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Palo Altans want tough, open new police chief
City hires recruitment firm to help with nationwide search, solicits input from residents

by Gennady Sheyner
Palo Alto Online Staff

Posted by shamima, a resident of the Palo Alto Hills neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 10:17 am

What I would like in the Palo Alto's next police chief is the honesty of implementing a sense of accountability for him or herself and for the department as a whole. Say it if you are wrong. Don't cover up. We all make mistakes. I do understand the challenges they face.

Best wishes

Posted by Concerned Retiree, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 10:38 am

I would like to see a Police Chief who is truly color blind and who would lead the PA force as such -- that means no racial profiling. It does mean that PA Police should not be afraid to pull over/stop African-Americans and/or purple skinned people who look suspicious or violate the law. I feel we have drifted too far in the other direction and have made our police afraid to do their job. Likewise, they should not be afraid to use a tazer or a gun, as appropriate.

Posted by midtown resident, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 10:49 am

I agree with concerned retiree. We retirees are increasingly vulnerable to violent crime and Palo Alto has become a favored target. We need tough, professional, color-blind policing that will go after ANY suspect that meets the description of a possible perp.

Posted by YouShouldKnow, a resident of the Old Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 11:28 am

CITY OF PALO ALTO JOB OFFERING: SUPERBEING WANTED FOR PALO ALTO'S TOP COP JOB.

REQUIRED ABILITIES:

Superhuman strength, speed, stamina, durability, senses, intelligence, regeneration, and longevity; super breath, heat vision, x-ray vision, and flight.

MUST ALSO BE:

Faster than a speeding bullet.

Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

More powerful than a locomotive.

QUALITIES:

Be kind to widder's and small children.

Have the computer hacking skills of Jonathan James.

The kindness and compassion of Mother Teresa (believe me, you are gonna need it)

The patience of Job when dealing with the City Council and constant critics of the police department.

Be willing to have your entire life scrutinized from your potty training years to present by the Average Joe Citizen to make sure you are worthy of our position on Most High.

Dual doctorates in sociology and jurisprudence would be lovely. Nobel Peace Prize and affiliation in the NAACP wouldn't hurt either.

Have an 'in' with the DAILY Planet, or the WEEKLY planet, either, both. You're gonna need it!

Thank you for considering employment in Palo Alto.

in small print:

Must be willing to pay $5000 a month for a small converted garage studio with tiny bath.

Ability to fight crime a plus, but not necessary. This is not an entry level position. More a middle management thing after you find out how many you will have to be accountable to.

Posted by Anon, a resident of the Adobe-Meadows neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 11:30 am

The current chief, Dennis Burns, has all of those qualities. No need to search for a new chief.

Posted by Sam, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 11:55 am

The number one criteria for our new police cheif is the he completely ignore Aram James and the Human Relations Commission.

Posted by Tough on crime, a resident of the College Terrace neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 12:02 pm

"More importantly, the new chief should be committed to keeping residents safe.."

Be tough on crime!

We support police officer.

Posted by rem, a resident of the Adobe-Meadows neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 12:05 pm

Of Course it would be great if the City Council would support he/she one hundred percent.

In other words it would be great if the City Council would tell the marchers and "constant critics" to go sit in the corner and SHUTUP..

The "constant critics" should be allowed to "ride" with police every so often. The "constant critics" need to see the other side...

Posted by supporter, a resident of the Downtown North neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 12:06 pm

Fight crime, be powerful and keep our neighborhood safe!!

Posted by Palo Alto Ex, a resident of another community, on Mar 25, 2009 at 12:21 pm

I completely agree with Anon. Dennis Burns has all of the qualities PA is looking for, a proven track record of integrity and openness, the respect of his department and the City staff, and he's a smart administrator. The process, though costly and time consuming, will be an excellent vetting ground to let him rise to the top and prove to the community that he's the best cop for the job.

Posted by Resident, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 12:59 pm

All these blogs are about what "I" want as a resident. The most important attribute a new Police Chief should have is to be an involved leader in his/her Department.

