Two heavy Los Al Council Agendas for this Tuesday, 1/22/2013
January 18, 2013 in 2013 Issues, City Council Meetings, Commissions By: Dave Emerson
(Los Alamitos, 1/18/2013) A very interesting Tuesday night:
- 4:30 p.m. Tuesday: Special Council Meeting to choose three planning Commissioners from a pool of six. including the three incumbents, and two Traffic Commissioners from one applicant plus (possibly) three left over Planning Commission Applicants. Lots of familiar names in the mix, including Grose, Mejia,DeBolt, Loe and Andrade. Interviews in public, apparently discussion as well, which would be a change. Click here for agenda & applications. Special Sessions are generally not televised unless they deal with the budget.
- 6:00 p.m., Tuesday: Regular Council Meeting with four presentations, eight “consent” items, a public hearing on extending the Ball & Bloomfield 7-Eleven’s operating & liquor sales hours, and three discussion items including that Salary and Benefit package that carried over from the last regular meeting and whether to have one or two Regular City Council Meeting per month, and then Appointing Council Members to a variety of mostly OC Agency Boards & City Ad Hoc Committees. Click here for agenda, scroll down for attachments and staff reports.
- 10:00?? (after all of the above, bascally) Closed Session, Conference with Legal Counsel, Existing Litigation, “John Doe v The City of Los Alamitos. United States District Court, Central District of California, Southern Division, Case #SACV122166 DOC (ANx) Google it. . . or wait for me to
My work for tonight is done–I just wanted to get the links up so the more diligent among us could review the staff reports that interest them most & report on what they find & their perspective.
I figure eventually Lance will be done confessing to Oprah and life will return to normal. I’d write more, but I’ve gotta go get some HGH injections to get ready for the next blog competition. . . .
So now convicted sex offenders are suing us because they can’t enter our parks or where children are gathering? What’s there to talk about? Fight it.
John Doe .v. City of Cypress, City of Los Alamitos, Jackie Gomez-Whitely, Martin Hoshino and Todd Mattern
Something tells me it has to do with the LAPD and something that we may have done with the joint powers…
Wrong. I read the complaint off pacer. It is what I said.
Plaintiff was convicted of raping his 51 year old ex girlfriend. He served 8 years per the complaint.
He is now homeless because he was kicked out of Cypress. He is suing Cypress claiming their laws are too vague as to where he can live and denies him his first amendment rights of assembly.
He is suing Los Al saying the ordinance against convicted felons being in a park or areas where children congregate is vague and should not apply to him because he never molested a child and therefore isn’t a threat to children.
He identifies similar laws in other Orange County cities, but did not sue them.
I sit corrected. I didn’t read the complaint, just the title as the complaint was behind a paywall.
Well, it’s not like we were not warned. As soon as the law was passed it became a problem. Guess our DA and all the city attorneys didn’t think it through. Maybe this guys attorney are as bad or hopefully worse than ours.
No wonder the DA was running from city to city for support.
Cities that passed the law have backed off it. Maybe Los Al should as well. The goal of protecting our children shouldn’t override the rights of those who have been convicted and have served the time that they were convicted for.
Yes, I have two kids, and I would want them to be perfectly safe from the moment that they leave my front door until the moment that they return home. But in our current criminal justice system there are a few “rules” that have always applied. The first is that you are innocent until a jury of your peers declares you guilty (or until you admit guilt). The second is that the court will assign a period of time for which you are to serve your sentence for the crime(s) you committed. The third is that after you have served your time you are a free man (parole is still part of time served).
The fact that our criminal justice system is a failure in many cases has to do with the warehousing of humans with no attempt to rehabilitate or treat them (a guy who commits a robbery because he had no skills and couldn’t get a job to feed himself leaves the criminal justice system today with the same skill set that he entered with, still unemployable [more so because he now has a criminal record] and worse than that, if he picked up any skills while incarcerated, those skills were picked up from other criminals on how to be a better criminal).
Now, before I get crap about being a softhearted liberal, Consider what we do today. Is it working? If you don’t think it is working, then I would suggest that continuing to do something that you know doesn’t work is a foolish waste of money.
Slightly off-topic rant
There are about 137,000 incarcerated people in CA. About 5,000 of then are in there for drug possession crimes. Another 9,000 are there for possession for sale (have enough on them at the time of arrest to be considered potential dealers 6,186) or sales (2,522). The cost for this is about $35,000/yr per incarceration ($490,000,000). One would think that for that kind of money we could find a better solution for the amount of money we are spending. [I'll forgo discussion on solutions for now...]
