So much has been reported elsewhere already on the powder
keg that Anaheim has become. Two more
names added to a growing list of those killed in Officer Involved shootings. Protestors
in masks screaming into bullhorns. A demonstration gone terribly, terribly
wrong. Rioting and looting. Horrific images that seem to be of some other
place, some other people. Is this really Anaheim?
Other than finger pointing and blame, nobody is really
talking about the underlying cause of the spark that lit a fuse years in the
making. Mainstream Anaheim wants to blame the gang members and the ’hood rats
who enable their criminal activity. The violent gangs are certainly one of our
major issues, but can any of us really look Manny “Stomper” Diaz’ heartbroken
mother in the eye and tell her that her son had it coming to him? The disaster
facing Anaheim today is the outcome of many influences, including different
cultures, various political agendas, severe budget cuts, raw ambition, and exploitation
from special interests, mixed with extreme failure to communicate in even the
most basic sense.
This week I am reporting on that giant melting pot of
misery, and hopefully we can begin to lay some blame where it belongs (you will
be surprised-or maybe not), but, most of all, I hope to begin some discussion
that might create some positive and constructive solutions, in the hope that
never again will I turn on the evening news to see my favorite neighborhood
grocery clerk cleaning up shattered glass from rioters who rampaged within
walking distance of my home.
To that end, I have spent the last week quietly interviewing
people from a variety of backgrounds, each with a compelling story to tell that
illuminates our surroundings. What I found fascinating was how each of those
stories became a puzzle piece, and when they are all put together we hopefully
will have a better idea of the picture on the front of the jigsaw box. I
suspect it is not going to be an image we want to frame for the family room
wall.
The neighborhoods
where these fatalities take place scream disenfranchisement. It is easy to
understand their bitterness. Let’s face it, few Council candidates walk the
precincts of Ponderosa, Anna Drive, or Guinida Lane looking for votes, nor do
they spend much time there after they’ve been elected. Except, perhaps, to show
up for a neighborhood event long only enough for a photo op. (Arriving for a “work
day” in a blinding white skirt and gardening gloves is a dead giveaway. But I
digress.) The residents of these neighborhoods know who is, and who is not, really
there to help. These people are poor, but they are not stupid. A very, very few
have reacted with anger. Most are gathering strength for something more
constructive. Perhaps something like Anaheim used to be.
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Once upon a time, Anaheim benefitted from true
CommunityPolicing programs,bringing together local residents and business owners,
boots-on-the-ground police officers, Code Enforcement, and social services
agencies. Those cops had the time to get to know the people they were
protecting, and they got to know them as people. As a cop who knows his beat,
when that thug-who-needs-to-go-to-jail runs for the alley, you know where he’s
going, because you know his Mom, and his sister, and his next door neighbor.
You know that when you get to Momma’s apartment she is going to hand that kid
over to you, because she knows you are only taking her son to jail, not the
County morgue. Code Enforcement went after the slumlords to improve living
conditions, creating a sense of pride in areas that had long lived without it.
Social services helped residents with access to resources, including helping
the homeless with programs, rather than moving them on to someone else’s
neighborhood park. Locals stepped up and took responsibility for themselves,
knowing that someone with power and authority finally had their backs. It
worked.
That effort was successful because those who knew what was
needed worked together to create a plan, and that plan received the backing and
resources of City Council and, specifically, then-Mayor Tom Daly (yes,
occasionally even Democrats can be the good guys). For a time, government in
Anaheim did what government does best-provide the services as a collective
whole that allow individuals to provide for themselves. No nanny-state, just a
true partnership of taxpayers and the stewards of those tax dollars.
Then, under Mayor Curt Pringle’s reign, Community Policing
programs came to an end, at least in function. They still called it Community
Policing, but the opportunity for cops to get out of their cars and get to know
the key players face to face was lost to long shifts without partners or
back-up. Tensions rose as Police and residents became nameless faces separated
by the window of a cop car on a slow cruise down a street that none of them
wanted to be on anymore.
Code Enforcement was changed to “Community Preservation” in
an attempt to be more “freedom friendly.” In large part, that worked out to
just be slumlord friendly. Residents lost hope as their complaints of hot and
cold running cockroaches were ignored, then became bitter following the
retaliation from absentee owners acting with the complete knowledge that the
City Attorney would do nothing to them. Graffiti trucks routinely sat in the
City yard for lack of repair funds, although a replacement truck could be had
for the cost of, say, one
Rose Parade float (not that I am bitter). The message was loud and clear: business was the
priority at City Hall. Residents, at least those who did not contribute to
campaigns, would have to take a back seat.
