2006: The Year in Davis Review

These last days we will have a countdown of the top 10 stories from Davis in 2006. We continue with our tenth and final installment, No.1 Police Oversight and the Ombudsman

The issue of civilian police oversight (the ability of a community to hold its police accountable) did not start in 2006. In fact, it did not start in 2005, although the key events that set the stage for what we would see in 2006, did occur. Halema Buzayan’s arrest in June, set things in motion, but in fact, the issue was already boiling before Buzayan was ever arrested. The issue has been around for over 20 years as incidents of police misconduct and racial profiling were widely reported in the community. Old-timers on the Human Relations Commission, the first HRC in fact, talk about the issue coming up from day one and time and time again.

Things would again begin boiling over on September 22, 2005 at a joint meeting of the Davis City Council and Human Relations Commission. Dan Silva, Berkeley’s Police Review Commission Officer, had been invited to this meeting to address questions and concerns about the implementation of a police oversight commission in Davis. The meeting turned contentious, accusatory towards the council both by members of the public accusing the council of being slow to act and members of the commission. This meeting would be a prelude of things to come.

The Human Relations Commission created a subcommittee to study the issue and draft a report. The chair of that subcommittee was Dr. Jann Murray-Garcia, local pediatrician who was not a member of the commission. But before the subcommittee had a chance to report their findings to the council, the then Davis City Manager Jim Antonen would come forth on January 17, 2006 with a report that offered an alternative to the HRC’s proposal (before that proposal could even be presented to council).

In it, Antonen present a multi-level approach to oversight:

1. Increased Training
2. CALEA (Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies)
3. Citizen Advisory Board (CAB)—made up of 12 people appointed by the police chief to represent a cross-section of the community.
4. Annual Report to City Council
5. Police Advisory Committee (PAC)—three member that will review complaints and make recommendations to this City Manager, “they will not be part of the formal disciplinary process.”

In our police oversight series we have a full critique of this process. Our chief complaint is that the access to this review system is controlled administratively and the police chief himself and the city manager control precisely who gets to sit on the CAB and the PAC.

One of the most troubling aspects of the January-February city council meetings on this issue was a series of public comments made by the originators of the five-point plan—Davis City Manager Jim Antonen and Councilmembers Don Saylor and Ted Puntillo.

When speaking of the on-going complaints, the City Manager and these two councilmembers , Saylor and Puntillo, made statements to the effect that these complaints were empty and had no merit to them. And yet, for some reason they chose to implement a system that while in many ways imperfect, was still a large amount of change over the previous system.

City Manager Antonen who developed the alternative plan said:

“Most of these cases that have been addressed, and again you might sense a frustration because I have personally reviewed some of these complaints that have been reviewed to my office, and I investigated them myself, a quite frankly, I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday, in my former life I was a certified law enforcement officer, and for a while I worked for the office of criminal investigations and part of my duties were to look into cases of police misconduct. And so I have a background in that and it’s very frustrating when I look at these appeals, and I say they are unfounded, groundless, I would say bogus but I wouldn’t want offend anybody, but this gives us the opportunity to a police advisory committee to have another process that hopefully the community can buy off from, have a comfort level and believe me we will have stellular (sic) people on this committee and they will review these complaints per se after they have been through the process…”

(It should be noted that when the Buzayans filed their formal complaint against the police, it was Antonen who signed off on the internal investigation and upheld the findings. Keep that in mind as you read this statement based on what we know now know about the Buzayan case.)

Saylor: “I’ll just say that council has reviewed, carefully, in closed session those matters that are subject to litigation because that’s an appropriate action for us to take, it’s necessary for us to do that and we have carried out that responsibility… During the discussions that the council has had, and our investigations, and inquiries into litigation matters, I fail to see any of them that call into question the operations or behaviors of Davis Police Officers. And I’m very confident in the operation of the department as it reviews allegations of behavior of Davis police officers.”

Ted Puntillo was most brazen in his assessment and feelings about police oversight.

“Recently, Don [Saylor] alluded to it, that we studied and investigated the complaints that had reached the litigation arena recently, and I have to agree with Don, I was very unimpressed, and I think the results of those will be an eye-opener for the community when you see what we’re dealing with here…”

Then Ted Puntillo uttered the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard a public official say:

“What I want are police officers out there that are using their training and their instincts, I don’t want them thinking about oh somebody’s going to be reviewing what I’m doing. I want them to do what they are trained to do and that’s protect us.”

When I heard this statement on the television broadcast that night, I was not involved in city politics. It was at that moment that I realized that not only did I disagree with these guys, but that these guys were dangerous. The idea that we did not need police officers to realize that they were accountable for their actions was ludicrous but also very much against the principles of government on which this nation was founded on.

While the council agreed in principle with the recommendations that the city manager put forth, they did have a formal hearing on the HRC’s civilian police review board.

One crucial error that the HRC made in this process was including a recommendation to account for the diversity of the community in the make up of the review board.

The recommendation read:

"The CRB shall have eleven (11) members and one (1) alternate member and shall reflect the diversity of Davis by striving to represent members of many different communities"

The Davis Enterprise on February 3, 2006 would report:

"Under the commission's proposal, the City Council would draw the police review board's members from several categories: senior citizens, people with physical or developmental disabilities or mental illness, the homeless, African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, European Americans, Arab Americans, Mexican Americans, gay or lesbian people and college students."

This led to belief that the commission was recommending homeless people serve on the review board. That was neither the intent nor the wording of the recommendation. The council would make the appointments to this body. The recommendation was simply meant to suggest people who perhaps worked with the homeless or mentally disabled community be considered for appointment, as they would have particular interactions with the police that would give them insights that perhaps others would not have. The commission recommendation never required nor suggested actual homeless people or mentally disabled people serve on the board. This was easily exploited by the opposition to suggest that the HRC was out of control and making ridiculous recommendations.

Meanwhile, the council was extremely dismissive of the HRC’s report. Puntillo said that the report was “not worth the paper it was printed on.” While Puntillo had every right to disagree with their recommendations he forgot that this body had spent considerable time and energy researching and drafting this report in a good faith attempt to assist the city council with positive recommendations to solve a continuous problem facing the Davis community regarding its police department.

One of the issues that came up was the issue of the relatively low rate of police complaints in the city of Davis.

(The following was first reported in our August-September series examining police oversight in Davis).

At the February 21, 2006 City Council Meeting, then Davis Police Chief Jim Hyde, described what he called a fairly low number of police complaints and an extremely low number of sustained complaints.

• 2003 -- 23 citizen complaints filed; 2 sustained
• 2004 -- 17 citizen complaints filed; 0 sustained
• 2005 -- 34 citizen complaints filed; 3 sustained

These numbers were purported by the chief to reflect a very low level of need for police oversight (basically low complaints—lack of sustained complaints). The utter lack of sustained complaints has been cited again and again by the police and the council as evidence that this problem is being blown up beyond all proportions. On May 2, 2006, Don Saylor said, “Every specific case that has been raised has been shown to be without merit.”

A 2002 report by the U.S. Department of Justice warns against such a conclusion.

“[T]he meaning of a complaint rate is not entirely clear: a low force complaint rate could mean that police are performing well or that the complaint process is inaccessible; likewise, a high force complaint rate could mean that officers use force often or that the complaint process is more accessible.”

The problem with the data presentation by the chief is that it lacked any sort of means to evaluate the wrong numbers. Are these numbers low as the chief suggested? Or are they actually high. Saylor on February 21 actually asked Chief Hyde the right question, asking him how this compares to other communities. Hyde dodged this question by stating that communities vary and therefore are difficult to compare. And Saylor never pushed him on the issue.

If he had, we might have gotten a very different story. A good example appears in John Burris’ book, “Blue versus Black.”

Los Angeles in 1995 was the poster-child for police corruption that eventually led to the FBI and the Department of Justice mandating changes. In 1995, there were 561 citizen complaints against the LAPD. Of these, ZERO were sustained. Zero. Now you can argue, well that is because the citizens are making faulty complaints that have no merit. Yet if we look at another figure, Los Angeles ended up paying out $34 million in settlements to lawsuits filed against the Police Department during that year.

Los Angeles can represent a baseline for a measure of police corruption. Los Angeles in 1995 had roughly 3.5 million people or 55 times the population of Davis. If we project the rate of complaints in the city of Los Angeles to a city the size of Davis, we would expect 10.098 complaints in Davis in a given year, with none of these being sustained. What we see over the last three year period is 74 complaints or nearly 25 per year, 2.5 times the expected rate of complaints. Instead of zero sustained complaints, there were actually five.

