Pasadena’s urban forest threatened by tiny beetle
City, scientists search for elusive solution
By Justin Chapman, West Pasadena Residents’ Association Newsletter, Fall 2014
OIR lead attorney says final report on 2012 McDade shooting death coming this week
By Andre Coleman and Justin Chapman, Pasadena Weekly, 7/31/2014
Although the lead attorney of a police watchdog group told the Pasadena Weekly that a report examining Pasadena Police Department procedure’s in a 2012 shooting incident in which a 19-year-old unarmed man was shot and killed by officers would be finished this week, NAACP Pasadena Branch President Gary Moody held out little hope that the report would be released.
“This has taken about two months,” said Moody. “We have been hearing that the report would be ready in the next few weeks since May. The longer it takes the more bad news I expect to come out of it.”
The city asked the Office of Independent Review (OIR) to investigate the officer-involved shooting death of Kendrec McDade in 2012. McDade was shot and killed by Pasadena Police Officers Jeffrey Newlen and Matthew Griffin on Sunset Avenue in Northwest Pasadena after he and a 17-year-old friend stole a backpack from a car parked near a taco stand. The vehicle’s owner, Oscar Carrillo-Gonzales, made a 911 call after the theft and told police he had been robbed at gunpoint by two black men. Carrillo-Gonzales mentioned a gun eight times during the call, which city officials say led the officers to believe McDade was armed.
At the end of a pursuit, the officers said Kendrec turned and ran towards them, prompting them to open fire, shooting McDade eight times.
McDade’s parents settled two lawsuits with the city with his mother, Anya Slaughter, receiving $850,000, and his father, Kenneth McDade, receiving $187,500, according to the statement.
Officers Newlen and Griffin were cleared in the shooting by the LA County Sheriff’s Department, the District Attorney’s Office and by an internal investigation. In June, the department said that the FBI had determined that McDade’s rights had not been violated in the shooting. The OIR probe is the only remaining investigation in the matter.
Local advocates have been waiting for the release of the report since the shooting and have grown impatient over the past several months.
The OIR was created by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to monitor the Sheriff’s Department and provide legal advice to ensure that allegations of officer misconduct involving LASD and other departments are investigated thoroughly.
In the two previous officer-involved shootings investigated by the OIR, the group completed its report in about a year. Local officials have said that they have received several drafts from the OIR and queries for more information.
“We plan to turn it over in the next week or so,” said OIR Lead Attorney Michael Gennaco. “The city will examine it and you’re probably looking at a two to three week window before it is released.”
The pending report could be the last time the OIR and the city Police Department work together. Sanchez announced in March that he will go to the Sheriff’s Department for outside investigations of local officer-involved shootings, not the OIR.
“We look forward to seeing the report from the group and we will review their findings and recommendations with an open mind,” said Pasadena Police Chief Phillip Sanchez. “I have no idea what it will say. I would like to absorb it for what it is with an open mind. Although we strive for excellence we are not a perfect organization. We will direct our attention and resources towards any recommendations.”
But instead of waiting on those recommendations, several groups including the NAACP have already called for action. Those groups, including the ACLU Pasadena Foothills Chapter, have called on the city to start a civilian oversight committee to provide independent oversight on use-of-force complaints and hire an independent auditor to oversee the Police Department’s investigation of use-of-force incidents.
On July 22, more than 50 people attended a debate on civilian oversight of the Pasadena Police Department between District 6 Councilman Steve Madison and ACLU Attorney Peter Bibring at the Donald Wright Auditorium at the Pasadena Central Library.
Bibring argued that the city should hire an independent auditor to oversee the department, especially in cases involving the use of force, in order to restore the community’s trust of the department by installing independent accountability. Madison said the department did not need an auditor and said the added layer of review would only create more bureaucracy and countered that there was no systemic corruption in the department or a resistance to change by the department’s management. The debate was moderated by ACT co-chair and former Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, sponsored by ACT and cosponsored by Pasadena NAACP, All Saints Church, ACLU Pasadena/Foothills Chapter, the Pasadena Foothills Democratic Club, Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, Pasadena Latino Forum and Coalition for Increased Oversight of Pasadena Police.
