Port Commissioner Assails Presence of ‘Crazies’ : Downtown: Louis Wolfsheimer says revitalization is threatened by petty criminals and the mentally disturbed.

San Diego’s downtown revitalization is being undermined by petty crime and street “crazies,” a committee preparing a blueprint for the future of downtown was told Thursday.

The issue was raised by Centre City Planning Committee member and Board of Port Commissioners Chairman Louis Wolfsheimer, who launched a tirade against the “crazies” who populate downtown. “I’m sure I’ll catch a lot of hell for what I’m going to say . . . but what the hell,” the situation is intolerable, he said.

Wolfsheimer, an attorney who has worked downtown for many years and recently moved into the new Koll Center high-rise on lower Broadway, described in detail several incidents that he said show conditions downtown are worsening.

Wolfsheimer recounted walking down Broadway and seeing a woman in her early 20s dressed in military fatigues and a T-shirt standing on the sidewalk “screaming obscenities at the top of her lungs.”

“No one said anything . . . obviously she was a very disturbed person,” he said.

He then told the Centre City Planning Committee about finding two people at 10 a.m. “making love in a doorway 100 feet from the courthouse door.” Two weeks ago, Wolfsheimer added, he encountered a man at State and E streets “screaming to the heavens” and that an hour later, the man was perched on a bus bench on Broadway “verbally and almost physically attacking a 5-foot . . . pregnant woman” waiting for a bus.

Wolfsheimer went on to talk about problems at Pantoja Park, on G Street near the waterfront, and along 5th Avenue in the Gaslamp Quarter.

The object of his fury, Wolfsheimer said, isn’t necessarily the homeless or transients who live downtown: “I’m talking about the crazies.”

“Are we going to accede the streets to the crazies?” he asked. “ . . . We’ve got to do something about it.” If nothing else, he said, the police should pick up people who are acting disturbed and take them to the county mental health hospital because, even if they aren’t admitted, it will “take them 5 hours to get back downtown.”

Wolfsheimer is not the first person to complain about what many perceive as downtown’s most glaring weakness. For several years, business owners, shopkeepers, office workers, downtown civic groups and others have warned that the area’s future as a residential neighborhood and as the region’s cultural focal point is jeopardized by an onslaught of peripatetic petty criminals, panhandlers, the mentally disturbed, drug users and dealers.

What makes Wolfsheimer’s comments notable are their timing. The City Hall-sanctioned planning committee headed by Horton Plaza builder Ernest Hahn is nearing completion of three years of work on a major new blueprint for downtown San Diego’s development. And the $160-million convention center is getting ready to open in a few weeks, attracting thousands of out-of-town conventioneers to downtown streets.

“It’s a collision course,” said Hahn, referring to the work by his committee. He said City Manager John Lockwood would be asked to speak to the committee about the matter.

Not everyone was as harsh as Wolfsheimer in assessing the situation. Committee member Charles Kaminski chided Wolfsheimer for describing the mentally ill as crazies. “I think that’s a very derogatory term,” he said.

Kaminski said the problem in San Diego is not unique in American cities. The problem, he said, “is not going to go away . . . we are a city” and as such will attract all sorts of people.

Although the city is attempting to create a vibrant downtown, such a goal should not come at the expense of being insensitive to people with mental and social problems, Kaminski said.

Police Capt. Nancy Goodrich told the committee there is little police can do to significantly change the situation. The county jails are crowded and thus repeat petty criminals are sent free almost immediately after arrest; those who are given citations seldom appear in court; county mental health facilities won’t accept anyone unless they are a danger to themselves or to the public, she said.

“The bottom line is we need more facilities and outreach programs,” she said, noting that downtown already has a much higher level of police service than any other area of San Diego.

After the meeting, Goodrich told reporters that downtown is plagued by a hard-core group of as many as 200 petty criminals who are continually cited for misdemeanors but aren’t prosecuted because both the district attorney and city attorney’s office are overburdened with higher-priority cases.

But Goodrich said the number of serious violent crimes downtown, such as street robberies or assaults, has not greatly increased. “Overall, downtown is not that dangerous,” she said. Then she quickly added, “However, I wouldn’t go to 9th and Broadway or 13th and Island” after dark.”