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Monday, July 20, 2009

A Question of Judgement

The email shown here is piece of spam that made its way around a couple of years ago. It was being forwarded to employees by a high ranking official of a public agency using their work email address. (click on the image for a larger version.)

Earlier this year, Los Alamitos mayor Dean Grose was caught forwarding a similar kind of email showing a picture of the White House with a field of watermelons in the front yard. The public criticism of this behavior quickly cost Mayor Grose his job.

What if it were a Los Angeles official that sent this using their City email? It clearly isn't appropriate and it shows a serious lack of judgement and sensitivity to some of the biggest problems facing Los Angeles today - gang activity, street violence, race issues, LAUSD and the quality of public education in Los Angeles, and so on.

The fact of the matter is that this email was sent by the Office of Public Safety's top officer - Chief of Police Gary Newton - using his City email to others in the department. Newton is the same chief who was found guilty along with the City of racial discrimination and illegal hiring practices a few months ago in a lawsuit that will cost LA taxpayers $1.4 million. One of the people Newton illegally hired over other qualified individuals to manage OPS's patrol officers was previously convicted of beating a minority in handcuffs and fired by the City of Huntington Beach's police department.

LAPD only just had a major federal Consent Decree lifted for the kinds of activities Newton and his hand-picked leadership team have been found guilty of engaging in. In a city where politics and policing is practically defined by the many hot-button issues related to Newton's activities, it leaves one to seriously question why Chief Newton is still in the job and who is keeping him there.

Requests to the City Attorney's office for comment on this issue have gone unanswered.

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18 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Petra, I don't want to kill your buzz, but "Whitehouse" is two words, not one.

Idiot.

July 20, 2009 9:13 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

What is Zuma Dogg doing with his free time now that he is in temporary housing?

Making grand plans for CD2?

Working to stay off the streets?

Showering? Eating?

Nope. He's watching the Jonas Bros. tv show. He Tweets, "Never saw the TV show, "Jonas" until today. OMG, what a great and hilarious show. Better than any network prime time. Like "Monkees" Clever! about 16 hours ago"

Didn't he say that he desperately needed to sleep in a single, quiet room? Watching the Jonas Bros., you can just imagine what else he was doing while watching the show.

July 20, 2009 9:18 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

9:13 am- nitpick, nitpick.
At least it was signed.

July 20, 2009 9:45 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

945, do you mean like the way you signed YOUR name?

July 20, 2009 10:37 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Let it be known the Office of Public Safety is under the Mayor and not LAPD. They are out of city hall. The city council misfits want to put sensitive information on the internet using Google mail. They haven't researched it and Tony Cardenas is pushing for it at a cost of $7.5 million. More bullshit from these misfits.

July 20, 2009 10:42 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

This is what our tax dollars are paying for 'STUPIDITY." Smith is getting raked over the coals for his stupidity voting against a woman's reappointment, police commissioner Ordin because he doesn't like Bratton. WHAT A COWARD. Instead of being a man and standing up to Bratton he cowards and takes it out on a woman. No wonder he's called Mrs. Doubtfire in drag. He definitely has issues with both men and women pulling this shit.

....Smith said his frustration reached the point that he voted against the reappointment of Andrea Sheridan to the Police Commission, out of a feeling the current commissioners rubber-stamp whatever Bratton wants

July 20, 2009 10:48 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

The truly ironic part of this is that neither Newton, nor most of his public safety officers (or Petra or Red Spoot, for that matter), could answer any of the math questions in the offending spam e-mail parody.

Now that I think about it -- neither could the mayor, Mr. 1.4 GPA, himself.

July 20, 2009 11:00 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Why is the creep who was fired for beating a suspect still in his job too?

July 20, 2009 11:01 AM  

Anonymous matt dowd said:

boo hoo
its a funny spam.
stereotypes make for good comedy. always will.

everyone does it. why pick on these guys?

more important, can any of these haters do the math?
post your answers to the quiz at 8pm tonite.


if you don't you'll have bad luck for a week, forward this page to 240,000 people in the next 5 seconds. .

July 20, 2009 12:02 PM  

Blogger Petra Fried in the City said:

Well heck, "Matt" and friend @11am, pretty darned sure I can do the math.

The real question is, can any of our City Councilmembers do the math? Odds are low given the financial situation the City is in.

To paraphrase something Tom Lehrer once said, regarding the City:

Los Angeles does not discriminate against not only Race, Creed, and Color, but ABILITY, too.

July 20, 2009 12:18 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Greig Smith hasn't been totally idle on the Public Safety Committee besides battling Bratton's "big ego" with his own.

Today they passed a resolution limiting backyards to just one noisy rooster per yard, because not only are the creatures loud and filthy (remember Bird and Swine Flu spreading from China, where people live right next to THEIR barns, anyone?) but are a business for cockfighting gangbangers. Pathetic that our city has come to where South L A backyards are just like some Mexican peasant villages. This is the stuff our cops have to spend their time enforcing.

July 20, 2009 3:00 PM  

Anonymous matt dowd said:

on another note Hugh Grant will make 2.6 million dollars tomorrow morning at 6.30 am without even getting out of bed.
how? he and I have something in common. we own Monsanto stock on Wall Street. he's a majority individual holder with 520,000 shares. they're going up $5 a share in the morning cause they got approval for their new corn seed that's super resistant to pest and disease.
I put my whole portfolio into them last week {i have less than 50] but still, I always just believed they were an 80 dollar share, and I saw them trading at 75. what can I say.?
hello Lacer fund commissioners....how's your investments doing?

July 20, 2009 3:38 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Frank Sheftel submitted all of his petition signatures TODAY. Ahead of the deadline Mr. Zuma Dogg!

Sounds as though Mr. Sheftel is more organized and prepared to bring in results while Mr. Zuma Dogg is shucking and jiving, too busy referring to himself in the third person.

July 20, 2009 6:45 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Returning to the original subject matter of this post, the email is being taken far too seriously. You have to have a sense of humor about this sort of thing. It's not as if anyone reading it would take it any more seriously than the ridiculous Ebonics idea that was promoted by left wing apologists not that long ago. Why is it when a liberal makes a race-related blooper, they get a pass, but when the police attempt humor, it's racism?

July 20, 2009 10:18 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Hey, leave Zuma alone; he's helping Phil with his recall signatures and advising Matt Dowd on his stocks.

And, there are the Jonas Brothers, too.

He is B - U - S - Y!!!

July 21, 2009 7:40 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

10:18, it is a question of the judgement of someone who is in a major leadership position. Hence the title of the post.

July 21, 2009 8:20 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

"Requests to the city attorney's office have gone unanswered." They sure were all over this blog during the elections though, weren't they?
Mayor Sam is among the very few on his Campaign Website even referenced as web journalistic support as though this blog even claims to be real journalism.

Too busy picking fights with and accusing both controllers Chick and Gruel, the CRA and the whole City Council and mayor for PR, I guess.

July 22, 2009 10:34 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Oh and I forgot to add LAPD to my list in previous post of those Trutanich is too busy accusing of fraud, abuse or even criminal activity, to have time for his "friends" who got him there.

That sums up pretty much everyone there is to attack I guess, in the city anyway. Other than Zine and Bratton-bashing Police Union head Weber, that leaves as his real "friends" only the County DA, Sheriff and assorted outsiders.

July 22, 2009 10:56 AM  

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