Election 2007: More debates, more money
No punches are being pulled in the Ward Three city council race as incumbent Art Gage goes up against challenger William "Rusty" Bailey in a battle of words and campaign mailers, according to the Press Enterprise.
Gage predictably goes after Bailey's military record, while Bailey has criticized Gage's history on the dais and his lack of endorsements from other elected officials. As if that's necessarily a bad thing, because one man's collaborative effort is another man's cronyism.
These are some of the words.
(excerpt)
"We spent 25 to 30 years with very little going on" at City Hall, Gage said. "We now have a group of people on the council who are doing what needs to be done."
This is all nice, but didn't this "group of people" expel Gage from its exclusive membership as GASS quartet faded out and its replacement, BASS faded in? It's mostly members of BASS that are pushing for Bailey and in fact most of them endorsed him way back before he'd even taken out his papers to run for city council. When people saw this all play out, they said, that they're starting to eat their own. And Gage was first on that plate, perhaps as an appetizer?
But Bailey takes his hits too.
(excerpt)
Bailey, 35, said he wants to bring effective leadership and a new generation to the fore.
By losing his colleagues' confidence, Gage has made himself ineffective, Bailey said. It takes the votes of at least four council members to pass anything.
Bailey also said Gage's business background didn't stop Gage from making the motion to enact the electric rate increase that the council recently repealed after residents received extremely high summer bills.
"If he's so experienced and he's got all this business acumen, he couldn't project the damage this did?" Bailey said.
The problem with this line of thinking is that Gage didn't vote for higher election rates in a vacuum and he didn't vote to undo them in a vacuum either. Those voting right alongside him both times were city officials who have endorsed Bailey's own campaign. Yet, he doesn't hold them to the same standard for their actions as he holds Gage because he's running for election against Gage and he's been endorsed by these elected officials.
If Bailey had been sitting on the dais along with the men he hopes to collaborate with on the city council while they were approving the utility rate hike, what would he have done?
Would he have as a councilman believed it was a bad decision then and voted against it, or would he have voted alongside the rest of them in favor of the hike?
And opinions on the controversy involving the rate hike are mixed. Some feel that either way, the burden of paying for disproportionate rates for utilities will fall on those least able to do so and that the mutiny against the rate hike was due in part to it being an election year but also because it was the people living in the largest houses, using the most electricity who were doing most of the complaining. Because after all, if you are wealthy enough to afford a larger house, then you're the squeaky wheel more likely to be heard by any panel of elected officials.
On the other hand, people felt also that the election rate increase was unfair to them because their bills had increased so much, but without increasing the rates, how was the city to upgrade its aging, already overtaxed(as noted by rashes of blackouts in certain areas of the city including portions of Ward Three) infrastructure to anticipate the tremendous increases in population it would face in future years?
So while this crisis was viewed as a clash between people with white hats against those in black hats, it's a complex issue which is as multi-tiered as the rate structure that was put in effect. The weakest link in the whole process by far was the lack of education given to the public about the rate hikes, most particularly concerning the electricity usage that was sure to increase during the hot summer months as it usually does for most home owners and those in rental units as well.
Just like Councilman Dom Betro implied that Ward One Candidate Mike Gardner was responsible for "past problems" with the CPRC rather than pointing the finger for where the CPRC's "current problems" lie which are much closer to home. Why? Because it's an election season. The problems are only useful if they can be used as ammunition to fling at your rival. That's a lot easier to use in that manner than dealing with them when they happen on your watch.
Given how alliances form and dissolve around commonly held principles, it's hard to say whether getting kicked out of the BASS clique is a good or bad thing politically for Gage. After all, the clique system that has run the city council during its so-called more productive years has been roundly criticized first by those who then decide they want to form their own voting majority to vote the way that they want. What's not good for the goose is definitely good for the gander.
What Bailey also fails to understand is that council members can vote together on items even outside the quartet and most often do, yet quartets remain the driving force because there's always one group of people with power, money and status who try to dismantle one voting bloc to replace it with one of their own as if that's adding to the democratic process.
If Gage has truly lost the confidence of his cohorts, the vote's still 7-0 the vast majority of the time, not to mention that the consent calendar which is virtually always approved, 7-0 has never been more impressive in its sheer size and scope. More city council members excuse themselves due to personal and professional conflicts from individual consent calendar items than vote against the passage of the consent calendar or pull items for further discussion.
