Organizers of Redding’s Safe City Project unveiled an ambitious plan Thursday night to deal with a spike in crime in Redding — one that many are attributing to the AB-109 prison realignment program. North State Public Radio’s Kelly Frost has more.
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Eleven distinct problems and proposed solutions were outlined during the two hour event at the Redding Civic Auditorium. Ideas from a reserve police force to a community court to work camps were all outlined.
Organizer April LaFrance says Redding is valuable, but is in trouble. She says her team put in over 1,000 hours preparing for the presentation. And she says they’ve already been in discussion with others in the community.
Lafrance: “With the work camp idea, we do have a private donation of 40 acres of land to build that camp. Good News Rescue Mission has volunteered to facilitate that homeward bound program. Then we listed some financial ideas tonight with reallocation of funding and city and county budgets.”
One idea is to close the Redding Library temporarily to help pay for some of the programs.
One of the big supporters of the Safe City Project is Ed Ruhlman who heads the Redding Merchants Crime Watch. He says some of LaFrance’s proposals will be easy to implement, but others are going to take some bold actions.
Ruhlman: “What April’s done is she’s brought some stuff to the forefront and now she’s thrown it out to the community to say ‘yeah, let’s go for it. Let’s make our community safe and let’s get back on track and be the Redding we know it can be. The Redding we all know and love.’”
LaFrance says no one — not even the City Council — knew what the eleven ideas would be until last night. And she knows now that the discussion will begin. She hopes the community has the will to make the hard choices to make the Safe City Project a reality.
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