Imagine, if you will, that Pacific Mayor Cy Sun decided to prevent today's scheduled march to call for his recall. Imagine that He called in support from several small jurisdictions affiliated with Pacific, and their police officers arrived and formed a staging area in the parking lot of the retirement home on Third Avenue, opposite the police station, frightening the elderly. Imagine that he only backed down when the American Civil Liberties Union advised the city's attorney that he was violating federal criminal law. Later, the protesters are allowed to speak to the city council, but first they must run a gamut of metal detectors and police officers before they can enter the council chambers — as if that's going to protect someone from harming a city official somewhere else in the tiny city of Pacific. Imagine that the city's legislative branch allows the executive to dictate how the public may approach the council.
Nuts, isn't it?
But that's almost precisely what happened a few years back when the Latino community, tired of the racial profiling by the Pacific Police Department, tried to stage a march to protest the abuse.
Pastor Mark Gause of New Hope Lutheran Church tried to facilitate an orderly event by first asking for a marching permit from city hall. No such permit was needed, he was told. Then, approaching the weekend before the march, it turns out that a permit was indeed needed, and the person issuing the permit was none other than Public Safety Director John Calkins (who was assuming the role of police chief, which he wasn't), and that Mr. Calkins conveniently was taking time off and could not be reached until late in the day of the scheduled march. However, according to Pastor Gause, after Lieutenant Massey delivered the message that the marchers would be arrested, the unavailable Mr. Calkins telephoned Pastor Gause to make sure he "got the message." Mr. Calkins called in the calvary from other cities and the forces to arrest began marshalling. Destroying any opportunity to pretend the threat never took place, Mayor Richard Hildreth brilliantly sent out a press release saying the march wouldn't be allowed, thereby thoroughly throwing his arms around his own tar baby.
And then the ACLU contacted the city's attorney and Mr. Calkins and Mr. Hildreth did one of the swiftest and smoothest moon walks on record, backing up and shutting up at light speed. But a few months later, when another march was planned for the Latinos to complain about the city's expropriation of THEIR celebration of Cinco de Mayo (it relates to a great battle in Mexico), the threats again emerged. And this time there was a counter demonstration — a group gathered in city park with American Flags waving, apparently to demonstrate America's right to expropriate a Mexican celebration. Lieutenant Massey crashed the party, uninvited, on private land with his citation book, and began asking for the name of the person in charge. When that didn't work and the Latinos decided to cross the street to explain to the counter demonstrators why they were upset, Mr. Massey got on his cell phone, and the flag wavers abruptly drove off, making any dialog impossible. I was there. I saw this.
Even if he could, Cy Sun isn't going to prevent his opponents from marching. Aside from the fact that he doesn't have the resources to arrest or intimidate anyone, he doesn't need to. Unless he can be removed by being charged with a crime, there doesn't seem to be any way of getting him out of the catbird seat in time to keep the insurance carriers from cancelling the city's coverage. Cancelling the coverage is the same as stepping on the oxygen tube of an intensive care patient. March and shout all you want to, but the longer this goes on, the more it's going to cost the insurers. Already the former city clerk has reportedly filed a $2.2 million claim against the city. As I've said somewhat privately, if I were Canfield and Associates, I would have cut the city off yesterday.
The last time the city lost its insurance, according to the recall Web site, claims against the insurer had been 120 percent of premiums. (This seems to be the figure posted in the recall blog page. Sorry, it's hard to read.) I think this time the bite is going to be a lot bigger.
And since we're on that subject, the person who lost that insurance was none other than Howard Erickson, the city's former mayor and the individual who was almost front-and-center in the confrontation between Mayor Sun and the Pacific Police who were sent to protect public documents. Protecting public documents has never been a big concern of Mr. Erickson. In 2001, before Proposition 1 was put on the ballot to change Pacific to a Council-Manager form of government, Mr. Erickson kept "losing" the authorizing documents until Karen McIver, council president, took them to King County and filed them herself. When the election was finally held, King County took over the city's voting booths, an obvious move to prevent further interference with the election.
It should be noted that Mr. Calkins would never have been around to attempt to suppress a civil rights march if Mr. Erickson hadn't appointed him after he became mayor in 2000.
Mr. Erickson and his past political associate, Ken Scroggins, have willingly placed themselves before television cameras and become part of a notorious side show that had folks well beyond the Puget Sound area paying attention. By so doing they have willingly generated great curiosity over who they are and what role they have played. No one held a gun to their heads and forced them into the city hall publicity stunt. They have sacrificed any claim to privacy they could have hoped for. And as public figures, they deserve the closest of scrutiny. They need to answer for what their role has been in this latest Mad Hatter Tea Party, and if they are the ones who have persuaded Mr. Sun to engage in his insane behavior, they need to be held to account by their neighbors, their friends, and the entire community for the anarchy that has resulted.
