Chief Cooper Tosses It In

Claremont Police Chief Paul Cooper (left) Stacks Arms and Double Dips

Having spent the past few months steering Claremont Measure PS to a 75% NO to 25% YES squeaker of a defeat, Chief Paul Cooper of the Claremont Police Department the very next day (November 4th) announced his retirement.

Whether this is a case of taking his ball and going home--we will leave that for you to decide.

Never one to leave any money on the table, Chief Cooper, who last year negotiated  a couple of multi-thousand dollar retention bonuses will retire on December 31, 2015 and be back the next day as a $193,000 annually (approximately $96/hour) Double-Dipper.  (His CALPERS pension will start then, and Lord knows how much it will be but probably in the vicinity of $175,000 per year if our meager knowledge of public safety pensions and our math skills don't fail us.)  That's a lot of Pixie donuts.

He is restricted by CALPERS rules from working more than "part time", defined as 960 hours in any fiscal year during retirement.  But Honest Paul figured this one to just span the second half of the City's FY2015-16 year and the first half of the upcoming FY 2016-2017 fiscal year.  This allows him, as City Manager Tony Ramos cheerfully reports, to "be able to work close to full-time hours over the term of his employment" as interim chief.  He will stay as interim chief not longer than December 31, 2016 at which time he will have scooped every last cent of City money off the table.

Anyway, bon voyage Chief Cooper.  May your retirement be short and may we see you back in the saddle again soon.  Probably in January.

We Stand Corrected

Our post last Friday generated this response from Claremont Police Chief Paul Cooper (photo, right):

Date: Mon, March 21, 2011 7:11:16 AM
Subject: [ No Subject ]
From: Paul Cooper
To: claremontbuzz@yahoo.com

Hi Claremont Buzz,

A friend sent me the link to your most recent story on March 18, 2011. I thought I would share with you that the proposed communications tower project was presented at City Council, Police Commission and Community Services Commission meetings. We have discussed the project with Cable Airport management and they have no issues with the project. We have also submitted the project to the FAA and received a “No Hazard” certification. Following the council presentation, the tower project was also in the Courier and the Daily Bulletin The most recent agenda report is to simply update the new council on the project and its status. There’s been no attempt to “slip this one in.” If you have any questions about the project, I am always available.

Sincerely,


Paul


Paul Cooper
Chief of Police
Claremont Police Department
909-399-5401
pcooper@ci.claremont.ca.us

We noticed that Chief Cooper's concerns about clarifying the record must have extended to the City's public relations arm. Over the weekend there was a change in the City's online materials for the tower. When we originally looked on the City's website last Friday, this is what we saw:


This is what you see now:


So the City's information on the tower is much more helpful now than it was last week. However, we'd still like to see a link to the so-called "Initial Study". Among other things, apparently, this contains the deadline for public comment. Presumably it also contains a discussion of the height and how the initially-proposed 200-ft tower in Upland transformed into a 174-ft tower in Claremont.

We checked the City's records, and we were able to find the references Chief Cooper mentioned. Cooper made presentations regarding the tower to the City Council, the Police Commission, and the Community Services Commission. Searching the City's document archives when we were composing our original post didn't turn up the documents the Chief was able to point us to, so we took another look.

We were glad the Chief wrote us because, when we looked for the meetings he referred to, we were struck by how much all of it seemed to serve seemed to underscore our original concern about the City "slipping one in." For instance, the tower was originally slated to be located in the northeast corner of the City Yard on Monte Vista Ave. That placement, however, put the 174-foot tower in Upland and under the aegis of Upland's planning process, which didn't give the Chief and City Hall to opportunities to maneuver that having the tower on the Claremont side of the property did.

(It also reminded us that when Claremont originally built the building, at the end of the Glenn Southard regime, they built out past the city and county limits without getting the permission of Upland, which cause a minor row at the the time.)

Click to Enlarge

Chief Cooper mentioned the change in the tower's placement in his 2/10/11 report to the Community Services Commission:

The location of the tower was originally proposed in the far northeast corner of the city yards which is actually in the City of Upland. As staff worked with Upland staff, it became apparent that this project could not move through Upland's process in the timeline needed to meet the needs of the project and the grant. The tower was moved approximately 20' from its originally proposed site so that it is now located within Claremont while still being constructed in the far northeast corner of the facility. This will allow the management of the project to be handled within Claremont's process and staff has the ability to manage the timeline better.

The communications tower is on the agenda for tonight's City Council meeting, by the way. The Chief's report for the council lays out a timeline for the the tower's installation. Note the implied inevitability:

March 22 Report to council for FYI on project.
Agenda Published March 17. Report due March 14.

March 25 - April 19 Publish CEQA (21 days).

April 4 Bid Specs Completed.

April 19 Planning Commission Meeting. C U P approval. CEQA hearing and approval.
Agenda Published April 14. Report due April 11. Notice April 7. Appeal until May 2.
April 27 Architectural Commission Design Review.
Building design needed.
Agenda Published April 21. Report due April 18. Notice April 14.

April 4 Bid Specs Completed.

May 10 City Council approval to go to bid
Agenda Published May 5. Report due May 2.

May 24 Approval for bid if CEQA Appealed.
Agenda Published May 19. Report due May 16.

June 27 Open Bids.

July 12 Award Bid.
Agenda Published July 7. Report due July 5.

July/Auqust/Sept Build Project.

The Chief doesn't foresee any problems arising in the public process that might change his timeline, and there's real no need for him to worry. His certainty is guaranteed by the fact that he can shepherd the project through Claremont's rubber stamping commissions. We assume the commissioners, especially the Architectural Commissioners, are in line on this matter and no one will raise the objection, well, that the tower is buck-ugly as proposed, looking like a cross between a rocket gantry and a 1920s Signal Hill oil well tower, except taller than either.

As to the FAA, we note that there wasn't much public comment on this matter. For example, we didn't see the City or Chief Cooper circulate the materials they presented to the FAA. Incidentally, though the owners of Cable probably didn't realize when Chief Cooper apprised them of the tower plans, in the long term building the tower might be good not only for police communications, but for the anyone who might want the for airport's land for some other use like commercial development or even future expansion for the Claremont Colleges. Somewhere far down the road, the tower's existence will make it easier to argue that development has so crowded around airport that safety will become a concern.

