Let me share a little about the town where I live and our police problem

"ImmoralMinority" (araimondo) 06/02/2020 at 22:49 • Filed to: None

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Our mayor elect is Jerry Dyer, our long time police chief. I live on a “county island,” a piece of land within city limits, surrounded on all sides by the city, but are u nincorporated urban pockets in county jurisdiction. This is a leftover byproduct of 1950s and 1960s urban planning fuckery .

I live in the pink area near the word “BULLARD” on this map. My neighbors a block over are in the city, I am in the county even though I live in the middle of fucking town. This is relevant because I don’t get to vote for mayor. And Jerry Dyer, to be blunt, is a cocksucker. This is a piece of what our PD has been under his control.

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This department is a horrorshow; I saw it up close and personal when I was a public defender. As Chief, Dyer had scandals fit for the movies.

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His Deputy Chief, Keith Foster, was convicted at trial in 2017 in federal court for drug trafficking marijuana and heroin. Chief Dyer said he had no idea, and people here just accepted it. To me, he had to have been either incompetent or complicit for this to happen right under his nose, but nobody really confronted him about that.

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His good friend, Lt. Jose Moralez, was found dead in front of Dyer’s house, a death that was ruled a suicide. The widow insisted her husband was murdered by Dyer, and there was a lot of noise about it. It went away. There were also allegations of sex with underage girls that dogged Dyer throughout his career.

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This is a guy who led a police department that had over 50 questionable shootings while he was Chief.  This is our next mayor, called upon to lead us through this.  I wish my county island was a real island.

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > ImmoralMinority 06/02/2020 at 23:00

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That’s no bueno. Also, I’m not familiar enough of CA law to know anything about it, but how have those islands not been annexed (even involuntarily) by the city?  Are you all running different utility systems than the city?  

Danimalk - Drives a Slow Car Fast > ImmoralMinority 06/02/2020 at 23:03

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Fuckin cops, man. Time to move?

I live in Illinois, so I am all too familiar with political fuckery. Every issue is buried under 5 more issues, and controlled by 10 fucker ists who are benefitting from those issues. It’s quite pessimistic, b ut it’s all so engrained here that there is no way any of that will change in my lifetime.

I have accepted that my only escape is literal escape from this city/state.

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > ImmoralMinority 06/02/2020 at 23:06

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Kevin Johnson was elected mayor of Sacramento while he was a known slum lord and frequenter of underage girls. Fucking sickening to me. These things were not even up for questions they were actual facts. The best thing that came out of it is that he fixed up some of his property’s   before the election and Dennis Rodman was hanging around town. I saw him in the flesh a few times and oh boy that dude has issues.

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 06/02/2020 at 23:12

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Actually yes a lot of these messed up zoning issues have separate water utilities at the minimum. Sewer is probably still city but could be via an agreement with the county. The greater Sacramento area has something like 10 separate water utilities and three or 4 sewer utilities. Power and gas comes from PG&E for most of the state.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > ImmoralMinority 06/02/2020 at 23:19

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Growing up in the South Bay you probably experienced the joy of El Segundo . For those unfamili ar with the area they have a h ighly xenophobic population (a friend of mine told me that the sign at the entry to the town once stated ‘no n-words’ back in the ‘60s), terrible location (LAX on one side, refinery on the other, a sewage treatment plant at one end and Hawthorne on the other... And no beaches despite being a few hundred yards from the ocean ), and a huge tax base with lots of large corporations being based there.

With that tax base comes a huge police department, way out of line for the size of the city, with a lot of bored cops. Bored cops that will detain and search you to a degree out of line with the alleged offense. If I could have avoided El Segundo I would have, but unfortun ate ly I couldn’t since I worked in the defense industry f or a couple of those large corporations that are based there. I always felt uncomfortable in that town, and tried to spend as little time there as possible, driving out to another city, any other city, for lunch whenever possible.

But Fresno in 2020? You’ve got a real piece of work there. All of a sudden El Segundo doesn’t seem so bad. It makes you wonder how much name recognition gets people elected regardless of their accomplishments, or lack thereof. Between state and federal officials, there seems to be a preponderance of idiots in jobs strictly because their name is out there , not that they have any clue WTF they’re doing. I was there for the Schwartzenegger years, and TBH they weren’t as bad as expected, at least as compared to the current shitshow(s)...

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > Highlander-Datsuns are Forever 06/02/2020 at 23:24

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I figured that might be a big part of it. As Las Cruces grows dealing with the various water and sewer (or lack of therefore) utilities in semi-rural outlying areas is a big part of what and when things get  annexed. Through it’s extra-territorial zoning authority the city has condemned and then incorporated a number of smaller water and sewer utilities into it’s system. I know a lot those actions are limited by the cost of later upgrading the often, um, creative little authorities infrastructure to the standards of the cities systems. Some of them have been done for shoddy or non-existant sewer authorities in areas with the potential to jeopardize water quality of city wells in the area.  

His Stigness > ImmoralMinority 06/02/2020 at 23:24

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Dumb question time: can you change your voter registration to the office so it’s within the city limits, or does it have to be an actual residence? 

Jim Spanfeller > ImmoralMinority 06/02/2020 at 23:26

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I wonder if this could partially explain why so many Californians are moving to Idaho... I’m sure Idaho is by no means perfect, but it seems a lot less crazy than that. 

jminer > ImmoralMinority 06/02/2020 at 23:28

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Local politics are almost always bad and usually controlled by a few people. That seems beyond the pale though to elect him. We have a similarly complicated jurisdictional setup here in the St Louis Area which leads to a ton of over- policing and just general shittiness.

