Sunday, June 1, 2008

The "H" word for May

If you cruise the local papers online, you'll find Pomona's crimes have been popping up on the online versions of the Daily Bulletin, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, and San Bernardino Sun. Slow news days, I guess. Tough to shake the Pavlovian association of Pomona and crime when press releases are being uploaded to newspaper websites.

I'll grant to the Pomona naysayers that indeed, our beautiful city shudders a little too often because of the "H" word, and given the social and personal cost even one homicide is one too many. The real shock for me over the last five months of mapping the reported homicides has been the distribution along the Interstate 10 corridor. I was expecting a gradual increase as we moved eastward from San Gabriel Valley. Why I had this bias, I won't really say. Funny how perception can be so inconsistent with reality.

May 2008
March-April 2008
Jan-Feb 2008

FYI: The last two homicides in May were on Saturday in Whittier and Rialto. It's a crazy, crazy world.

Thanks for the photo goes to rutless.com at Flickr.

3 comments:

kate valdez said...

Say it isn't so!
Can't believe Norma Torres won the election. Did people in areas other than Pomona actually vote for her? So now, she's not only an embarrassment to Pomona, if she wins the next election, she'll be an embarrassment to the state. Sure hope that doesn't happen.
Kate Valdez

Anonymous said...

It appears that a vote for Torres to the assembly is a vote against her for mayor. People voted for her to get her out of Pomona. Doesn't make sense right? The fact that she did not even get 50% of the vote tells me that this "win" was not well deserved. I'm voting Republican come November.

bloghog

John Clifford said...

Please note that Norma got 45% of the vote in an election where there was only a very small voter turnout (I've seen everything from 8-20%).

So she slipped by again, without a majority of any kind, not of those who voted, nor of the registered voters, and certainly not of the population.