Mayor Bill Bogaard, Pasadena City Council members Victor Gordo and Margaret McAustin, and former PUSD School Board member Esteban Lizardo attended the event. City Council members Jacque Robinson, chair of the council’s Public Safety Committee, and John Kennedy, the only advocate on the council of at least studying civilian oversight, did not attend.
The department’s use-of-force incidents during arrests have dropped by about 33 percent since 2012. Last year there were 35 such incidents during 6,630 arrests. That number is down from 52 and 53 use-of-force incidents in 2011 and 2012, respectively. The decline in the use of force during arrests resulted in 57 investigations against local police officers, down from 89 the year before.
Allegations made by members of the public against officers have included rudeness, refusal to take a crime report and false arrest.
Of those 57, 12 officers faced disciplinary action. Five of them were suspended. Five received verbal warnings and two were ordered to undergo training.
In 2012, Broghamer, Detective Keith Gomez and Officer Kevin Okamoto were cleared in eight separate investigations surrounding allegations that they beat up suspects, threatened witnesses and hid evidence. Earlier that year, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge declared a mistrial in a murder trial after admonishing Broghamer and Okamoto for hiding exculpatory evidence that would have helped defendants Jerrell Sanford and Michael Grigsby in a 2007 homicide.
Despite the decline use of force incidents, a handful of critics point to the conduct of several officers, including Detective William Broghamer who is currently being investigated for statements he made on tape. In those statements, Broghamer reportedly told a fellow officer to “Just pin it on anybody,” while discussing a homicide. Broghamer later told a courtroom he was joking when he made the statement. In another case, Broghamer told a suspect, “I’ll lie to fry your ass.”
“We want to make sure that everybody is treated fairly,” Moody told the Weekly. “In light of what we are hearing now, it concerns me that there are things in the OIR report they don’t want us to see.”
Bibring said that the issue comes down to trust, and made the case that many people in the community, especially those in Northwest Pasadena, do not trust the police. Madison said that the city council and the Public Safety Committee have adequate access and review of the department. Council members are elected by Pasadena residents, therefore the community can hold the department accountable, he said.
Essentially, Bibring argued that in order to restore the community’s trust in the police, the city needs to hire an independent auditor to oversee the department, and Madison argued that the existing levels of review are adequate.n
Reporter Justin Chapman contributed to this story.
What will the Crown City look like in 30 years?
By Justin Chapman, Pasadena Weekly, 7/17/2014
The year is 2044. The hoverboard of “Back to the Future” fame has finally been invented. The Internet is now directly connected to our brains. The Earth is 3 degrees Celsius warmer. The world’s population is 9 billion. And Bill Bogaard is still mayor of Pasadena.
Kidding aside, what will Pasadena be like 30 years from now? Looking back that many years, Pasadena was quite different from today. In 1984, this reporter wasn’t even born yet. There was no Gold Line. The Foothill (210) Freeway was in its infancy. Old Pasadena was just beginning to turn around following decades of squalor. The popular culinary, nightlife and shopping Mecca was for many years considered a no man’s land.
In 2044, will there be a Pasadena Weekly? The paper has survived the trials and tribulations of the past 30 years, but everyone knows that print newspapers are unfortunately going the way of the Dodo, the pager and the laser disc. People, especially young people, now overwhelmingly get their news from social media, which has exploded in popularity over the past five years. Daily newspapers will most likely not exist in 2044. However, there is hope for community-based alternative weeklies, much like the good ol’ PW. Instant news consumption will invariably almost all be digital in three decades, but free weekly print papers can still provide investigative journalism and in-depth analysis of local stories, coverage of those inevitable issues of the future.
Future problems
Water pollution, energy conservation, air quality, development, overpopulation, shifting demographics, policing and drones are all issues that aren’t going anywhere. As Pasadena City Councilmember Terry Tornek put it, “Thirty years is not a long time in the life of a city.”
One of the biggest challenges for Pasadena over the next 30 years will be transportation, as many of the city’s streets are already overcrowded.
“My hope for Pasadena in 2044 is that auto traffic will be a nonissue,” said Mayor Bogaard, “with mobility provided by walking, biking and new technological facilities such as moving sidewalks.”
Bogaard noted that another challenge for the city is whether Pasadena can retain all of the benefits of a diverse population when the cost of living goes up.
