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Despite Plans to Turn a Dozen Rural Acres of Long Beach into Housing, City Says Nothing Is Guaranteed

A little over three years ago I discovered one of the Long Beach’s natural wonders hiding in plain sight in the middle of the 8th District: the 11.5 acres of rusticity that is the Will J. Reid Boy Scout Camp.

But that “is” may become a “was” in 2014, as last October the Boy Scouts of America sold the woodland wonderland to Integral Communities, a self-described “diversified real estate development compan[y].” And development is what’s on the company’s mind.

According to Ed Galigher, Integral Communities’ vice-president for acquisition and entities, the company is in the planning stages of developing the site into “residential, for-sale, single-family subdivision.”

Because the property is zoned “Institutional,” it will take a zoning change—something that can be effectuated only by a full vote of the Long Beach City Council—for Integral to get its way. Many residents are against such a change. But one of those who has the most insight into how things work in the City of Long Beach laments that the whole thing may be a done deal.

“The property is still zoned as ‘Institutional,'” says former 8th District Councilmember Rae Gabelich. “That means [Integral] were given the wink or the nod that [their plans] will go through and they will get [the necessary] zoning changes. […] I think it’s a terrible loss for North Long Beach, [in terms of] the recreational opportunities families had there. In lieu of what? For more housing? […] I think it’s a sad day for the community.”

However, Jeff Winklepleck, acting zoning administrator for the Planning Commission of Development Services, calls the current stage “very preliminary” and says that, although the City has indicated receptiveness toward Integral’s initial proposal, by no means is the matter a fait accompli.

“I would the [most] correct term is, ‘We’re not necessarily opposed to it,'” Winklepleck says. “Anybody can come and ask for anything they want, and we would still have to take them through the process. [… But] that is in no way an entitlement. That gets them feedback from the various departments, including Public Works, Building, Fire, Planning, [etc.], as to what sort of issues that they may be looking at. […] In general, [what Integral is proposing] is not out of character with something we would support. […] But at the same time, we always caveat it with, ‘Obviously you have a process you need to go through, [and] there will be public input, [along with] studies to verify what we need to verify regarding traffic and all the things that go along with that—and ultimately we may have a different recommendation. We don’t know.'”

Galigher says Integral representatives have met with neighboring residents “a couple of times” and heard their concerns.

“Obviously, the neighbors are concerned that [the land] is not going to be a Boy Scout camp anymore, [is not going to be] basically open space,” Galigher says. “But they realize that [the development] will increase [area] property values.”

Gabelich reports that during her eight years in office the City partly staved off the sale of the land by vowing not to allow for a zoning change, mostly because the area is inappropriate for a residential development.

“We were very clear with them that we were not going to approve of a zoning change,” she says. “They come back several times with, ‘Well, what if we did this? What if we did senior housing? What if we did housing for disabled people?’ So they hit the spots that would be close to my heart. But I said, ‘No. You’re not on a transportation corridor. It’s already a dense neighborhood that has issues now, so why would you build more [housing]? […] That was the only leverage we had: that we wouldn’t change the zoning.”

Winklepleck says that traffic is one of several studies that must be completed and reviewed before Development Services makes any recommendation, and that review of the necessary Environmental Impact Report (EIR) could take up to one year, though he guesstimates that the process to fully review what Integral is proposing will take nine months.

In the meantime, Integral has already completed some landscape work at the site, cutting the tops off of a number of trees. Galigher says the only work was to “old eucalyptus trees near power lines” at the perimeter of the property, some of which were diseased.

“They typically crack and break and fall,” Galigher says. “We don’t want any fires or any damage to the neighbors property and all that, so we just went out and trimmed a bunch of them.

Gabelich, however, is disbelieving of Integral’s claimed rationale for the work.

“I went down there, and I was devastated,” says Gabelich, who learned of the work from a neighbor and documented it through a number of photographs. “At first they said they were diseased. That [rationale for the work] is bullshit; it’s not true. ”

One 8th District resident who declines to comment on the situation is Gabelich’s successor, Councilmember Al Austin. Through his staff, Austin told Random Lengths News that he would rather not comment on the matter prior to the submission of Integral’s application. However, Winklepleck believes that Austin had at least some discussion with Integral prior to the company’s $6 million purchase of the property.

“I had heard there was some outreach from Integral to the council, [including] to Austin,” Winklepleck says.

Despite the City’s economic struggles in recent years, Gabelich believes that perhaps there would have been a way for the City to secure the property—or at least to force any sale to come with some preservationist concessions—were it not located in North Long Beach, an area she feels is often neglected by the City’s decision-makers.

