The Burlingame Voice

Watching the new sheriff in town--or trying to

The editor at the Daily Post, Dave Price, has taken a good amount of interest in local police departments and county sheriffs' departments over time.  He's covered the move to encrypted police radios, the general crime beat and whatever else pops up including sheriff elections and the funding for said.  Since we just elected a new San Mateo County sheriff, Cristina Corpus, Price is still on the beat.  He's also apparently a cartoonist--who knew?  Next to his column this week was this cartoon.

The adjacent editorial didn't mention anything about the sheriff's department, so this looks more like an early warning signal.  One thing is for sure; once Dave Price grasps a thread he doesn't let go easily.

PSA: Elder abuse in the County

As a favor to a long-time reader who requested such a post in order to gather ideas on what to do, I'll drift into a new area-- elder abuse, especially financial abuse.  I am also aware of a case years ago that was never pursued by law enforcement even though there was ample evidence, in my opinion.  The long-time reader writes (edited down a bit):

My parents have and are still experiencing Elder Abuse by their Caretakers. As of today, $300,000 and "counting." I have been in contact with APS, DA, Police, and much more. Jackie Speier's office at least inquired.  My Father will (probably die) of skin cancer within two weeks.  My mother is on 24/7 oxygen and has severe mental as well as other "end of life" medical problems.  Did I mention one of their caretakers made a Full Confession to the San Bruno Police- Case # SNB 2201541.  No arrests. This started 6 months ago.

Again, this is coming from a long-time reader and I have not verified any of it, but if anyone has any ideas, I am sure they would be welcome.  The last census showed 17.5% of the population in San Mateo County is over 65 and the median age has been rising just like the rest of the country.

Bad parking in broad daylight

Let's kick-off our 19th year with an old favorite topic here at the Burlingame Voice--the crazy, illegal parking maneuvers people do all over town  There are plenty of examples like here, here and here.  Today's gem was right on Howard Ave. in front of the bank across from Park & Howard.  Facing the wrong way against traffic and parallel parked across a diagonal parking space with no money in the meter.  The good news was a Parking Enforcement Officer was on the scene as I walked by.  How many tickets is that?

EssEff: London is Calling BS

This Examiner front page is just too good not to post.  You would be forgiven if your immediate reaction is "What took you so long?"  We have to keep an eye on SF since "when they sneeze, we get a cold" from the derivative impact.  You may have seen a bit of that in town and I don't just mean the Apple store smash and grabs.  We are far from a crime-free city and I will be updating the B'game statistics for this year when they come available.  In the meantime, Ms. Breed seems to have gotten that Old Time Religion and the Gavinor sounds like he thinks the California rep for crime might hinder his presidential aspirations.

Gov. Gavin Newsom confronted the national media furor over mass retail theft in California on Friday, unveiling a more than $300 million proposal to help law enforcement fight organized criminal rings.  The Democratic governor said his plan will include $255 million for a grant program to give police more tools to arrest and investigate thieves who participate in such smash-and-grab crimes, increasingly brazen heists that have drawn widespread attention in recent months.

Again, you would be forgiven if your immediate reaction is "What took you so long?" followed by "Wait, shouldn't these priorities already be in the $1.8 billion budget?"  Here in B'game, we spent a lot of time on policing last year (remember the big Townhall that showed nothing?)  No matter, if Gavin wants to pass out money, we should stick out our hand.  The net effect of the Defund the Police movement is to increase police funding.....the Law of Unintended Consequences will not be denied.

A Watchful Eye....Put Down the Phone!

One of the unexpected consequences of the Covid lockdown is that some people have forgotten how to drive properly.  I've had at least four conversations in the last few weeks with people commenting on unsafe lane changes, running red lights, blocking the box and the bane of everyone's safety--- texting or talking without a headset or hands-free speaker.  As a regular pedestrian around downtown and Broadway, I see it all the time.  I don't have the numbers, but the crosswalk in front of Walgreen's on B'way can feel like a game of chicken when the light at California is green.  So this was a welcome sight on California just north of B'way.

Election 2022: County Sheriff

The election for county sheriff is about ten months away (next June 7), so the chatter among the chattering class has started.  Mark Simon at the Daily Journal did a full column on the potential of the race a week ago.  His focus was money and race as seen in these couple of snips:

Even before his 2016 appointment by the Board of Supervisors to replace Greg Munks, who resigned in midterm for health reasons, Bolanos had begun raising money for the 2018 election, when he would appear on the ballot for the first time. He raised more than $100,000 in the first half of 2016. By the end of 2017, his campaign fund had more than $250,000 in cash on hand. In the months leading up to the June 2018 election, he raised another $135,000 and entered the last month of the campaign with more than $225,000 in cash on hand. He spent $212,000 for his election.  He did little fundraising in 2020. But at the start of this year, as the next election neared, he raised more than $150,000. At midyear, he had more than $260,000 in his campaign treasury.