“I hope that technology allows Pasadena to achieve housing that is affordable to assure that the diverse population which makes up Pasadena today will continue and be embraced,” he said.
District 7 Councilmember Tornek, who is running for mayor, said the real question is not so much physical sustainability or ethnic diversity, but rather economic diversity.
“Because we value historic tradition so significantly, I don’t think the city will look dramatically different physically,” he said. “But is the marketplace going to drive less affluent people out of town? If we take diversity seriously as a community objective, how do we continue to make Pasadena affordable?”
The looming fight
In 30 years, the status of the controversial Long Beach (710 ) Freeway project will likely be one of three scenarios: defeated, built, or still tied up in court. Caltrans and Metro are currently studying five alternatives to the originally proposed surface freeway to connect the 710 and 210 freeways: constructing a 4.5 mile tunnel, building light rail, increasing bus service, making traffic improvements and a no-build option. The draft environmental impact report and statement is slated to be released in February.
Scenario one
In the year 2044, the proposed tunnel will have been defeated, the story of small, local communities battling the massive state transportation department and prevailing after more than a century, considering Caltrans first conceived the idea in the 1930s. Hopefully by 2044 other transportation options will have been considered and implemented to help relieve the area’s growing congestion.
“If Pasadena succeeds in overcoming the bureaucratic push for this obsolescent proposal in the next year or two,” said Bogaard, “the 710 freeway will be seen as a classic solution in search of a problem, and the community of Pasadena will escape the detrimental impacts of this traffic-creating facility.”
Scenario two
The tunnel will be completed and in use. This scenario will drastically alter the way Pasadena looks and feels in 30 years. In 2044 Pasadena will be celebrating the 155th Rose Parade. However, the parade may be affected if the tunnel is built, because one of the mouths of the tunnel will open right into Old Pasadena and the traditional route of the parade.
“It will be the apocalypse,” City Councilmember Steve Madison once said at a council meeting about this scenario.
Scenario three
The tunnel project will be tied up in the courts, neither side willing to cede ground. In this scenario, the only happy people are high-priced lawyers and low-income residents in the 710 corridor who haven’t yet been displaced from the homes that are currently slated to be sold starting this fall.
Down the road
In the meantime, light rail could still proliferate.
“One of the alternatives to the 710 being studied is light rail, which I have embraced,” said Tornek. “We could have unbelievable rail service. To everyone’s amazement we may actually have everyone getting out of their cars. There’s a real yearning for that. It’s an emerging trend that will have an impact on Pasadena.”
Local land use attorney Chris Sutton believes that the first scenario outlined above will be the one to play out, saying the project will just be “too expensive in light of shrinking gas tax revenues.” The saved money, he added, could be used to underground the Gold Line from Glenarm to Del Mar and to complete new light rail lines connecting to Glendale and westward and southward to East LA and Orange County.
With any luck, in 2044 the Gold Line will not only extend out to Montclair to the east, but also to Bob Hope Airport in Burbank to the west and be accompanied by several other light rail lines crisscrossing Pasadena, with stations at City Hall, Caltech, JPL and the Rose Bowl. One potential line could shoot up into Altadena to the foothills, where passengers could take a reconstructed Mount Lowe Railway up to Echo Mountain where a replica of the Echo Mountain House, a 70-room Victorian hotel, could be built. Other lines could pass through La Cañada Flintridge, Eagle Rock, Glendale and Alhambra.
Light rail lines could connect Pasadena to every other municipality and unincorporated community in southern California by the year 2044. Our city can and will be exactly the way we want it to be. The vision is there. The possibilities are limitless. All that’s needed is leadership.
Members gather for the WPRA’s 52nd annual meeting
By Justin Chapman, West Pasadena Residents’ Association Newsletter, Summer 2014
Earth-conscious developers host a day of educational workshops and discussions to celebrate summer solstice
By Justin Chapman, Pasadena Weekly, 6/19/2014
Saturday marks the summer solstice, the day when the sun is at its highest, a Pasadena-based sustainable design and urban landscape architecture company is throwing a party to celebrate all things local.
La Loma Development Co.’s Summer Solstice Festival will include a plant sale, place-making workshops, panel discussions, community archive collection, music and food. The event will take place from 4 to 9 p.m. at La Loma Development’s headquarters at Lincoln Avenue and Washington Boulevard, dubbed “The Shed” by La Loma’s executive and creative directors, Marco and Michelle Barrantes.