And this is how Official Claremont uses the process to batter the uninitiated. In Claremont, there's never one meeting you can point to and say, "You must be there." If you showed up for, say, the Police Commission meeting last November 4th, you could have heard Chief Cooper talking to the commissioners about the proposed tower. If you raised an objection, however, you would have been told that this was really just an informational agenda item to address your concerns and that you would have your chance to air your concerns at a future meeting.

So you then you would have gone to the Community Services meeting on February 10th. You again raised your concerns, but would have been told there was no need to worry and that your concerns would be addressed at the City Council on March 22nd, or at a future Architectural Commission meeting. By the end of it, when you've had more than your fill of meetings, you'll be told that you should have had your concerns addressed earlier on when you had the opportunity and that the project had already been vetted by the city's commissions and by the City Council.

The unstated fact of the matter is that none of the meetings really mattered. It was all just window dressing. The idea for a trolley gets floated at someplace like a dinner party at former Mayor's Judy Wright's home, and the next thing you know, the project is a fait accompli.

Only after you've experienced the vaunted Claremont public process will you come to appreciate the machinery at work in our town. Only then can you truly call yourself a Claremonter.

Because We're Claremonters...

A PARABLE

Some years ago, a friend of the Insider moved to New York to work in the publishing industry. This person settled into a small, six-square block village on Long Island and soon came to marvel at the local natives, who insisted on spending large amounts of money on things like maintaining a volunteer fire department, complete with a fully equipped fire engine. Fires in the area were rare, and the main purpose seemed to be to keep up with the neighboring villages, all of which had their own volunteer fire departments.

The locals also overpaid for their trash service, whose waste hauler wouldn't allow residents to move their garbage cans from their yards to the street for pick up. The trash contract specified that the trash workers moved all containers, even if they were in backyards. This seemed mainly designed to require extra workers on each waste disposal truck.

Our friend tried asking some of his neighbors about these peculiar arrangements and received nothing but odd looks, as if he were crazy for questioning how much money the village was spending on toys. This is how we've always done things, they'd say. Our friend eventually came to the conclusion that his fellow LI villagers were completely irrational. One night at a restaurant, the friend struck up a conversation with a waitress, who was herself a West Coast transplant. He asked the waitress why people in the area seemed to have such a hard time with reasoning skills. She leaned over and whispered, "Because they're STUPID."


CLAREMONT CRAZIES

Claremonters seem similarly committed to their own brand of craziness, which includes overpaying for services too, for everything from their schools to their city services. Witness last November's $95 million Measure CL school bond campaign. Or the recent editorials and letters in the Claremont Courier by former Claremont Mayor Sandy Baldonado and police commissioner Barbara Musselman, who is also a former Claremont League of Women Voters president. Readers will recall that Musselman, in keeping with her LWV ties, has a long history of interfering in Claremont elections.

The two yentas, Baldonado and Musselman, are upset that the City has had to cut back on services because of budget deficits. Both, along with their friend and failed City Council candidate Bridget Healy, have labored mightily to put a scare into residents, first when city staff looked into outsource Claremont's trash service and more recently after someone in City Hall leaked the news that Police Chief Paul Cooper is a finalist for the chief of Glendora's police. The B-M party line is that Claremont City Manager Jeff Parker is gutting city staff and services with the support of his city council.

Baldonado and Musselman have both claimed that Chief Cooper wants to leave because he doesn't feel that our City Council fully supports the police. What they conveniently overlook is that Chief Cooper, who will be eligible for a generous CalPERS retirement in a few years, needs to bump up his salary, since his pension will be based on final salary. Glendora, which is larger than Claremont, will always be able to pay more than our town.

Musselman, who is a former human resources director for San Bernardino County (and herself a public pensioner) certainly knows this, as does Baldonado, who through her council voting record is responsible for awarding lavish CalPERS plans to Claremont municipal retirees - the very city pension that Cooper seeks to maximize with his Glendora job application.

If Baldonado had been more fiscally responsible, she wouldn't have supported those super-sized pension plans, which included having the City paying for the employees' share of their pensions, and we would have more money now to dedicate towards staff and services. It's because of the foolish arrangements supported by Baldonado's votes that management-level employees are able to collect six-figure retirement incomes, an inflation-indexed $166,700 per year in Bridget Healy's case, a good chunk of which is paid for by the City of Claremont.

Click to Enlarge

From californiapensionreform.com

The simple fact of the matter is that the free-spending ways of Baldonado and her friends, not Parker, are responsible for City Hall's present belt-tightening. However, instead of owning up to their respective roles in all this, they want to take down Parker's administration and seek to take us back to the Glenn Southard era in City Hall. (The two, if they were capable of introspection, might consider where we'd be if Glenn were here now - after he retired from Indio, Southard left that city with a $9 million budget deficit.)

But, because they suffer the same malady that once afflicted certain Long Islanders, Baldonado and Musselman are bent on stirring things up in town, mostly because they think this will benefit the election prospects of their friend and current City Council candidate Robin Haulman, whom both Baldonado and Musselman have endorsed.

The Haulman campaign, or at least her endorsers, seek to scare voters by telling them city employees are leaving because they're being undermined by Parker and by the City Council. We've seen this scare game before with the 2005 Preserve Claremont campaign, so it's no coincidence Human Services Commissioner and former PC spokesman Butch Henderson is an honorary chair of Haulman's campaign. Also, PC's treasurer, Francine Baker (a city employee, by the way) is listed as a Haulman endorser, and her husband Bill is Haulman's treasurer.

We should expect more than a little campaign skulduggery from Haulman's backers. After all, Pastor Butch has told us this is how Claremont does campaigns.


A NEW VOICE SPEAKS FOR ROBIN

This past Saturday, thanks to the Baldondo-Musselman-Haulman communications team, the Claremont Courier carried a letter by Musselman, and another by a third Haulman endorser, Gregory Shearer. Shearer's letter took up the B-M message. Oddly, though, Shearer also included a passage that left us scratching our heads:

In speaking with the rank and file officers of the Claremont PD, I am sure they will be glad to see Cooper get the Glendora gig as more than one Claremont officer has mentioned his abusive management style, which may just be frustration over working with the current city council.

