READERS RESPOND

Martin Rodriguez and Augustina Mendoza have lost their son by tragic circumstances. Israel Maciel — by all accounts a hard-working young man — was murdered Aug. 2 in a fusillade of bullets near his home on Baker Street. It is a tragic story.

While Marciel’s death is awful, Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor’s response is no less disgusting and unbecoming of a mayor.

One would think that a mayor, asked to respond to this tragic death, might have said that it is a “terrible tragedy, and I want to share my regret and deepest sympathies with Israel’s parents. I will personally do everything in my power as mayor to make sure the individual responsible for this senseless crime is apprehended and brought to justice.”

Instead, what we got from Mayor Mansoor was a shameful, coldhearted pile of political muck. “It shows we still have work to do,” he told the Daily Pilot, “but it takes time to remove the welcome mat. When you have job centers, soup kitchens and a high concentration of downscale rental units, it drives the city down, and I favor a multifaceted approach to include stronger gang enforcement and overlay-zone revitalization, and I also think a social worker holding the hand of a hardened gang member has not worked in other cities.”

Nice. How does the mayor know, absent conclusive evidence from the crime scene, that Maciel’s murder was gang-related? How is it that the now-defunct job center, the soup kitchen and the city’s “downscale” rental units aided and abetted in his death?

But, let’s go one better. Let’s look at the flip side of the mayor’s presumption that Israel’s slaying is likely a gang-related event perpetrated by someone who was drawn to town by the now-defunct job center, the soup kitchen and those downscale rental units. Let’s suppose for a moment that witness accounts and the Costa Mesa Police Department’s report pan out; that the shooter was white. And since we don’t know whether the incident was gang-related or not (but the mayor seems to presume it was), let’s take the same license to assume it wasn’t. In fact, let’s say the crime was committed by the hand of an angry white man stoked and motivated by Costa Mesa’s hostile anti-illegal immigrant bonfire. Who or what do we then blame for creating the atmosphere that drove this goon to murder Maciel?

Oh, by the way, Mansoor had an opportunity to put in place a “multi-faceted” gang eradication program at the June 20 City Council meeting. He voted against it.

BYRON DE ARAKAL

Costa Mesa

In light of the backlash over Alan Mansoor’s comments on the recent Costa Mesa shooting, perhaps a look at the statistics is in order.

The last four murders in Costa Mesa have involved Latinos. Latinos make up roughly 25% of the Costa Mesa population. The odds, therefore, of Latinos being the victims of the last four murders is 255-1. The long odds would point to these crimes not being random. This is not a racist issue; as it turns out, violent crimes are committed in greater numbers in low-income areas. When you have charities that draw transients to the area and high-density, low-income housing units, that is a brewing ground for violent crimes.

If this situation is allowed to grow, we will see more violent crime in Costa Mesa. Keep in mind, 99% of the people helped by charities and in low-income housing are good, law-abiding, people; they just happen to also include the less than 1% who cause the trouble. There is nothing wrong with providing high-density housing or helping the less fortunate, just remember it comes with a cost. The residents of this city need to decide if it is worth the cost. To those who chastise Mansoor’s comments, I say, “Don’t shoot the messenger.”

MARK GRIFFIN

Costa Mesa

Mayor Allan Mansoor’s comments regarding the shooting of Israel Maciel were insensitive and cruel. First, he appears to have no consideration for the families and friends of the victims. Then he makes a heartless comment about it taking time to remove the welcome mat. It sounds as if he is saying that the victims were not welcome in this country in the first place, so it is their fault they got shot. Of course, he has no way of knowing whether the victims are U.S. citizens, he just says they are not welcome.

Mansoor then jumps to the conclusion that the crime is gang-related without waiting for the facts. How does he know that it was not a hate crime, or a crime of passion or just a random act?

Mansoor goes on to blame “job centers, soup kitchens and a high concentration of downscale rental units” for the crime. You know, maybe we should get rid of all those things. After all, people who want to work to feed their families should have no opportunities, low-income families don’t need places to live and unfortunate and mentally ill people should not be fed. While we’re at it, let’s get rid of all the seniors. They are using up our Social Security and Medicare funds. And … well, the list goes on and on …

BECKY and GEORGE COTÉ

Costa Mesa

,!

The only responsible thing for Mayor Allan Mansoor to say in reaction to the shootings last week would have been something like: “I’d like to express my deepest sympathies to the families of the victims and let them know that their city will stand by them in this traumatic time. I’ve asked the Costa Mesa Police Department to do everything possible to bring this killer to justice.”

Sympathy for the victims and outrage at the killings are appropriate responses and are really all that a responsible and caring city official can say at a time like this.

Instead, Mansoor went on the record with another of his preposterous tirades, laying blame for this murder on the job center, the soup kitchen and “a high concentration of downscale rental units.” The job center been closed for many months and the soup kitchen exists only to help people truly in need. Neither have anything to do with this crime. “Downscale rental units” exist because not everybody can afford to live in Mesa Verde, yet they do need to live and they’d like to live in Costa Mesa, Mansoor’s objections notwithstanding. For “Minuteman Mansoor,” “concentrations of downscale rental units” clearly equates to “low-income people,” which for Mansoor seems to equate to “Latinos,” which ultimately equates to “immigrant scourge,” which, of course, is the root of all evil in our fair city.

Mansoor wants to “remove the welcome mat” for anybody other than the well-to-do, so it’s not just the working-class Latino community that he wants to sweep away, but low-income people in general. Based on that, I guess it’s unfair to imply racism is part of Mansoor’s agenda — classism seems more appropriate. In Mansoor’s city, providing services to people in need is not a compassionate helping hand — it’s a magnet for the great unwashed. We’ll replace the welcome mat with the “Go Away” mat and sweep things clean with the “Get Outta Here” broom of “overlay zone gentrification,” oops “revitalization.” Instead of a Greeter like in Laguna, perhaps we’ll post Oscar the Grouch at our city border.

Mansoor has taken the position that if one does not support his specific agenda, one must therefore be in favor of illegal immigration. If that’s true, mustn’t the converse also be true, that if one supports Mansoor, one must be in favor of classism, xenophobia, narrow-mindedness and insensitivity? Both are obviously invalid and classic examples of extremism, which is a far more dangerous thing for our city than a soup kitchen.

While this latest session of vitriol-spewing is typically embarrassing and grossly insensitive, it is once again instructive. This is indeed how Mansoor thinks, and knowing that for sure is important.

MARK GLEASON

Costa Mesa

,!

While reflecting upon Mayor Allan Mansoor’s breathtakingly insensitive, incredibly undiplomatic, astoundingly arrogant and amazingly impolitic remarks following the tragic death of Costa Mesa resident Israel Maciel, I was reminded of one of my dearly departed mother’s favorite sayings: “It’s better to be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”

I suggest that those running for Mansoor’s council seat this fall might do well at any debates to turn and point to the mayor and utter only the following three words: “I’m not him.”

CHUCK CASSITY

Costa Mesa