The Arroyo Time Bank will be there to present an orientation on exchanging services without money. Attendees will also be able to sign up for waste-less living residential and commercial compost pick up. Panels will discuss innovative and inexpensive ways to reduce energy bills at home (including solar, solar thermal, wind and lighting), how to become a licensed cottage food operator and developing an organic understanding of the food we consume by discovering the hidden messages in food.
Three cooperatives, Arroyo Food, Mondragon and Pacific Electric Workers, will discuss how co-ops create jobs and encourage community building.
The evening will be capped by the Los Angeles County premier screening of urban fruit.
La Loma Development has been converting The Shed, once utilized by historic Paul’s Auto, since June 2012. The 30,000-square-foot yard and warehouse is now being used as a center for green job training, ecological skills, sustainable development, urban architecture, permaculture, food systems and art space.
“This whole location is the natural extension of La Loma’s original goal,” said Marco, “which is promoting, designing, creating and supporting sustainable communities with a big emphasis on local watersheds and food systems.”
The Shed is also located in the middle of a large food desert in Northwest Pasadena. Marco said they want to have a food commissary on the property to help solve that problem.
The Shed is also available for rent to the general public for films, weddings and other events. Call (626) 354-8993 for more information on renting the location.
Tickets for Saturday’s Summer Solstice Festival are $10 in advance, $15 at the door and free for those under 21. The Shed is located at 1355 Lincoln Ave., Pasadena. Visit lalomadevelopment.com for more information.
Sister act
How did Barbara Emmons and Darla Longo get to the top of the male-dominated commercial real estate world?
By Justin Chapman, Pasadena Magazine, May/June 2014
After graduating from UCLA in 1989, Barbara Emmons decided to follow her sister Darla Longo's lead and enter the field of commercial real estate. Although she didn't know it at the time, there were few other women in that industry. When Emmons was interviewing for the company that the two sisters now practically run, a manager tried to set her straight.
"He asked me what I wanted to do, and I said I wanted to be an industrial real estate broker," Emmons recalls. "And he said, 'That's not a profession for women. You should be a residential broker.'"
Emmons came out of that interview and called her sister right away. "You're not going to believe what he just told me," she told her. "He said I shouldn't do what I want to do because I'm a woman." For Emmons, his remark proved inspirational. "It was like, 'I now want to prove you wrong,'" she says.
Even today there aren't many women in commercial real estate, and even fewer work in industrial real estate, an industry that the sisters have excelled in as vice chairs of Downtown Los Angeles-based CBRE. Working as an unusual kind of corporate sister act, they've carved out a space for themselves in a business that is exceedingly male-dominated--succeeding in part because they went into it with no idea that they had chosen an obstacle-strewn path. Their father, Phil Vessadini, had always told them they could do and be anything they wanted. When he passed away at the young age of sixty-seven, Emmons was just about to start her career, and it brought the two sisters together professionally.
Their father, Longo says, had always wanted them to work together. "Being sisters, we were kind of like, 'No, we don't want to have any conflicts,'" Longo says. "But we are very complementary, and in our seventeen years we've never really had any issues. It's been pretty amazing."
Their method has been described as good cop/bad cop: Emmons warms the client up, and Longo is the closer.
"It's more that we have different skills and talents, so we play different roles on the team," Emmons says.
The La Canada natives have been involved in tens of billions of dollars' worth of sales. Longo and Emmons take a holistic approach to investment sales and land sales. They take an industrial property, value it, and bring in a capital market buyer. Sometimes they'll even get involved in leasing and developing the properties.
Both agree that facing stereotypes was something they had to overcome when they were first starting out.
"It wasn't like, 'I am woman and I'm going to burn the bra and go forward,'" Longo says. "It's more that Barbara and I do a really good job and we care about our clients and, yes, when we started we had to work harder and smarter and longer hours. I mean that was the truth. But if we hit a brick wall, we'd back up and figure out how to go around it."
As for how they've managed to climb so high--according to Longo, it's because "we check our ego at the door. We're not trying to prove anything to anyone," Longo says. "We're really just trying to do the best possible job that we can. That's why clients keep coming back to us, because they can trust us, they know we're fair. The fact that we're women makes it interesting, because what we find in the real world is men like to chat with women, and if you're smart and good there is no barrier."
