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My wife and I are retired, having lived in San Diego for s 34 years. The gang culture there was a large concern for us so we researched places to move to where we didn’t have to be on pins and needles due to gang and crime issued. We chose Oracle out of a long list of towns, cities, and states for the lack of crime issues.
When the nearby boys camp was the site where Central American immigrants were to be housed, the first thing that came to mind was the research I had done on a novel I had done less than a year prior to moving here. The Google search terms used were “History of Mara Salvatrucha, Background on Gang Initiations, and Gang Involvement.” The first search term is one that caused us the most consternation, with the other issues also causing concern. There was no information from the feds about how these people were screened to weed out the potential for gangs.
It is human nature to wonder why things are done when no data is provided, surreptitiously, or without a response, when questions are raised. Those questions were raised without any substantial data being provided. Ron Thompson had tried to get answers, as had others. We inquired about it to the local people we knew with no results. No one we asked had been provided that data by any gov’t. agency to those locally who should have been informed.
Frank Pierson called Ron Thompson’s actions “chest thumping” when attempts to seek answers from the school about the issues of health, gangs, and the other issues that one would naturally be concerned about were finally answered.
The above referenced Google results would have made anyone shrivel in fear due to not knowing the extent of potential disease, gang members, and so on that could be in our midst, in a community wanting only a peaceful life in which to raise children without added potential issues these items could have provided.
The article by Mr. Pierson was written without taking into account the fact that there are people with natural reactions to these issues, and rightly so. Incendiary language and choice of adjectives to seemingly be an attack on those who wanted answers was a bit beyond what was necessary. The article was missing any mention of communication with Mr. Thompson to determine his motivation for trying to ensure the community was not going to be the recipient of harm to the public.
Several attempts were made by Mr. Thompson to obtain data from the school and other sources. This was not productive when requests were made to gather what should have been given willingly to assuage concerns of this community. The use of words such as instigator, chest thumping, “conflict resolution’’, “anxiety”, “trepidation”, “mediated’, and the phrase of ‘blizzard of threats to our town’ could easily have been made with language that expressed the situation in a more decent way.
The fault that promulgated this situation was not Mr. Pierson, Mr. Thompson, or any other source other than a failure of government to provide the information that any thinking person would have made known. Prediction is not a difficult thing in cases such as the importing of people from Central America or taking in refugees that possibly could currently have or had ties to the gangs which might locate them and rekindle the relationship. According to news media, criminal elements are all but running the lives of those in Central America. We don’t want or need that to occur here.
We agree that the decent thing as stated in the last paragraph is relevant. However, prudence dictates we should also exercise caution when no answers exist to allow logical people to ascertain a level of threat to our lives and to our children.
/s/ Bernard Haas
Oracle
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