Thank you, Judy Thein, for telling the whole world what a dangerous place Clearlake is. And, just in time for the peak of the tourist season, too. As most people know, content from local media goes on the Internet and turns up in searches.

Sure we have a lot of theft around here of a nonviolent variety. So anything you don't want stolen you should throw a chain around or park a Rottweiler on top of.

I've seen our local police go from shoplifting to break-in incidents in a laid back, unhurried manner. They don't appear to be spread thin, careening from one life-threatening crisis to another.

If properly used, the word “public safety” should mean keeping the public from physical harm. It should not be a code word for pumping up the police force to resume the class war on lifestyle crimes.

However, there are public safety hazards that are actually caused by public policy. Some examples:

In aggressively pursuing people walking home drunk, but in a quiet, orderly manner, we are encouraging some of those people to risk driving home, to leave themselves exposed for a shorter time, but at the risk of public safety.

Judy Thein herself tacitly approved of her tight knit neighborhood demanding a change in the transit bus route which services the nearby senior complexes.

This change, to appease Thein and her NIMBY neighbors, forced the bus to make a partially blind u-turn, according to the Lake Transit manager. Public safety be damned. This senior community's safety was already compromised by the city not enforcing the sidewalk to Burns Valley Mall agreement with the developer.

I, myself, experienced how willing some of the seat warmers at city hall are to compromise public safety for political reasons.

As some of our artsy residents know, I own a block of dense brush on a knoll where I do stage design experiments. Nobody can see a thing from outside the property.

Two days after I made a tentative announcement to run for Clearlake City Council, I find the county's Environmental Health Department crawling all over my knoll. The officer admitted the location was very hard to find. The City of Clearlake had pulled him away from his day's scheduled assignment to investigate a HazMat site elsewhere.

How did they do it? They told him they thought my book container, visible only by Google Maps, was a meth lab. Apparently, this decision to derail the HazMat response was made before Thein discovered the concept of public safety.

Not only has the city diverted public safety resources for political hits and class war campaigns through code enforcement, but a free public safety resource has been ignored.

The city has discouraged the police from learning how to use public access TV8, located 8 feet from the police's front door, for emergency notifications.

Meanwhile, the city feels police time is well spent doing background checks and credit checks on TV8 volunteers. This new requirement was developed for political reasons.

Public safety deficiencies in Clearlake are not a result of too few police. Most public safety issues we do have are the result of a public policy steeped in petty meanness and dishonesty about a ruling clique's real intentions. How sad that Thein should end her political career as their spokesperson.

Dante DeAmicis lives in Clearlake, Calif.