There’s St Louis City which is a wholly distinct entity which oddly enough the police there until a couple years ago reported (in part) to the Missouri State Government as a holdover from the civil war as the confederate state government didn’t want a large armed force under the control of the union stronghold of St Louis.

Then there’s St Louis County, which St Louis City doesn’t reside in or share resources with. Inside of St Louis County ( which has a sizable police force) there are ~70 individual municipalities that have their own police force. Each one of these also generally operates their own Fire and EMS brigades . It is also worth mentioning that the county is heavily populated (for Missouri at 1 million residents ) but you can drive from one corner to the other in 45 minutes so it is not geographically large.

This general fuckery had a lot to do with the explosion that was Ferguson Missouri in 2014.

Only Vespas... > ImmoralMinority 06/02/2020 at 23:32

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H oly Moly! Now I don’t feel so bad in NYC. 8 pm curfew tonight. I was late...on the way home at  8:15 I was rolling up the vast sidewalk in front of City Hall on my Cannondale toward the financial district and a group of 50 18-20 yr old kids of all ethnicities were walking up Broadway look ing to fight [t he cops] chanting “ W e are in control.” Like it was T he Warriors or something.

fintail > Jim Spanfeller 06/02/2020 at 23:45

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As a resident of an area that experienced the invasion starting 30-35 years ago with little pause in it since - beware.  New arrivals eventually bring their problems with them, while not grasping the common denominator of it all.

Jim Spanfeller > fintail 06/02/2020 at 23:51

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sigh. Well, I’m still hoping for the best.

Nauraushaun > Only Vespas... 06/02/2020 at 23:54

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That’s closer to the warriors than I’m comfortable with lol

SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media > ImmoralMinority 06/02/2020 at 23:56

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I can’t say I’ve ever understood the structure of American policing despite a number of attempts by both Americans and Australian expats. It just seems unnecessarily complicated and highly politicised. Like...you have to vote to pick your sherrif or police chief?

Here, our police forces are State based and they are public servants just like those employed by any other government department. All positions are filled using a fixed procedural arrangement managed by the department and the process is largely out of the hands of government.

Mind you...it doesn’t prevent corruption or mismanagement though it seems to becoming far less likely due to the oversight of the Independent Commission Against Corruption...and certainly far less institutionalized!!

Back when I was a lad though...well, they didn’t call the classic ( and now 20 year old) miniseries ‘Blue Murder’ for nothing.

Svend > ImmoralMinority 06/03/2020 at 00:02

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Bloody hell. There was once calls for our then mayor to step down when he used the official car. He went to an official event but instead of going home, getting his own car to drive half way back to where he’d come from to get his wife from a function she was attending. He stopped on his way home, attended her function for an hour and then went home in the official car with his wife.

Ours doesn't even warranty a mention against the corruption, never mind murder, drug trafficking, etc... 

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > jminer 06/03/2020 at 00:32

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One of the things I think New Mexico really got right was preventing any new municipality from forming within five miles of any other. It has largely prevented such checkerboard development from occurring by generally forcing new development to be annexed by existing cities instead of incorporating as their own jurisdiction .

DipodomysDeserti > Highlander-Datsuns are Forever 06/03/2020 at 00:33

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I’d take Rodman over KJ any day. That dude was known as a creep in Phoenix.

jminer > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 06/03/2020 at 00:41

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That is very smart. Every few years a city will absorb a chunk of un incorporated county but it is mostly a mess. A lot of it is that St Louis is a pretty old city (founded when the French still owned Missouri) so there are a lot of complicated and convoluted reasons behind the mess, mostly a lack of urban planning and desire to fix it though. Some of it is just holdovers from the super racist part of the 20th century - one city was the jewish area of the county, one the irish, one the italian and so on.

There has been a push these last couple years to unite St Louis City and St Louis County and allow them to share resources and such but it got hampered by the County Co mm issioner (a vocal supporter of the merger)  being ousted by Federal corruption charges last year.

RPM esq. > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 06/03/2020 at 03:21

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Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > ImmoralMinority 06/03/2020 at 06:07

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Do you find yourself tripping over Colin a Farrell  all the time? Because it sounds like you’re basically living in the set  of True Detective.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media 06/03/2020 at 08:43

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Here our police forces are either municipal...or the RCMP. Towns can have their own forces if they have the budget (local to me, Bridgewater has its own Police Department while Lunenburg and Mahone Bay don’t) but everywhere else is the RCMP.

SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 06/03/2020 at 09:41

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If you had our setup then Nova Scotia would have it s own police force for the entire State...and the RCMP would only have the same functions as our Australian Federal Police...perhaps similar to the US FBI?

MrSnrub > ImmoralMinority 06/03/2020 at 11:04

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That is horrifying, but at this point  I’m not really surprised either. Which is sad

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media 06/03/2020 at 11:52

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I believe t he RCMP has their own like...head office in each province that reports to the Federal authority, so the provincial overview group in each province can somewhat do their own thing, and then there are deta chments around the provinces in various areas ( Bridgewater has a deta chment to cover the area outside of town there , Lunenburg has an attachment that covers it and Mahone Bay and surround areas, etc, as an example) that report to that Provincial head office type thing.