Hmmm. Tell us again why we want to keep the abusive Chief Cooper? It's the city council's fault for driving Cooper to abuse his employees? We had all wrong. We thought a good boss protected his employees and took the heat himself.

One thing's for sure, Shearer fits right in with Baldonado, Musselman, Haulman, Healy, Henderson, the Bakers and all the rest of their friends when it to wasting public dollars. In 2000, Greg Shearer was the subject of a money-makeover column by LA Times business section columnist Kathy Kristof:

In short, unless Shearer learns to restrain himself, he'll never attain the comfortable retirement that he wants, said Margaret Mullen, a fee-only financial advisor in Los Angeles.

But restraint is something that the Claremont adult-video salesman, who has filed for personal bankruptcy three times, finds exceptionally difficult.

Serial bankruptcy filer advising us on municipal policy? Makes as much sense as anything else here in this kooky town. Shearer probably has some ideas for next summer's movies in the park series, too.

Crime Alert

Padua Park was the scene of a crime last month, though city officials don't seem to want the public to know about it. Apparently, on Wednesday, September 29, when city workers tried to turn on the soccer field lights at the park, they discovered the lights were inoperable because someone had stolen over 130 feet of copper wire from the park's main electrical vault.

The information going around town is that the copper, presumably taken by thieves who turn around and sell the wire to metal recyclers, was worth around $500. Like gold, copper's price has shot up the past few years, and such thefts have become more common. The city of Glendale issued an alert last year because of a rise in just this sort of crime:

Glendale has seen a sudden rise in metal and copper wire theft in the last two years. Customers are urged to contact authorities if they see people lingering near electrical equipment or inactive construction sites. Stealing copper wire is a crime and very costly for the City, but the bigger issue is public safety. Tampering with wires can cause serious harm, bodily injury or death. Power and telephone outages can also result from copper wire theft.

Odd that Claremont officials haven't issued a similar alert. The only way of catching copper thieves in the act is to have more eyeballs on the lookout, and people who reside near likely targets like parks and schools need to be alerted to this fact.

We suppose the City may say this was just a case of vandalism, but this kind of theft requires specialized knowledge. Poking around a high voltage electrical panel can be very dangerous, and from time to time we hear about the occasional copper thief getting electrocuted. The Padua Park incident, however, sure sounds as if it were done by someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

City Hall and the Claremont Police are no doubt hesitant to let news of the Padua Park theft get out because one of the complaints before the park was built was that it would lead to a rise in crime. Police Chief Paul Cooper (photo, left), who has worked with Claremont AYSO Region 3 as their Volunteer Protection Advocate, himself may have an interest in keeping a lid on the information, even if means less public awareness about the matter.

Or maybe it's all just a sign of CPD's competence level. They've issued press releases before when there were scams or more serious crimes in our area, even in cases where Claremont wasn't hit. So why not now?

Speaking of crime at Padua Park, we're waiting to hear about an increase in burglaries in the area. The public restroom sits on a rise that a good 20-25 feet higher than it should be, with the result that it offers a great vantage point from which to peer into the backyards and windows of several of the surrounding homes.

When they were planning the park, the City promised to plant a screen of trees around the perimeter to create a natural screen. But you know how it works with Claremont and promises. When the park was finally built, a good part of that natural screen consisted of oak saplings, which are pretty slow growing. Maybe in 15 or 20 years, City Hall will finally make good on its word to area residents. Of course, given the City's record with landscape management, a good number of those trees won't last that long:

Our Prurient Town

Don't know how we missed it, but the Pomona College paper The Student Life reported on the Claremont PD stopping about a dozen bicyclists from the Claremont Colleges who were riding naked through the Claremont Village on the evening of February 26.

TSL tells us the students were part of a group of 40 such riders whom Claremont police said were in violation of indecent exposure laws. Three of the bikers were detained and handcuffed, including Pomona College student Erica Reiss, whom a CPD officer physically removed from her bicycle.

The TSL article explained how it all went down:

Participants in the bike ride said 12 students were stopped when a police vehicle tried to block the group’s path on First Street. The rest of the students continued cycling. When a second vehicle tried to cut them off, police Corporal David DeMetz grabbed Reiss, who was not injured in the incident.

Two other students, Eric Stahl-David PI ’11 and Matt Goldbach PI ’11, stopped when they saw DeMetz take Reiss to the ground. All three students were handcuffed and told to sit on the curb. According to police, the students were released when witnesses opted not to press charges against them.

The matter came up at the City Council meeting last night during public comment. Resident and retired LAPD officer Ralph Ruiz brought up the issue. Ruiz called the incident in, and he was unhappy that no one was arrested.

As Tony Krickl over at the Claremont Courier says on his blog, Claremont Police Chief Paul Cooper was present at the council meeting, and he explained his department's stance on the bikers:

Cooper said police will not take action against a nude biker as long as witnesses are not offended by the nudity or the biker is not getting sexual pleasure from his/her activity.

"This is a specific intent crime," Cooper said. "The persons exposing their genitals have to received some type of sexual gratification from this. There's no evidence to support that [in this case]."

Oh.

You can watch the council video here (just click on the public comment agenda item). You have to wade through some non-nude biking talk, including a little medical marijuana info and a few comments by Citizen Michael John Keenan before you get to Chief Cooper's and the council's comments.

Emergency Operations

Hear the loud alarum bells -
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now -now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells -
Of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

We tried to remind ourselves just where that $1.8 million Emergency Operations Center fit in the list of Claremont priorities. It just didn't ring a bell--or alarum, or siren, or whatever would be appropriate in the circumstance.

Here is a list of priorities from one of last year's City Council study session on the subject. This list came from an agenda report dated July 22, 2008, from City Manager Parker to the Council. No EOC that we notice:

click to enlarge

You can go through the entire agenda report yourself; we see no mention of an EOC in any of the funded or unfunded Capital Improvement Projects for FY 2008-9, or 2009-10, either.

And yet we have Congressman David Dreier, presumably as a result of lobbying by staff or council, showering down $1.8 million for an EOC in Claremont. (We could be wrong, but we thought the City Hall was reconstructed nearly a decade ago with FEMA money for something very near that purpose, and the Citrus Room was designated the EOC.)