Marvin Schachter celebrates 90 years and reflects on his ‘accidental’ life as a liberal icon
By Justin Chapman, Pasadena Weekly, 4/24/2014
On the cusp of 90, Marvin Schachter reflects on a life that has inspired countless people around the world, but especially in Pasadena, where his soft voice commands attention and his ideas continue shaping public policy on a litany of crucial issues.
Schachter’s hearing may be a little fuzzy at times, but his mind remains razor-sharp. Memories of events like the Great Depression, World War II, the McCarthy Era hearings of the 1950s, the Civil Rights Movement of the ’50s and ’60s, the anti-war demonstrations of the ’60s, the nuclear freeze movement of the ’70s and ’80s, and the most recent peace actions over the wars in the Middle East are at his fingertips.
And to think, if not for being fired from one job after his boss learned of a dossier prepared on him over his leftist activities as a student, then taking an even more lucrative job in retail sales, which led Schachter and his family to California from Chicago, none of it might have ever happened.
“It was totally accidental, thanks to the FBI,” Schachter said during a recent interview at his home in Pasadena.
Schachter has been an influential part of most of the major social causes of the past 60 years. He even dabbled in owning his own newspaper, part of a group of investors who founded and owned the Pasadena Weekly in the early 1980s. From student activist in the 1940s to involved senior citizen in the past three decades, Schachter’s affiliations have been many, among them in recent years the International Criminal Court Alliance, the United Nations Association, the California Commission on Aging and the Center for Healthcare Rights, to name just a few. But the organization that he’s maintained the longest relationship with is the American Civil Liberties Union. In fact, Schachter is a lifetime member of the ACLU of Southern California board of directors.
From his student activism, Army service and business and political careers to his loving family, Schachter has lived an extremely full life. He and his wife Ester have two grown daughters, Pamela and Amanda, both of whom are successful in their own right. And he is currently documenting his life through the Pasadena Historical Society’s Oral History Project, run by Ann Scheid.
“Marvin Schachter is the kind of man you want on your team,” wrote Pasadena Weekly columnist Ellen Snortland. “Eyes twinkling, formidable brain whirring, Schachter is a force for good. If you don’t know Marvin — and I’m sorry if you don’t — you are missing out on a role model for yourself and your children.”
Decisive years
The youngest of four children, Schachter grew up in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. He said the tough times of the ’30s were influential years for him in determining the direction of his life. He remembers his father, who was in the furrier trade, being unemployed a good deal of the time.
“The 1930s was the period of the rise of fascism, the war in Spain, the rise of Hitler in Germany, the beginnings of the anti-Semitic laws that were passed there,” he said. “We lost substantial members of our family during the Holocaust. The ’30s were also the period of the Depression and the rise of the New Deal. I would say that those years were decisive years in determining what I wanted to do.”
He was drafted into the Army in February 1943 and served in military intelligence until his discharge in February 1946.
“I was a so-called Russian-German expert at 19 years old,” said Schachter. “Sort of ridiculous. That’s what they trained me for. They sent me to University of Chicago and University of Minnesota in uniform.”
Following in the footsteps of his older brothers, Schachter soon became very involved in the rising student activism during the early years of the Civil Rights Movement in the South. He became active in the American Student Union, a national left-wing organization of college students best known for its protests against militarism. Although he was still in high school, Schachter became a member of the ASU’s national board at the age of 15.
A little more than a year after the war, he received his bachelor’s degree from Brooklyn College, due in large part to the credit he received from the courses he took through the Army. He began his graduate work in economics at Columbia University in fall 1946. That year he married Doris Donnally, who he met when he was at the University of Chicago.
He helped organize and participated in the march on Albany, opposing quotas for Jews, women and African Americans in graduate courses. He spent six months visiting both African-American and white schools in the South. He attempted to establish statewide student organizations against segregationist Jim Crow laws that were pervasive throughout the South. He served on the preparatory committee for the National Student Association.
He finished his master’s degree in economics at the University of Colorado and was admitted as a graduate student at Cambridge University in England in 1951. While at Cambridge, he worked under Joan Robinson, who was John Maynard Keyne’s assistant and a prominent economist who wrote a major work on the theory of imperfect competition.
