The federal report about San Diego police misconduct is here, and it said the city did a poor job of policing the police. The mayor and police chief say they’ll implement all of the recommendations in the report, some of which are already in place.
The report points to “gaps in policies and practices, a lack of consistent supervision at many levels and a failure to hold personnel accountable that allowed misconduct to occur and go undetected for some time.”
The U-T has more details, noting that “another change in effect is that recruits are asked 24 new questions about past sexual history, an area expanded upon in response to the rash of sexual misconduct cases.”
• The relationship between the police and community is the subject of a special Rise San Diego breakfast Friday. Our Scott Lewis is moderating the panel that includes Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman.
Police staff have tinkered with the SDPD’s Wikipedia page to scrub it of references to certain misconduct cases. (U-T)
Teacher Labor Dispute Worsens
San Diego teachers have declared an “impasse” in their negotiations with the school district, an official move that will lead to outside mediation and puts teachers one step closer to a strike. The teachers, KPBS reports, are fighting for more pay and smaller classes.
• A county treasury official is miffed at a Poway school district planning official, accusing her of unprofessional and rude conduct in a discussion that apparently was about district borrowing schemes. (Pomerado News)
Podcast Special: The Land-Use Consultant
Marcela Escobar-Eck, a high-profile local lands consultant, has worked on several controversial projects in recent years, including NTC Liberty Station, the Sunroad tower (the one that spawned a giant political mess) and the just-approved One Paseo. Scott Lewis sat down with her on a special-edition VOSD podcast, where she defends One Paseo: “Contrary to what has been said by certain folks, this is not dumb growth, it is smart growth. And ‘smart growth’ is an overused term, but it’s responsible growth.”
Culture Report: Operas Multiply
VOSD’s weekly Culture Report checks out the San Diego Opera’s new schedule, isn’t too impressed by the same ol’, same ol’ and takes note of good news on the variety front: We have not one but two new opera companies in town.
Also in the Culture Report: news about a Nixonian opera, “an abstract critique of real estate advertisements” in La Jolla (will it be picketed?) and good news from the San Diego Latino Film Festival. (KPBS)
A Lost Town and a Sea Change
Cool map alert! Slate has posted a 1909 Bell Telephone Companies map of North American telephone lines. You can zoom into Southern California and spot the local lines from San Diego to Escondido, Oceanside, El Cajon, Vista and a few remote places you might not expect: Dulzura, Cuyamaca, Warner Springs, Mesa Grande, and the Lakeside-area “Foster,” a “lost town of San Diego history” devoted to quarries. The giant flood of 1916 killed the town.
There’s a big something that’s missing in the map: the Salton Sea. It actually existed in 1909, born a few years earlier when flooding from the Colorado River broke through irrigation lines. “For the next 18 months the entire volume of the Colorado River rushed downward into the Salton Trough,” the states park and recreation department says. Now, there’s talk about saving the inland sea as it dries up because of the risk that contaminated sands will spread across the land.
“In a 2012 event sometimes called ‘the big burp,’ many Los Angeles County residents got a surprising whiff of Salton Sea air, scented by a massive fish die-off,” the L.A. Times warned in an editorial this week. “If the pungent aroma can reach Santa Clarita, could not the lake bed dust as well?”
• State water officials have voted “to impose a new round of water conservation rules, including sharp restrictions on landscape watering and orders to restaurants not to serve water to customers unless asked,” the NY Times reports. Mild water restrictions are already in place locally.
Quick News Hits: Hon.? C’Mon!
• KPBS talks to the rapper “Tiny Doo” and co-defendant Aaron Harvey, who this week won their bid against an unusual and controversial guilt-by-association prosecution alleging they were part of a gang conspiracy.
By the way, yesterday’s Morning Report inaccurately described the charges in a wider group of gang conspiracy cases connected to shootings. There were no arrests in most of the shootings; I misread the U-T story about this detail. The district attorney’s office says “of the 33 individuals charged as part of two criminal cases, 12 have pleaded guilty to various charges, including attempted murder, robbery, possession of firearms and conspiracies to do shootings and assaults.”
• An audit finds signs of travel-expense abuse among officials at San Diego State, with some nightly hotel tabs reaching $279 without approval instead of the usual limit of $175. Officials sometimes paid for upgraded airline seats without explaining why they’re needed.
• Former one-term Councilman Carl DeMaio, who lost high-profile races for mayor and Congress, is asking supporters to give money to a county supervisor candidate in Orange County. He signs off his email with what U-T columnist Logan Jenkins calls “a bit of self-puffery”: “Hon. Carl DeMaio.”
In a word: Wrong! An etiquette guru says “The Honorable is not used by the person him or herself.” Jenkins goes on to critique the “frippery” of pretentious lawyers (“Esq.”) and pretentious Ph.D. types (“Dr.”).
For the record, I am properly known by my name followed by “VBVI.” That stands for “Very Busy, Very Important.” Please make a note of it.
Randy Dotinga is a freelance contributor to Voice of San Diego and president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Please contact him directly at randydotinga@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/rdotinga.