“The City didn’t have the money to buy it. Not that there was ever a push for thing really to go in that direction,” she says. “But year after year we were in the red, so there was no conversation about buying any land. [Nonetheless], in my opinion, [the City] could have negotiated that a percentage of [the land] had to be reserved for recreation or that they had to do something to enhance…They could have done a number of things. [But] I think there could have been a much stronger push from the City Manager’s Office. They did not make that a priority. Not too many things in North Long Beach get made a priority downtown.”

Gabelich also feels that the City—including Austin’s office—could have done more to solicit community input prior to the sale.

“Whether [or not] Al knew enough to offer a community meeting or get input from the community at large, the City Manager’s Office certainly knows that,” she says. “Pat West, [who] worked in community development for all those years, he certainly knows that. [But] they dropped the ball.”

But Winklepleck notes that community members will have ample opportunity to make their opinions heard during the next several months, and that those voices will be among the factors that influence the ultimate recommendation Development Services makes to the city council.

“As we go forward, we will take into consideration all the different input that we have,” he says.

Still, Gabelich’s pessimism is almost palpable.

“We’ve lost another piece of Long Beach history,” she says. “[…] I think it’s sad when people aren’t looking at the big picture. When things get piecemealed together, that’s when you end up with blighted areas.”

According to Winklepleck, however, it is well within the realm of possibility that a year from now Integral could find itself an owner of a property that the company cannot develop as intended—and that there is recent precedent for such a scenario.

“That’s always a possibility, as our friends at 2nd+PCH can tell you,” Winklepleck says, referring to the ill-fated plans to develop a site at intersection of 2nd Street and Pacific Coast Highway. “Initially we let [the Integral] folks know that [the company’s proposed development] is something we might be able to support. […] But beyond that, there’s obviously no guarantees.”

March for Immigration Reform

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Jan. 11

A March for Comprehensive Immigration Reform is scheduled to start, at 10 a.m. Jan. 11, at OrizabaPark in Long Beach.

Marchers will walk along Anaheim Street and end their demonstration at MacArthurPark in Long Beach.

Venue: Orizaba Park

Location: 1435 Orizaba Ave., Long Beach

LBPD Releases Preliminary Crime Stats

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Long Beach Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell announced preliminary year-end statistics for 2013 during a news conference, Jan. 2, at the LBPD headquarters.

“We also maintain an exceptional four-and-a-half minute average response time to Priority 1 calls for service,” the chief said.

The preliminary data showed that 2013 had lowest violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in 41 years, with 2,340 incidents compared 2,705 in 2012 — a decrease of about 13.5 percent.

Property crimes also decreased about 8.5 percent compared to 2012. Property crimes include theft, burglaries, grand theft auto and arson. There was a decrease in bicycle thefts by 25.6 percent and petty theft that was more than $50, which is about 20 percent. An 18.4 percent decrease — 450 — is expected for auto burglaries. However, there is an expected increase in petty theft of under $50 (about 5.5 percent) and residential burglaries by 1 percent.

Rape decreased by about 11.3 percent; there were 102 rapes. Robbery decreased about 10 percent; there were about 1,114 robberies — and aggravated assault decreased about 17.4 percent, compared to the prior year.

Strangle and Fire Suspects Get Pretrial Hearing

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Adrian Berumen and Jose Angel Martinez, both 18, are scheduled for a pretrial hearing, Jan. 31 at the Los Angeles County Superior Court in Long Beach.

The hearing is related to the murder of a 42-year-old man in April in Rancho Palos Verdes. Berumen and Martinez are accused of strangling and setting Christopher Waters, who they had hired to do silkscreen t-shirts, on fire.

In December both men plead not guilty to the murder and answer. They are being held on more than $1 million in bail.
Both defendants are being held on more than $1 million bail and are looking at 15-to-life in prison.

On April 23, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a call regarding a fire at a basketball court in Rancho Palos Verdes. Officers found a body in the back of a car as they were extinguishing the fire. Waters was found bound. Officials say the cause of death was asphyxiation. Berumen turned himself in. Investigators found the victim’s dry blood in the garage at Berumen’s home — they believe he was killed in Berumen’s garage.

Officials said that Berumen and Martinez had a business relationship with Waters. They had hired him to provide silk-screen T-shirts before they killed him. Berumen also faces an attempted murder charge on an unrelated case, officials added.

Woman Found Dead in Wilmington Motel

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WILMINGTON — A 45-year-old woman was found dead, on New Year’s Eve, in a room at Oscar’s Motel in Wilmington.

The Los Angeles Coroner’s Office identified the woman as Alicia Espinoza of Long Beach. Though investigators have yet to establish a cause of death, they estimate that she died at about 12:20 p.m. Dec. 31.

Los Angeles Police Department officials said that they have an unidentified man, believed to have connections to the incident, was under guard at a hospital.