This is just the kind of Federal waste that people of all political stripes rail about. From the Right: big money for a project neither necessary nor desired by the community. From the Left: big money for a rich community at the expense of nearby poorer ones. (the same analysis of the Omnibus Earmark Act found, for example, two projects benefitting Pomona totaling $875,000 (for ground water cleanup in South Pomona and the construction on the 71 south of Mission Blvd.)

Claremont, with a population of some 35,000 receives $1.8 million (more than $50 per capita) for an unnecessary frill. Pomona, with a population of about 150,000, receives $875,000 (not quite $6 per capita) for projects that more directly affect the health and safety of the community.

Whose life is going to be made better knowing that Jeff Parker, Tony Ramos, and Paul Cooper have a comfortable place to go, with lots of neat radios and computers and large LCD screens, when the Big One hits? They have the mobile command center trailer already. And what scarce staff resource is going to honcho this money and this project?

(Proposed answer to previous question: Most likely this is a make-work project to fund a couple more city staff members during the upcoming lean times; don't look for it to pencil out in any cost- benefit way.)

In the meantime, we have gotten copies of the proposed drawings for the EOC. When Jeff Parker shows up at Council meeting tonight in a Starfleet uniform, you'll know we are right.

click to enlarge

* * * * *

The stanza introducing this post is from 'The Bells', by Edgar Allan Poe

Somatotypes

A post over on M-M-M-My Pomona announcing the "retirement" of Pomona Police Chief Joe Romero featured a photograph of him. This put us in mind of our own Chief Paul Cooper and similarity these two chiefs of police have in their physiques. We then dug out our copies of Sheldon, The Varieties of Temperament and The Varieties of Human Physique to see if there was an explanation for this extreme endomorphy in the upper echelons of law enforcement. Alas, Sheldon is more descriptive than he is explanatory, so no help there. In fact, most psychologists today dismiss his ideas as so much hooey.

Still, the characteristics must be widespread enough to gain the attention of Hollywood moguls who can make a buck off of anything if it's obvious enough.

You form your own opinion. Below we compare photos of top law enforcement officers in Claremont (Paul Cooper), Pomona (Joe Romero), and New Jersey (Paul Blart).

Contract Policing

CPD Chief Paul Cooper

The Goddess of Pomona blog has a discussion today that considers the pros and cons of contracting out Pomona's police services to the LA County Sheriff's Department.

This is a discussion that has come up from time to time here in Claremont, but it usually doesn't get very far because, despite the much greater costs of having it dedicated municipal police department (costs that include things like salaries, pensions, training, equipment, insurance, the cost of old jail facilities, the future costs of a jail facility - easily the largest single city budget item), Claremonters for the most part prefer its CPD to a less personalized Sheriff's Department.

Goddess of Pomona's take is that all-in-all, she'd just as soon keep Pomona's PD for many of the same reasons the majority of Claremonters want to keep the CPD and its Chief Paul Cooper (pictured, above right):

Of all the pros and cons, the one that resonates with me most is the threat to Pomona's small town feel. When people wonder aloud why I live in Pomona, it's not just that I live in a great old house, but what keeps me here is the sense of community. I strongly believe that disbanding the Pomona P.D. would directly affect the quality of my life here in Pomona. I don't want to be another anonymous L.A. County town whose been stripped of most of it's personality. But then again, I don't like to shop at Walmart either.

One big factor that precludes a rational discussion of the issue here in Claremont is the emotional attachment people feel toward their police department. But, if it were possible to remove the emotion and simply look at the costs and benefits, it's possible to conclude that we're far better off contracting out.

One big advantage is that we'd get a more professionalized service. Deputies would have served time in the LA County jails and would have more experience dealing with a wider range of people and crimes than our CPD officers. Also, as Goddess noted, the LASD would be able to provide specialized investigative personnel such as gang intervention or narcotics officers.

It's also possible, for instance, that we could forgo building a new $25 million-plus police station by sharing jail services with other area towns that use LASD - San Dimas, Walnut, potentially Pomona. More importantly, the huge costs of police salaries, pensions, and benefits would be shared with the county, reducing a big chunk of our budget.

And to people worried about Claremont losing its identity by contracting out the police service, the LASD has made an effort to provide individualized local service. The LASD website explains some of the cost benefits of their contract system:

The intergovernmental contract system offers a wide range of services at a reduced cost, allowing each contract city to choose a level of service that best meets the needs of its community. Duplicate costs are avoided because contract cities draw upon the full potential of the Sheriffs Department, sharing support resources and paying only their proportionate "user costs." As a result of this "cost sharing" concept, contract cities can obtain an optimum level of police service for a lesser cost than would be required for them to maintain their own police department. In addition, the contract cities can draw upon the full resources of the largest Sheriffs Department in the world.

The question is, with the economy deteriorating and the City's budget veering more and more sharply toward the red, can we afford not to consider contracting out the single largest municipal expense?

Council Meeting Moved to Tonight

Because Veterans Day is tomorrow, the Claremont City Council has moved its regularly scheduled meeting to tonight at 6:30pm in the council chambers at City Hall, located at 225 W. 2nd St. in the Claremont Village.

You can read the agenda here. If you're so inclined, you can also watch tonight's meeting on the City's website.

Among the items on the council's slate for tonight:

• Approval of Claremont Police Chief Paul Cooper's recommendations for the allocation of $100,000 from the state's Citizen Options for Public Safety (COPS) grant.
  
  Chief Cooper wants to use the money to: purchase some new equipment; upgrade some existing equipment; and fund training, additional community outreach, more bike patrols, and more patrols in the Wilderness Park.
  
  Oh, and then there's that $1,200 for a McGruff the Crime Dog costume. Seriously.
  
  Guess we know what Chief Cooper is going as to next year's staff Halloween Party.
  
  
• Acceptance of the resignation of Human Services Commissioner Anne K. Turner. Turner submitted this resignation letter to the City:
  

  October 28 2008
  
  Dear Members of the Claremont City Council and Members of the Human Services Commission:
  
  It is with great regret that I inform you that I can no longer serve on the Human Services Commission. My schedule can't accommodate the commitment necessary to do a proper job.
  
  I have been extremely honored to work with such a wonderful staff and dedicated volunteers. I count myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to be a part of "the process" and I thank you for that. [Are the scare quotes supposed to indicate sarcasm? - ed.]
  