The lesson here is that for a city the size of Davis, what looks like a small number of complaints, is actually a much higher rate than for 1995 Los Angeles with a thoroughly corrupt police department.

The next question is why there are so few sustained complaints by Internal Affairs Departments. And the problem is universal, in 2002, there were around 26,000 complaints nationwide. About a third of all complaints in 2002 were not sustained (34%). Twenty-five percent were unfounded, 23% resulted in officers being exonerated, and 8% were sustained.

Burris’ experience as a litigator against police misconduct leads him to the following conclusion about Internal Affairs investigations: They “offer little opportunity for the complainant to be heard. Invariably, when it’s his or her word against a police officer’s, the complaint is judged “unfounded”—even when the officer in question has a history of misconduct or abuse complaints. And, even when Internal Affairs “sustains” a complaint, the sanctions often fall painfully short of being reasonable—or punitive (see page 84 of Burris' book).”

This is not to suggest that every complaint against a police officer has merit or is accurate.

“People lie to get off the hook; they lie to get back at an officer who may have arrested them, or a friend, or a family member; they overreact; they resist a legitimate arrest and cause the actions that take place. But it’s ludicrous to believe that 84 percent of citizen complaints are unwarranted—as Philadelphia’s records suggests. (85, emphasis added).”

As our report on police oversight suggests, the system that the Davis City Council implemented is a weak system, that gives most of the power to the internal police only review process, however, it seems that Davis did get one break in this process—they hired Bob Aaronson as Ombudsman. As I have said on numerous occasions, Aaronson is in a weak position. His position is called an Ombudsman, which is defined as an investigator, but in actuality it is more like an auditor—someone who reviews the process after the investigation has been completed. However, Aaronson’s background suggests that he will call things as he sees them.

For example, in one highly publicized case, the Santa Cruz police department was accused on spying on war protestors. The police internal investigation exonerated the police. Aaronson issued a scathing report on the investigation. He said the investigation "is incomplete and flawed for a very predictable reason. It violates one of the most basic investigative precepts by having been compiled and written by the very individual whose decisions are and should be under investigative scrutiny." He went on to say, "I am surprised and disappointed that he was assigned to that task."

In the conclusion of our examination of the police oversight issue, we came up with seven recommendations in September:

1. Strengthen the Ombudsman position by making it a full-time position. As we’ve seen, the City Manager has had difficulty finding a qualified person to take a part-time position and it seems clear at this point that the city needs a full-time position. In the future, we might be able to cut back on that as department practices adjust to avoid continued complaints and adverse findings.
2. Give the Ombudsman a stronger role in the initial investigation. Both the San Jose and Boise models would accomplish that. The San Jose model would be a less drastic change but it would have a great impact simply allowing the ombudsman to monitor and participate in the entire investigation. The Boise model would change who conducts the primary investigation.
3. Strengthen the PAC by using it to replace the Internal Affairs Department. This is drastic, but it seems very clear that the IAD cannot police or even properly investigate complaints against the police. The PAC is made up of legal professionals, a retired police chief and two attorneys. These are not amateurs. The current model puts them as mere observers; this change would put them into the forefront of the investigation.
4. Strengthen the CAB by giving it specific advisory authority. Right now the CAB is not being used as a Community Advisory group. It needs to be given specific charges to advise the police on specific department policy.
5. Improve Community Outreach. There needs to be forums for the public to participate to express concerns. Some of this happens already. However, in order for this to work properly, the department needs to go into the minority communities and actually interact with segments of the public who feel aggrieved in the current climate—that includes students, the African-American, Muslim-American, and Mexican-American communities.
6. Improve Representation on the Boards. Find a way to get diverse opinions on these boards. Find students not heavily involved in student government. Find minority students. Find people who represent youth. Find representatives from the minority communities who may not support current polices. Give the public a true forum by which to express their views. And make the CAB meetings, public meeting.
7. Re-instate the Human Relations Commission. When the City Council shut down the HRC, it shutdown the most effective body to register dissatisfaction with current system. By removing its membership, the Council chilled the possibility of a future Commission that would heavily voice its dissent of Council goals. That creates a very dangerous precedent for future interactions.

It is unfortunate that the council has actually gone in the opposite direction by removing or attempting to the remove authority to the HRC granted by the Davis Non-Discrimination it ordinance. Souza stressed this in September in making the point that the council is the ultimate body for oversight of the police--and that the public need not get involved. The HRC has been further weakened rather than strengthened and the result is that in recent events such as the anti-gay harassment of a junior high school student, the HRC has not been a participant in helping solve these serious community problems.

It remains to be seen how this will all play out. Aaronson seems to be in a tough position, but at least we have someone in that position who will not be an apologist for the police. Let me be very clear, that is exactly what I was expecting and I was very pleased that we ended up with someone like Aaronson. But this is far from over. However, the police oversight issue and the hiring of the ombudsman was the top story in Davis for 2006.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

2006: The Year in Davis Review

These last days we will have a countdown of the top 10 stories from Davis in 2006. We continue with our ninth installment, No.2 Davis Police Chief Hyde Resigns and HRC Disbanded.

On February 7, 2006 Davis Councilmember Don Saylor concluded the Davis City Council Meeting with a long statement about his concerns about the Davis Human Relations Commission (HRC) including contentiousness, Brown Act violation, intimidation of fellow commissioners, and other acts of misconduct by members of the HRC. He recommended a subcommittee look into these allegations and make a determination. Councilmember Saylor's allegations were never documented or proven, nor was he ever held accountable to explain himself. He and his colleagues were determined to reduce the power of the commission and its recommendations regarding civilian police oversight. The council did not like the HRC recommendations as well as the commission's responsibility and duty to investigate and advise the council. Instead the council wished to dictate and control the commission's work, direction, and recommendations. It was at this point, that the Davis Human Relations Commission was put on notice.

The bulk of these allegations and the ensuing long public campaign against the HRC resulted from a single issue--the issue of police misconduct and the HRC's support and push for a civilian police review board.

In our last segment, on police oversight, we will spend much greater time chronicling the debate over police oversight. In this we will focus on the dynamics between the Davis Human Relations Commission and the Police Chief Jim Hyde that led to Hyde leaving for Antioch and the HRC being put on Hiatus.

The key time frame was that in the summer of 2005, the police issue heated up once again over the controversial arrest of 16 year old Halema Buzayan. What ensued were a number of private and public meetings between the HRC and Chief Hyde. Hyde quickly went on the defensive, refusing to acknowledge problems with his police force and then eventually refusing to meet with or work with the Human Relations Commission. This followed a series of contentious public meetings where the issue was raised before the commission and the city council by members of the public as well as civil rights groups.

The tide in this fight was turned prior to the January 17, 2006 Davis City Council Meeting. It was at this point when then Davis City Manager Jim Antonen came forth with his proposal for an Ombudsman as a preferred alternative to the civilian police review board. The HRC was largely kept in the dark about the development of this alternative plan and only found out about the item on the agenda a few days before.

The police chief however was not caught flat-footed. He and his staff organized a number of members of the local pro-Iraq war military community to come forth during public comment and support the police department. Chief Hyde did this because he knew these pro-war people were upset with the commission for having recommended that the city council adopt a resolution requesting that the President of the Unitied States withdraw our military from Iraq. Hyde knew these folks would be motivated to strike out at the commission as payback for advocating for the resolution and he was right. It was only through a public records request, that it was discovered how much coordination this involved under the direction of Police Chief Jim Hyde and his senior officers.

Chief Hyde enlisted Davis Police Lt. Dorothy Pearson to recruit supporters for police department who would attack the HRC and its chairperson.

In early January 2006 in an e-mail exchange between Chief Hyde and Lt. Dorothy Pearson:

Chief Jim Hyde: "FYI, calling in my cards. Are any of the military supporters willing to speak at public comment time … on the 17th at city council in support of the police department? HRC is pushing for there (sic) own police review commission."

Lt. Dorothy Pearson: "I am already circling the wagons! I am trying to get as many people as possible to attend and possibly speak."

On Jan. 12, Lt. Dorothy Pearson thanks James Hechtl [Davis resident, retired air force officer and pro-Iraq war supporter]. "The Chief called me last night after the meeting. He was singing the Military Family's praises. … I can't thank you enough for your help. I also sent Bob Glynn [Davis resident and pro-Iraq war supporter] a thank you e-mail and told him that you would keep the group posted on upcoming strategies."