The case is being treated as a homicide.

Happy New Year to the Police; or, How I Show My Love

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“I’m crazy about the president, Josh. […] And I’ll keep poking him with a stick. That’s how I show my love.”
–Amy Gardner, inThe West Wing(“The Red Mass”)

It was just about midnight when I heard the tires of the Fullerton Police Department cruiser crunching gravel as it moved along the road that curves around the lake of Tri-City Park. I thought the driver might not spot me sitting there on an unlit bench, dressed in black, silent and still. But then came the spotlight, which in a moment shakily found me in its beam.

I turned and waved hello, fully expecting the next sound I heard to be the crackling of a loudspeaker and an authoritative voice ordering me to approach the car. Instead, the light went out, and the car continued on its way.

I wasn’t all that surprised. While bad acts and apples make the news when it comes to the cops, the vast majority of police encounters are both completely lawful and totally uneventful.

Nonetheless, I write about the police—questioningly and sometimes critically—seemingly more—a lot more—than anybody else in Long Beach. (Not that that’s saying much, since Long Beach media generally seems unwilling to do so.) You might think that means I have something against the police. But here’s a little secret: I love the police.

I’ll say it again: I love the police. I live only a couple of blocks away from the Long Beach Police Department’s West Division headquarters, and I like the proximity. Heck, if the LBPD wants to open up a little substation in my building, I’m all for it. No doubt the police are charged with enforcing some bogus laws, but most of what they do needs doing.

About a half-hour after my Thanksgiving encounter with the po-po, I was making my way around the lake when a cruiser—whether the same or another I don’t know—stopped nearby. The officer got out, and I made my way toward him. I took my hands out of my pockets (not only a nice thing to do for the officer, but advisable to help secure your own well-being, you know?), waved, said “Hi.”

With my strong libertarian leanings, I am quick to exercise my right not to speak with police when they have no business stopping me. I’ve even taken legal action when I felt the wrong was egregious enough. But in this case even if the officer didn’t have an out-and-out legal right to stop me—and if the park was closed (as I guessed it was), he certainly did—I didn’t have the slightest problem with his wanting to see what’s up.

The officer looked about 25 and was not exactly bubbling over with warmth, but there was nothing aggressive or unprofessional. He asked me what I was doing. “Out for a walk?” he correctly guessed. He asked if I lived around there: I didn’t, but my mother did. He told me the park was closed. “Oh. Okay,” I said. And that was that. He didn’t ask to see my ID, because my personal information was neither here nor there concerning our encounter. I was in the park after-hours, he let me know—c’est tout.

If you’ve followed local police stories in recent years, you know about the Kelly Thomas incident, and so you know that Fullerton is no more immune to questionable uses of force by police than Long Beach or anywhere else. But you can’t rightly judge an entire police force on the basis of a few dubious officers or actions, any more than you can write off excessive uses of force on the basis that most police officers don’t do that.

As a society, we cede a tremendous amount of power to the police. Aside from the military—which plays basically no role in day-to-day life within the confines of our borders—members of law enforcement are the only people to whom we give permission to use physical force against others. The charge we give police—to use force, but only when truly necessary to protect and serve society—is a sacred duty, worthy of requiring an oath. I recently saw video of a Los Angeles Police Academy graduation ceremony. One by one, these cadets-become officers are handed handguns. It’s a ceremonial act with heavy implications.

I hate the use of force and the weaponry that facilitates it, but I want the police to use force when necessary, equipped with handguns and rifles and tazers and billy clubs and whatever else they need to protect not only the rest of us but also themselves. I’d even like to see them get better funding and higher salaries in the process. That’s how much I love them.

But love, true love, is not blind approbation; it’s not about being a “yes” man. If it’s true that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and if it’s true that the police do not want to be a corrupt corpus, then any police force should welcome checks on its power. Clearly, one of those checks is an investigative, questioning press and robust, intellectually honest public discussion about what is happening within the Thin Blue Line. They shouldn’t look for stenography from the media. They should want the press to press them on police conduct. They should embrace transparency, since the best possible public relations for the police is close, skeptical scrutiny that reveals police engaging in perfectly proper procedures.

Based on my observation from a distance, as well as from my first-hand experience as a journalist in this town over the last several years, the LBPD does not seem to subscribe to this theory. But I love them anyway. And as with anyone I love, I want the LBPD to be better, always better, always healthier. That’s why I poke a stick at them so much: it’s how I show my love.

