It’s been more than a week and I’m just as angry over the murder of Camarillo tourist Rob Gutierrez as I was when I wrote my Jan. 20 Best of Bill column.

You should be, too.

As Noozhawk reported back on Dec. 9, Gutierrez was shot that night near Santa Barbara’s world-famous Dolphin Family Statue at the base of Stearns Wharf — the exact center of our local tourist scene.

Santa Barbara police released the barest of details at the time, describing the victim only as “an adult male,” and noting he was taken by American Medical Response ambulance to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.

The police withheld all further comment — in spite of repeated requests from Noozhawk — and then clamped down further after we learned the victim had died of his wounds on Dec. 20. Our source was solid but we were unable to get official confirmation.

One month later, on Jan. 19, SBPD issued a 373-word statement describing a morning of coordinated multiagency raids and arrests from Montecito to Noleta.

The statement finally identified the 52-year-old victim, acknowledged his death and declared him “an innocent bystander;” listed the four twenty-something Santa Barbara men arrested in the case; mentioned a minor found in possession of a gun; and, almost in passing, said they were “connected to a local criminal street gang.”

There wasn’t much more to the announcement, and requests for further comment and details were simply ignored.

Thanks to the criminal complaint filed Jan. 23 by the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office in Superior Court, we now know that police believe the shooting to be at the behest of the Westside criminal street gang.

The DA’s complaint also provides shocking additional details of the brazen and seemingly randomness of the attack, which could have resulted in even more loss of innocent lives.

There are so many aspects of this atrocity that simply make no sense, starting with the question of why a gang of criminals apparently believes it can operate anywhere it wants in Santa Barbara. Is this our city or theirs?

I’ve since heard from several of the victim’s friends and colleagues in Camarillo, along with friends of my own in the city of 70,000 people just 40 miles down Highway 101.

Their questions are why the dearth of information, why didn’t the news media cover the story until Jan. 19, and was this a cover-up by civic and business leaders to protect Santa Barbara’s $2 billion-a-year tourism industry?

I’ve told each of them: 1) I have no idea, 2) Noozhawk and all other media reported what we had, and 3) you obviously don’t know how little influence Santa Barbara’s business community wields — otherwise State Street wouldn’t be such an interminable fiasco.

All snark aside, the tourism question must not be dismissed.

Santa Barbara is an internationally renowned destination. Are we, as a community, OK with a global perception that gang-bangers can just hop out of a car at any time and shoot people? I’m not.

And lest you think that, as a business owner and former board chairman of the Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce, I’m only interested because the victim was a tourist, I refer you to my columns after a 2021 double murder on the Lower Eastside — here and here.

In that case, two Santa Barbara High School students — 17-year-old Angel Castillo and 18-year-old Omar Montiel-Hernandez — were shot to death in a gang-related drive-by attack.

The teenagers’ desperate relatives and neighbors regularly implored Noozhawk to help, but police and public officials kept up the silent treatment until a series of arrests was made three months later. So much for “Once a Don, Always a Don.”

Which brings me to the Santa Barbara Police Department.

As professional journalists, we at Noozhawk understand why law enforcement officials cannot — and should not — divulge certain details of an ongoing criminal investigation, especially a homicide. We respect the circumstances and pressures that police operate under.

But, as I wrote previously, there also is state law that applies to law enforcement and we — the news media — have a right under the California Criminal Code to report some of that information to you. And you have a right to know it.

Even in the 10 days since the arrests were announced, new police Chief Kelly Ann Gordon still has had absolutely nothing to say publicly.

Coincidentally, after my column was posted the morning of Jan. 20, Gordon DID at last call executive editor Tom Bolton — about SBPD’s information blackout the day before over a series of bomb threats that had snarled traffic throughout upper downtown.

In the course of that phone call, Tom brought up the Gutierrez murder but Gordon was adamant that the arrests would not have been possible if police had released ANY information prior to Jan. 19. Including that the victim had died a month before.

That is absurd.

Not only is Gordon’s claim condescending toward the public she is “dedicated to serve,” it’s an insult to the detectives who are just as capable of solving cases without a complete veil of secrecy.

It’s also an unmistakable message to Santa Barbara’s increasingly emboldened gangs: Our city is so intimidated by your criminal acuity and depravity that we won’t dare challenge you head on.

You do you, and we’ll just trail behind — the public be damned. Or dead.

And where is the victim and his family in all of Gordon’s clandestine police work?

By all accounts, Rob Gutierrez was a stand-up guy, a loving husband and father of two girls, and a health-care professional committed to a career of service on behalf of some of the most vulnerable among us.

Equally important, he was a devout member of and a ubiquitous volunteer at Padre Serra Parish in Camarillo.

To Christians, and perhaps even more so among Catholics, Advent is one of the two holiest and exciting seasons of our faith, and the foundation for all that is to come.

What does it say about the callousness of Santa Barbara’s top cop that Gutierrez’s family had to go through Advent, Christmas and far beyond, keeping their grief and mourning largely to themselves? What is wrong with her?

Even after the arrests, Gordon and other Santa Barbara officials — like City Administrator Rebecca Bjork, who hired her, and the seven elected City Council members who approved the appointment — have maintained a deafening silence.

Why?

Why isn’t Gordon publicly explaining her decisions to the citizens of Santa Barbara? Does she feel no responsibility to keep the community informed about what she is, or is not doing, when it comes to major crimes and gang activity?

She evidently thought it important to comment Friday on a heinous crime that occurred 1,900 miles from here. Doesn’t Santa Barbara deserve at least that much consideration?

And what about Bjork and the City Council? Nothing?!

This lawlessness has got to be stopped. Santa Barbara should not be a haven for street gangs for six minutes, let alone six weeks. Or three months.

Whether cold-blooded murder and other despicable felonies occur at Stearns Wharf, in the heart of downtown’s Arts District, on the Lower Eastside or on the Lower Westside, and regardless who the victims are, the lack of transparency over public safety is an alarming trend in Santa Barbara.

Public officials have an obligation to be straight with us about crime, about gangs. And it’s our duty to hold them accountable if they aren’t.

Santa Barbara is owed some answers. Now.