There may be some pride in the Latino community that the county’s top law enforcement official is also Latino, but Bolanos has carefully cultivated an image as serving the entirety of the county’s population. He is credited with effective work in the heavily Latino community of North Fair Oaks, but he is not prominently associated with that community.

That column prompted a letter to the DJ from B'game planning commissioner Ray Larios attempting to "clarify things" including asserting that fundraising equals "desperation" and

Mr. Bolanos indeed has raised a large sum of money. However, Mr. Simon omits that most of his campaign funding comes from private interests, retired judges and consultants who reside outside of our county lines.

I'm not going to bother to pull Bolanos' campaign financial filings for three reasons.  First, even if factual, none of those sources of donations give me cause for concern.  Second, building a war chest for a county race is hardly surprising--we are 766,000 people.  Without some context of say a typical county supervisor's fundraising, spending $200K on a countywide race isn't out of line.  Lastly, if any of the challengers could raise that much cash I am sure they would do it in a heartbeat.  Larios finishes his letter with some serious bloviating 

I leave readers with something to consider. Here is a woman who has risen through the ranks as an exceptional officer, commander and community leader in what has been traditionally a male-dominated career. Chief Corpus works twice as hard as her male counterparts and is not concerned about politics.

Christina Corpus is chief-in-title of the "Police Bureau" in Millbrae because Millbrae was too broke to afford its own police department and had to outsource it to the Sheriff's Department years ago.  Bolanos is the one who has been promoting her.  One wonders how a guy who lives in a different town (ours!) would know who is working twice as hard as everyone else?  It's so ridiculous on its face that it begs the question of whether someone with such poor judgement should be in a position of responsibility on the Burlingame Planning Commission?  With advocates like Larios, Corpus is going to need more than a chunk of cash, her gender and her ethnicity to win in San Mateo County.

At least we have ten months to assess the real issues of how the Sheriff's Department has been performing and what every candidate believes should happen in the future.  Can't happen fast enough.

Put Down the Phone and Drive

Here is a small but gratifying snippet of news that was in yesterday's Daily Post.  You probably didn't see it because there are only about four newspaper boxes in town that have the Post regularly.  I get it in San Mateo.

Kudos to BPD for making the local streets safer.  I see this violation all the time when I am walking around town, so let's do it again real soon.  Ten instances is a drop in the bucket.

Update:  I got some further insight from BPD on this effort. 

The distracted driving enforcement is part of a grant B'game gets from the State’s Office of Traffic Safety.  The grant funds fifteen 4-hour enforcement details throughout the year (with 2 officers per detail).  They are broken down as follows:

• 2 bicycle/pedestrian safety details
• 6 distracted driving details
• 7 details at high accident areas in town

The grant also funds 2 DUI checkpoints, 4 larger collaborative traffic enforcement details and some officer training.  The grant year runs from October 2020 thru September 2021.  We have completed 6 of the details so far and still have 9 to go.  BPD tries to do them about once a month, so there are more to come.

Hating...Well, Just Disliking Propaganda

You have to wonder who comes up with some of the stuff in city government and who especially approves it to go out in the city e-newsletter?  I hate dislike propaganda of all kinds.  Propagandizing about "hate" is just another form of propaganda.  So this week's e-newsletter brings us

As the dangers of hate, racism, and bigotry grow more apparent every day, the need for local action to counter hate is urgent. Our City Council and Burlingame's United Against Hate (UAH) Committee invite you to join us for a week of civic action to stop hate and build inclusion.

Do we have an urgent need to address hate in town?  I must have missed that somehow.  I can only recall a couple--and I mean two--instances of hate in town. Both at BHS in the form of hateful graffiti and both committed by misguided teenagers.  One was dealt with efficiently by the police and I'm not sure where the other one stands.  Is hate "growing more apparent every day in town"?  I doubt it.  It's not a category in the daily crimegraphics report, but maybe it should be.

This seems eerily reminiscent of the police use-of-force hubbub we had that led to a townhall in July.  We learned that we didn't have anything close to a use-of-force problem in town.  Let's be thankful for that.  We were told there was a public outcry about it and we need to DO SOMETHING.  Here's what I did.  I submitted a Public Records Act request for city communications related to several aspects of police use-of-force, training, etc.  So far I have gotten back hundreds, maybe more than a thousand, electronic communications with city officials mostly around the weeks of the townhall.

Here is what I found.  As I worked through the “real” emails from people in Burlingame, I found 65 -- after attempting to account for reply-all’s etc.  Of those, 43 made some attempt to write something original or at least customize something from the e-mail mills that are active around the country.  Even more insightful was that 24 of the 43 showed unequivocal support for our police or concerns about looting!  There were dozens of cut-and-paste emails from Fremont, Berkeley, Santa Rosa and as far away as the East Coast; many suggesting we do what we have already done.

