Auntie Charo's Soapbox

"Rumors have spread that local gangs have been specifically targeting military personnel, taunting them and picking fights with them.
Lt. John D. Griffin, public affairs officer at Andersen Air Force Base, confirmed that a memorandum has been issued to base personnel, warning them to be alert when they are out of the base. But he told Variety that he can’t send out a copy of the memo. “Air force members have been told to be aware of their surroundings and be alert. Commanders have been telling their airmen to be aware when they go out at night,” Griffin said.But he denied that military personnel are being singled out. “Actually, that is incorrect. What has been happening is that there has been an increase in assaults in the Tumon area in general. And I stress in general, not just military. This has been happening over the past several months already,” Griffin said.
He added that the advisory is for everybody on base, not just for the newly arrived airmen on Guam, and that military personnel are briefed not just about safety and security issues but also about environmental issues such as being careful with the island’s reefs and other natural resources."
The article is an omen of what's to come....the 7,000 Marines, more sailors when a submarine replaces the San Francisco, if we get more Navy ships that we're all praying we get to help the economy get back on its feet. It's pretty simple, the more military we have, the more Section 30 dollars we get infused into Rev and Tax we get, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of dollars we get in construction dollars that'll come from the contractors that will come to build barracks, et cetera. When there was a large presence of Military on Guam, we had it 'good'. We didn't feel the 'crash'(in dollars) when they left because the Japanese yen was up and we were up to our ears in Japanese tourists but when the Yen was down, they stayed home and there were no longer the military types that spent money downtown, we felt their loss.
We have the chance to have our cake and eat it. We have the chance to show the military that we have matured as a community, that we can be good neighbors, that we can welcome them to our island, make them feel welcome and appreciated. We should take every measure possible to make sure that they are safe, that our young punks don't ruin their stay on our island.
The article in today's MV didn't say it, but our punks are also ruining it for the tourists. They're not only beating up the military types, they're beating up the Japanese tourists, stealing purses from the fragile women who dare to walk on the well-lighted sidewalks. We rave about cops having a Koban full of police officers in Tumon to keep our tourists safe. They must be with the ghosts of the past since I've yet to see a one of them any time I've been on any of my walks down there and that's early a.m. or at dusk. You can't find a rolly polly cop if your life depended on it! You see the cruiser parked next to the building but the cop's no where to be found.
As a community, we'd better take the law into our hands and police ourselves or we're going to lose the best thing we have going for us. Let's not wait until someone gets hurt. When we see a fight beginning to take place, let's call the police when it's at the argument level, by the time the police get there, there'll be at the broken bottle, knife stabbing stage.
Perhaps we should make it a law that our punks that cause trouble with the tourists and military that they be punished, then be put to work in Tumon, wearing a sign that they harmed a tourist or military person and ruined the island's economy down at the Paseo Loop at peak traffic time for a month!
We can't say we want the military here then look the other way when our punks beat them up! It's time we walked the talk!