Letters to the Editor

LBPOA Park

Wow, another bulls eye from the Beachcomber! [Page 1 Parks story.] Garcia must be relieved that you are gunning for the next batch of corrupt politicians. Every bad story has “a lie with a tie” attorney who thinks he will sanitize the garbage. Indignant and outraged, but still in cover up mode.

Dan O’Leary

LBPOA’s attorney should be as vigorous about providing the accounting the contract called for as he is in defending his client. If in fact it was all done as required and honestly, what shame would there be to embarrass the Beachcomber with the evidence?

For all the bluster, he ends his response by refusing to prove what he claims. We can trust but validation is necessary.

Tom Beck

That was an eye-opener. The POA has in effect been gifted with public land, which doesn’t bother me as much as the fact they are renting it out and profiting from it, all the while peddling influence in elections by expending money from their coffers. And we have no idea if they have commingled these monies, because we don’t bother to audit their funds and practices?

Where is Laura Doud on this topic? Aren’t the taxpayers owed a review on practices where public monies are involved?

Corliss Lee

LBPD 2021 Stats

After having analyzed LBPD police statistics for years, I have difficulty believing anything LBPD publishes on this matter. I contend the crimes reported by LBPD are just a fraction of what occurs. I know this from both my personal experiences and past data obtained by Public Record Act requests.

While president of the Belmont Shore Residents Association, I requested and received copies of police reports regarding six different crimes I personally witnessed. What I discovered is three of those police reports never made it into the LBPD crime statistics monthly report. It appeared LBPD was NOT including in their data base many crimes reported by their own officers. This caused me to submit a Public Record Act request for historical LBPD crime data. I learned the following:

1. When someone calls the police to report a crime, it is considered a “call for service.” The number of calls for service to the LBPD has remained approximately the same every year since the year 1990 at approximately 200,000 calls for service per year, indicating the REAL number of overall crimes occurring in Long Beach has remained relatively the same since 1990.

2. The number of sworn police officers employed by LBPD has increased steadily over the years from 300 in 1990 to over 700 today. The number of officers has more than doubled.

3. Despite the number of calls for service remaining the same and the number of sworn police officers doubling, the number of overall crimes “reported” by LBPD has dropped from 55,000 crimes per year in 1990 to under 30,000 crimes per year today. Keep in mind this is only the crimes entered in the police data base and I contend is not reflective of the volume of crime occurring in the community.

4. From 1975 to 1990, the percentage of calls for service in Long Beach that resulted in a police report declaring a crime occurred held steady at approximately 30%. Since 1990, that number has steadily dropped to where it is today at 15% while the number of calls for service has remained the same. This indicates fewer and fewer of the calls for service are being reported as crimes into LBPD’s data base even though the number of officers has more than doubled.

The raises and funding LBPD receives from City Hall are based in large part on these crime statistics. LBPD has a large incentive to report decreasing crime statistics to provide their union with a compelling argument for larger raises and more funding. As I have repeatedly said in the past, it is a conflict of interest for LBPD to have sole control over the crime data base that is used as an indicator of crime in Long Beach and a determinant of future funding of LBPD.

Mike Ruehle

Wilson Locker Rooms

What the author fails to understand is that gender neutral locker rooms violate privacy and toilet provisions of the code, Chapter 31B Public Pools. Chapter 31B states that separate toilets for each sex shall be provided and that locker rooms shall be designed to keep members of the opposite sex from viewing into the locker rooms. The current Wilson high coed locker rooms violate both of these provisions thereby failing to meet minimum life safety standards mandated by the code.

Inclusive design and private changing and shower stalls can easily be incorporated into traditional single sex locker room designs much like accessibility is handled. We don’t redesign entire parking lots with 100% accessible parking stalls because we know that the parking lots lose functionality. The locker rooms are the same. We can keep our time proven single sex locker rooms without a complete design for inclusivity.

It is misleading to say that coed locker rooms are the only way to achieve the privacy that the author states students have requested.

These points have been brought to the attention of all invested parties: the district, school board, architect, state architect and the California department of education. My question is, when will be hearing from the district as to whether these locker rooms will be redesigned so they meet code.

The author is welcome to contact me should he wish to become more informed on the issues at hand.

Tracy Myers, AIA

Gender neutral rest rooms are not the same as co-ed locker rooms! A co-ed locker room with boys/men and girls/women plus non-binary individuals will be changing into and out of swimsuits at the same time and moving between showers and changing stalls wearing just a towel. Why in the world would you think this will be a safe space?

There is much, much more to this issue than the very abbreviated comments that Isaac Foster wrote. Perhaps he should have interviewed people on both sides of this issue before publishing such a poor piece. Perhaps he should have educated himself on the origin of Safe Sport (https://uscenterforsafesport.org).

Lucy Johnson

I was shocked to read [the] regurgitation of the school district’s PowerPoint listing all the pros for this swim locker room configuration. If you want to be a real reporter, why not go to Wilson and interview some swimmers? How about going to Wilson and interviewing some coaches? How about interviewing any warm body?

How about listening to the board meetings and seeing the community response toward this plan? None of it is favorable. The district claims to have “polled” students about this locker room and found that they were in favor of it, but where did they find these kids?

This video was made in the summer before kids were back in school. They were not shown the architectural plan. Asking six kids what they think is not polling students. (Not one of those kids interviewed in the video had been shown the plan and none of those kids were swimmers or water polo players.).

Now that kids have been shown the plan, they are not in favor of this locker room and neither am I. Please do your best to be a real reporter and actually do your homework.

Annie Kunkle