Do 19 residents expressing a general, but uninformed concern about police use-of-force justify all of the staff and police time and effort that went into that string of events?  Maybe, but in the end it was a non-event.  Will the movement against hate be the same or just more propaganda?

BPD Use of Force Townhall: A Summary

Last night's Zoom Townhall on the Police Department's "Use of Force" policies, its track record and its responses to residents' concerns was somewhat enlightening.  But not in the way you might have expected.  If you were expecting to learn that this is an actual problem in B'game and that major changes are needed, you were disappointed.  It's not and they aren't.  But if you wanted to see how much some people need to learn about how the City is organized, how it operates, or how it interoperates with the County and other entities then this was the place to be.

First, what has been the extent of Use of Force in B'game?  Chief Mike Matteucci saved the statistics until near the end.  I was writing as fast as I could but missed a couple of numbers that I will add when the recording becomes available.  From 2016 to present there have been 2,643 arrests in B'game.  I missed the 2019 figure for uses of force, but all the other years totaled 35 and I believe all but 3 were "empty handed" use of force.  Tasers accounted for 3 in five years, if I heard right.  Hospitalizations totaled....zero, except for a few officers.  After the Chief noted that BPD policy doesn't allow choke holds and now "carotid holds" are newly off the table, the elephant in the room is how exactly empty-hand force will work?  Only my first two questions in the post below were addressed, but I am really anxious to get the answer to the fourth question.  I wrestled in high school and a bit in college.  I know what a challenge it is to just get a guy down on a mat who weighs exactly the same as me; with both of us wearing tights and a referee to prevent eye-gouging, head slaps, etc.  It ain't easy.

The Q&A took up about an hour of the 90 minutes.  Attendees were informed that the City doesn't have mental health professionals (it's a County function and BPD works with them if they have advance notice), the Taser policy is one-time-only except in rare cases where a second might be needed, and MOST IMPORTANTLY that there is NO SUCH THING as routine call or routine stop.  City manager Lisa Goldman's shining moment in an overall excellent performance last night was when she pushed back completely on the idea of some officers going unarmed.  Thinly-veiled, leading questions about the use of a private company (Lexipol) for legal updates, officer "impunity" (it's qualified immunity), and the police unions were deftly handled by the Chief and the City attorney Kathleen Kane. 

There was more on the education front and I'll link to the recording when it comes out.  This webinar was billed as the first step with more to come, but I really don't see why we should bother.  Maybe provide written or video'ed answers to the rest of questions in the hopper and let staff get back to work.  I took this photo during the Avenue shut-down for potential rioting and I like its nuanced message.

BPD Use of Force Townhall Questions

Next week the City and the B'game Police Department will be holding a Zoom Townhall meeting on the "use of force" and will be responding to questions from the public.  While it's tempting to question if this topic should be our first priority for BPD community outreach, I decided to go ahead and submit my questions.  Here they are:

• What are BPD’s responsibilities for mutual aid to neighboring cities that “defund” their police when we are fully funding ours?  Have we notified those city councils of the potential for reduced aid?
• If the city allocated 10% more funding to BPD today, how would it utilize the funds?
• What evidence exists to support Councilman Brownrigg’s public assertion that “so many of our neighbors and friends and residents fear the police”? (Daily Journal, June 19, 2020)
• Please describe in detail what the City Council would like to see happen when:

    -A 6’2” 220 lb. male reacts physically to a 5’6” 145 lb. female BPD officer?

    -A driver with fully opaque windows refuses to lower all windows?

• What is the risk of senior, tenured officers taking early retirement or filing for disability due to the demonization of police nationally, in the Bay Area, and in Burlingame?
• How many slots will there be in the training program for new officers in the next three years?
• What are our current capabilities to repel a violent outbreak in Burlingame?  What Police PPE, vehicles, canine support, etc. is fully operational?
• In the event of a natural disaster or violent outbreak, how many hours or days will it take to have at least 80% of the entire police force in town and on duty?
• How many of Burlingame’s 23,000 adult residents have been issued active concealed permits (CCW) today?  What are the requirements for a Burlingame resident to obtain a concealed carry permit today?  Does the city offer training classes to provide the skills required to be granted a concealed carry permit?

The meeting is on July 23 at 6:30 pm and the City is requesting questions by 4 pm the day before at [email protected].  We'll see how many questions can be addressed in the 90 minutes allocated.  If you want to ask the council why they sold the Measure I sales tax as a new BPD funding source for two more uniformed officers if they were unhappy with the force, now would be a good time to do so.  The times they are a'changing especially for those with short memories.