It’s not the only way, though. Years ago I felt wrongly detained by a couple of LBPD officers, and I called their sergeant to complain. After a series of discussions with him—wherein he personified the kind of openness and transparency I advocate—he told me that, although it didn’t seem to him that any misconduct had occurred, I was free to file a formal complaint; but that it sounded to him like my issue was not about misconduct (it wasn’t: they had been aggressive or even rude) as with their taking an overly broad interpretation of what is required to justly detain someone. He offered to speak with them personally about this. Satisfied, I let the matter drop.

Then there was the press conference announcing a number of gang arrest. During a prefabricated photo op showing confiscated weapons, etc., a detective unobtrusively pulled a jacket off the table. I had already taken a picture with the jacket—spread out so you could clearly see the name of the gang—in-frame. Not wanting to run a photo that might somehow compromise an ongoing operation, I asked the detective why he pulled the jacket. “No reason,” he lied to my face. It took a bit of self-control not to run the photo out of spite, but I asked another detective, who went with the truth: the jacket had been set out mistakenly, and yes, that was information they would not like made public at that time. I went with an alternate photo.

Recently, I was out on Pine Ave. hoping to shoot an appropriate pic for a piece I’d just finished about a police encounter I’d had there the week before (see above). I came upon the perfect shot: four LBPD officers leaning against a car, while across the street behind them a club was letting out. I asked them whether they would mind my taking their pic: they said they would. They weren’t saying I couldn’t—you can take a photo of anything in public, including cops on the job—and after a short, friendly conversation about why, and I ended up settling for a lesser shot. Because, hey, police are people, too, and like many of us, some aren’t crazy about having a camera shoved in their face. And since this wasn’t a question of newsworthiness or some other pressing public interest, I gave them a break.

Because the police have literally so much power over the rest of us, what they do deserves intense scrutiny—via words, photographs, video, what have you. It comes with the territory. Unfortunately, law enforcement doesn’t always like it that way. Sometimes that sentiment manifest in officers getting aggressive with bystanders filming them. Sometimes it simply comes down to departments being less responsive with anyone in the media who would dare question anything they do.

I love the police nonetheless, and I’ll keep loving them in my way, hoping that in the long run more and more of them will come to realize what many of them already do: scrutiny and debate are the friends of well-intended power.

So happy new year to police in Long Beach and everywhere! May whatever pokes you receive in 2014 be taken in the proper spirit (and may there always be less to poke about).

Love,
Greggory

cc:
LBPD Chief Jim McDonnell
LBPD Sgt. Aaron Eaton (Media Relations)
Etc.

Sail Aboard a Tall Ship

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Enjoy the sailing of a life time, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 2 to 5 p.m. Jan. 3, 7 and 11, 2014, in San Pedro.
Cost is $25.

Details: (310) 833-6055
Location: Berth 78, San Pedro

Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace & Unity Parade Volunteers Needed

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Sixth District Councilman Dee Andrews is calling for volunteers for the 26th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace and Unity Parade Celebration.

There are all types of fun activities that you can donate your time towards such as the 7th Annual Peace March, park celebration assistants, and parade monitors. Community service hours are offered to all volunteers and students are welcomed. You must 16 years old or older to volunteer.

Details: (562) 570-6816.

Teenager Falls Off Palos Verdes Estates Cliff

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A 19-year-old man is in serious condition after falling off a cliff, Dec. 27, in Palos Verdes Estates.

Official believe the young man, who was airlifted to a Harbor UCLA in Torrance, may have been attempting suicide. Palos Verdes Estates Police responded to the report of a car falling off the cliff at about 2 a.m., near the 1300 block of Paseo del Mar. The car was about 100 feet from the cliff, near its edge.

Brown Appoints Four to LA County Superior Court

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SACRAMENTO – On Dec. 27, Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. announced the appointment of Mark K. Hanasono, Daniel Juarez, Shelley L. Kaufman and Dorothy C. Kim to judgeships in the Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Hanasono, 39, of Los Angeles, has served as a deputy alternate public defender in the Los Angeles County Alternate Public Defender’s Office since 2004. He served as a deputy public defender in the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office from 2000 to 2004 and was a law clerk for the Honorable Stephanie Duncan-Peters at the District of Columbia Superior Court from 1999 to 2000. He earned a juris doctor degree from Georgetown University Law Center and a bachelor of arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley. He fills the vacancy created
by the retirement of Judge Stephanie Sautner. Hanasono is a Democrat.

Juarez, 47, of Rancho Palos Verdes, has served as an administrative law judge at the California Office of Administrative Hearings since
2005. He was associate managing attorney at Protection and Advocacy Inc. from 1995 to 2005 and a staff attorney at the Legal Aid
Foundation of Los Angeles from 1992 to 1995. Juarez earned a juris doctor degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and bachelor of arts degrees in political science and Spanish literature from the University of California, Irvine. He fills the
vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Joseph F. De Vanon Jr. Juarez is registered decline-to-state.