I would like to see a Police Chief spend some time out on the streets working with his or her regular Police Officers. I would also like to hear that a new police chief regularly attends the officer's briefing before a shift so he/she knows what's going on.

What we need and what we haven't had recently is a cops Cop.

Posted by YSK, a resident of the Old Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 3:01 pm

I remember posting after taking MY first hallucinogen. Obsesses much?

Posted by david, a resident of the Monroe Park neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 8:16 pm

I think that the new chief should be an outsider. Burns and Company will be much of the same as they were trained under the Durkin/Johnson administrations. Get rid of the whole management team and get new blood in with a whole new way of doing things like no racial profiling,

Posted by I wasAtTheMeeting, a resident of the Old Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 8:53 pm

Seriously, that meeting last night was almost a joke. There were about fifteen people there, the majority of them journalists, city employees, and the usual critics. For such an important topic, the attendance was pathetic. Aside from the people listed above, there were six additional interested residents.

The meeting started with City Manager Keene giving us a short opening statement stating the objective of this meeting. When he threw the matter to the floor, the first gentleman spoke up, immediately invoking the name of President Obama. I turned around to look, was he here? Why were we hearing about the President of the United States at a meeting in Palo Alto to determine the qualities we seek in a new Police Chief? Such commentary just smacks of the self important mien others accuse Palo Altans of sometimes projecting to outside communities. What others do not know is those people are in the minority, not the majority. When I turned back to the meeting; not seeing Pres. Obama anywhere, I tuned back in to hear this same speaker harping on the departments reputation for racial profiling. He harped on the so called strong armed tactics used on van dweller Joseph Ciampi, and the beating of Albert Hopkins. I couldn't help but wonder, were YOU there?

Regardless of court rulings and judge opinions, I still believe there are two sides to these stories, and no one but the people present at the time can really tell the story. Rarely is anything clearly defined as to right, and wrong. Anything that comes after is Monday Morning quarterbacking, judicial opinion based on recitations from both sides, and one sided representations. The best story, wins. Blogs in this forum from people who knew all parties involved sure had a different story yet again. Interesting several of those were deleted.

When this man was finished speaking, usual suspect outspoken police critic Aram James, armed with his poster that apparently interested no one, went into his usual soliloquy about the egregious human right violations perpetuated apparently daily by the PAPD. He, and the first man, kept nodding at one another, brothers in unison against a common enemy. Soon thereafter, his speech was followed up by another speaker, another man again invoking the spectre of racial profiling, and about the great pain experienced by the African Americans in our community, and the horrors these people have experienced under the auspices of our police department. At times, he appeared choked by great emotion at the horror of it all.

I looked around, saw NO African Americans in attendance. I could not help but think if this issue is as pervasive and flagrant as these three are alleging, then why were there no African Americans present to give us their perspective on this serious issue? I was hearing this complaint coming from three older white men. I would have appreciated hearing more from the actual community that PAPD is supposedly targeting.

After about forty minutes of this, I came to realize that absolutely no one was addressing the issue of crime in Palo Alto. No one was bringing up what we want to see in a Police Chief on the issue of FIGHTING CRIME. You know, actual policing. I had heard all the alleged ills of the police department, and I heard about well publicized events that put the department in a poor light, and I heard the general attitude that came off as a real concern with protecting the rights of perpetrators. Perpetrators, and suspects. Bad people doing bad things being victimized by the Big Bad Palo Alto Police Department.

What about the rights of Palo Altans to reasonably expect to be safe in our homes, on our streets? Ever since Johnson was railroaded out of town, a sacrificial lamb on the alter of personal City agendas, this City has become a playground to the criminally inclined.

There has been a rise in violent crime. Burglary. Muggings. A lot more person on person violence, right down to murder. In local blogs, you can tell that some of the people complaining about the department are about as familiar with police procedure about as far as their nightly TV programming will allow. People here aren't complaining about unsolved crimes, they are complaining about the length of time it take to solve them. Compared to larger Cities with more crime, where many cases are never resolved, I think Palo Alto's solve rate is pretty good!