Bailey could be prepped better on several issues by his boosters before his forums, but it's almost as if more of the attention is being focused elsewhere. One issue impacting his ward that he appeared to not know much about was what exactly DHL was. Note to his backers, DHL is an air freight company not a railroad company.
He's smart and he's energetic and personable enough but there's been little to indicate so far that he's his own person. And when he is out campaigning, you can almost feel the sheer push of his focus groups whose members mostly reside outside Ward Three and that seems to be a stronger force than he is.
Gage has his own considerable albatrosses which he brings into his reelection attempt which makes endorsing him dicey to say the least. But while it might be a cheap shot to criticize Bailey's military background or less than one, more attention and not less should be paid to his years spent working under City Manager Brad Hudson with Riverside County's Economic Development Agency which may be the single factor most driving the decision of city officials to endorse a young neophyte for an election even before he had officially declared his candidacy. More attention should be given to the sheer amount of fundraising that Gage has done among development interests, especially when building an argument that he opposes eminent domain when he was willing to partner up with developer(and long-time campaign donor to many a campaign) Doug Jacobs to take some houses through eminent domain several years ago.
Gage's two main independent votes, the one to preserve the ability for commoners to pull items from the consent calendar and his vote against the SLAPP suit against Riversiders for Property Rights are stemming from a commonality that exists between the two issues and has very little to do with eminent domain in itself. People call his votes here, "safe votes" and perhaps they are, but to come up with that assumption, means that their candidates of choice are doing "safe votes" themselves to appear that they are more concerned with how city residents feel on an issue than they really are.
What both quartets have in common is how firmly they are backed by money and those who have it and fairly high status in the political circles of this city. Their political ideologies may differ but it's all the same to most of the city's residents who do not have the time or energy let alone the money to play such parlor games.
What's probably more interesting than what will transpire in these elections are what will happen in future ones and who will decide to run and what platforms they will hide or ride behind.
But before then, there are these elections which are still one month away and in Ward Seven, incumbent Steve Adams will face off against former mayor and current challenger, Terry Frizzel, according to the Press Enterprise.
Time hasn't been good to Adams. After an ill-fated foray into the arena of state politics, he returned home to carry his ward by barely one-third of the votes and lost the support of the labor union that had practically put him in office, the Riverside Police Officers' Association who initially backed Roy Saldanha and are sitting the final round out.
Saldanha and the two other candidates who ran in the preliminary round earlier this year are all backing Frizzel. Still, Adams has raised a lot of funds to spend on his campaign.
Development in the La Sierra area is a big topic in this election along with improving the city's infrastructure and basic services to match the huge growth expected through immigration and annexations.
(excerpt)
Both Adams and Frizzel accuse the other of not doing enough to protect the hillsides and rural areas of the ward.
Frizzel said Adams backed the Rancho La Sierra project that would have built 500 luxury homes near the Santa Ana River. The project was in violation of city laws limiting development on hillsides and rural areas, she said, and it took a lawsuit to stop it.
"They forced us to go to court. They weren't abiding by (the law)," Frizzel said.
The former mayor added that she didn't like general plan changes that would have threatened the ward's rural atmosphere with more development. Creating a redevelopment area in the ward took away vital funds for police and fire services that are needed to keep up with growth, she said.
Redevelopment also raises the specter that city officials could take private property through eminent domain, she added.
Adams said the Rancho La Sierra project would have protected the hillsides in perpetuity in exchange for developing flatlands. Without the project, property owners can now build up to 150 homes on the hillsides, because city laws only limit development and don't prohibit it, he said.
"They stole away our right to protect our hills," Adams said of Frizzel and her allies. "This is a personal issue by a handful of people against the will of the citizens of Ward 7."
Is this the first proclamation that Adams made about how he's a great protector of the hillsides of his ward? Perhaps but how that will be accomplished by building 500 luxury homes, he should explain in much greater detail.
And why is the focus on million dollar homes when many people who wish to own homes here including those who work for the city are having difficulty financing the ones that are available?
What's also very interesting is the money raised by each candidate including some key late contributions by development firms into the campaigns of councilmen including BASS quartet members, Dom Betro and Adams as well as aspiring BASS member, Bailey and BASS reject, Gage.
No pension for crooked cops, stated an editorial written by the New Haven Register in response to the city's decision to provide a pension to another police officer who was fired for serious misconduct and then handed a disability retirement.