Hechtl responds, "What kind of availability do you and the Chief have this afternoon (Thur). I want to meet with both of you with (sic) and discuss some strategy."

Hechtl and Glynn proceed to write numerous letters attacking the Davis Human Relations Commission and its Chair Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald.

This public attack on the HRC would continue in the newspapers with a series of very negative letters to the editor. This was all orchestrated by Lt. Dorothy Pearson, often on city time, using city resources to do it.

James Hechtl writes, "Ms. Greenwald and Ms. Garcia apply their racist views to every possible issue that confronts them. They look at the world through their prism of hate. ... The mere fact that they support numerous frivolous and hate-based lawsuits against the city should be enough to invite them and the rest of the Human Relations Commission to practice their trade in a more appropriate city. I recommend Johannesburg, South Africa."

(Dr. Jann Murray-Garcia is a Davis resident, parent, pediatrician and president of BECA (a Davis civil rights group) who worked with the commission on researching and drafting a report on racial profiling and recommending a proposed civilian police oversight review commission. )

Bob Glynn writes on May 5, "Davis must rid itself of this antiquated, racist commission and its bully chairperson, Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald."

This public campaign against the HRC and its chair Escamilla Greenwald was extremely effective. The city council, used this to their advantage, tightening the screws on the commission. Following the February 21, 2006 meeting where the council rejected the commission's recommendation for a civilian review board, the council would install several measures for additional training giving the directive that any public communication must be premised on the fact that the individual was speaking as an individual rather than as a member of the commission. Part of the problem here was that Escamilla Greenwald was a very visible and articulate spokesperson, who along with many of her colleagues were heavily involved in the movement for oversight even as a private citizens and identified as speaking only for themselves. Eventually the council would suggest that even this distinction of a citizen speaking for her/his self was not enough, that any public statement against the actions of the council was grounds for removal.

The spring of 2006 would eventually pave the way for two events. Chief Jim Hyde was a focal point of the problems in the police department. But it was the Buzayan case that really brought the issue to the public light. Chief Hyde made the calculated decision that he would back his officers regardless of the propriety of their conduct and support only the council actions for police reform. This made him a rallying point for those defending the Davis Police Department. However, he was clearly under tremendous pressure during this entire episode as was the department as a whole. There was a higher than average transfer rate out of the department, resulting in a lot of vacancies and now a number of new officers.

Following the June 2006 city council elections, Chief Hyde abruptly resigned and put a large amount of the blame for his departure on the Human Relations Commission as well as its chair Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald.

His resignation email was short and to the point:

"The destructive and divisive behaviors of the Human Relations Commission and in particular, their chairperson, have limited my effectiveness to work with this fine community. Despite the great work of the members of this police department, the HRC has divided the community along race and religious lines to fulfill a self serving political agenda. In my 27 years of government service, 10 years of clinical psychology, and 16 years of working with non-profit organizations, the HRC is the most dysfunctional and incestuous group I have ever witnessed. I hope that City Council will correct this community problem."

Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald would respond and point out to the public that in fact there had been a large breakdown in communications between the police department and the HRC. Much of that was due to the public campaign that Hyde had been running against the HRC.

"The police chief has resigned and thrown a large amount of blame in the direction of the Human Relations Commission and myself. After many months of hearing from members of the public, last summer we met with the police chief over concerns about the growing number of complaints about police misconduct. These meetings and interactions quickly turned adversarial as the police chief became defensive. Instead of engaging in public dialogue over these very serious issues, Chief Hyde retreated--he cut off communications with the HRC, he pulled his liaisons to the commission, and began a concerted public campaign to discredit the efforts of the HRC to reach common ground on reforms that could be done within the department.

"Sadly this did not have to be the case. But it serves as another reminder that many of the events that the public has witnessed in the last year have been unnecessary. The Buzayan family was more than willing to go through the process of review within the department until it became clear that no satisfactory result could be achieved. Recently, the young African-American students who marched on the Police Station made multiple efforts to meet with Chief Hyde and his staff. Assistant Chief Pearce went as far as to overtly discourage other police departments from participating in Statewide Campus events aimed at achieving dialogue and understanding on police-minority relations. Finally in frustration they marched on the police station, only to have Chief Hyde's staff stand behind protective glass windows, gawking and laughing at the protestors, many of whom had personal accounts of profiling.

"During the past year, the Human Relations Commission, after hearing repeated accounts from credible citizens in our community, recommended the formation of a Citizen's Review Board of the police department. The Police Chief reacted negatively and with attacks upon the HRC as well myself and members of the community for even suggesting such a body. Once again, Chief Hyde reacted defensively and inappropriately instead of working with the community to resolve these problems.

"Chief Hyde's departure does not solve the problems of the Davis Police Department. We need to hire a new chief that can work with community groups like the HRC and others to establish meaningful dialogue that can produce common ground results.

"Unfortunately, Hyde's parting words will serve to further polarize this community and breed contempt rather than understanding. I urge the City Council, no matter what steps they deem necessary, to seek to open a sustained and meaningful dialogue between segments of this community and the police department."

The Davis Human Relations Commission and its Chair Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald became the focal point for the police chief's departure and were blamed for creating animosity rather than a climate of tolerance and understanding. Chief Hyde would take a higher paying job at the larger city of Antioch Police Department as their police chief. But his public resignation and blame for it would push the Davis City Council into action once again, this time on June 27, 2006. Davis City Councilmember Ted Puntillo the prior week had requested be placed on the city council's next agenda a discussion on the future of the Davis Human Relations Commission.

As we have come to find out, Chief Hyde had a number of problems within the department that also led to his departure. However, the public scrutiny constructed by the chief, the city manager, and the city council fell solely on the Human Relations Commission and its chair Escamilla Greenwald.

The June 27, 2006 meeting would be loud and contentious. With the council chambers packed with citizens, over 40 community members, several of them past chairs of the HRC and a number of past and future elected officials spoke on behalf of the HRC. The police had their usual cadre of defenders at the meeting, but in the end, it did not matter.

Davis Councilmember Stephen Souza summed up his objections to the HRC's conduct with a parable of his own both read during the meeting on June 27 and in the paper.

From the July 16, 2006 Davis Enterprise: "Souza himself was a member of the Human Relations Commission from 1989 to 1996. An alleged rape and several other crimes against women spurred the then-Human Relations Commission to recommend a hate-crimes ordinance to the City Council."We pushed the issue three times," Souza said. "The council said 'no' two times. Two former mayors came to the commission and said 'We are the policy-making body. You are the advisers.' "Although Souza said he was miffed at the time, now that he's a councilman, he understands where the two former mayors were coming from."

But what the article failed to point out is that Souza was not kicked off the commission for his actions and the city council did not disband the commission for their actions. And that was the big difference, this council decided to disband the HRC because the commission advised on an issue and made recommendations against the wishes of the city council's majority.

The chief complaint by council was that the HRC overstepped its authority as an advisory board. But as we would find out in the fall, the HRC actually under the City of Davis anti-Discrimination Ordinance had much greater power than was generally acknowledged in the June 27 meeting.

Section 7A-15(C) of the Davis anti-Discrimination ordinance reads:

"Any person who believes he or she has been discriminated against in violation of the provisions of this ordinance may file a request to have the Human Relations Commission investigate and mediate his or her complaint. The Commission may adopt rules of procedure to accommodate the needs of such investigation mediation. A complaint to the Commission shall not be a prerequisite to filing a civil action under this section, and the findings and conclusions of the commission issued in response to such proceedings shall not be admissible in a civil action."

The HRC had acted within its authority by investigating these complaints and making a recommendation to the city council for changes.

In the end, Councilmembers Puntillo, Souza, Saylor, and Asmundson all voted to disband the commission, put it on hiatus and take new commissioner applications in the fall. Only one member of the commission, reapplied, John Pamperin. No one else chose to do so. The commission that was reconstituted in the fall was safely filled with new members who will do as they are told and the commission was neutered. The council has also stripped it of much of its investigative power.

As we saw with the contrary results of the Senior Citizens Commission, there was something else at work here. It was not merely the actions of Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald, for Davis Senior Citizens Commission Chair Elaine Roberts Musser was certainly no less assertive or brazen in her criticism of the council than Escamilla Greenwald. At the end of the day, the HRC represents the minorities in Davis, a small group of people who are somewhat isolated and politically weak.