He came back to the United States at the height of the McCarthy Era, also known as communist witch hunts led by Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. Schachter thought his career path led to academia, but he soon learned there was an FBI file on him because of his student activism.
Rebel with a cause
At that time, Chicago was the center of the television manufacturing industry. Practically every TV in the country was made there. Schachter took a job doing market research for a company called Hallicrafters, which built electronic equipment for the Air Force. However, he was fired when an executive vice president of the company learned about Schachter’s activism in leftist organizations.
“I decided that retail might be a place where they wouldn’t bother me,” said Schachter. “My wife needed medical care and I needed to support her.” So he took a job in a department store, beginning a long and successful career in retail and merchandising.
“I did things that were unusual, like running a single dress advertised in color, which people could buy by mail or telephone and be delivered,” he said. “In those days, department stores had their own delivery systems. I sold thousands of dresses.”
Then tragedy struck. His wife Doris died in 1954 of a collapsed heart. Two years later he met Esther, who was a copywriter in the department store where he worked. The couple married soon after they met.
The May Department Stores Co. offered Schachter a job in Los Angeles. Soon after arriving, he saw a notice in a “throwaway newspaper, sort of like the LA Weekly” of an American Friends Service Committee meeting in Pasadena. The local chapter of the Quaker organization was run by Catherine Cory, a leader in social action organizations who was well connected with the California Democratic Council.
“It was the beginnings of all kinds of things,” Schachter said of his friendship with Cory.
Eason Monroe, executive director of the ACLU California, invited Schachter to join the board of directors of the ACLU in 1958, and Schachter has been a member ever since. In that board’s bylaws, he is written in as the only lifetime member. He became president of the ACLU of Southern California in 1971 and served on the organization’s national board for 17 years. He played a key role in having the ACLU adopt civil rights as a major part of its program.
“My membership on the ACLU board always continued,” he said. “That’s always been my anchor organization.”
Back in the ’80s, Schachter also hosted a weekly 15-minute radio program on KPFK that dealt with domestic and foreign policy issues. Also around that time, he joined the board of directors of a company that founded the Pasadena Weekly. He wrote an occasional column for the paper on current affairs, as he does to this day.
Many hats
After leaving May Co., he continued his lucrative career as a successful retail executive for other department stores. But, “Around 1978 I decided that this accidental life,” one created by coming under suspicion by the FBI, “that I had established in the retail business was not where I wanted to spend my life,” he said.
Schachter left retail and set up a real estate company that built homes and condominiums in Pasadena. But his social and political activism continued. He became vice chair of the Interfaith Center to Reverse the Arms Race, which was headquartered at All Saints Church, and played a leadership role in the California nuclear freeze movement. He served as chair of a steering committee that organized all of the state’s disabled communities, making their cause a common one.
In the ’90s he became involved with the senior community, serving as a governor’s appointment to the California Commission on Aging, and he has served as chair of the Senior Advocacy Council of Pasadena and president of the LA County Agency on Aging Advisory Council.
‘The issues continue’
After a lifetime of fighting the good fight, one would be justified in taking it easy and enjoying retirement. Schachter, however, isn’t ready for that.
“As long as I can I’m going to stay as active as I can,” he said. “It really stems from the issues. Unfortunately, issues don’t disappear. War and peace issues are always with us. Nuclear arms issues, unemployment, hunger are always with us. The issues continue.”
Looking back, Schachter said it’s as if everything in his life happened yesterday. He also said he was flabbergasted at how many meetings he’s attended.
“I’m happiest with the fact that I’ve been involved,” he said. “I think I did make significant contributions to important movements at crucial times.”
Kris Ockershauser, former president of the ACLU Pasadena/Foothills Chapter, has known Schachter for 40 years.
“Marvin has been the steady, knowledgeable helping hand,” said Ockershauser. “The great thing about working with him is that, in addition to his historical knowledge of and participation in civil liberties issues here and nationally, he’s right there in the trenches with you … and at 90 he still is. He’s been a real gift to hundreds if not thousands of Southern Californians working to advance social and economic justice over the last half century. Not only has he created a legacy that inspires the next generations to continue the work, he’s also a dear and fine person to know.”