Justen Kasperzyk, a fired narcotics detective, will receive a pension of $41,013 a year. Kasperzyk, 34, hadn't worked long enough to qualify for a regular pension. Instead, he was granted a disability pension, although he was fit and reporting for work up until the day he was arrested in March along with Lt. William White, the head of the police narcotics unit.
After he was fired, White got a $91,000 disability pension.
The system is set up so crooked cops can't lose.
What did these two officers do? They allegedly stole money and took kickbacks. The editorial board urged the city to change the rules to prevent the granting of pensions to officers facing criminal charges until at least after their cases are resolved.
In Los Angeles, a female detective who sued former Deputy Chief Michael Berkow for favoring female employees who had affairs with him was awarded over $1 million by a jury according to the Associated Press.
Berkow was no longer a defendant in the law suit but his former employing agency was.
(excerpt)
John W. Sheller, representing the city, said he was disappointed by the jury's findings.
Berkow has acknowledged having an extramarital affair with a female officer, but denied Christle's allegations.
Before the start of testimony, Superior Court Judge William F. Fahey dismissed Christle's claims that she was the victim of sexual harassment and endured a hostile work environment, which removed Berkow as a defendant in the case.
Berkow is currently chief of police in Savannah, Ga.
The ruling eliminated Christle's chance of being awarded punitive damages. The jury awarded her money for wages lost because of her reassignment.
A fatal shooting of a 14-year-old by Washington, D.C. Police Department officers last month is getting even more scrutiny after a preliminary report showed that the male teen was hit in the back of the head and suffered numerous unexplained injuries, according to the Washington Post.
Numerous federal and local agencies are doing investigations and a grand jury is expected to be convened.
The police's version ran into controversy almost from the start. The report hasn't lessened that but has produced even more questions.
(excerpt)
According to police, Officer James Haskel asked fellow officer and friend Anthony Clay to help him find a minibike that Haskel believed had been stolen from his home in Southeast. Off duty and out of uniform, the officers went looking for the minibike in Haskel's sport-utility vehicle and found DeOnté riding it on nearby Atlantic Street SE, police have said. DeOnté shot at the officer, police said, and Haskel got out of the SUV, pursued the youth on foot and shot him.
The autopsy report, dated Sept. 27, describes DeOnté as 5-foot-2 and 102 pounds. It includes a toxicology analysis that found no traces of drugs or alcohol in his blood.
The report notes that the youth's hands and fingers had no obvious gunshot residue, powder or soot. Police have said they did not perform gunshot residue tests because they are unreliable.
Greg Lattimer, an attorney for the Rawlings family, said the medical examiner's findings -- especially those describing injuries on the side and back of his body -- are "extremely troubling" and cast doubt on the police version of events.
In Chicago, no bail for the officer facing charges in connection with planning to murder a former police officer. All this is tied into to a huge corruption scandal involving one of the police department's special units.
Also involving the Chicago Police Department is a case being heard before a federal jury involving allegations that police officers assaulted a man with a screwdriver while searching him, according to the Chicago Tribune.
(excerpt)
Coprez Coffie, 23, testified that he had seen the tactical officers take the tool from the glove compartment of their unmarked car. He was handcuffed, placed against the car in an alley near Division Street and Pulaski Road and told to spread his buttocks, he said.
"I told them I couldn't ... [because] my hands were cuffed," said Coffie, telling jurors he then felt one of the officers insert the screwdriver.
"It was a shock to me," he said in the first day of a trial stemming from his lawsuit against the City of Chicago and the two officers, Gerald Lodwich and Scott Korhonen.
Lawyers for Coffie contend the search was unreasonable and violated his 4th Amendment rights. But city attorneys denied the incident took place, calling the arrest routine and noting that Coffie pleaded guilty to drug possession.
The head of Interpol has a warrant out for his arrest allegedly due to his close ties with criminal gangs.
New York Times columnist, Bob Herbert writes about the trend growing in policing which Herbert wrote was smarter and more effective than past practices.
(excerpt)
In the old days, the knee-jerk police reaction to a spike in crime was to respond with gratuitous (often murderous) violence. Los Angeles was a particularly brutal venue, and the brutality there yielded some particularly horrendous results.
L.A. is now in the early stages of a potentially historic decline in crime. Some of the police tactics are counterintuitive, if not heretical, from the perspective of the old-timers.
Earl Paysinger is Bill Bratton’s deputy in L.A. He told the gathering in Chicago that the decline in crime in his city was due in part to the department’s efforts to “reach out to communities that years ago we didn’t even talk to.” One of the payoffs, he said, is that now “people are more willing to call the police.”