  I apologize for this mid-year decision, but it could not be avoided I wish you all the very best and again thank you.
  
  Sincerely,
  
  Anne K Turner
  
  Anne K Turner MPA.
  VMA Communications

  
  As you can see, Turner is employed by VMA Communications, the public relations firm owned by Preserve Claremonter Valerie Martinez. Martinez is also on the Human Services Commission and reportedly had a hand in the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to the recent resignation of Commission Chair Gwen Carr. You can always count on Martinez to stir the pot.
  
  No word yet on which VMA employee will fill the seat vacated by Turner.
  
  
• An amendment to the city's agreement with Grand Central Recycling and Transfer Station, Inc., to process solid waste and recycling materials. The current agreement expires on November 14th, and city staff would like to extend the agreement one year.
  
  
• An appeal by a group of residents of the Architectural Commission's mitigated negative declaration and site plan approval for the Claremont Commons project at Monte Vista Ave. and Foothill Blvd.
  
  
• Adoption of staff recommendations for new procedures for dealing with foreclosed properties. Staff wants trustees taking possession of foreclosed properties to register vacant homes with the city. They also want enforcement of landscaping requirements reduced to 30 days from the current 180 days.
  
  If the recommendations are adopted, staff also wants the city to approve a fee to register vacant homes (also looking for new revenue, this bunch).
  
  
• Approval of a mitigated negative declaration for the Padua Hills Theatre, as well as a lease agreement between the city of Claremont and the developer, Arteco Partners.
  
  
• Approval of a process for appointing members of Claremont's Sustainability Committee. (In English: We get to pick people who rubber stamp the projects we like.)
  
  
  
  
  

Police Station Decision on Hold

The Claremont City Council Tuesday ended up sending the question of where to put the proposed new city police station back to the Police Commission for more information.

The commission had sent the council a recommendation to put the new facility at the Corey Nursery site on Monte Vista Ave. and Claremont Blvd. just south of the city's maintenance yard.

The council decision will have Claremont Police Chief Paul Cooper (right), who had his heart set on the nursery site, revisiting some other options that had been raised, including the idea of working with the city of Pomona on a joint facility. Wes Woods II had the story in today's Daily Bulletin:

Council members asked the police commission to return later with additional information on more sites.

``I'm not necessarily disappointed,'' Cooper said.

``We started this in 2002 and as each year ticks by, there doesn't seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel. But we'll be getting the information to them (the council) by the end of the year.''

Cooper said the commission was asked to look at the current site at 570. W. Bonita Ave., the strawberry patch fields at Baseline and Towne Avenues owned by the Pomona Valley Protective Association and the Corey Nursery at Monte Vista.

Council also directed the commission to again talk to Pomona about working together for a possible station at Towne and Bonita avenues, Cooper said.

The cost of the new station, an estimated $25-30 million, is one thing delaying the decision. No amount of grant money will come close to funding the facility, so the city's taxpayers will have to foot the bill. As the Johnson's Pasture purchased showed a couple years ago, not only does the project have to be worthy, but the funding mechanism has to be free of gimmicks or it will be rejected. The city council may have learned its lesson from that previous experience.

City Council Meets Tonight

The Claremont City Council eases back into action tonight with a somewhat modest schedule following its August recess. At 5:15pm, the council will meet in closed session for a conference with labor negotiators regarding the Claremont Professional Employees Association. The council will also be discussing price and terms of a prospective agreement with Arteco Partners over the Padua Theatre.

The regular council meeting begins at 6:30pm with a number of routine administrative items, including the introduction of three new commissioners:

• Angela Bekzadian-Avila, Human Services
  
• Rosemary Fisher-Anaya, Police Commission
• Sayeed Shaikh, Police Commission
  

The council will also accept the resignation of Human Services Commission Chair Gwen Carr. No word on why Carr stepped down, but you can bet that fellow Human Services Commissioner Valerie Martinez had more than a little to do with the resignation. The word on the street is that Martinez, who was the spokeswoman and brains behind the Claremonsters' Preserve Claremont campaign, maneuvered against Carr's appointment to commission chair and seems to have continued to work against Carr by manipulating her fellow, less-aware commissioners.

In addition, the council will also vote on a resolution against the LA County Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Measure R sales tax increase. The resolution also expresses support for the Gold Line.

Other items on tonight's council agenda include a discussion of the elements of a proposed mansionization ordinance that would try to implement tighter controls over the sorts of homes that can be built in town, as well as the adoption of a residential parking permit policy.

The parking issue came up previously with the residents on Via Santa Caterina in the Claraboya neighborhood. That neighborhood sits at the trailhead for Johnson's Pasture, and the residents there have complained of parking and crime problems since the city purchased Johnson's Pasture. Via Santa Caterina residents might want to take a closer look at our Forked Tongues post from yesterday. From what we're hearing, the city's trail of broken promises is growing, so don't get too comfortable with the parking situation on Via Santa Caterina.

Reporter Wes Woods II had an article on the parking permit issue:

City staff has recommended the City Council establish such a program and, if approved at tonight's council meeting, the ordinance could be adopted by the end of October.

Councilwoman Linda Elderkin said the ordinance "authorizes ground rules for setting up possible parking areas by permit and the rules for doing that."

Elderkin added: "The first important thing is this policy does not authorize any particular area yet."

The neighborhoods identified in the agenda report as being interested in the ordinance include College Avenue between Foothill Boulevard and Seventh Street; Baughman Avenue between Berkeley Avenue and Indian Hill Boulevard, and the residential area to the west of the Village Expansion. A residential permit for Via Santa Catarina has been established through a separate ordinance.

Officials noted Monday that the ordinance states "a finding would have to be made that no alternative to the proposed zone exists that is feasible or practical."

Permits would cost between $12 and $14 each and would be established with each resolution that creates the separate permit zones in the city, said city engineer Craig Bradshaw.

The police chief, or designee, would be responsible for issuing permits and no more than four permits per address would be issued, Bradshaw said.

A word to the wise, don't put too much stock in anything the city engineer, Police Chief Paul Cooper, or the city's chief planner Lisa Prasse have to say. Those holdovers from the Glenn Southard-era are among the worst of Claremont's Promise Breakers, and we'll try to fill in the blanks as soon as we get more details.