In all, we have become a City spoiled by a degree of safety enjoyed and shared only by other affluent communities. A large part of this is due to the diligence of our police department. Since the exit of Chief Johnson, and since the March on Palo Alto brought on by the Mayor of EPA,(who should have been tending to her own volatile City), there has been an alarming uptick of crime in Palo Alto. I have friends in low places as well as high, and 'word on the street' is, at this time, that the cops in Palo Alto have been effectively handcuffed by the likes of Aram James and others of his ilk. It's a good time to be a criminal in Palo Alto. For years, James has gone after the police department, slinging mud, and finally, something stuck. His agenda coincided with the agenda of a few others, and out went any semblance of a unified City. Right now, this City is rife with criminal activity, because the cops are having to worry more about being politically correct and not becoming the personal targets of crusaders who are more worried about the rights of the criminals than the people they are victimizing, or the rights of the cops who are only doing their jobs the way they were trained.

What really pisses me off is how these people represent these incidents as the policy of the department as a whole. Absolutely NO credit is given to individual officers for their ability to use their own minds, training, discretion and integrity. They act as though Palo Alto PD is a department filled with automatons programmed by one entity and sent out among us to perpetuate police harassment and misconduct. If anyone takes the time to read the local blogs, even more than the few bloggers that simply don't get it, there is another voice of Palo Alto, and it's the voice of more moderate reason. Our own City Council has admitted it doesn't read these postings, claiming them to be too 'toxic'.

The lack of understanding the job has never been more obvious than last night, as I sat and listened to all the ethereal and actual qualities this new Chief should possess, from life experience to education to personal philosophy, I was beginning to feel I was hearing the job specs for a social worker, not a Chief of Police. I was amazed at the demands being placed on City Manager Keene as pertains to the depth of the involvement these people want in the hiring process. The City is HIRING a new Police Chief. This is NOT an elected position. A lot of what these people were demanding to know are human resource matters, not fodder for dissection by the general public. With people such as these involved, it worries me that any qualified applicant will pass on applying to this department. As stated by one of the few voices of reason in that meeting, the PD wasn't broken when Johnson was there (of course there's always room for improvement), and if it needs fixing, that's a recent development brought on by some of the issues I have mentioned here. I believe I speak for a lot of people that are too busy living their lives, dealing with children and homework and jobs instead of blogging and showing up at meetings announced last minute, when I (and a few others at the meeting last night) say that I want a police Chief who is a cop, not a politician. Of course there should be certain guidelines to follow in interactions with the public, no matter what the ethnicity. The point is, those guidelines are already in place, and it's obvious to anyone with common sense that any new Chief will want to enforce these rules and ideals, especially in light of recent events. Any Chief worth his/her salt will be well acquainted with why the previous Chief left. I'm sure these issues will be one of the first a new Chief will address. Some things just go without saying!

What DA Jay Boyarsky said really rings true. Taking the Top Cop job in Palo Alto is a thankless task in a high maintenance area, and you had only to be sitting in that meeting last night to fully realize how spot on accurate that assesment is.

Posted by Outside Observer, a resident of another community, on Mar 25, 2009 at 8:55 pm

David,

You've got it right.

From what I've read, CM Keene has a history of going to the outside for appointments like this. I hope that's true.

Status quo is not what we need in the PD, or any other City department.

Posted by Michelle, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 8:56 pm

"Palo Alto's next police chief should be honest, innovative, experienced, independent, eloquent, technology-savvy and racially sensitive.

It would also be helpful if he or she can foster neighborhood awareness, raise morale within the department, work well with schools and serve a high-maintenance community that isn't shy about voicing its discontent."

Dennis Burns has all the qualities that are listed above. He has been a Palo Alto Cop for 27 years. He is a proven leader within the department AND the community. When it is all said and done...there wont be much need to look further.

