Fox Canyon Neighborhood Association, Inc.

President’s Corner

Mar 09, 2002

My Dear Neighbors and Friends:

IT FANALLY HAPPENED!

With sorrow and great pain in my heart, I received the news of little ASHLEY MORA REYES' dead. She was backed into by a neighbor's truck on upper Auburn Drive, early evening on Tuesday, February 26, 2002. Ashley was only a 14-month-old toddler.

Also with deep sorrow and a great deal of anger, I write the following: for years we have been printing editorials, letters, emails opinions and announcements on this newsletter. The subject of children playing or just being on the streets without parental or adult supervision, for hours on end, has been the central point of our attention. If the association has lend support to this issue is not because we do not like children. But because we like children in the safety and confines of a home and the watchful eye of an adult supervisor at all times. I know, the above does not sets-in well, especially with our Hispanic majority and it is not politically correct. But such is the fact that danger is always lurking-on our streets twenty-four hours a day. Just ask the residents of Castle and Lantana whom many of their kids have got a near miss with pedophiles. All of us have stories to tell of near misses and bumping children with our cars.

Responsible parents have to make the extra effort to bring-in the kids from the street. Please, come out and see who is your eight-year old plying with. I will tell you, in our streets you will see them playing with the seventeen-year-olds whom have a juvenile record to their name and have been arrested. Those who already have experience drugs and sire kids, those who at least will teach your dear child a long litany of vulgarities.

In addition, there are not more than a couple of weeks that go by, in our hood, without the Police helicopter overhead with the announcement of a missing child. Are you deaf to such announcements in your quest to prove someone wrong? Are you defiant because you think that the streets are way better than your backyard, as playing grounds? Forcing our children to follow the macho image of our ancestry is not the best tool that they will use in our culture. And such attitude only puts your own children at risk, to which you are responsible for.

How many more children should suffer sexual abuse, the pain of accidents and the exposure to crime, a gang directed way-of-life before you take action and bring your kids in from the street? How many children have to die before you support our neighborhood association in its quest to provide adequate PARKS in our neighborhood for you children to play in safety?

JOSE