The Police Chief and his supporters were able to prevail in the end by stirring up public sentiment against the HRC and creating a climate of fear that the police would be hamstrung by the process of civilian police oversight and unable to protect the residents of Davis. The irony is that the police chief ended up doing many of the same things that the HRC was accused of doing, but they got away with it.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

2006: The Year in Davis Review

These last days we will have a countdown of the top 10 stories from Davis in 2006. We continue with our eighth installment, No.6 Yolo County District Attorney's race.

We have spoken at length on this blog about the problems in the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office. In the coming months, we will speak about more of the problems that exist. In 2006, we had a clearly defined battle set up between two Deputy District Attorneys Jeff Reisig and Pat Lenzi.

District Attorney Dave Henderson will retire shortly (in January) after serving as Yolo County District Attorney since 1984 and working in the District Attorney’s office for over 30 years. It was a long tenure marred by serious allegations of corruption and malfeasance. The culture of his office is one of a “good-old boys network.” His handpicked successor was Jeff Reisig. Reisig was only 35 years old at the time of his election. He is a right-wing Republican and he had the support of every law enforcement officer organization in the county and many of the public officials. That included numerous elected Democratic officials such as Davis City Councilmember Don Saylor and Yolo County Sheriff Ed Prieto. These Democratic officials wore “Democrats for Reisig” buttons at the Davis Farmer's Market actively campaigning for him.

Reisig was opposed by fellow Deputy District Attorney Pat Lenzi. Lenzi, a moderate Democrat and mother of a Marine stationed in Iraq, brought to the table a different perspective. She had a strong focus on issues of children and women. Issues that have long been ignored by the current District Attorney. But she also had an excellent record as a tough but fair prosecutor.

As one might imagine, given the large number of endorsements from key officials, Reisig had a strong and sustained advantage. He was able to out raise her and outspend her.

Despite these advantages, in the closing week of the race, it seemed close enough that Resig would pull out a very dirty campaign tactic. In 1999, while working as Deputy DA for Sacramento County, Pat Lenzi was involved in a serious automobile accident (a drunk driver hit her car) that had for a time caused her some memory problems. James Hawes was a sexual predator, who was convicted for committing a string of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor, sexual assault, and several other offense. This was a convicted sex offender who was trying to seize on this issue to get a new trial.

The Woodland Daily Democrat on May 31, 2006—just over one week prior to the election seized on this information printing an extremely slanted version of the story.

The story led of with: “An admission by Deputy District Attorney and candidate for District Attorney Patricia Lenzi of a brain injury affecting her memory - which led to her failing to give defense lawyers a piece of evidence favorable to their client - is raising questions about her competency for the top office.”

Yolo County Deputy District Attorney and Jeff Reisig supporter Tim Wallace then played the role of the subtle hatchet man:

"That disclosure came as quite a shock to me in the extreme because I've never seen any evidence of it… I'm not saying it's not true, but I've never seen any evidence of memory loss… If she has memory losses of the severity that she described under oath, then I don't think she's fit to be District Attorney… This office performs an invaluable service to the community and they need to know the person in our top office is competent."

Notice that he heavily couches his statement but the punchline is that if this is true, she is unfit to serve. Tim Wallace you will remember along with Clinton Parish made a series of irresponsible and outrageous statements about the Buzayan family. They were both strong supporters of Reisig and frequently attacked Lenzi in vicious and juvenile ways.

The article went on to cite 2005 transcripts taken out of context that suggested that, “Sometimes I don't recognize my own house, when I go home. Sometimes I don't know my own street.” Told completely out of context from her statement this was a vicious and devastating blow by a supposedly impartial newspaper.

This story appeared in the Daily Democrat, which had endorsed Reisig. However, most of the county does not read the Daily Democrat. So the Reisig campaign reproduced the article and sent it out to every home in Yolo County to make sure that everyone saw the article.

Despite all of that, the margin of victory by Reisig was fairly slim. Pat Lenzi won in Davis, but lost badly in Woodland for the margin of a 54-46 victory.

Now Reisig will inherit many of the problems of the Henderson office. Moreover he owes his victory to the efforts of Deputy District Attorney’s such as Patricia Fong, Clinton Parish, and Tim Wallace who are under scrutiny for misconduct in their roles in various high-profile cases. In the end, Reisig’s success and failure will rest on his ability to manage his office and in many ways clean house despite the political allegiances he owes some of those deputies. It will be a difficult and unenviable task in the coming months and the People’s Vanguard of Davis will be monitoring this office to see how they respond to what lies ahead.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

2006: The Year in Davis Review

These last days we will have a countdown of the top 10 stories from Davis in 2006. We continue with our seventh installment, No.3 Davis votes for a "Green" Target.

Target is perhaps the most written about topic on this blog. I note that there are 37 blog entries on this blog that have Target as a label. The decision by the Davis City Council to place the issue of Target on the ballot preceded the formation of this blog. The issue of Target became among the most important local issues during the fall campaign.

I began the fall campaign planning to vote against the construction of Target. There were two primary reasons for this. One, there are no stores like Target in Davis. That was a reason given by both sides of the issue--in both support of and opposition to building a Target. But for me, what makes Davis special is that it is a small college town without a lot of the huge commercial enterprises that blight our countryside across this nation. If we cannot keep a giant corporate conglomerate out of Davis—what hope do we have in the rest of the country.

The second reason for opposing Target was, following from the first, I am a believer in small and locally owned businesses and good paying union jobs. I think stores like Target give us cheap merchandise and not in the good sense and poor customer service. I want the knowledgeable salesperson to help me with my purchases not a person hired at ridiculously low wages who knows as little as I do about the general products. And I want well-paid and well-treated employees who are not treated as mere commodities.

However, and this is something I realize more and more, what really angers me is not people who oppose my viewpoints because I enjoy differences of opinion and conversing. No, what really angers me is when people are dishonest and deceptive. The Target campaign was dishonest and deceptive.

If you want to make the argument that we need a Target because it provides us with cheap products in-town that people would have to drive out of town to buy, I will disagree with you that that should be a rationale for bringing in a Target. However, it is a fair argument and not one that I am going to complain about.

However, the marketing of the “green Davis-friendly target” was nauseating beyond words. And duplicitous. They sold Target in Davis by changing their trademark color from red to green. Somehow that was supposed to symbolize that Target fit in with Davis values.

The Davis Enterprise in their October 15, 2006 endorsement of Target closed with this:

"Davis' Target store will be an environmental showplace as well--one of only 10 retail stores worldwide... that have achieved LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification."

Theresa Francis in writing a letter to the Davis Enterprise actually had the best response, “I'm going to open a Hummer dealership in a giant LEED building; that way I can help save the environment.” And that sums it up. You have a giant corporation with world-wide impact on the environment. Opening a LEED building in Davis is not going to change that. Nor does it address the labor polices of the company which are also quite bad.

Both PG&E and Target have poor environmental records and both tried to sell themselves as environmentally friendly. It was an insult to the intelligence of the Davis voters. Unfortunately, this is not the only example of the pro-Target side trying to manipulate the voters on the issue of the environment.

On November 5, 2006 we write:

“A November 1, 2006 advertisement in the Davis Enterprise suggested that the EPA was in support of Measure K. The EPA spokesperson wrote a letter to the editor that appeared in the Davis Enterprise, clarifying that the EPA had not taken a position on the Target Development.

The text quoted in the advertisement was verbatim from the emails exchanged between the EPA's Project Manager and Councilmember Don Saylor. However, those quotes were juxtaposed with other material to suggest that the EPA had in fact supported the measure. This is a clear attempt to change the meaning of the information that the EPA provided to Councilmember Saylor.

Saylor completely twisted the words of the EPA to suggest to the public that the EPA was supporting this project. This is a gross attempt by Saylor to manipulate the public into supporting the Target project and Measure K.”

The EPA then wrote a letter making it clear that they took “no position regarding the proposed Target development.”

This was just one of the misleading acts committed by Davis City Councilmembers acting as supporters of Measure K. Then we have the entire living wage issue. The major problem was that Target was proposing bringing in 200-250 jobs into Davis with their store opening. Now research suggests that is a misleading figure at best because there are generally coinciding job losses when big box retail stores open in a given market. However, even granting those figures, the average worker would make minimum wage. As recent statistics demonstrate, that is not even sufficient for a single-wage earner with no family to be able to afford a one-bedroom apartment in Davis.

Newly elected Councilmember Lamar Heystek raised this issue at one of his first council meetings on August 1, 2006. Heystek at that meeting asked for the council to agendize a living wage ordinance for discussion. The council majority voted down that request. Councilmember Stephen Souza specifically recommended to Heystek that he bring it up as a councilmember’s item and do the legwork himself. This led to an agenda item on the September 18, 2006 agenda to create a living wage that would pays workers of large retail stores $10/ hour instead of minimum wage.

