Making Long Beach California's safest city.

By Frank Colonna

My top priority as Mayor will be to make Long Beach the safest city in California.

It is clear that we must increase the number of police officers on our streets and provide competitive compensation and benefits so we can continue to attract the most talented men and women to our police department.

Long Beach needs an additional 300 more uniformed officers to secure our streets and combat street gangs. On the Council, I championed a Police Personnel Strategy that will earmark new incoming revenues to increase the number of police officers, and supported the creation of a new Central Long Beach Public Safety building.

Our firefighters also need new facilities in many areas of the city to accommodate new equipment necessary to deal with a changed world. Older fire facilities built decades ago no longer fit the needs and logistics necessary to combat and defend the new and expanded mission of our fire department.

Our firefighting ranks are thin compared to a decade ago and we are going to need to add personnel, equipment, and modernize old facilities to meet the challenges of an ever growing city.

My public safety plan includes:

- Hiring 300 new officers to patrol the neighborhoods, airport, and seaport.

- Building a new Central Long Beach police and fire station.

- A new and aggressive anti-gang plan.