Comments by scoop9324
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Posted on July 11 at 9:42 a.m.
And, I forgot to mention our city management's newest tourist attraction -- almost hourly helicopter flights and landings in the middle of town!
Posted on July 11 at 9:36 a.m.
Here we go again! Just one more backward spin in the downward spiral of State Street. It's already bad enough that out of town tourists, disembarking cruise ship passengers, and sightseers have to pass through a quasi-skid row, sleazy looking section of lower State St. amidst all of the bars and junk-souvenir shops before entering the "real" Santa Barbara downtown. Now we have our own deep-discount '99 Cents' store with cheap foreign made trinkets, wrong-sized clothing, child-endangering plastic toys, unsold and out-of-date supermarket products, packaged food with labels in foreign languages, and gaudy porcelain dishware and imitation statuettes!! Welcome to Santa Barbara, friends!! C'mon down and see what poor city management hath wrought on the once beautiful and picturesque 'American Riviera!' (cough, cough!)
Posted on June 19 at 3:54 p.m.
Nick hit this nail right on the head once again....(hmmmm, I wonder if that is what could have happened to Wendy some time ago!) The News-Press does itself no favors, nor any for the community, when it spews forth such inarticulate, ill-conceived, inept, and idiotic things as Nick references in this column. But, one thing has always bothered me about all of this, and it is something that gets very little, if any, media coverage. And that is the influence her affianced, carved-in-concrete-toothpaste-commercial-smile ‘svengali’, Arthur von Wiesenberger aka The Nipper, has on her. His having adopted the snobbish royal title of "Baron von Wiesenberger” a few years ago, obviously an attempt to burnish his growing reputation as Wendy's personal "Captain Hook" and aide d’ boudoir , I wonder if he can produce his royal birth certificate or his official Baronesque certificate? The Baron has now craftily maneuvered his way into a Rasputinish-close proximity to the 'McCaw Fortune', a quantum leap forward from having been a local barkeep and self-promoting food and wine connoisseur extraordinaire. (And, ignorant me, I had always thought that there was only one Baron in the McCaw media circles – Baron Ron Herron. ) Anyway, I think it’s a valid question to ask if The Nipper is truly Wendy’s “svengali” in many matters especially in helping to turn the News-Press from a journalistic fine wine into sour vinegar. Just some Hell’s Kitchen food for thought!
Posted on June 9 at 11:25 a.m.
The primary reason for increases in burglaries and robberies, as many studies have shown, is the absence of a physical police presence in that area. When burglars know that it is highly unlikely, if not improbable, that there might be a police officer cruising by, they know they have almost a zero possibility of being caught. The professional burglars case their target and know who the most vulnerable targets are, and when the best time of day is to hit the place. The only real unknown they must face is a patrol car cruising the neighborhood, but if there are none, then..............
In this town, when our police are consistently understaffed preventing them from conducting routine neighborhood patrols, helping to set up neighborhood watch groups, or
keeping tabs on known burglar or burglary high risk areas, the burglar rates go up.
The poor leadership of our police department and our city government in this area is palpable. What is it going to take -- a resident getting killed in their own home by a surprised burglar caught in the act? Or, an officer getting shot after arriving at a burglary in progress alone because there aren't enough officers to provide him or her with a backup? Someone needs to look at police staffing levels in other similar cities and see what they have. I'd bet we'd be surprised.
Posted on February 2 at 8:20 a.m.
Forgot to include another thought............since Covarrubias had reportedly earlier mentioned something about killing himself if this illicit relationship was discovered, and obviously his best, closest buddy on the department would have known this, any chance there was a pre-arranged scenario in play here?
Posted on February 2 at 8:10 a.m.
Maybe this was suicide by cop, maybe it wasn't. Either way, it doesn't mean his colleagues had to kill him -- especially if there had been less loose talk about the investigation and his imminent arrest (which he had heard or been told) and better planning and execution (no pun intended) for such a dangerous arrest. Was there anything so urgent about this incident that would not have allowed the cops to arrest him in a safer environment? And, come to think of it, why was this female cadet allowed to work on this DUI checkpoint with him if they were already investigating the allegations? A lot of stuff doesn't add up here -- especially with the other shooting debacle back in December where two other SM cops were also shot by their fellow officers in yet another example of either failed training programs, or bad planning, or faulty supervision and fire control.
Posted on March 18 at 10:20 a.m.
Some of the prior comments regarding Eringer's column have touched on the key issue -- is Chief Sanchez honest and credible? Or, is he a prevaricator, an embellisher, a fraudster, a tax cheat, and an elder abuser. If what Eringer wrote in his News-Press column submission about the chief is true, regardless of whether the chief was contacted so he could lie once again, they are still true despite the News-Press firing him and refusing to print the column.
As other comments above also pointed out, aside from conning the city out of a half million dollars of taxpayer money in order to buy a house while concealing his ability to soon buy two rental homes in far-away cities, the legacy the chief is building for himself is quite disturbing. It is punctuated by rising crime rates in terms of increased gang activity and murders, and growing community dissatisfaction with his lagging leadership, and not to forget the questions about his truthfulness. Doesn't all of this sound familiar when put under the same spotlight as the AIG bonus scandals?
But it's not fair to cast aspersions on the whole police force due to the chief's increasingly apparent shortcomings and lack of ethical values. They're doing the best they can despite the odorous lack of leadership wafting out of the chief's office these days.
It's departure time, Chief.
Posted on March 2 at 8:32 a.m.
I still find it quite interesting that the police chief was in "full dress" uniform with all four stars of his rank glinting in the sun while attending a relative's wedding in a public park. I can't help but wonder why would he be wearing his uniform to a wedding -- ego, show-off, Little Napleon complex, his only civilian suit was in the cleaners, etc.?? I don't know the Chief so I can't answer that.
But, I was playing golf the other day (a weekday) at a course in the city when I saw the chief himself out on the course obviously also playing a round. He wasn't in uniform then, yet it was in the middle of a regular workday.
Does he have trouble making a decision as to when he's off duty or on duty? Or when to wear the uniform (at a wedding while off-duty) and when not (on a regular workday). It sure sounds like it. That makes me wonder about his decision-making ability on other things.
Posted on February 23 at 11:10 a.m.
It seems that a rather strange and dichotomous problem exists -- between letting taxicabs pickup customers along State St. by making brief stops curbside or in the street, and keeping drunks and drunkdrivers off our streets by encouraging taxi use when the bars and nightclubs close. Is there really that much traffic on the street at that time of morning that allowing cabbies to make brief stops would obstruct traffic? Big delivery trucks are apparently allowed to do this, and they certainly pose a bigger obstacle to traffic during the day than taxis do at night.
The police told the taxi operators that the truck companies and the downtown business association strongly lobbied the city council to ease the rules for them. The cabbies were told that a new ordinance might be needed to allow this and they were encouraged to obtain lobbying assistance.
Isn't there a police commission that oversees both the taxi licensing as well as the police department's procedures and advises city council on needed changes? It seems they would be the logical agency to help mediate some solutions. Why aren't they looking into this problem?
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Posted on August 10 at 9:16 a.m.
The most offensive aspect of this for the taxpayers is that, actually, we are paying this employee twice for the same time for which he has already been properly compensated. The other problem is, I don't believe for a minute that anyone can go long enough to accumulate that amount of unused sick leave without having been sick at some time. So, this means either he came to work while sick and probably infected co-workers and the public -- or never recorded the days he was off sick. Or, maybe the same woman who collected (and embezzled) the parking ticket money at SBPD was also in charge of recording sick leave -- a quid pro quo?
On Retired Police Captain Cashes Unused Sick Leave for $115,900