• Saylor complained at that meeting, “To bring it up as a discussion is appropriate. To bring it up as a full-blown ordinance for a first reading, that’s not talking about policy, that’s talking about politics in a lead-up to an election.”
  
  
• Souza wrote a letter to the editor suggesting, “The particular living wage ordinance was trotted out at the last moment before other council members could review or comment on the measure.”

One of the points that Souza made on the night of September 18, 2006 was that he and Saylor had been working secretly on a project labor agreement. Until that moment the actions of Souza & Saylor were not known to either Mayor Sue Greenwald or Councilmember Lamar Heystek.

"We [Souza and Saylor] have been working on that and we've almost completed it, we're hoping that these actions won't jeopardize it, because all parties have been in agreement so far to date... We were hoping that we'd be able to bring that to you as an announcement, but we have not got it completed but we are very close to having it completed."

This rationale was used to quash the proposal for a living wage. However, we discovered in November, coincidentally right before the election, that there were negotiations for a project labor agreement but it involved not Target workers but those who would construct the Target store. So Souza clearly misled the community and the council of what was going on.

As we discussed at the time at some length, these negotiations occurred outside of the authorization by the City Council. Members of the Davis City Council, Souza and Saylor did this on his own.

Souza was misleading in his characterization at the September 18, 2006 meeting when he led us to believe that this would be some sort of broad labor agreement. Souza and Saylor were both unscrupulous in their back door deal cutting.

As Heystek would write in a letter to the Davis Enterprise:

“I am disappointed that the exclusive group working on behalf of Mr. Dewes is interested in pursuing labor issues only insofar as it will win the election for Target. Should Measure K pass, the days after Nov. 7 will surely test their mettle when it comes to fixing the long-term integrity of Target's labor practices. I invite them to express a full commitment to this issue by supporting legally tested safeguards such as a living-wage ordinance. It's the right thing to do.”

In the November 2, 2006 Davis Enterprise article Souza played down the importance of this announcement.

“We don’t want to make a big hoopla about this…We don’t want to say anything about it, and then after the election we could say something.”

You will note that the date this occurred was the Thursday before the election. You will also note that it is now nearly two months later and I have yet to hear an announcement of a project labor agreement. Was this a cynical manipulation by Souza and Saylor in order to prevail in what was a very close election?

Once again, we see a very deceptive campaign run by the supporters of the Target Project. The opposition to Target was outspent by nearly a 20-1 margin. The supporters of Target promised people cheap consumer goods, a green and a labor friendly Target, and that mustered them an impressive victory by less than 700 votes. The opposition to Target against all odds nearly were able to pull off an improbable victory only to come up just short. For that, the Target campaign and ballot measure is our No.3 story of 2006.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

2006: The Year in Davis Review

These last days we will have a countdown of the top 10 stories from Davis in 2006. We continue with our sixth installment, No.9 City Councilmember Stephen Souza’s failed attempt to merge the Senior Citizen’s Commission with the Social Services Commission.

As any experienced politician will tell you, the third rail in politics is taking on senior’s issues. It was an experience the Republican Party would learn to the hard way in 1995 when Bill Clinton was able to parlayed proposed changes to Medicare and Social Security into newfound traction against a Republican Congressional juggernaut fresh off impressive sweeps in the 1994 election. That rule applies no less in the city of Davis where now, Stephen Souza must grapple with an angry senior vote. What makes seniors a formidable force is not only their numbers but the fact that they all vote and they do not quickly forget who put their political power in jeopardy.

It is ironic that this issue comes out the outcrop of the last city commission battle with the HRC. There the council majority took advantage of the political weakness of the minority community to disband, put on hiatus, and finally severely curtail the power of the HRC. During the course of restructuring the HRC, the council subcommittee of two—Souza and Mayor Pro Tem Asmundson came up with the idea that they could merge the Senior Citizens Commission with the Social Services Commission.

Let us be clear on this issue, no matter how much Souza and Asmundson tried to back track off of their earlier claims and actions—the intent from the start was to merge the commissions. The rationale and the defense would come later.

As we discussed on December 14, 2006, the intent of Souza and Asmundson was merger not “generating discussion of the merger” as Souza would later post-hoc claim. Instead they placed on the September 12, 2006 council agenda a recommendation to merge the two commission along with a resolution that would enact that merger. The only reason it was not passed at that very meeting was that Councilmember Lamar Heystek and Mayor Sue Greenwald convinced the council majority to get more feedback.

Souza then took the item to both commission meetings. The Social Services Commission (stacked with a large number of council majority supporters) voted overwhelmingly to agree to the merger, but the Senior Citizens Commission strongly opposed such a merger. Led by Chair Elaine Musser Roberts, the Senior Citizens Commission fought back at the meeting, in the press, and in the community.

Armed with a petition of 140 Senior Citizens, Musser forced the council to backtrack. First staff recommended that they wait two years before reconsidering the merger and then finally the council put the idea to rest all together.

As we wrote at the time:

“The most striking part of this entire experience is the blatant dishonesty by the Councilmember Souza and Mayor Pro Tem Asmundson about their original intentions which were quite clear. They made serious errors about how they chose to approach this issue. It would have been a responsible thing to do to take a step back in September when these errors became apparent and put this process on a different trajectory. Instead, they tried to finesse around their mistakes and then deceive the public about their true intentions.”

For those who have not seen it, I highly recommend watching the video of Elaine Roberts Musser giving the council, specifically Souza and Asmundson a severe dressing down.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

2006: The Year in Davis Review

These last days we will have a countdown of the top 10 stories from Davis in 2006. We continue with our fifth installment, No.8 Police Officer of the Year Pheng Ly.

On April 17, 2006, Judge Thomas Warriner dismissed the misdemeanor hit-and-run charged against 16-year-old Halema Buzayan. The family had complained about the conduct of Officer Pheng Ly during the course of his arrest and questioning of the minor. This case had become a focal point in the struggle for police oversight.

The father, Jamal Buzayan declared, “Case Dismissed, Justice is Done.”

Halema Buzayan said, "It's a really good day. I think it's a great feeling to know that justice has prevailed."

Just two weeks later however, the entire scene shifted. The Yolo County District Attorney’s Office, in opposition to a ruling from Judge Warriner, released audio recordings of the hit-and-run investigation to the Davis Enterprise. The Davis Enterprise would run a front page story on April 28, 2006 and post those recordings on their website.

More damaging however was the April 30, 2006 Editorial from Davis Enterprise Editor Debbie Davis.

Listen for yourself, and then decide whether you believe Davis police Officer Pheng Ly was hostile, discriminatory or abusive when he arrested a Davis teenager last summer for suspected hit-and-run.

After hearing the audiotapes released Friday by the Yolo County District Attorney's Office, our answers are no, no and no.

Jamal Buzayan filed a citizen's complaint against the Police Department two days after his daughter Halema's arrest on June 13, 2005, saying the incident "went beyond the reasonable standards of acceptable, civilized behavior." He's wrong.

LISTEN FOR YOURSELF. The audiotapes are available on The Davis Enterprise's Web site, www.davisenterprise.com. Click on the story "Audio of hit-run arrest revealing," and follow the links to the recordings.

You'll hear a Davis police officer discharging his duty to this community in a decidedly professional manner. He's doing his job, and he's doing it well. In every contact with the hit-and-run victim, the witness and every member of the Buzayan family, he is polite, respectful and professional.

(I will remind people once again, Debbie Davis is not a lawyer).

Bob Dunning on May 2, 2006, would follow up this editorial with his own remarks.

Frankly, I expected the tapes might provide a little something for everyone to hang their hats on. Maybe a harsh voice on one side or the other, or a moment of misunderstanding that would be interpreted one way by one group and another way by the opposite side, leading to one of those inevitable impasses where everyone digs in their heels and nobody wins.

I was wrong. There were no harsh voices, misunderstandings or unclear meanings on the tapes. They are straightforward and easy to understand. It would be hard for 100 impartial observers who know nothing of this case to not reach exactly the same conclusion about their contents.

And, while there are aspects of this case that people may wish to continue to argue about, one thing is clear from a close analysis of the tapes: Davis police Officer Pheng Ly is owed an apology by all those who have suggested he is a rogue cop motivated by both racial and religious discrimination.

That apology would come that evening at the Davis City Council.

Officer Ly addressed the council, "I am not bitter about what has happened to me. I have already forgiven and moved on. It is time for me to get back to working for the good citizens of this community."

