Posted on 02/17/2024 11:38:25 AM PST by grundle
ANTIOCH -- The Antioch Community Library is being closed because crime has made it too dangerous for users and staff, the Contra Costa County Library announced Friday.
The county library said it "has made this difficult decision after repeated dangerous incidents in the last few months that have threatened the safety and security of patrons and staff," according to a Facebook post.
"Beginning Saturday, February 17, 2024, the Antioch Library will be closed until further notice," the post said.
The library apologized for the lack of notice on the closure, "but the safety of our patrons and staff is a top priority."
The library said it is working on new security measures that will allow it to reopen as soon as possible.
"These will take some time to complete, and we do not have an estimated date for reopening," the library said.
People with books to return are asked to take them to the Prewett Library in the Antioch Community Center, Pittsburg Library or any other Contra Costa County Library.
"You may also hold onto your returns until after the Antioch Library reopens," the library said. "The Library will automatically extend the due dates on your materials."
What are those going to be, since this is California? Given the need for the closure in the first place, anything less than armed protection will be a waste of time and quite likely doomed to fail.
In the great original Time Machine movie (1960 version) “A man’s vision for a utopian society is disillusioned when travelling forward into time reveals a dark and dangerous society.” there was a scene where the traveler tried to get the wimpy, weak people to stand up to the muscular thugs the Morlocks.
He asked about books to learn how to rebuild civilization. “Books? We have books.”
The weak Eloi pointed to bookshelves. One touch and the books crumbled into dusty fragments. Long ago unused when literacy died out.
The important thing is no one is stealing the books.
Guess you can thank Cali teachers union for that.
Regards,
The once beautiful library in downtown San Diego has become a cesspool of vagrants and the filth and degenerecy they bring with them.
Need for armed protection....
I worked in two university libraries from 1969 to 2017.
The people working in libraries are woke and will not allow those nasty gun things that harshly shoot the bad guys instead of talking to them about their dysfunctional families in their childhood.
No examples of these “dangerous incidents” was given.
I’m guessing the homeless Bums and dopers have taken the place over.
Somebody/bodies were stealing upto $950 worth of library books?
> Public libraries have become little more than homeless shelters with books. <
There’s a beautiful, huge, century-old public library not all that far from me. It’s in a distressed area. I know a lady that works there. She says that the library is now also a day care center.
By that, she means moms drop their kids off in the morning, then go off drinking, carousing, whatever. Then they come back just before the library closes for the day.
So the library board is thinking about instituting a “no unaccompanied children” policy. But I doubt if that will work. Mom goes in with the kids, then just sneaks out a bit later.
I remember when libraries were safe and clean places to go and read a book or periodical literature. Bums and vagrants were kept away.
Then so many cities began to do away with vagrancy laws that the last time I went one in a large city near here all the chairs and couches had bums sleeping in the cool of air conditioning.
Not long after, that library had to close for a while due to an infestation of bedbugs.
Then they infested the free museums so bad they also had to start charging a minimal fee which kept the bums out.
It's sad to imagine that society has fallen to the level where kids are banned from libraries.
And I'm sure it's a small handful of women who are doing this but since we can't make narrow policies to specifically punish the troublemakers, we make wide policies that punish everyone. Just like the no kids allowed unaccompanied at shopping malls even though 95% of the kids are behaving themselves and rewarding vendors with their discretionary income.
Then again, just as socialism devolves ultimately into soul-crushing communism because socialism fails to consider -- much less accept -- the basic attributes of human behavior, so do the promises and "good intentions" of modern Leftism inevitably devolve into anarchy then into soul-crushing tyranny by failing to acknowlege -- much less accept -- the reality of what results from forced implementation of their secular religious beliefs.
Assuming the library can mount a speaker on the outside of the building, they should learn from 7-11. https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/4126034/posts
> You would think Democrat/Communists would learn from the hard lessons of recent history… <
“This time it will be different.” That’s the number one rule of starry-eyed liberals. Sure, socialism has failed in the past. And those failures were always accompanied by great suffering.
But this time it will be different.
The truth is that The Jackal has decided that there are books in the library that should not be read by the Peons. So rather than burning or banning them, he just closed the library to the “right wing” terrorists.
In the mid or late 90s, I brought my family with me on a business trip to San Diego. We were walking around downtown and stopped into a nice hotel for a break and refreshment. I was waiting to use the men’s room off the lobby (which happened to be a single stall with a single, lockable door. Two guys were in that bathroom fornicating making loud noises. I could not believe it. We skedaddled out of that place as quick as we could. Fortunately, my wife and kids didn’t hear or see it.
It was a precursor of things to come.
And no considered breaking out the Holy Hand Grenade? Tsk tsk. Silly kuh-niggutz.
Are you kidding? Where else can you find a copy of an actual paper newspaper for free?
Time to admit that the public library has as much value to our society as a newsprint newspaper or a print copy of a magazine, and stop funding them through tax dollars.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.