City Council Meeting
- Closed Session, 5:15pm
- Regular Session, 6:30pm
Council Chambers
225 W. 2nd St.
Claremont, CA 91711
(909) 399-5460

LWV Finds Police Station Site

Leave it to the Claremont 400 to always pick the hardest, most costly way to do things.

Saturday's Claremont Courier had an article by Tony Krickl reporting that the city's Police Commission has identified a site for a new $25-35 million police station. The site is located on Monte Vista Ave. just south of the Claremont City Yard and is currently owned and occupied by the Corey Nursery.

The Courier article gave the background for the decision:

In December 2007, an architectural firm was contracted to review the top 10 sites identified by the commission as viable locations for a new police station. The 7-acre site was the top pick by the firm and won unanimous support among police commissioners.

The location is ideal for several reasons, said Carol Painter, Chair of the Police Commission. It is not located in the middle of a residential neighborhood, which could hinder mobility for emergency vehicles. It would be adjacent to the city yard where city vehicles are fueled and repaired. It would also be located across the street from the Pomona Valley Hospital development.

The commission has been looking for a 4- to 5-acre site that would provide enough room for a single or two-story building and ground level parking. The 7-acre site along Monte Vista Avenue would offer plenty of space for current needs and allow for future expansion, according to the architectural firm’s report.

The article also noted that the Police Commission eliminated the former affordable housing site on Base Line Rd. as a consideration, as well as the Holliday Rock site to the north of the city yard.

We're betting the city will have to use its eminent domain powers to take the land, not necessarily because the Corey Nursery would be an unwilling seller. As we've seen in other Claremont land transactions, private parties selling and to Claremont want the threat of eminent domain because that confers a certain tax benefit. The Johnson's Pasture owners wanted this threat at one time, and it was also used to help Claremont Toyota acquire the former Chili's property (another great deal for the citizens of Claremont).

So, we rather than using the land at Base Line Rd. and Towne Ave. that Claremont already owns, the city is going to have to go buy land and then build the station. The Corey Nursery land also has the added problem of extending over the county line into Upland, adding the problem of having to negotiate the running of the police station with San Bernardino County.

Moreover, the Base Line Rd. site raised the possibility of a joint facility with the neighboring city of La Verne. Something that would allow for sharing the cost of building and running the station and jailing facility - a not-so-insignificant hurdle that La Verne's City Council has been grappling with.

Why not use the Base Line Rd. site? One reason that the Base Line Rd. site is smaller than what Claremont Police Chief Cooper is seeking. Of course, there's always the chance that he's been told, "Hands off the Base Line site," by the Claremont League of Women Voters (LWV), League president and Police Commissioner Barbara Musselman, and Mayor Ellen Taylor (herself a former LWV president).

Musselman and Taylor, you may recall, were two of the LWV forces behind the failed affordable housing project at the Base Line site. Musselman is also on the city's Affordable Housing Task Force, along with several other LWV members. We suspect they will try to resurrect the Base Line Rd. site for affordable housing sometime in the future. So, whether it would work for a police station or not, that land is spoken for.

Another problem with getting a larger property is that the city and the CPD will want to fill it. Give them more land and they'll just build a larger facility. Give them two acres, they might just find a way to make do for a lower cost.

With the city contemplating a $100 million or more water company take over, building an affordable housing project somewhere, and starting in the fall on the first stage of $12 million Padua Sports Park, they may have a hard time going to the citizens of Claremont for the bonds to pay for that $25-35 million police station, especially at a time when Claremonters and people everywhere are having to cut back on their own household budgets.

Proposed CPD Station Site
(Click on Image to Enlarge)

She's a Wonder

OUR STORY SO FAR:

IN the early part of the 21st Century, the town of Claremont faces certain destruction from marauding bands of street gangs and thugs. Crime is rampant, and law-abiding citizens fear to walk the streets alone.

Into this breach steps Queen Ellen Taylor of the Amazons from the tribe's secret refuge on remote Paradise Island. Armed with her Lasso of Truth and her bullet-deflecting, indestructible power bracelets, Ellen, in the guise of her alter ego Wonder Ellen, comes to the aid of the beleaguered Claremont Police Department and honest but bumbling Chief Paul Cooper to defend Claremonters from the forces of evil.

In our latest installment, Wonder Ellen fended off a gang of vicious pre-teen girls who were harassing innocent pedestrians and motorists. The youthful criminals possessed magic biscuits, which they tried to use to mesmerize their victims into giving the gang money. When Wonder Ellen intervened, the gang's leaders, two adult women, tried to counter Ellen's powers but were no match for our heroine's mighty cunning and righteousness.

Wonder Ellen's good deeds win her the everlasting approval of Claremont's grateful town elders, who unanimously elect her Mayor.

NEXT TIME: Ellen joins forces with the Justice League of Women Voters and squashes a Jamboree!

Claremont's Finest

Centinel over at the Foothill Cities Blog noted that the Claremont PD was hard at work this past week.

Centinel picked up on a Daily Bulletin article about the Claremont PD ticketing motorists who honked their horns in response to anti-Iraq War protesters at Indian Hill Blvd. and Arrow Hwy. last Friday.

According to the article:

Each Friday afternoon since the 2003 start of the war in Iraq, about 20 people - most holding signs with anti-war slogans - have congregated at the intersection to protest U.S. foreign policy.

The protesters are often encouraged by passing motorists who honk their horns or wave in support.

On Friday, police ticketed three of those motorists, alleging excessive honking.

Police say the honking was creating an unsafe environment. The protesters dispute that it posed any danger, with vigil coordinator Jim Lamb claiming that "police cars racing out" in order to ticket motorists was more hazardous.

"I was kind of amazed that they saw the reality there - that we'd been living with all this time - as suddenly a dangerous situation," Lamb said.

Claremont police Capt. Gary Jenkins said police responded to the intersection Friday after officers were flagged down by a person who felt the situation at the intersection was "becoming dangerous and unsafe."

Police issued tickets only to drivers who laid on their horns through the intersection, not those who beeped briefly in support, Jenkins said.

"Our focus is on the traffic safety," Jenkins said. "We are not focusing on any group or cause. It's completely irrelevant."

A reader also sent us a link to the Bulletin article, saying:

What! The Claremont police don't have enough speeders to contend with so now they have to ticket honkers? [Claremont Police Chief Paul] Cooper is a joke!!