Mayor Ruth Asmundson would utter that apology on behalf of the city. A few months later, some of the supporters of the Buzayans pointed out to the Mayor that Halema Buzayan had been arrested and had her case dismissed, was she not owed an apology as well. Asmundson’s response was that “I think Halema has learned her lesson.”

Despite Ly’s words that night that he was not bitter and that he had forgiven and moved on. His words on his website which was only taken down in the last few weeks say something very different:

“I hereby challenge the family (particularly the arrested minor) to take a polygraph test with me, regarding the facts surrounding this case, with an independent and certified company or polygrapher and that the results of those tests be immediately made public in their entirety. I have nothing to hide and want the truth to come out.

From the very beginning, it was crystal clear to me that the highly paid defense and wealthy family did not want this case to be tried in a court of law, where all the facts would have been legally brought out, but rather in the more ambiguous and inflammable court of public opinion through the careful use and manipulation of the media. Yes, the family has spent a lot of money over this "minor fender bender". In fact, they paid the other car owner almost $900 even though they denied ever hitting her car! Now if someone accused me of hitting their car or damaging their property and I know I didn't do it, I would never pay them off; particularly so quickly and especially with no questions asked! I believe this type of behavior is commonly referred to as "consciousness of guilt" in the legal system. This is clearly a wealthy family that believes they can buy their way out of any and everything.”

Yes, Officer Ly was not bitter, not bitter at all.

Like everyone else involved, Ly shifts the emphasis to demeanor and away from process.

“Was I so upset at the family that they truly thought I was going to physically strike them as they have accused me of? Was I rude, demeaning and yelling to the family when I questioned them as they have accused me of? Did I illegally question the minor without advising her of her Miranda rights and deny her an attorney or parent as they have accused me of?”

As we showed previously, the tapes clearly indicate that while Officer Ly read Miss Buzayan her Miranda rights, he ignored her request for counsel.

As the lawsuit alleges:

“Ly also challenged the Buzayans to take a polygraph, but conspicuously did not offer to answer questions regarding whether:

• He determined that members of the Buzayan family were making false statements, based upon his assumptions about their cultural characteristics;

• He lied to Andrienne Wonhof-Gustafson regarding the Buzayan families' willingness to pay for the damage to her vehicle regardless of fault;

• He instructed the Buzayan family to compensate Mrs. Wonhof-Gustafson, and then claimed that their willingness to do so was evidence of guilt;

• He lied to Dr. Buzayan when he claimed to want only to "speak to Halema;"

• After arresting Halema, he deliberately did not take her to a probation officer, as the law expressly requires;

• He entered the Buzayan home on the 13th of June, 2005, without a warrant, while concealing his intent to arrest Halema;

• He knew that Halema had asked for an attorney, and ignored her request;"

These matters will fortunately be sorted out in a court of law rather than in the Davis Enterprise or City Council Chambers. However, it seems irresponsible for an officer of the law to be making those types of accusations on a website. It is striking that the day the story on the Buzayans filing a lawsuit against the police came out in the Davis Enterprise, Officer Pheng Ly’s webpage came down. Moreover, it was completely irresponsible of Mayor Ruth Asmundson to apologize to Officer Ly on behalf of the city. When the lawsuit is finally adjudicated, Mayor Asmundson will have to answer for those words. She will either be vindicated by those words or she will be condemned for them. I think a responsible government official should have withheld comment until the civil case was resolved.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

2006: The Year in Davis Review

These last days we will have a countdown of the top 10 stories from Davis in 2006. We continue with our fourth installment, No.4 Lamar Heystek is elected to the Davis City Council.

We were at the party at the University Inn on Richards Street at Davis, it was election night, nervously bustling with excitement. We've been here thousands of times before, but this one felt different, this night. It began to drag on, the numbers were not coming in. The machines were not working. Finally, we get the numbers from the absentee ballots. It does not look good for the progressives in Davis—Asmundson is leading the pack followed by Mike Levy. There in a distant fourth place is Lamar Heystek.

We had voted for the then-25-year-old Lamar Heystek just two years before. Unlike many, we had not trusted Souza or Saylor, and so Heystek was our third vote after Greenwald and Harrington. Heystek had run hard, but in the end, he was a 25-year-old fresh out of school. 2006 would be different. Heystek would spend two years working hard to make himself a strong candidate—working on city commissions (such as Parks and Recreation) as he worked at Safeway to put himself through graduate school. By 2006, he had emerged as one of two progressive backed candidates.

Flash forward to that night in June, it’s getting late, the returns are slowly, slowly trickling in, Heystek is moving up, Levy is moving down. But it’s now after 1 a.m., it’s been a long day, indeed a long campaign, and it doesn’t appear likely we’d get good results until the next morning. So we went home and fell into a restless sleep until awakened some time after four by a jubilant Lamar Heystek. He was ahead. But it was precarious. A slim lead over third place Levy and by an even slimmer margin he was behind Asmundson for MAYOR.

It took another ten days, but Heystek had won a seat on the Davis City Council. As intense as the build up, the results were almost anti-climatic. The result after days of recounting concluded with the exact same results that we had had that morning of June 7 following the election.

That anti-climax perhaps obscured just what a shocking event this indeed was. The conventional wisdom was that Asmundson would once again win as Mayor, but former Councilmember Stan Forbes, with experience and name recognition would be second, Heystek would finish third, and Mike Levy as the relatively unknown newcomer would finish a distant fourth and UC Davis student Rob Roy would finish an even more distant fifth. Instead, it was Heystek who would secured the second council seat missing by just 123 votes from becoming Mayor. Levy finished a strong third and Forbes finished in fourth, some 345 votes behind Heystek.

All the more remarkable because of the long and sustained heat that Heystek took for backing civilian police oversight and for his close political association with HRC Chair Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald. Yet in the face of intense scrutiny and pressure, Heystek never once wavered in his convictions.

During the final months leading up to the June city council election the Davis Enterprise (under the direction of Assistant Publisher/Editor Debbie Davis) would conduct biased and unfair reporting and editorializing in an attempt to discredit Halema Buzayan, her family, the Davis Human Relations Commission as well as anyone who spoke out in support of holding the Davis Police Department accountable to do competent, fair, honest and lawful work for the public they serve. Lamar Heystek spoke out in support of civilian police oversight, in support of the Human Relations Commission and the community leaders who had supported a civilian police oversight review board. Debbie Davis, her reporters and columnist Bob Dunning would feverishly work to convince the community that the arrest by Davis Police and the prosecution by the Yolo DA's Office of Ms. Buzayan was correct and that the Human Relations Commission was out of control. The Enterprise would publish only some of the tapes, omit evidence favorable to Ms. Buzayan from their articles, editorialize on the righteousness of the police conduct, endorse Asmundson and Levy for election and their columnist Dunning would come in for the kill.

On May 3, 2006, Dunning upon declaring the Davis Police Officer Pheng Ly audio tapes had nothing on them which would incriminate the officer, wrote, “the City Council candidate who stands to lose the most from the failure of the arrest tapes to deliver any damning evidence against the Davis Police is Lamar Heystek.”

The worst was perhaps a May 11, 2006 column from Dunning:

THE LATEST FROM LAMAR … candidate Heystek, perhaps sensing that public opinion in this contentious debate has suddenly and dramatically swung in favor of Officer Pheng Ly, has apparently come to the conclusion he is on the wrong side of this great divide and the momentum his campaign has been building in the last month is about to be derailed … how else to explain the panicky "press release" he fired off late last week that began, "No candidate realizes the need for vigorous law enforcement more than I do." … funny, that wasn't what he was saying just the other day about Officer Ly's vigorous enforcement of the law …

Lamar goes on to explain that two of his neighbors in East Oakland were shot to death, in part he says, because of the lack of a police presence … he concludes: "I pledge to you that I will remain committed to law enforcement that serves all our goals as a community: safety, freedom from fear, and justice for all." …

Great stuff, Lamar, but it's too little, too late … the public simply can't get out of its mind the image of you sitting next to Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald at one recent council meeting, clapping raucously each time a speaker approached the public microphone to batter the reputation of Officer Pheng Ly or demean the efforts of the Davis Police Department …

As usual Dunning swings and misses as he tries to gauge the degree of public backlash directed at Heystek for the crime of sitting next to Escamilla Greenwald at a city council meeting and advocating for a civilian police review board to guard against police misconduct. Too late? A month later, Heystek would become the youngest person elected to Davis City Council in over 30 years, while Dunning would have to resort to catcalls from the cheap seats every now and then.

