PALMDALE - Petitions bearing more than 800,000 signatures were turned in Friday in husband-and-wife lawmakers George and Sharon Runner's campaign to put a public safety initiative on the November ballot. The so-called Safe Neighborhood Act needs 435,000 valid signatures from California voters to get on the ballot.
If enacted, the measure would increase punishment for gang members and ex-convicts caught with guns; establish standard funding levels for California law enforcement; pay for a gang database and GPS monitoring of gang offenders, sex offenders and violent criminals and central gang databases; and strengthens the state's witness-protection program, backers say.

The measure does not propose raising taxes as state lawmakers struggle with a multi-billion dollar budget deficit, but would establish a minimum funding level in the state budget.

"It's not about if we're going to spend money. It's about the priorities of what we're going to spend money on," George Runner said Friday. The Runners stood with Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy Baca in front of a Los Angeles county office building in Norwalk on Friday morning to announce the delivery of signed petitions to be counted. Similar deliveries were made in eight other California counties.

The Runners have described the Safe Neighborhoods Act as a combination of proposals laid out in bills presented in the most recent legislative session, many of which never made it out of Assembly or Senate committees.

The initiative calls for new enforcement programs, stiffer sentencing and many other changes, including authorizing county sheriffs to create emergency jail facilities and preventing illegal immigrants arrested for violent crimes from posting bail.

The initiative also:

• Adds a 10-year sentence for felons who carry loaded or concealed firearms in public.
• Increases penalties for multiple acts of graffiti.
• Increases penalties for possession and sale of methamphetamine to the same level as penalties for cocaine.
• Increases penalties for gang recruitment.
• Requires convicted gang members to register with local law enforcement agencies.

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