Howard Erickson, Ken Scroggins: Stand and deliver.
Nuts, isn't it?
But that's almost precisely what happened a few years back when the Latino community, tired of the racial profiling by the Pacific Police Department, tried to stage a march to protest the abuse.
Pastor Mark Gause of New Hope Lutheran Church tried to facilitate an orderly event by first asking for a marching permit from city hall. No such permit was needed, he was told. Then, approaching the weekend before the march, it turns out that a permit was indeed needed, and the person issuing the permit was none other than Public Safety Director John Calkins (who was assuming the role of police chief, which he wasn't), and that Mr. Calkins conveniently was taking time off and could not be reached until late in the day of the scheduled march. However, according to Pastor Gause, after Lieutenant Massey delivered the message that the marchers would be arrested, the unavailable Mr. Calkins telephoned Pastor Gause to make sure he "got the message." Mr. Calkins called in the calvary from other cities and the forces to arrest began marshalling. Destroying any opportunity to pretend the threat never took place, Mayor Richard Hildreth brilliantly sent out a press release saying the march wouldn't be allowed, thereby thoroughly throwing his arms around his own tar baby.
And then the ACLU contacted the city's attorney and Mr. Calkins and Mr. Hildreth did one of the swiftest and smoothest moon walks on record, backing up and shutting up at light speed. But a few months later, when another march was planned for the Latinos to complain about the city's expropriation of THEIR celebration of Cinco de Mayo (it relates to a great battle in Mexico), the threats again emerged. And this time there was a counter demonstration — a group gathered in city park with American Flags waving, apparently to demonstrate America's right to expropriate a Mexican celebration. Lieutenant Massey crashed the party, uninvited, on private land with his citation book, and began asking for the name of the person in charge. When that didn't work and the Latinos decided to cross the street to explain to the counter demonstrators why they were upset, Mr. Massey got on his cell phone, and the flag wavers abruptly drove off, making any dialog impossible. I was there. I saw this.
Even if he could, Cy Sun isn't going to prevent his opponents from marching. Aside from the fact that he doesn't have the resources to arrest or intimidate anyone, he doesn't need to. Unless he can be removed by being charged with a crime, there doesn't seem to be any way of getting him out of the catbird seat in time to keep the insurance carriers from cancelling the city's coverage. Cancelling the coverage is the same as stepping on the oxygen tube of an intensive care patient. March and shout all you want to, but the longer this goes on, the more it's going to cost the insurers. Already the former city clerk has reportedly filed a $2.2 million claim against the city. As I've said somewhat privately, if I were Canfield and Associates, I would have cut the city off yesterday.
The last time the city lost its insurance, according to the recall Web site, claims against the insurer had been 120 percent of premiums. (This seems to be the figure posted in the recall blog page. Sorry, it's hard to read.) I think this time the bite is going to be a lot bigger.
And since we're on that subject, the person who lost that insurance was none other than Howard Erickson, the city's former mayor and the individual who was almost front-and-center in the confrontation between Mayor Sun and the Pacific Police who were sent to protect public documents. Protecting public documents has never been a big concern of Mr. Erickson. In 2001, before Proposition 1 was put on the ballot to change Pacific to a Council-Manager form of government, Mr. Erickson kept "losing" the authorizing documents until Karen McIver, council president, took them to King County and filed them herself. When the election was finally held, King County took over the city's voting booths, an obvious move to prevent further interference with the election.
It should be noted that Mr. Calkins would never have been around to attempt to suppress a civil rights march if Mr. Erickson hadn't appointed him after he became mayor in 2000.
Mr. Erickson and his past political associate, Ken Scroggins, have willingly placed themselves before television cameras and become part of a notorious side show that had folks well beyond the Puget Sound area paying attention. By so doing they have willingly generated great curiosity over who they are and what role they have played. No one held a gun to their heads and forced them into the city hall publicity stunt. They have sacrificed any claim to privacy they could have hoped for. And as public figures, they deserve the closest of scrutiny. They need to answer for what their role has been in this latest Mad Hatter Tea Party, and if they are the ones who have persuaded Mr. Sun to engage in his insane behavior, they need to be held to account by their neighbors, their friends, and the entire community for the anarchy that has resulted.
Howard Erickson, Ken Scroggins: Stand and deliver.
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