The ugly side of Dunning would re-emerge in November with help from Noreen Mazelis.

Dunning wrote: "Writes my friend Noreen: '… Lamar Heystek will be on a panel with three other privileged men to discuss 'struggle.' " Dunning then adds: "... wow, nobody knows the trouble he's seen, overcoming his college education and teaching position at UC Davis to become one of the youngest City Council members in Davis city history ... struggle? ... Lamar? ... heck, he's not old enough to have even struggled with a razor ..."

And yet again, Dunning swings and misses. This time writing from a point of view of sheer ignorance, Dunning did not realize for some reason that not only does Heystek not come from a place of privilege, but he comes from some of the poorest parts of Oakland. Heystek used to have to run home with his twin brother from school to avoid being beaten up. His brother is now an elected school board member in the City of San Leandro and like Lamar a graduate from the Unversity of California (albeit Berkeley).

Heystek’s father put together a very modest living to raise two sons and a daughter, a Marine Corps veteran serving in Iraq. Heystek worked his way through school by working at Safeway, worked his way through graduate school, and worked his way right onto the city council.

Most of even his closest supporters did not realize how impoverished a background that Heystek has because he simply does not talk about. It was not a point in his campaign. It was something he lived through, does not like to reflect upon, and does not advertise.

What Heystek does advertise is sincere conviction. Barely seated on the Davis City Council, Heystek took up the fight for the living wage. Heystek brought the issue up in August 1, 2006. But the council majority wanted no part of it, however Souza specifically encouraged Heystek to bring it up on his own.

When Heystek did upon return from an August council hiatus in September, Saylor accused him of politicking.

(From the 9/20/06 Davis Enterprise) “There’s just a number of questions about this,” Councilman Don Saylor said. “To bring it up as a discussion is appropriate. To bring it up as a full-blown ordinance for a first reading, that’s not talking about policy, that’s talking about politics in a lead-up to an election.”

And yet, given the constraints placed upon Heystek by the council majority, he had little choice given the timeline for having the ordinance effect the Target proposal.

One of the reasons Souza gave for opposing the living wage was he and Saylor were working on a secret project labor agreement. From the September 18, 2006 meeting:

"We have been working on that and we've almost completed it, we're hoping that these actions won't jeopardize it, because all parties have been in agreement so far to date..."

Of course, in November, we find out that the project labor agreement had nothing to do with wages for Target employees. (By the way, it was reportedly imminent in November, I wonder if it has been completed?)

Undaunted Heystek continued the progressive fight for a living wage and opposing Target. The election of Lamar Heystek gave progressive Davis a fighter and champion for their cause who would not back down even when facing against long odds. For that, Heystek’s election ranks as the fourth biggest story of 2006.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

2006: The Year in Davis Review

These last days we will have a countdown of the top 10 stories from Davis in 2006. We continue with our third installment, No. 10 Target gets placed on the ballot and Samantha McCarthy does a sit-in

Meeting until the late hours of the night, the meeting on June 20, 2006 was long and explosive. Council had a four-hour discussion, marred several times by tension and arguing both between the council majority and then Mayor Pro Tem Sue Greenwald, and also by the council (particularly Mayor Ruth Asmundson) and members of the community.

Supporters of the proposed Target argued that the store would increase shopping options for Davis consumers including providing them with cheap consumer goods and also generating revenue for the city through sales tax. Proponents argued that the Target would produce around $675,00 per year in sales tax revenue.

Opponents such as Mayor Pro Tem Sue Greenwald suggested that the figure compared Target to the revenue of a "vacant field" rather than an alternative development project. Greenwald's calculation placed the figure at closer to $125,000 per year or $2 per Davis resident.

Moreover, there were strong concerns by residents of the adjacent community that the project would disrupt and disturb their community. Some were concerned about traffic, crime, and noise. There was concern that the project was being built next to a super-fund cite. And finally there was a lot of concern about the effect that the Target would have on downtown business.

The council’s ultimate decision was put the issue on the ballot--a move that Greenwald called "cowardly."

Dissent erupted between the members of the council and also the council and the public over the issue of public comment.

First, there was debate among council over whether speakers who had commented on the issue at the previous meeting could speak again. Then there was strong opposition when Asmundson ended the public comment period.

Samantha McCarthy would sit down in the middle of the floor in protest. "Refusing to leave had nothing to do with Target. It was a matter for fairness and process."

The meeting stopped while McCarthy ignored requests that she leave the meeting. Asmundson halted the meeting and four officers and one sergeant (the entire police force on duty at that time) reported to the meeting.

McCarthy: "There was a few minutes more of comments to go and that alone should have triggered a time extension. Ruth has publicly stated that council meetings are for council business and that if people want to talk they can see her during office hours. She has forgotten totally about public comment being for the public and not just for council. That meetings INCLUDING public comment are for all to view and see and that as of yet her office is not included as a public forum."

McCarthy would eventually leave the room on her own and the meeting resumed at around 9:25 p.m. So the council in trying to save time actually ended up taking up 25 additional minutes diffusing the situation. It seems more reasonable to have just allowed the public to speak and if it takes longer than you want, that's the price of democracy.

The next week the council would put the HRC on hiatus and McCarthy had an angry outburst, prompting Mayor Asmundson to again threaten to close down the meeting and having Steve Pierce remove McCarthy from the room. Pierce looked at McCarthy and shrugged as though to say, I don't want any part of this one.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

2006: The Year in Davis Review

These last days we will have a countdown of the top 10 stories from Davis in 2006. We continue with our second installment, No. 5 PG&E spends $11 million to defeat the Sacramento Municipal Utility District Yolo Annexation Vote...

There was a long-time effort on the part of Yolo County elected officials to bring public power to Yolo County through the annexation of the Yolo County power infrastructure to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). The remarkable thing is that elected officials who can hardly agree that the sky is blue all came together to support this proposal--city councilmembers from the three major cities in the county, every member of the Yolo County Board of Supervisors, and even school board members and special district unanimously supported the SMUD annexation.

In many ways, it seemed like a slam-dunk--at least in Yolo County. Unfortunately, this was not a level playing field. It was one heavily tilted toward the electricity giant, PG&E. Yolo County had to pass not one but two measures--H and I-- and Sacramento County had to consent to the expansion of SMUD into Yolo County through the passage of Measure L (not to be confused with the Davis Measure L in support of Choice Voting).

The battle lines for this election were drawn early.

• SMUD estimated Yolo County energy customers would save $148 million over 20 years if they switched providers.
  
  
• Pacific Gas & Electric Co. estimated the move would cost this area's customers $835 million.

The dispute had to do with the value of PG&E's infrastructure and facilities.

• SMUD estimated that value was between $86 million and $133 million.
  
  
• PG&E on the other hand, estimated that its facilities were worth more than $500 million.

Those cost differences accounted for roughly half of the difference in the projected cost to Yolo County energy consumers. The rest of the difference was derived from predictions about the future cost of natural gas, a key component for generating electricity.

PG&E aside from the structural advantage of only having to prevail on one of three measures, had one other key advantage--virtually unlimited resources. They spent $11 million on their campaign to convince Yolo County voters that this was too risky. SMUD, on the other hand, could spend no campaign money as they are a public agency and prevented from doing so. So grass roots citizen driven campaign organizations ran the Yes on H & I (Yes on SMUD) campaign in Yolo County raising from local businesses and the general public just over $100,000 to fight PG&E's propaganda machine.

PG&E's strategy was first, to cast doubt on the fact that Yolo County consumers would save money by switching to SMUD.

Second, PG&E presented themselves as environmental friendly and SMUD as enemies of the environment.

The People's Vanguard of Davis devoted numerous articles to discussing this topic.

One of the more duplicitous tactics by PG&E and their campaign consultants was the mailer sent to Davis households that suggested that a vote for PG&E was equivalent to a vote against Covell Village.

In the end, the deck was stacked against a victory by SMUD. Measure H narrowly prevailed in Yolo County. Measure I narrowly was defeated in Yolo County. But Yolo County was irrelevant as Measure L was overwhelmingly defeated by a huge margin in Sacramento County.

As I wrote in the post mortem:

"Even granting the large defeat in Sacramento County, I'm a bit disappointed with the Yolo County results. Had Yolo solidly voted to support SMUD, it would have been a loud and clear signal. First, that PG&E could not buy our votes with their ten million dollar plus campaign, fraught with deception. Second, that we were not happy with our service from PG&E."

