San Jose and Santa Clara County officials today rolled out a $60,000 campaign to focus attention on the persistent gang problem in this area.
At a press conference launching the program this morning, officials including District Attorney Dolores Carr and San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed didn’t spew out statistics that might paint a clearer picture of the gang problem they discussed. Instead they stood before television cameras and reporters, talking about the ins-and-outs of a provocative public service campaign that’s sure to grab attention.
Already, the county has put up billboards along heavily traveled roads, and posters inside local buses and light rail. The billboards and posters have images of a cemetery. Across the cemetery the message reads: “Gangs have a special place for your kids.”
The phone number 408-808-FREE is listed on the posters and billboards for parents to call to connect with county resources and counseling services. “We are here today because, frankly, gang violence tears at the fabric of our community,” Carr told reporters. “We have certainly seen increase in gang violence in the last year and we have made a more concerted effort to deal with that.”
It’s a sad thing to say, but I’ll bet a dollar to a donut hole that the cowardly gang members will eagerly target the billboards and posters with their butt-ugly grafitti.
The story does not agree with the picture. On the sign it says to call 311, not 408-808-FREE.
Did any of the dull knives from the media think to ask the assembled law enforcement leaders to share the significant lessons they themselves learned as young people from messages on billboards? An absolute waste of money, more about giving the general public the impression that something is being done than expecting that some would-be gangbanger might actually read and comprehend something not written in spray paint. If our civic leaders insist on using billboards to blow smoke up our asses, couldn’t they at least wait until election time?
I LOVE this billboard! Great idea.
Greg, I fear you are correct, but I’ll keep my paws crossed that the message is widely read before the destruction happens~
If there is one thing we learned from the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, it’s this: Billboards, Billboards, Billboards.
Why is this billboard only in English, when every other government announcement comes in at least three languages?
Oh, and since everyone is into “proportionality” these days, please enlighten us by publishing the statistical makeup of the numerous gangs in SJ by race. Wanna bet that some groups will have gang membership “disproportionate” to their race’s makeup of SJ population? Guess which ones they will be?
#7 JMO
If they include militia, minutemen, and the kkk as gangs (armed, thuggish, territorial) it would be interesting reading.
#8—I doubt there are very many of those groups in SJ
I love it when people complain about solutions offered by other, but have no real solutions to offer themselves.