Posted by police god, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 8:57 pm

as nice as it would be to have a functional police chief, this article makes it seem like these 'palo altans' are asking god to become the cities new police chief. if every city was equipped with a person that palo alto is looking for, there would never be any crime anywhere

Posted by YouShouldKnow, a resident of the Old Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 10:47 pm

Essentially that's what they were asking for last night...and MORE if you can believe it. What does this position pay, especially in comparison to other departments of a similar size? I saw in the Post today Athertons police chief makes $168,000. His predecessor was apparently paid more.

Posted by Big Al, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 11:02 pm

Well, perhaps we should go ahead and at least pose the question:

Lord, god, oh high holy one, would you, could you please be our new

police chief, if only for a couple of years (or until we find somebody more

qualified)? Doesn't hurt to ask.

Posted by TheLord, a resident of the Palo Alto Hills neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 11:13 pm

HELL no.

Posted by Kate, a resident of the Duveneck/St. Francis neighborhood, on Mar 25, 2009 at 11:57 pm

I want a police chief who is not hamstrung by the fear of dissident-marching political correctness advocates and a reactionary city council, and the fear of one misstep and you're out. PA residents are scared. I don't see senior citizens walking in the parks anymore. Residents are locked in the homes for fear. Didn't used to be that way but now it's fear. We want to live and walk without fear. We need leadership and a chief with a strong personality who does not 'fear' this reactive city council. I didn't like Johnson, but she did not deserve the treatment she got,

Posted by Mario, a resident of the Old Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 2:26 am

I like all the traits listed in the article, but I think a couple very crucial elements are being forgotten. As someone who wants to get into a career in law enforcement, I think we need a chief who, as Kate wrote below, is not afraid of speaking their mind and does not "fear" unreasonable objections/demands from critics, or the media especially, who may not truly understand how law enforcement works and the kinds of things our officers face; because the truth is, they usually do not. A chief should most certainly be tough on crime and be able to make clear and concise decisions regarding the future of the department and the tactics it utilizes in keeping criminals off our streets. It seems we are running short of leaders these days who are not afraid of speaking their minds to a media that always takes things out of context.

Posted by rr, a resident of the Southgate neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 8:22 am

TO: I was at that meeting.

Will you be the next Chief?

You seem to have a firm grip on this City and all that is REALLY happening.

Seriously, I think you hit the nail on the head. Please contact JK and somehow become involved in the process. You are one of the very few that really knows what is what, and that is valuable in this city.

Posted by Carole, a resident of the Duveneck/St. Francis neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 10:51 am

Exhibits responsibility in getting back to people within a reasonable time period.

Posted by IwasAtTheMeeting, a resident of the Old Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 12:20 pm

RR: Trust me, I wouldn't be wanted. My kind of input doesn't play well here. I want to cut through the b.s. and get to the reality of the matter at hand. Special interest groups would not interest me any more than taking their opinion into consideration and integrating that opinion into the situation as a whole.

I believe our Police should follow the numbers. Not stats, those can be skewed or interpreted in any way an interested party wishes them to read. For example, when doing stats in a sport, like volleyball, the rating of a pass is open to the determination of the person recording the stats. Other stats are skewed when someone wants to make a point to support their agenda. How often do you hear the same study stats being skewed to be pro or con a particular subject?

In crime, I believe the actual numbers should speak for themselves. Regardless of sex, color or creed. If a white female wearing a bandana was reported as the suspect in 10 muggings, as Chief I would order my officers take a good look at the behavior of all white females in bandana's. Check out their actions, see if they are behaving in a suspicious manner. It's called, follow the trail. COMMON SENSE. Then, if one of these ladies are a cause for concern, again, trusting the officers judgement and training; stop them and question them. What's more, if said females were posing a significant risk to the public, I would state publicly that the public needs to be especially careful and watchful for individuals fitting this description. I would not be doing this to target a certain group, I would be doing this so I could solve a CRIME. Of course, as the suspects are white females, there would be no hue and cry. It appears to be implied that certain groups should be excluded from this type of assessment, while the inclusion of others barely raises and eyebrow, much less causes a public railroading and march.

It would not be 'profiling', it would be a statement based on the facts we had so far. Profiling would come in if I said that white females wearing bandanas would most likely be the perpetrators, not because of witness statements to date, but based on some reported history somewhere of white females in bandanas assaulting and robbing people.

This would also be the difference between hard and soft profiling. When the whole Johnson debacle came down, I went on web sites across the country of all different racial groups, and set about educating myself. Soft profiling is what I described above. Hard profiling is when the race of a suspect is used against them in such a way that it becomes a harassment issue. Persecution and unfair targeting. That is not something that should happen at any time, to ANY group. I did find that several groups across the ethnic board agreed with soft profiling, because it is used to aid in solving crime. People of color also don't like to be crime victims.

Soft profiling also helps in other areas, such as demographics used for determining financial aid to a community or a school district to help with minorities. It just becomes a dirty word when applied to law enforcement.

A police Chief who would know and understand the difference between the two, and use the reasonable man standard would be someone I would like to see in office. A Chief who won't be afraid to follow the facts, instead of having to first filter everything through a political correctness filter, then the City Council and Aram James then special interest groups. That kind of management may please the bleeding heart liberals of the City, but it won't solve any crimes.

Posted by Sun and Sand, a resident of the Embarcadero Oaks/Leland neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 12:22 pm

To "rr".

While I concur with the spirit of your sentiment, I don't think that the poster named "I was at that meeting" wants to be the next Chief. :) However, that poster did hit the nail on the head, and is more in tune, by orders of magnitude than some of the others at the meeting, with the real sentiments of most Palo Altans.

I think we already have a superb candidate in the running: Acting Chief Burns, who has all the qualities asked for, and more - e.g. an exceptional administrator, has the confidence of his staff, understands Palo Alto's diversity issues, has the skills to scale the department appropriate to fiscal and other conditions, and many other qualities not mentioned here.

Aside from that, it's important for all regional Police Chiefs to continue coordinating information and other tactical complexities as our population increases. We are definitely going to see our population increase - in the region, and in our city, by some significant amount in the next 10-20 years. Along with population increase comes a higher incidence in the probability of certain kinds of crime. All of the police departments in our region are going to have to work better together, as a group, to keep us safe.

Palo Alto's police force is a superb group - professional to the core; always looking for improvement, and so on. Of course, as with any large organization - from corporation, to churches, schools, etc., occasionally our police department will encounter a problem employee, or a mistake will be made. Our police department is not immune from the occasional problem employee or gaffe, but it's overall an excellent department, infused with professionalism, people who really care about our community, and as such is a source of pride for the entire community.

Public safety is always a dicey issue; it's not easy to maintain the public safety - just look at the massive infrastructure that our cities have to deploy, to keep us safe. Yet, even in spite of that, we still have crime. How many of us have taken the time to imagine what our lives would be like if we didn't have our police department out there every day, 24 hours a day, protecting us from wrongdoing? It's easy to take policing for granted, because it's always "there".

Last, I think we need to better appreciate just how stressful policing is. It's easy to Monday Morning Quarterback police decisions, but there are few positions in any occupation that require the professionals in it to constantly encounter the specter of being seriously maimed, or worse, during every waking hour that one is on duty.

Citizens call the police when they are in trouble, or feeling threatened. Police patrol the streets looking for trouble spots. It's a VERY stressful job, with one's life on the line more than any of us know.

We should try to better understand the difficult situations that police officers find themselves in, and realize that when we see an officer on the street, that s/he has been at far higher *conscious* risk to personal safety than any of us has been. I would urge all of us to appreciate that, and understand what those kinds of stresses can do to a person, and what kind of professionalism it takes to absorb that kind of stress, day-in, and day-out. We owe our police department a huge vote of thanks for keeping us safe. This doesn't mean we shouldn't complain when something occasionally goes wrong, as it does in every police department in America. Nobody is perfect.

I wish our Police Dept the best in its search, and hope that our City leaders look for more effective ways to inform our citizens about the many positive things our police force does for the city, in ways that improve citizen engagement.

Posted by Hank, a resident of the Old Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 12:23 pm

Fight crime. Is that so hard? As for this Aram guy -- he doth protest too much. Makes me wonder what he's hiding.

Posted by Sun and Sand, a resident of the Embarcadero Oaks/Leland neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 12:35 pm

"A police Chief who would know and understand the difference between the two, and use the reasonable man standard would be someone I would like to see in office. A Chief who won't be afraid to follow the facts, instead of having to first filter everything through a political correctness filter, then the City Council and Aram James then special interest groups. That kind of management may please the bleeding heart liberals of the City, but it won't solve any crime"

This is right on target! In fact, soft profiling is used, appropriately, *within* minority communities, to filter out the most egregious troublemakers. Like the last poster says, it's COMMON SENSE, and is used in many other demographic scenarios.

To take IWATM's post one step further, I would be willing to be that the VAST majority of community members (including minorities) in Palo Alto, or any other city, would be appalled and frightened if soft profiling was not deployed in crime apprehension situations. Not to employ soft profiling is a non-adaptive activity, that leads to *more* crime.

Thanks IWATM, we need to hear from more citizens like you. We don't because people are too busy with their lives to picket City Hall for every little thing, or raise Cain every time a gaffe occurs. In fact, this is the PRIMARY reason we need more civic engagement in Palo Alto - to discover that there is a far more balanced and reasonable sense about our city from the great majority of citizens who think more as you do about these matters.

Posted by IwasAtTheMeeting, a resident of the Old Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 1:00 pm

All things being equal, (aka UTOPIA) I would love to be on the citizen panel or participate in any capacity as one of the voices representing the more moderate people of Palo Alto. As I said, I doubt they would want me, I am not the 'type' most commonly chosen for these types of proceedings. If that's not the case, they know who I am, I've essentially 'outed' myself on here because this issue is so important, and because of the low turnout at the meeting. It's a simple process of elimination.

You know, now that I think about it, if there is one person out there that WOULD be able to get on such a committee, PLEASE DO volunteer. Given what I heard at that meeting about the level of involvement in the decision process that James and his group is hoping to achieve, the rest of us will be sorely underrepresented. I am not too confident about the power of the email process. How do we know these emails are really going to be read, or if they are merely a pacifier to ward off critics?

There should be another meeting, this one better publicized and with more advance notice.

Posted by Sun and Sand, a resident of the Embarcadero Oaks/Leland neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 1:46 pm

"Given what I heard at that meeting about the level of involvement in the decision process that James and his group is hoping to achieve, the rest of us will be sorely underrepresented."

That's a prudent caution.

About having a second meeting, maybe that would be a good idea, it's hard to say - because most people are just too busy, and that's what those who cast the police department in the worst light count on, because the press is always there, and reports only what it hears. (In a way this is also an issue of press respsonsibility: Why isn't the Press going out to the community to find out what it wants in a police chief? Why not put a reporter out there to ask people all over town what they think, instead of limiting exposure to under-attended meetings that are little more than launching pads for the unchecked negative assumptions that people like Aron James are constantly spewing.)

Also, any additional meeting should be held in some other part of the City, perhaps place a kiosk at the farmer's markets - get a cross section of people to put a few words on paper, or feedback to a City Council member, in public.

Last, although I may be wrong, any sense that Aram James crowd is going to have major inputs into this process may be overstated. I, like you, think that James far from representing most Palo Altans, including 99% of Palo Altans who are minorities. Without saying anything about him personally, his ideas and methods are on the fringe. He and a few others make a lot of noise, but they are not taken seriously by most. His power mostly lies in the fact that the press is still not doing its job, because it places reporters only at poorly attended public meetings where the same old crowd always gets interviewed with the same old opinions. Come on! Local press! Beef it up!