In the end, the process concerned me much more than the outcome. In politics you win or lose. But there is a bitter pill to be swallowed when you face a corporation with unlimited resources who unleashes their money and propaganda in ways designed to confuse the voters.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

2006: The Year in Davis Review

These last days we will have a countdown of the top 10 stories from Davis in 2006. We begin with No.7: Bob Dunning versus the ACLU.

On April 25, 2006, the Davis Enterprise obtained the audio tapes from the arrest of a 16-year-old minor. Two days later, reporter Lauren Keene ran a front page article on the tapes, complete with interviews of Deputy District Attorney Patricia Fong and Defense Attorney for the Buzayans, Whitney Leigh. In addition to the story, the Davis Enterprise took the amazing step of posting the tapes on their website for the entire community to listen to.

That Sunday Davis Enterprise Assistant Publisher/ Editor Debbie Davis wrote in a main editorial about the content of the tapes:

“LISTEN FOR YOURSELF. The audiotapes are available on The Davis Enterprise's Web site, www.davisenterprise.com. Click on the story "Audio of hit-run arrest revealing," and follow the links to the recordings. You'll hear a Davis police officer discharging his duty to this community in a decidedly professional manner. He's doing his job, and he's doing it well. In every contact with the hit-and-run victim, the witness and every member of the Buzayan family, he is polite, respectful and professional.”

However, Debbie Davis is not an attorney and has no legal training. Therefore, it seems actually inappropriate for her to be making legal judgments. She is certainly able to make general comments about what she heard, but by pronouncing him as doing his job and doing it well, without any legal training, she is making legal judgments that she lacks the training to be able to make. Her statements about his demeanor rather than the legality of his conduct confuse the point for the average reader.

The local Yolo County ACLU (attorneys Bill Kopper, Natalie Wormeli and Paul Gerowitz) was very concerned about the propriety of this case and also the coverage of this case. They were extremely critical of the conclusions reached by the Davis Enterprise Editorial Board and Chief Editor, Debbie Davis. They wrote an Op-ed that appeared in the Davis Enterprise on Sunday May 7, 2006.

“The Davis Enterprise's editorial last Sunday touting the propriety of Officer Pheng Ly's conduct in the Halema Buzayan case does a disservice to the citizens of Davis. The editorial demonstrates a profound ignorance of the facts of the case, and also the law. Officer Ly's conduct was not proper or lawful.”

The ACLU makes two key points:

• First, “Officer Ly pursued an action against the Buzayan family without carefully examining the damage to the two vehicles involved in the hit-and run.”
  
  
• Second, Officer Ly made an illegal arrest by arresting the minor for “a misdemeanor charge committed outside his presence without an arrest warrant.”

The bulk of the ensuing debate would focus on point two—whether an officer can make such an arrest of minor as a specific clause in California law.

Robert Day wrote a letter to the editor published in the Davis Enterprise citing this clause:

“California Welfare and Institutions Code 625(a) specially provides for the probable cause arrest of a minor without a warrant for both misdemeanors and felonies. This is a departure from the law as it applies to adults.”

Day fails to identify himself as a retired member of the Yolo County District Attorney’s office. Day and Tim Talbot who represents the DPOA (Davis Police Officer’s Association) begin feeding Davis Enterprise Columnist Bob Dunning information to combat the ACLU’s position on the second issue.

Bob Dunning on May 12, takes his first shot with an entire column devoted to the issue:

“Far be it for me, a nonlawyer sitting in the bleacher seats, to question the opinions of three of this county's finest legal minds, but California Welfare and Institutions Code Section 625 says 'A peace officer may, without a warrant, take into temporary custody a minor: (a) Who is under the age of 18 years when such officer has reasonable cause for believing that such minor is a person described in Section 601 or 602.'”

Bill Kopper then responds to Dunning, with an email to Debbie Davis that was printed at least in portions in Bob Dunning’s May 16 column (by the way notice the Dunning tactics here):

“On Saturday, Enterprise Editor and Assistant Publisher Debbie Davis, who has been my immediate supervisor at this newspaper for many years, received the following e-mail from Bill Kopper, a local attorney and former mayor who the previous Sunday had co-authored an op-ed piece in The Davis Enterprise contending that Officer Pheng Ly's conduct in the Halema Buzayan case "was not proper or lawful."

Said Kopper's e-mail to Davis: "Mr. Dunning's May 12th column lambasting Ms. Wormeli, Mr. Gerowitz and myself about our May 7th Op. Ed. is particularly offensive because [attorney and retired administrative law judge] Mel Trujillo had informed Mr. Dunning that he was incorrect on the law (and the precise reasons Mr. Dunning was incorrect) prior to Mr. Dunning writing the column."

Continued the e-mail: "Officer Ly was not permitted to take Halema down to the police station, question her, and arrest her without an arrest warrant under the auspices of Welfare and Institutions Code section 625."

Kopper then went on to argue why "statutory law and case law absolutely prohibits Officer Ly's conduct toward Halema without an arrest warrant."

Note this part: (Dunning continues)

“Kopper's charge, basically, is that I wrote a column knowingly using false information. He makes this contention based on the alleged timing and the alleged contents of a phone conversation he was not a party to. It's hearsay at best, and an outright falsehood at worst. Plus, you'd have to agree that the information I allegedly "received" was accurate, on point and overwhelmingly conclusive.”

Dunning then proceeds to argue points of law—(after admitting that he was a "nonlawyer) which obviously required some assistance since he’s not a practicing attorney. The assistance came from Mr. Day and Mr. Talbot.

This episode succeeded in creating a tremendous amount of uncertainty about the Buzayan case to the point where few in the community were certain about whether or not Officer Ly acted properly or improperly (mission accomplished!). One thing became very clear to this blogger—Bob Dunning was carrying the water for the Davis Police Department and the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office. There was no effective way to communicate with the public without the interference of Dunning. There was no effective way to win a debate against Dunning. That is a tremendous amount of (largely unchecked) power.

Dunning’s bottom line is this:

“In the California case ‘In re Samuel V.’ the court clearly states, ‘On this appeal we determine Welfare and Institutions Code section 625, subdivision (a) does not violate federal constitutional equal protection rights of a juvenile by allowing a peace officer to arrest juvenile misdemeanants solely on probable cause without a warrant or any requirement the offense be committed in the officer's presence.’

That case seems to answer most of the questions raised about the propriety of the arrest of Halema Buzayan: probable cause, no warrant and the arrest of a juvenile for a misdemeanor not committed in the officer's presence.”

Sorry Mr. Dunning, but that does not even address (let alone answer) most of the questions about the propriety of the arrest because you failed to address the central contention as directed in Section 625 and 626 of the California Welfare and Institutions code.

Bill Kopper writes the Editor of the Davis Enterprise published on May 26, 2006:

California law barred Officer Pheng Ly's arrest of Halema Buzayan without a warrant. The law in this area has been settled for more than 25 years.

Bob Dunning and others rely on Welfare and Institutions Code section 625, which allows an officer to take a minor into temporary custody without a warrant. If an officer takes a minor into custody under section 625 for a nonviolent misdemeanor, WIC sections 626 and 626.5 require the officer to immediately take the minor before a probation officer. An officer cannot take the minor to the police station for questioning before taking her to the probation officer. (In Re Michael E, 112 Cal.App.3d 74.)

.......

The best that can be said is that Dunning was careless. Mel Trujillo advised Dunning to review WIC sections 626 and 626.5 the day before his column was printed. Dunning did not ask the ACLU why we concluded Officer Ly's conduct was illegal before he published his column. Apparently, Dunning still does not understand the shortcomings of his legal analysis.

According to Buzayan Attorney Whitney Leigh, this still constitutes an illegal arrest precisely because Officer Pheng Ly failed to follow the provisions of the aforementioned code.

“Pursuant to California Welfare and Institutions Code Sections 625 and 626, Officer Ly was required to take Halema, a minor, to a probation officer prior to conducting any interview with Halema. But Ly deliberately disregarded this rule in a blatant effort to exploit a minor in confessing to a hit and run outside of the presence of her parents. Ly later attempted to justify his nighttime arrest of Halema in her pajamas based upon his need to ensure that the minor and her parents would not engage in a further conspiracy.”

This critical provision in the code was conveniently omitted by Dunning in his discussion and for good reason—it undermined his case. However, this give and take between Kopper and Dunning shows us clearly and distinctly, whose side Dunning was on in this case. He was far from the neutral bystander that he portrays himself as.

This was a crucial development in the Buzayan case and the City Council races in May of 2006. For that, this earns our No.7 story of the year.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting