All Points Bulletins

POLICE CONFUSION (Mar 29, 04)

WHERE IS CITY HEIGHTS, EXACTLY? (Mar 17, 04)

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Let me lay out some things for your consideration. Several years ago the Police Department and the local newspaper cooperated to print maps of city communities and neighborhoods. In one version they said San Diego has 99 neighborhoods, in another version they said 101. I expect fuzzy reporting at the Union-Tribune, but I expect the police to be well informed.
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Neither newspaper map shows City Heights. That's right. We are NOT there. Ridgeview was submerged in Webster. Bayridge and Fairmount Park were renamed Gateway although there has never been a Gateway community. The rest of our community was split into City Heights East and City Heights West. Gone were Azalea Park, Castle, Cherokee Point, Chollas Creek, Colina del Sol, Corridor, Fairmount Village, Fox Canyon, Hollywood Park, Islenair, Swan Canyon, and both Teraltas. Neither the newspaper nor the Police Department ever bothered to correct the error or even to acknowledge it.
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In 2002, on orders of the Mid-City Division, some RSVPs went into the neighborhoods along Euclid Avenue, trying to get the residents to change their boundaries and names to suit the police department's ego. Some of those neighbors complained to me; I registered an objection with the Mid-City Division; and Captain Cornicelli phoned me to deny it was happening. I called
her bluff. I read to her over the phone the survey form her staff had given to the RSVPs as part of the effort to change us. I read from a letter that Fox Canyon had sent to Chief Bejarano with the same complaint. I suggested she speak to officers at the East storefront, where Fox Canyon had complained about RSVPs trying to change Fox Canyon's name.
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When she found out that I knew the whole story, the true story, Cornicelli back away from her denials, and wrote me in September, 2002 to acknowledge that the department had "surveyed" Fox Canyon and Islenair, "..about the name of their neighborhood.." The RSVPs stopped going door-to-door trying to change names and boundaries, but the police continued to mislabel our neighborhoods. Just this past October, for example, the ARCO station on Home Avenue near the I-805 onramp was reported by the police and the newspaper to be in Webster. As a result of bad police maps, some of our friends in Webster now think the Police Pistol Range is in their neighborhood. It's actually in Fairmount Park, past Ridgeview, nearly a mile from Webster.
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In late 2002, at Officer Tulumello's request, he and I met to review a Police Department map of City Heights and its neighborhoods. It was a correct map. It matched the Mid-City Communities Plan, and I asked that it be used by the department, especially by the Mid-City division. Officer Tulumello said he would relay my request, and I thanked him. If the department paid any attention to that correct map, it was not obvious through the rest of 2002. I believe Officer Tulumello did try to get the map accepted up the chain of
command. I think the chain of command ignored him.
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I wrote the Chief in January 2003 and received a reply in February, signed by Chief Bejarano himself. Captain Cornicelli drafted the letter, and the Chief signed it. Chief Bejarano tried to defend the Mid-City division by writing, "The Mid-City Command attempted to incorporate identified community names and boundaries into our Computer Aided Dispatch System (CAD)." That wasn't true when he signed the letter, and it isn't true today, but let's not blame Chief Bejarano for his staff's misrepresentations.
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The letter goes on, "Updates always include community input..." That also was not true then, and it isn't true today. The department has never consulted City Heights's leadership about names and boundaries of our neighborhoods or ever paid attention to the Mid-City Communities Plan which has our names and boundaries correct. Officer Tulumello is the exception. The map he had in late-2002 matched the Mid-City Communities Plan. The department should have adopted that correct map.
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The police department isn't the only city agency that thinks it has control over our names and boundaries. Two years ago the Deputy Planning Director issued a memorandum to the city's Graphic Information System manager. The subject was 'Official Boundaries of "Communities" and "Neighborhoods"'. In the memo, the Planning Deputy wrote that the Planning Department is the city's "keeper" of community boundaries. Farther on she wrote that the Police Department is the City's "keeper" of the neighborhood boundaries. Nowhere in the memorandum was there mention of communities or neighborhoods as keepers of their own boundaries, although they should be both keepers and deciders. As far as I can tell, the Planning Department's party line is unchanged.
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I hope you agree that our names and boundaries are OUR business, ours to keep or change as we wish. The Area Planning Committee, the Town Council, the affected Neighborhood Associations, and our Councilmembers should be involved in any attempt to change a boundary or a neighborhood name. Our names and boundaries do not belong to the city. They belong to us. They're ours. They are not bagatelles for the city or the Planning Department or the Police.
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As I told Chief Lansdowne when he spoke at the Rosa Parks School, I have asked for an appointment (now set for March 22, 2004) to see him face-to-face at his office. I hope he has Captain Cornicelli there. I'll give the Chief all the correspondence, and tell him the name and mailstop number of his staff office that creates and updates police maps. I'll ask him to order the department to get our names and boundaries correct once and for all, and to use them in every public announcement. I hope he does. I'll ask him to incorporate identified community names and boundaries into ALL police work, and have the updates always include community input, as Chief Bejarano claimed to be doing. We can't ask for more than that. We shouldn't accept less.
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If you have an opinion about all this, please click "TALK ABOUT IT" and leave a message for everyone to read.
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THE STATUS (Mar 29, 04)

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I met with Police Chief William M. Lansdowne last Monday (Mar 22) to discuss several things, including our names and boundaries. The Chief agrees with us that we control who we are and where we are. There is serious confusion in the Department about names and boundaries (just Friday, Mar 26, the police said a murder in Chollas Creek had happened in Chollas View). It will take time to clear it up. I'm encouraged that the Chief is on our side.
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Yes, for those who have asked, I did indeed name Captain Cornicelli, and I did describe her efforts to avoid responsibility the incident with the RSVPs going around urging our neighbors to agree to name and boundary changes. I don't think that will happen again.
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