Posted by Super, a resident of the Community Center neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 2:09 pm

I hope the new police chief shares many of the same traits as Sheriff Buford Pusser from the movie "Walking Tall". Keep the riff- raff out of Palo Alto.

Posted by YSK, a resident of the Old Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 2:29 pm

Sun and Sand, before what happened to Johnson I would have totally agreed with you. A large part of that debacle was due to James finally getting something to stick, and now he's riding high on that success. He IS quite pleased with the press coverage he's getting, and is riding the tide and making the most of that. His comments at the meeting illustrated his confidence in getting his points and agenda across, to the media if nowhere else. Worked once! Maybe it will again!

Posted by Sun and Sand, a resident of the Embarcadero Oaks/Leland neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 3:04 pm

YSK, I agree with what you say, but based primarily on what the press reports from those meetings. For citizens who are not present at City Council meetings (that's 99.999% of them), all they see about these issues are what's in the newspaper. I've attended City Council meetings where James and 4-5 others have made their constant, negative, harping points about our great police department, and just because nobody else speaks up (among the only 10-20 others in the room), it gets reported that we have a "problem". It's absurd that in a city with the purported sophistication of our populace, that we should have a press that is only reporting from City Hall on issues like this. We need more than "man in the street" features from the Friday print edition! We need reporters going out to get opinions from citizens who are too busy to come to City meetings. We also need a decent marketing department in the City that is into more than promotions. Funny thing, when our auditor gets out and about - that's her job - we always seem to find out that things are not oas bad as the constant complainers at City Hall meetings claim. Why don't our policy makers pay more attention to that? I think they do, but sometimes, when things like race get pushed into the media in a way that sucks in the press, politicians (who are sincere, but have agendas for further office, or reelection) can be manipulated to take stances and/or grandstand just to preserve their future reputations). btw, that isn't an indictment of City Council members; it's just pointing out a reality that intrudes in the elected public sphere. Also, there are sensitivities inside City Hall, where a City Manager who is beholden to City Council for his job has to bend certain ways if media attention over an issue starts to spin in a way that can put him/her in danger. This is why I keep coming back to the press; I don't think the press in Palo Alto is doing its job well enough, in this area. That said, the press is highly constrained, because of the changes to that sector, and the disintermediations caused by the Internet. Staffs are lean, so it's not like people are lazy; there is only so much time in a day. Have you ever seen a job description for a small paper local reporter; it's mind-boggling (and for little money).

So, we have a complex problem. With all that, if we could really get innovative about community engagement, we might find ways to bring more voices into the system, so that the compulsive publicity seekers, professional agitators, wannabe Al Sharpton's (who all have a right to speak, btw) would have their voices placed *within the context* of our larger population, so that we could act on a more comprehensive, measured, and averaged-out opinions of a larger swath of our population.

It's a complicated problem, but again, the press largely holds the key here. It needs to widen its sources of input, and the City needs to really reach out to engage, lest we continue down the path of running our city based only on the opinions of a few, or those who shout the loudest.

Posted by IwasAtTheMeeting, a resident of the Old Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 3:12 pm

I need a job. Big time. Hire me! I can talk to anybody, and usually do! ;)

I will say this, when I spoke out and it became apparent my opinions weren't in line with those of the James gang, the reporters at the meeting one by one came to me for comment. It's funny, I went fully to that meeting totally intending to fly under the radar, just listen, because I like to know what I am talking about before I comment. Thing is, the commentary was so out of touch and irritating I just had to speak. There was another lady with the same idea in mind, she wound up speaking too. I give the papers credit for taking some of my input into consideration and printing it in their articles.

Posted by stimulus 2, a resident of the Charleston Gardens neighborhood, on Mar 28, 2009 at 1:34 pm

how bout a 500 0000 dollar reparations check to anyone not pure white

Posted by Be tough, a resident of the Professorville neighborhood, on Apr 1, 2009 at 10:55 pm

Here is teh only qualification: Be tough on crime instead of bending over backwards for every nut that complains at meetings or in the press. In other words be a freakin' cop!