Police said there have been five homicides in Costa Mesa this year, but most of those were not gang crimes. But there has been a rise in gang activity, including the Wednesday night shooting, which was not fatal.
While some believe Mansoor's agenda will help eliminate those problems, others say it has worsened them, so recent crimes could boost the mayor's leading opponents, Mike Scheafer and Bruce Garlich.
Wednesday's shooting is a sign that in neighborhoods where the city has worked hard to build up trust, people are afraid to talk to police, so crime is creeping back in, said Councilwoman Katrina Foley, who is part of the Return to Reason political action committee supporting Garlich and Scheafer.
"Anyone who thinks that having our police act as immigration agents is going to decrease crime, I feel fairly confident we've already seen it increase crime, and it [the immigration plan] hasn't even been implemented," Foley said.
Letting the Orange County Sheriff's Department handle immigration screenings, as he has proposed, would allow Costa Mesa police to be out in neighborhoods, where they're needed, she said.
Election-watcher and blogger Byron DeArakal, who supports Garlich and Scheafer, said he thinks the jump in crime may solidify each side's base, but it probably won't have a big effect on Tuesday's results.
For voters who haven't paid much attention so far, it might encourage them to vote for Mansoor, DeArakal said.
But overall, he said, "the only thing it would do is affect the undecideds, and I don't think there's many undecideds…. It is not going to be a large margin of victory, whoever wins."
