slightly-at-best in-charge would be the post-war fascist international groups, they'd have people _in_ the government, but they wouldn't _be_ the government. The Kochs and the Roves and the like aren't "in" on it I would think, though they try to use some of the same "base" - but yeah, the mainline republicans don't want to see the US split up or civil war, but they're finding themselves waking up and starting to see who they've been in bed with.
Any likely modern "civil war" will instead look like dispersed low-level conflict, few direct engagements, think sabotage, disrupting communications, blowing up gas stations, disrupting everything, forcing civil society to spend vast efforts guarding convoys and fixed high value assets like harbors, trains, power plants, hospitals, etc... A whole lot of "not fun"
but I doubt anyone has their hand on a knob they can use to turn up the rate of these events, and unless the rate goes up significantly these disruptions would remain manageable.
Now from an electoral politics point of view... I would bet that a lot of people who would vote republican are being turned off from voting, the AlexJones'verse and other more clearly exclusively right-wing voices is likely suppressing votes for Romney fairly significantly. Not sure how it's going to work out in the end with the whole 'tea party' thing, they active and vote, but they seem to be replacing other parts of the republican base rather than adding to their base.
CLK wrote:What I'm saying is very simple- you can extrapolate as far as you like or not at all. But my basic argument is that conspiracy theories and you know, actual conspiracies, curiously emerge from the very same quarters- that of the far right.
The shootings all have a common denominator that no one wants to talk about- I simply pointed it out. Take it or leave it.
What's the point, really?
CLK wrote:What I'm saying is very simple- you can extrapolate as far as you like or not at all. But my basic argument is that conspiracy theories and you know, actual conspiracies, curiously emerge from the very same quarters- that of the far right. The shootings all have a common denominator that no one wants to talk about- I simply pointed it out. Take it or leave it.
I really don't know what any of this really accomplishes in the long run. My basic goal now is to debunk right wing conspiracy theories and offer real world counterarguments, such as pointing out that the Jesus Freak/Evangelical movement was the real end result of mind control experimentation. Doing so is pretty much the most thankless task in the world.
Maybe I'll give that up too. What's the point, really?
barracuda wrote:CLK wrote:What I'm saying is very simple- you can extrapolate as far as you like or not at all. But my basic argument is that conspiracy theories and you know, actual conspiracies, curiously emerge from the very same quarters- that of the far right.
Agree entirely. In fact, that statement is one of the ongoing curiosities of this forum, that, from Illuminati, to ZOG, to sovereign citizen, to mil-intel devouring of UFO theory, so much of it both comes from and benefits the extreme right wing.The shootings all have a common denominator that no one wants to talk about- I simply pointed it out. Take it or leave it.
Fair enough.What's the point, really?
Presumably, gaining an understanding of what's really going on with a bit more clarity, an undertaking anyone attempting ought to be congratulated for. So, as a reader of your site: thanks.
CLK wrote:What I'm saying is very simple- you can extrapolate as far as you like or not at all. But my basic argument is that conspiracy theories and you know, actual conspiracies, curiously emerge from the very same quarters- that of the far right. The shootings all have a common denominator that no one wants to talk about- I simply pointed it out. Take it or leave it.
I really don't know what any of this really accomplishes in the long run. My basic goal now is to debunk right wing conspiracy theories and offer real world counterarguments, such as pointing out that the Jesus Freak/Evangelical movement was the real end result of mind control experimentation. Doing so is pretty much the most thankless task in the world.
Maybe I'll give that up too. What's the point, really?
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