The Claremont Courier also had an article on the ticketing. One question: What constitutes excessive honking? Sounds like U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's definition of hard-core pornography: "I know it when I see it."

Or in this case, hear it.

According to the Courier's article, by Tony Krickl, some of the motorists plan on fighting their tickets in court:

Duane Welsch also received a ticket for excessive honking. She was told that complaints had increased about the noise and that honking posed a safety hazard for students wanting to cross the street.

“It wasn’t apparent that there was a safety hazard,” Ms. Welsch said. “It just seems ridiculous to me.”

Those who were cited hope to work out an agreement with city officials to get the tickets rescinded. If no agreement is reached, they plan to fight the tickets in court because they believe that the citations violate their freedom of speech or were unclear on defining the terms of “excessive honking.”

Good luck challenging the tickets using the freedom of speech defense. This is the Grand Duchy of Claremont, not the U.S. We've all seen how much respect the city and City Attorney Sonia Carvalho have for the First Amendment.

Claremont v. Claremont

The Inland Daily Bulletin has an article online concerning the Great Claremont Salary Leak. Reporter Will Bigham does a nice job rounding up comment. We urge you to read the whole piece, but can't resist some excerpts:

The pay stub contains private information that the city would not be required to release upon request, said City Attorney Sonia Carvalho, putting the city in a position to be sued by any staff member whose privacy was compromised. [look for the lawsuit soon: Claremont v. Claremont.]

[City Manager Jeff] Parker said late Friday that he plans to investigate how the information was leaked and said he had contacted Police Chief Paul Cooper about the possibility that the document had been stolen.

Carvalho said Friday afternoon that she had contacted the legal department at Google, which hosts the Claremont Insider blog, to request that the private information in the post be removed.

Sonia must have been busy yesterday. She really got her knickers in a knot and went tattling to teacher. But so far the Google Gods have permitted our modest effort to live on in cyber-space.

"I'm not happy because I don't think it's information that should be on any kind of Web site, or a blog in this case," [Parker] added.

Don't shoot the messenger. Matt Hawkesworth is the one keeping the records in the on-line City Document Archive, not us.

"However it got into the hands of the blog, there was a theft involved, and that concerns me greatly," Parker said. "I'm going to look into starting an investigation into the potential theft of that information." [Will they be getting Columbo, or Inspector Clouseau?]

Parker would not comment when asked whether he would consider legal action against the city if it's determined that a city staff member was the source of the leak.

Maybe the lawsuit will be Parker v. Parker.

(The Insider got brief mention today on the Foothill Cities blog. The link is worth your while because it raises the point, once more, that there is a real public interest in disclosing public employee compensation.)

Good Neighbors

Something there is that doesn't love a wall

That sends a frozen groundswell under it

....
Before I'd built a wall, I'd ask to know

What it is I was walling in and walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.

Robert Frost, Mending Wall

The saga continues. Our story so far: the city with attitude and a serious inferiority complex to compensate for (Claremont) decides it's going to build its new police station at the corner of Towne Ave. and Bonita Ave. on the site of a 10-acre vacant lot owned by the Xerox Corp.

One big problem is the land isn't part of Claremont. It's in Pomona, a much larger city with its own inferiority complex. Another is Claremont forgot to tell the Pomona City Council it was planning on annexing the police station land. Not exactly the best way to start off a friendly negotiation, especially when Claremont and its ruling caste, the Claremont 400, has a reputation for snootiness, snobbery and arrogance.

From the 400's point of view, Pomona should be thankful for ceding that little plot of land to its much superior neighbor. After all, Pomona is to blame for all of Claremont's problems, beginning with crime. The Claremont Police Commission took up the matter last week, as Will Bigham in the Daily Bulletin was kind enough to detail yesterday.

Pomona Mayor Norma Torres didn't seem to happy to hear the news when it originally broke, and she pretty much told Claremont to take a hike. Claremont's elite, used to ignoring its own citizens, applied their same classy charm to this issue. Claremont Police Commissioner Gary Soto in Bigham's article wooed Pomona by calling Mayor Torres "someone who lacks political savvy and professionalism."

Obviously, in Soto's view, professionalism means doing what he says without question. Soto, a former Fontana middle school principal, must still think he's dealing with seventh-graders. We're not sure who needs to grow up here.

It really is hard not to laugh at the situation, something Bulletin columnist and longtime Claremonter David Allen had no trouble doing.

It was also nice of Police Chief Paul Cooper to let us know the cost of acquiring the land and building the station: $29 million. Toss in the $100 million-plus for buying the water company, the $10 million-plus to build the Padua Sports Park, the $11.5 to 12.5 million to buy Johnson's Pasture, and you have quite a pricey agenda for Claremont. Of course, just as it's not their land, it's not their money either. Chief Cooper said in the Bulletin that the city would probably take out bonds to pay for the station.

Maybe Cooper should just ask Pomona to pay for the thing since Claremont is being kind enough to police Pomona's crime problem. Sort of hearkens back to the 1970's, when Claremonsters still called our police "the border patrol"--something former Mayor Judy Wright omitted from her "Claremont: A Pictorial History."

As long as we're shelling out the money, why not build a wall around our town? Something there is that doesn't like a snob.

Don't Mess with Claremont

A sharp-eyed reader points out the Texas-shaped graphic on the door jam of Chief Cooper's car and wonders what that's all about. Probably the logo of the impound lot where they get it lubed. Maybe nothing.

Another reader thinks the Chief is missing a bet by not having an official Claremont PD song, and suggests the following. Readers can remind themselves of the tune by clicking here.

Chief Paul Cooper, Where Are You?

There's a holdup at the Vons,
AYSO's broken out in fights,
There's a traffic jam on Baseline
That's backed up to Claremont Heights,
There's a sports team short a child,
The City Manager's gone wild--
Chief Paul Cooper, where are you?

All Cooper All the Time

This week is all Paul Cooper's, we have to give it to him. Today he assumes permanent command of the Claremont Police Department after a meteoric career beginning in 1985. Following a nationwide search, wonder of wonders, Jeff Parker found the most qualified person right here in his own backyard. This sounds to us just like Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court awhile back. What are the chances?