Sometimes the right thing to do is also the most effective.
Gage predictably goes after Bailey's military record, while Bailey has criticized Gage's history on the dais and his lack of endorsements from other elected officials. As if that's necessarily a bad thing, because one man's collaborative effort is another man's cronyism.
These are some of the words.
(excerpt)
"We spent 25 to 30 years with very little going on" at City Hall, Gage said. "We now have a group of people on the council who are doing what needs to be done."
This is all nice, but didn't this "group of people" expel Gage from its exclusive membership as GASS quartet faded out and its replacement, BASS faded in? It's mostly members of BASS that are pushing for Bailey and in fact most of them endorsed him way back before he'd even taken out his papers to run for city council. When people saw this all play out, they said, that they're starting to eat their own. And Gage was first on that plate, perhaps as an appetizer?
But Bailey takes his hits too.
(excerpt)
Bailey, 35, said he wants to bring effective leadership and a new generation to the fore.
By losing his colleagues' confidence, Gage has made himself ineffective, Bailey said. It takes the votes of at least four council members to pass anything.
Bailey also said Gage's business background didn't stop Gage from making the motion to enact the electric rate increase that the council recently repealed after residents received extremely high summer bills.
"If he's so experienced and he's got all this business acumen, he couldn't project the damage this did?" Bailey said.
The problem with this line of thinking is that Gage didn't vote for higher election rates in a vacuum and he didn't vote to undo them in a vacuum either. Those voting right alongside him both times were city officials who have endorsed Bailey's own campaign. Yet, he doesn't hold them to the same standard for their actions as he holds Gage because he's running for election against Gage and he's been endorsed by these elected officials.
If Bailey had been sitting on the dais along with the men he hopes to collaborate with on the city council while they were approving the utility rate hike, what would he have done?
Would he have as a councilman believed it was a bad decision then and voted against it, or would he have voted alongside the rest of them in favor of the hike?
And opinions on the controversy involving the rate hike are mixed. Some feel that either way, the burden of paying for disproportionate rates for utilities will fall on those least able to do so and that the mutiny against the rate hike was due in part to it being an election year but also because it was the people living in the largest houses, using the most electricity who were doing most of the complaining. Because after all, if you are wealthy enough to afford a larger house, then you're the squeaky wheel more likely to be heard by any panel of elected officials.
On the other hand, people felt also that the election rate increase was unfair to them because their bills had increased so much, but without increasing the rates, how was the city to upgrade its aging, already overtaxed(as noted by rashes of blackouts in certain areas of the city including portions of Ward Three) infrastructure to anticipate the tremendous increases in population it would face in future years?
So while this crisis was viewed as a clash between people with white hats against those in black hats, it's a complex issue which is as multi-tiered as the rate structure that was put in effect. The weakest link in the whole process by far was the lack of education given to the public about the rate hikes, most particularly concerning the electricity usage that was sure to increase during the hot summer months as it usually does for most home owners and those in rental units as well.
Just like Councilman Dom Betro implied that Ward One Candidate Mike Gardner was responsible for "past problems" with the CPRC rather than pointing the finger for where the CPRC's "current problems" lie which are much closer to home. Why? Because it's an election season. The problems are only useful if they can be used as ammunition to fling at your rival. That's a lot easier to use in that manner than dealing with them when they happen on your watch.
Given how alliances form and dissolve around commonly held principles, it's hard to say whether getting kicked out of the BASS clique is a good or bad thing politically for Gage. After all, the clique system that has run the city council during its so-called more productive years has been roundly criticized first by those who then decide they want to form their own voting majority to vote the way that they want. What's not good for the goose is definitely good for the gander.
What Bailey also fails to understand is that council members can vote together on items even outside the quartet and most often do, yet quartets remain the driving force because there's always one group of people with power, money and status who try to dismantle one voting bloc to replace it with one of their own as if that's adding to the democratic process.
If Gage has truly lost the confidence of his cohorts, the vote's still 7-0 the vast majority of the time, not to mention that the consent calendar which is virtually always approved, 7-0 has never been more impressive in its sheer size and scope. More city council members excuse themselves due to personal and professional conflicts from individual consent calendar items than vote against the passage of the consent calendar or pull items for further discussion.
Bailey could be prepped better on several issues by his boosters before his forums, but it's almost as if more of the attention is being focused elsewhere. One issue impacting his ward that he appeared to not know much about was what exactly DHL was. Note to his backers, DHL is an air freight company not a railroad company.