There are 749 people incarcerated for “Oral Copulation”, another 217 for “Sodomy” (including 1 female) and 574 for “Penetration with Object”. Yes, 8,749 are there for “Lewd Act With a Child”, and yes, we have to be concerned about those people being part of society as parents, but last time I checked “Oral Copulation” really required two participants who were agreeing (otherwise it would be classified as rape [2,455 incarcerated] or assault [15,739 incarcerated]) and there are 6 women and 749 men (still trying to figure that out)… but before I veer too far off topic, if the first three groups weren’t assault or rape, just why are these people in prison?
I guess the point of this mini-rant is that we need a better criminal justice system and just stacking more things, like the “you can’t go to parks” is not a viable solution. We have bankers that committed massive acts of fraud that crashed the economy who will never spend a day in jail, but some stoner who never hurt anyone is put away for years. We have people like Aaron Swartz (http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/aaron-swartz-laid-rest-action-plan-us) who wanted to remove the research our tax dollars paid for removed from behind a paywall and made available for free to the people that paid for it, harassed to death, while the CEO’s like JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon get to keep their cushy jobs and get millions of dollars.
In 2005 a young lady just out of school and unemployed acted in a pornographic movie to pay the bills. In 2012 she was employed as a eighth-grade science teacher. Someone found out what she did before she was ever employed and the School District Board of Trustees terminated her employment (I’m actually surprised that didn’t try to get her jailed for “Oral Copulation” if they had the video evidence).
Justice is sort of “odd”. It seems to fail in the most spectacular ways, and it seems to never affect our betters. It wouldn’t surprise anyone to know that to date we are still waiting for a criminal charge to be filed on someone who created a fraudulent City document. The system is failing, and patches like the park law arenot the way to fix it.
end slightly off topic rant
JM
Do you really believe “The goal of protecting our children shouldn’t override the rights of those who have been convicted and have served the time that they were convicted for”.
How about “The goal of protecting our children shouldn’t override the rights (including the second ammendment right to bear arms) of those who have never been convicted and are otherwise law abiding citizens?
And please no long rant about the minority opinion of supreme court decisions that it applies to “regulated militias only”. It is current settled law that gun ownership is a constitutionally protected right.
Why is it that the mass killers were not members of the NRA, were not part of any right wing party, including Republican, had a conceal carry permit or had a background check?
The solution is to actually protect our children. School districts including our own need to work with local lawenforcement to provide armed security at our schools.
So, how did we appreciate our guns on “gun Appreciation Day”?
Yep, the answer is all these people wouldn’t have been shot if they had been well armed to protect themselves! The answer is more guns!
I know it’s blasphemous for me to bring up Saint Ronnie but…
Gov. Reagan signed into law the Mulford Act in CA (a firearm ban)
Gov. Reagan signed into law the 15 day waiting period in CA
President Reagan signed into law a ban on fully automatic rifles
Former President Reagan supported the Brady Bill
Former President Reagan in 1994 wrote Congress supporting the ban on assault rifles.
There used to be some sanity. When I was a member of the NRA the NRA was about educating the public on the proper use and safety of firearm ownership. I earned all my bars using a .22 on a range with certified instructors. But the NRA of today is not the NRA of my youth. Today the NRA is the lobbying arm of the firearm manufacturing industry (that’s where they get most their money). They push the Red Dawn mentality and stoke fear to increase weapon sales.
See, and I haven’t even started a “long rant” about the Second Amendment. But just for grins, may I suggest you read what happened back then so when we do get around to discussing it, you can do so knowing what happened in Congress. http://constitution.org/mil/militia_debate_1789.htm Personally I like the Amendment as proposed by New York.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-albuquerque-family-shooting-20130120,0,917364.story
Oh, I’m sorry Art. Did you say something about uncontrolled access to firearms? I couldn’t hear you about the sounds of more KIDS DYING. I’m sure that Angelina, Jael and Zephania all agree with you that MORE guns are the answer.
Will it ever stop?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/us/shooting-reported-at-college-in-houston.html?_r=0
JM
Stay on topic, I said nothing about uncontrolled access to firearms. All of your one-line out of context “justifications” point to the lack of substance in your arugments. The one or two involving children are the result of irresponsible adults allowing access to their firearms. And those parents pay a heavy price for that irresponsibility. No different than if you allow access to your liquor cabinent, perscription drugs or anything else a child could gain access to and hurt themselves or their friends.