According to the Courier, Cooper will be sworn in at 4 p.m. Friday, April 6th, (that's today) at the Doubletree Hotel.

In the City press release, Jeff Parker said,

Cooper has worked in many capacities at the Police Department and has a long list of accomplishments, including serving as a field training officer and patrol watch commander supervising officers; working as a detective investigating burglaries, thefts, fraud, narcotics and gangs; overseeing the operations of the jail, communications, records and the impound lot; coordinating the upgrade of the department’s radio systems; developing the Reserve Police Officer program; developing and implementing the supervisor and manager training program; and, providing leadership and management for the entire department. He has also applied for, received and managed close to $3 million in grant programs.

One wonders if he had time to catch any actual criminals.

It looks as if physical training isn't much of a priority for the new police chief, though. Or has he been bulking up with those tummy steroids? This must be part of his new plan to "work smarter, not harder". We will avoid the obvious jokes about policemen and donut shops. Anyway, the camera adds 10 pounds.

Crime Watch II

Yesterday's Claremont Courier featured a front page article about new Police Chief Paul Cooper. We've written here before about Cooper's being the candidate of the Claremont 400, Helaine Goldwater in particular. We've also argued that Cooper, who joined the Claremont PD in 1985, about three years before former City Manager Glenn Southard started, is very much in the Southardian management style: install yes men in middle and upper management; stifle dissenting opinions; use bonuses and performance evaluations to reward those loyal to you and to punish independent thinking.

As we stated two days ago, our objection to Cooper is that he doesn't really represent institutional change. Rather, he represents a step backward in terms of management culture, back to the Southard days. He's spent his time since being installed as interim chief in August, 2006, filling the positions beneath him with people loyal to him, entrenching himself in the position and discouraging more qualified candidates from applying. The fix was so obviously in that it would be a waste for a smart person to apply.

Speaking of the fix being in, a reader with inside information wrote in to say:

Rumor has it that the public review panel for the chief of police unanimously thought that Paul Cooper was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Why then, do you suppose, did City Manager Parker appoint him? What was the decision of the professional panel? Did the CM just hold his breath, wait for McHenry to become political dead meat and do what he planned on doing all along? Were the two review panels, public (each council member got to appoint 1 public person for the public panel) and professional, just a dog and pony show? Seems that way. There were about five or six formal letters to council members touting the merits of appointing Cooper, one of them from the owner of Bert and Rocky's Ice Cream Parlor, so was that what swayed him? Perhaps we will never know, but it would be interesting to find out how they all voted. Bet it is secret information, but in the end, it was the CM's decision all long.More pity Claremonters.

The reader also pointed out that the Tony Krickl's second article on the Police Department had the misleading headline of "CLAREMONT CRIME CONTINUES TO DECREASE." (The article is not available online.)

The police department released a comparison of 2005 and 2006 crime stats, claiming that crime had declined eight percent in 2006. Here is a table with the stats. Note that Cooper's department withheld the 2004 numbers:

As you can see, virtually the entire decrease came in one area: thefts. In the Krickl article, Cooper attributed the drop to the arrest of two very active burglars and to educating college students on keeping a better watch on their property.

The other crime numbers stayed essentially the same. If you removed the theft numbers, the totals for all other crimes were 444 in 2005 and 452 in 2006.

The problem with the numbers is that the Claremont PD and Cooper are doing exactly what Pomona College President David Oxtoby complained of when he wrote that Forbes.com was most likely going to list Pomona College among the top five, and possibly the number one, among colleges for crime per capita.

Oxtoby said that Forbes looked at only one year, 2005, which he said was anomalous for crime. Oxtoby listed the following numbers for reported theft incidents on campus:

The 2005 spike was not the norm and, according to Oxtoby, was the result of "some juveniles" who were apparently stealing from dorm rooms. In 2006, the numbers reverted to what one might normally expect. So, in Oxtoby's mind, pointing to only the 2005 numbers and not looking at how they fit into the bigger picture, Forbes is skewing their analysis of Pomona College's crime problem.

Using the Cooper Method, Pomona College's theft rate decreased by 54 percent from 2005 to 2006. Or it increased by 73 percent from 2004 to 2005. It all depends of what numbers you play with.

And that is exactly what Paul Cooper is guilty of. Glenn Southard, of course, did this type of thing constantly, this numbers game. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Carnac: Claremont Gets Its Chief

Claremont has a new police chief. As we predicted, Paul Cooper has been named Police Chief. Rather than going outside for a chief, Claremont stayed with one of its own.

We remember Cooper as the man who with former Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy co-authored the 1999 staff report (open the PDF) justifying the city's proposal to have mental health professionals on call at city council meetings to monitor speakers. The reason? So that speakers deemed threats to public safety by the council or city manager could be silenced and removed. That should give you an ideal of Cooper's management style.

Cooper is a product of the Southard School of Business Management, meaning he can be counted on to surround himself with yes-men, and punish those who try to propose views and ideas that are different his own by giving them lower raises and by denying them promotion. As our piece on Philip Zimbardo and James Suroweicki indicated, this is generally guaranteed to design in institutional failure.

Hubris always precedes crisis, and Claremont is no exception. Write this down and put in an envelope: There will be another Landrum crisis. It is as inevitable as the fire that burned down the homes in Palmer Canyon. It's simply a function of fuel load and heat.

That mess was a byproduct of a system, of which Cooper was a part. When it happens, call Helaine Goldwater and thank her, if she's still around at that time. Goldwater, a former Police Commission Chair and a key Claremont 400 member, has been behind the push for Cooper. Goldwater and the 400 Cooper, who is a son of Claremont, because is will take the Police Department back to the Southard days.

Call current Mayor Peter Yao, too, when the crisis comes. He may still be on the council at that time. Yao, who was hired in large part in reaction to the Landrum incident, has stood by while the the Police Commission has been neutered and the Vehicle Stop Study was halted. Yao's backing of Cooper represents his bowing to the will of Goldwater and the 400.

One of the ironies of Will Bigham's Bulletin piece on the hiring is that Bigham writes:

The response to the [Landrum] shooting - including the two officers involved in the incident being named city employees of the year - led to charges of institutionalized racism and cast a pall over the department and City Hall.

So the answer to hire a key member of the institution to bring change to that agency's management culture?