Community

Nov 132013
 
Racism Quietly Flourishes in San Leandro

Neighbors Call Police for “Walking While Black” The warning came in a neighborhood bulletin board.  A female resident of the the mostly-white Estudillo Estates neighborhood, had seen three men in their twenties, two of them black,  walking down her street.  She did not recognize them.  Some time later, she saw them again. This time they were walking on the same direction, but on the other side of the street.  She was kicking herself for not having called the police on them.  Surely they were casing houses.  Mind you, she did not say she had seen them look at homes carefully, check out [Continue Reading]

Oct 142013
 
Hint to Politicians: You don't show respect to Spanish-speakers by butchering our language.

Hint to anyone trying to court Spanish-speaking customers, businesses or voters: if you address us in Spanish, make sure you do it correctly.  It can be quaint when a non-Spanish speaker memorizes a short message in Spanish, and we’ll be forgiving, thought it’s overdone and a bit boring.  But if you are going to produce Spanish-language materials, get a professional Spanish-language copywriter and proofreader/editor.  Or at least, hire someone who has had formal education in the language.  Spanish is a beautiful language with rather strict grammatical and spelling rules, you can’t just wing proper writing.   When your Spanish-language materials [Continue Reading]

Sep 292013
 
Katz-Lacabe Discusses Chinese Flag & License Plate Cameras in Brian Copeland Show

Today my husband, Mike Katz-Lacabe, was a guest of Brian Copeland on his KGO radio show. They discussed the controversy around raising the flag of the People’s Republic of China in San Leandro as well as the use of license plate cameras.  It’s only 20 minutes, so listen up! BTW, Brian Copeland said that neither Councilmember Benny Lee, the architect of the flag proposal, nor any other supporters of the flag were willing to go to the show and stand up for their views.

Sep 272013
 
San Leandro Teacher to Face Trial on Spurious Charges

Rick Styner case shows how criminal defendants can be easily railroaded Yesterday I went to court to listen to the the third part of the preliminary hearing on the case against Rick Styner, the San Leandro High School teacher accused of possession of child pornography.  Unfortunately I missed the first two days of the hearing and the media coverage by the BANG papers has been atrocious. Yesterday, the judge ruled there was sufficient cause to go to trial on charges of stealing a pair of Amy McNamara Furtado’s panties and of possessing child pornography (not for anything found in his [Continue Reading]

Sep 132013
 
Surveillance Cameras Don't Work Against Crime

Data from a multitude of studies makes the case that money is better spent elsewhere.. There is little controversy within the academic and scientific community that surveillance cameras don’t work, either to prevent or solve crimes.   City-wide surveillance cameras have been around since 1994, and in the last two decades there have been numerous studies on their effectiveness.  They show that it’s minimal at best. The Studies: England Perhaps the most extensively studied camera system is also the biggest: England’s.  Put together, England and Wales have 4.2 million cameras and, not surprisingly, the British government was interested in finding [Continue Reading]