He's smart and he's energetic and personable enough but there's been little to indicate so far that he's his own person. And when he is out campaigning, you can almost feel the sheer push of his focus groups whose members mostly reside outside Ward Three and that seems to be a stronger force than he is.
Gage has his own considerable albatrosses which he brings into his reelection attempt which makes endorsing him dicey to say the least. But while it might be a cheap shot to criticize Bailey's military background or less than one, more attention and not less should be paid to his years spent working under City Manager Brad Hudson with Riverside County's Economic Development Agency which may be the single factor most driving the decision of city officials to endorse a young neophyte for an election even before he had officially declared his candidacy. More attention should be given to the sheer amount of fundraising that Gage has done among development interests, especially when building an argument that he opposes eminent domain when he was willing to partner up with developer(and long-time campaign donor to many a campaign) Doug Jacobs to take some houses through eminent domain several years ago.
Gage's two main independent votes, the one to preserve the ability for commoners to pull items from the consent calendar and his vote against the SLAPP suit against Riversiders for Property Rights are stemming from a commonality that exists between the two issues and has very little to do with eminent domain in itself. People call his votes here, "safe votes" and perhaps they are, but to come up with that assumption, means that their candidates of choice are doing "safe votes" themselves to appear that they are more concerned with how city residents feel on an issue than they really are.
What both quartets have in common is how firmly they are backed by money and those who have it and fairly high status in the political circles of this city. Their political ideologies may differ but it's all the same to most of the city's residents who do not have the time or energy let alone the money to play such parlor games.
What's probably more interesting than what will transpire in these elections are what will happen in future ones and who will decide to run and what platforms they will hide or ride behind.
But before then, there are these elections which are still one month away and in Ward Seven, incumbent Steve Adams will face off against former mayor and current challenger, Terry Frizzel, according to the Press Enterprise.
Time hasn't been good to Adams. After an ill-fated foray into the arena of state politics, he returned home to carry his ward by barely one-third of the votes and lost the support of the labor union that had practically put him in office, the Riverside Police Officers' Association who initially backed Roy Saldanha and are sitting the final round out.
Saldanha and the two other candidates who ran in the preliminary round earlier this year are all backing Frizzel. Still, Adams has raised a lot of funds to spend on his campaign.
Development in the La Sierra area is a big topic in this election along with improving the city's infrastructure and basic services to match the huge growth expected through immigration and annexations.
(excerpt)
Both Adams and Frizzel accuse the other of not doing enough to protect the hillsides and rural areas of the ward.
Frizzel said Adams backed the Rancho La Sierra project that would have built 500 luxury homes near the Santa Ana River. The project was in violation of city laws limiting development on hillsides and rural areas, she said, and it took a lawsuit to stop it.
"They forced us to go to court. They weren't abiding by (the law)," Frizzel said.
The former mayor added that she didn't like general plan changes that would have threatened the ward's rural atmosphere with more development. Creating a redevelopment area in the ward took away vital funds for police and fire services that are needed to keep up with growth, she said.
Redevelopment also raises the specter that city officials could take private property through eminent domain, she added.
Adams said the Rancho La Sierra project would have protected the hillsides in perpetuity in exchange for developing flatlands. Without the project, property owners can now build up to 150 homes on the hillsides, because city laws only limit development and don't prohibit it, he said.
"They stole away our right to protect our hills," Adams said of Frizzel and her allies. "This is a personal issue by a handful of people against the will of the citizens of Ward 7."
Is this the first proclamation that Adams made about how he's a great protector of the hillsides of his ward? Perhaps but how that will be accomplished by building 500 luxury homes, he should explain in much greater detail.
And why is the focus on million dollar homes when many people who wish to own homes here including those who work for the city are having difficulty financing the ones that are available?
What's also very interesting is the money raised by each candidate including some key late contributions by development firms into the campaigns of councilmen including BASS quartet members, Dom Betro and Adams as well as aspiring BASS member, Bailey and BASS reject, Gage.
No pension for crooked cops, stated an editorial written by the New Haven Register in response to the city's decision to provide a pension to another police officer who was fired for serious misconduct and then handed a disability retirement.
Justen Kasperzyk, a fired narcotics detective, will receive a pension of $41,013 a year. Kasperzyk, 34, hadn't worked long enough to qualify for a regular pension. Instead, he was granted a disability pension, although he was fit and reporting for work up until the day he was arrested in March along with Lt. William White, the head of the police narcotics unit.