Here are a few of in context examples of responsible gun ownership. And there are hundreds more to read at http://www.americanrifleman.org/BlogList.aspx?id=21&cpage=2
******
When 14-year-old Brady went to the kitchen for a glass of water late one night, he heard voices. Brady said, “I walked to the edge of the stairs and I [heard] them talking. I didn’t recognize their voices and I went back to my room and got my 12-gauge shotgun. I loaded it.” The boy confronted the men. The intruders had their own firearms pointed at Brady, but fled upon seeing his shotgun pointed back at them. (FOX16, Little Rock, Ark., 4/30/12)
Kendra St. Clair, a 12-year-old at home alone one day during her fall break, called her mother at work to say there was a man repeatedly ringing the doorbell and banging on the door. When no one answered the door, she said he disappeared. St. Clair’s mother instructed her daughter to get her .40-cal. Glock pistol and go into a bathroom closet. St. Clair heard him break in through the back door. As the man made his way through her home, 911 dispatchers kept St. Clair on the phone. He was inside the home for approximately six minutes before he made his way to the bathroom where St. Clair was hiding. When she saw the door knob begin to turn, she fired the gun. The 32-year-old intruder was taken into custody after being treated for a gunshot to the chest. (The Oklahoman, Durant, OK, 10/20/12)
Around 5 a.m. on October 9, 2012, 72-year-old Jerry Duncan called police to report that he had fired a single shot at someone who had cut his electricity and was attempting to break into his home. Before Duncan fired he told the perpetrator to go away, but 51-year-old William Ragsdell of Lake Elsinore did not acquiesce. The shot was fatal, and Ragsdell died at 6:15 a.m. at the Inland Balley Regional Medical Center in Wildomar. (The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, CA, 10/9/12)
Brianne Rodriguez heard a knock at her front door just before 9 a.m., but ignored it. A few minutes later, Rodriguez heard loud noises coming from her bedroom. When she went to investigate, she discovered a man wearing a ski mask in her home. The confrontation led to a struggle and Rodriguez was pushed to the floor and kicked in the face and ribs. The masked man then grabbed her screaming 2-year-old daughter and bolted for the door. Rodriguez quickly retrieved a shotgun she kept in her bedroom and followed. Upon seeing the gun, the man dropped the child and fled. He escaped with Rodriguez’s purse and some jewelry, but Rodriguez and her daughter sustained no serious injuries. (KSEE 24 NEWS, Fresno County, CA, 8/28/12
Martha Lewis was at home with her two daughters when she heard a loud noise. It was 3 a.m., so Lewis immediately called police and grabbed her gun. She went to her daughters’ room and told them each to get something with which to defend themselves. They were at the top of the stairs when a man, who had kicked in the door and entered the home, spotted them. When the man started up the stairs toward them, Lewis warned the intruder that she would shoot him. When he ignored her warnings, Lewis fired causing him to stumble outside where police found him. The 25-year-old male was hospitalized in stable condition. After the incident, Lewis said, “There’s so much talk about banning guns and gun control, but they’re for protection. There’s no way that I could have fought him off.” (The Blaze, Dora, AL, 8/17/12
Actually you did.
Now, accepting your statement all I did was post the factual debate of the Bill of Rights as a link
and I quoted the proposed Amendment as presented by the State of New York which clearly shows what the intent was before it was shortened down to “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” in the final approved draft. Again, “That the People have a right to keep and bear Arms; that a well regulated Militia, including the body of the People capable of bearing Arms, is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free State; that the Militia should not be subject to Martial Law, except in time of War Rebellion or Insurrection. That standing Armies in time of Peace are dangerous to Liberty, and ought not to be kept up, except in Cases of necessity; and that at all times, the Military should be under strict Subordination to the Civil Power.” Standing federal armies are bad. The people of the States should be in well-regulated militias, and they should be called up in time of need.
Art, I’m all for all members of a well-regulated State militia having arms. I fully support the intent of the founders. I am also for the elimination of all standing federal armies.But you didn’t want to have this debate (possibly because the facts don’t support the rather bad political decision from the SCOTUS).
False equivalencies Art.
My child bringing a bottle of rum from my liquor cabinet to school isn’t going to potentially kill a bunch of kids and teachers.
When I was 12 and being taught to fire a weapon (.22 long rifle) from my NRA instructors, one of them who was also teaching us fencing said something that was true then and is still true today. “With a blade you have to learn how to use it, but any idiot can point a barrel at a target and pull the trigger.” As my examples show, what he said 40+ years ago still hold true today.