I want to believe that the previous administration’s motives
were pure, at least in the beginning. Focus on building a tax base through
business development, the logic goes, and eventually we can bring that economic
resource into the community. The grand experiment in business-centric policy
failed.
Anaheim’s unemployment rate at the end of when Pringle’s term actually exceeded that of the
County as a whole.
The downward spiral had begun. The economy in the toilet,
neighborhoods in decline. A Police force so underfunded that cops were stressed
out and afraid of the streets they were sworn to protect, with the result that
the people began to fear the stressed-out cops. Quite a
legacy to be handed to a new City Council.
Anaheim is not lost. Dazed and hurt from a beating, but not
lost. Today, we tart up my neighborhood with the moniker of “Anaheim Colony
Historic District,” but the reality is that I live in the inner city. Unless
those brave souls who moved in here before me stood their ground in what had
become a war zone, I would never have brought my kids here. It was an effort
that made a real, long lasting difference, and thankfully “the Colony” was able
to hold onto many of those improvements despite the last decade of civic
leadership.
Mayor Tom Tait has looked to those success stories like “the
Colony”, as examples of how the City might be pulled back from the brink.
“HiNeighbor” has been ridiculed by some as a band-aid on a cancer patient, but it
is based on the success of the
Anaheim Colony neighborhood, and it is a
beginning. The Council as a whole has balanced the budget, managing somehow to
stop depleting the reserves while beefing up the APD budget to replace cops as
they retire. And an outside
investigation of previous APD incidents had been authorized prior to the latest
shootings, for which the State Attorney General and Federal investigators have
been called in. If we learn from our mistakes we can fix this. The images of
Tuesday’s riot are not indicative of who Anaheim is as a city. Instead, the
image of Anaheim is the
volunteers who showed up Wednesday morning, activated
by facebook and twitter, to quietly clean up someone else’s mess.
Anaheim did not get to this place overnight, and recent
events are not the result of any one situation. To say that everyone on either
side is all good or all bad is just too simplistic. While I hope that through
strong leadership and a sense of purpose Anaheim can recover our sense of place
faster than we lost it, I guarantee it will not happen until we all take the
time to work together, and that starts with putting our own political agendas aside
http://www.nojordanbrandman.com/blog/2012/7/29/jordan-brandmans-whisper-campaign-targets-mayor-tait.htmland listening to what others have to say.
While interviewing people this last week I heard things I
could never have guessed at, from some folks in and out of Anaheim I would not
ordinarily encounter. Some of what I heard made me cry, and quite a lot of
information led me to apologize, profusely, to people I had characterized as
evil. Some information just confirmed the evil I had long suspected in others.
I greatly appreciate Marlena Carrillo of Kelly’s Army
agreeing to speak to me, and set the record straight about events I had blamed
her Fullerton group for. I am awaiting video proof that shows both sides of the argument,
but I will be proactive and publicly apologize in advance.
My greatest apologies go to Mayor Tom Tait. I liked him,
even when he was running against my friend, Shirley McCracken. But my only
memory of his leadership on City Council was based on his last two years, as he
helped his friend, and newly elected Mayor, begin those “Freedom Friendly”
policies that became such a disaster for our neighborhoods. And when so many
people, with agendas that appear to be polar
opposites of Tait’s voting record and
stated philosophies, began pumping
hundreds of thousands of dollars into his
campaign, one has to question what they think they are buying. I feared that his platform of “Freedom and Kindness”
would apply only to well-heeled developers.
If all that campaign
money was intended to buy Anaheim’s special interests a Mayor, Tom Tait never
got the memo. He has rooted out special interest back-door deals and slammed
those doors
(and a few windows left open by previous leaders) firmly shut. I have never been so glad to be so wrong
about another human being in my life.
One can imagine that if this long-winded diatribe is my
introduction, the body of the series is likely to be involved. We are going to
break down the elements of how Anaheim got here, one by one, and make hamburger
out of a few sacred cows. Please stay with us for the series.
In the early hours of the morning, Anaheim Police and Federal agents descended upon a number of gang-controlled areas, including the neighborhood in Central Anaheim that has long been infested by the Eastside Gang. Yep, that would be the same Anna Drive / Acacia Street area that has been in the news lately. It seems the cops had very good reason to suspect that some men were into illegal activity and were worth questioning. That suspicion appears to have less to do with racial profiling, and everything to do with the fact that law enforcement has been watching the gang in that area for roughly a year! Those cops knew who was dealing drugs, who was dealing guns, who needed to be questioned, and frankly, who to fear might be carrying a gun. In fact, the OC Register reports that "Among the mugshots of suspects displayed at the news conference was one of Manuel Diaz. His death July 21 was the first of two back-to-back police shootings last month that touched off nights of protest." 
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