After he was fired, White got a $91,000 disability pension.
The system is set up so crooked cops can't lose.
What did these two officers do? They allegedly stole money and took kickbacks. The editorial board urged the city to change the rules to prevent the granting of pensions to officers facing criminal charges until at least after their cases are resolved.
In Los Angeles, a female detective who sued former Deputy Chief Michael Berkow for favoring female employees who had affairs with him was awarded over $1 million by a jury according to the Associated Press.
Berkow was no longer a defendant in the law suit but his former employing agency was.
(excerpt)
John W. Sheller, representing the city, said he was disappointed by the jury's findings.
Berkow has acknowledged having an extramarital affair with a female officer, but denied Christle's allegations.
Before the start of testimony, Superior Court Judge William F. Fahey dismissed Christle's claims that she was the victim of sexual harassment and endured a hostile work environment, which removed Berkow as a defendant in the case.
Berkow is currently chief of police in Savannah, Ga.
The ruling eliminated Christle's chance of being awarded punitive damages. The jury awarded her money for wages lost because of her reassignment.
A fatal shooting of a 14-year-old by Washington, D.C. Police Department officers last month is getting even more scrutiny after a preliminary report showed that the male teen was hit in the back of the head and suffered numerous unexplained injuries, according to the Washington Post.
Numerous federal and local agencies are doing investigations and a grand jury is expected to be convened.
The police's version ran into controversy almost from the start. The report hasn't lessened that but has produced even more questions.
(excerpt)
According to police, Officer James Haskel asked fellow officer and friend Anthony Clay to help him find a minibike that Haskel believed had been stolen from his home in Southeast. Off duty and out of uniform, the officers went looking for the minibike in Haskel's sport-utility vehicle and found DeOnté riding it on nearby Atlantic Street SE, police have said. DeOnté shot at the officer, police said, and Haskel got out of the SUV, pursued the youth on foot and shot him.
The autopsy report, dated Sept. 27, describes DeOnté as 5-foot-2 and 102 pounds. It includes a toxicology analysis that found no traces of drugs or alcohol in his blood.
The report notes that the youth's hands and fingers had no obvious gunshot residue, powder or soot. Police have said they did not perform gunshot residue tests because they are unreliable.
Greg Lattimer, an attorney for the Rawlings family, said the medical examiner's findings -- especially those describing injuries on the side and back of his body -- are "extremely troubling" and cast doubt on the police version of events.
In Chicago, no bail for the officer facing charges in connection with planning to murder a former police officer. All this is tied into to a huge corruption scandal involving one of the police department's special units.
Also involving the Chicago Police Department is a case being heard before a federal jury involving allegations that police officers assaulted a man with a screwdriver while searching him, according to the Chicago Tribune.
(excerpt)
Coprez Coffie, 23, testified that he had seen the tactical officers take the tool from the glove compartment of their unmarked car. He was handcuffed, placed against the car in an alley near Division Street and Pulaski Road and told to spread his buttocks, he said.
"I told them I couldn't ... [because] my hands were cuffed," said Coffie, telling jurors he then felt one of the officers insert the screwdriver.
"It was a shock to me," he said in the first day of a trial stemming from his lawsuit against the City of Chicago and the two officers, Gerald Lodwich and Scott Korhonen.
Lawyers for Coffie contend the search was unreasonable and violated his 4th Amendment rights. But city attorneys denied the incident took place, calling the arrest routine and noting that Coffie pleaded guilty to drug possession.
The head of Interpol has a warrant out for his arrest allegedly due to his close ties with criminal gangs.
New York Times columnist, Bob Herbert writes about the trend growing in policing which Herbert wrote was smarter and more effective than past practices.
(excerpt)
In the old days, the knee-jerk police reaction to a spike in crime was to respond with gratuitous (often murderous) violence. Los Angeles was a particularly brutal venue, and the brutality there yielded some particularly horrendous results.
L.A. is now in the early stages of a potentially historic decline in crime. Some of the police tactics are counterintuitive, if not heretical, from the perspective of the old-timers.
Earl Paysinger is Bill Bratton’s deputy in L.A. He told the gathering in Chicago that the decline in crime in his city was due in part to the department’s efforts to “reach out to communities that years ago we didn’t even talk to.” One of the payoffs, he said, is that now “people are more willing to call the police.”
Sometimes the right thing to do is also the most effective.
Labels: business as usual, City elections, officer-involved shootings, sexism costs
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