Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 451
July 23, 2024 - On Friday, Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Mark Zuckman indicated he would like to recommend a diversion program for the suspect who reportedly attacked local business owner and community activist John Alle in Palisades Park last summer. Alle claims he was taking a short break from work by walking in the park along the ocean-side cliffs on Tuesday, September 19 at around 3 pm when the suspect, Tyler Jordan Keating, demanded his phone and his wallet and then sucker...
July 10, 2024 - Well over three hundred employees of the City of Santa Monica had salaries of $200,000 and over in 2022, according to data obtained from a public records request by John Alle and the Santa Monica Coalition. The breakdown obtained by the organization of residents, property, and business owners concerned with public safety is as follows: 24 city employees made between $450K-$600K 40 made between $400K-$450K 56 made between $300K-$400K 256 made between $200K-$300K This adds up to 37...
June 28, 2024 - The Santa Monica City Council voted unanimously to condemn a sign hung in a storefront on the Third Street Promenade that labels the city as unsafe and accuses City Manager David White of complicity in putting needles into the hands of drug addicts. The resolution has no legal impact and cannot force the store owner to take down the sign. The sign is sponsored by the Santa Monica Coalition, a group of residents and business and property owners. It says "Santa Methica is not...
June 28, 2024 - At a lengthy city council meeting, the legislative body refused three attempts by Mayor Phil Brock to raise enough money to hire more police officers or otherwise increase the budget for public safety. Instead, they voted to ask for a study to be made regarding if and how to increase the public safety budget that they would revisit in September. A considerable portion of the meeting was devoted to discussing a resolution that a sign on the Third Street Promenade protesting lack o...
June 14, 2024 - Santa Monica College has received a legal complaint letter from nonpartisan education organization StandWithUS regarding two class assignments that they call bigoted, harassing, and ultimately illegal. StandWithUs supports Israel and fights antisemitism. The assignments involved are: (1) Professor Elias Serna's Ethnic Studies 1: Introduction to Ethnic Studies in which he asked, "What are your thoughts on the ongoing destruction and genocide by Israel in Palestine? What forms of...
June 26, 2024 - With the Santa Monica Police Department Daily Arrest Logs now online again, we decided to take a look at the numbers involving crime in this city. Using the 13 days of log reports available, from June 12 to June 24, we discovered that only a little over 4% of police calls end in arrests, that nearly half of arrests end in "cite outs," and that there are an average 7.15 arrests made per day. A "cite out" is when the police detain an individual on suspicion of having committed a cr...
UPDATE JUNE 24 2025: Emails provided us substantiate the claims made in the sign on the Promenade that Santa Monica City Manager David White co-wrote a Joint Statement regarding the needle program with the County Department of Public Health with the specific aim of addressing those who "want to dig in" and "take a step back in how this is framed." June 23, 2024 - An item on the agenda for the next meeting of the Santa Monica City Council requests the creation of a resolution expressing the...
June 20, 2024 - The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office has decided not to charge a 19-year-old USC student in the stabbing death of a man who was allegedly breaking into a car near the college fraternity houses. Ivan Gallegos, 19, fatally stabbed Xavier Cerf, 27, on Monday night around 8 pm in the 700 block of West 28th Street. Gallegos remained on the scene after the stabbing, cooperated with authorities, and was booked and held on $2 million bail. Cerf was found by police in a nearb...
June 17, 2024 - Santa Monica Mayor Phil Brock said in a phone interview that he and Vice-mayor Lana Negrete did a walk-along with Venice Family Clinic (VFC)as part of an effort to move LA County Department of Public Health's "harm reduction" needle distribution program out of the city's parks. According to Brock, the experience did not change his mind about the need to move any drug-paraphernalia distribution programs out of public spaces. Brock said the walk-along was part of their response to...
June 17, 2024 - The Los County Department of Public Health announced today that 10 monkeypox (or mpox, as they prefer to call it) cases have been confirmed in the county in the past two weeks, an increase over less than two cases per week previously. Monkeypox arrived in this country two years ago, and the first case was seen in Los Angeles County in June of 2022. Previous to that year, it had been mostly confined to Africa. Symptoms include rash or unusual sores that look like pimples or...
June 12, 2024 - During the lunch hour today, John Alle, business and property owner, witnessed paramedics dealing with an overdose situation in popular Palisades Park in Santa Monica. As EMTs attempted to help the victim, two individuals, apparently homeless, harrassed them in their efforts. Palisades Park runs from the Santa Monica pier along Ocean Avenue all the way to the north end of Santa Monica. It is a major destination point for tourists with its clear views of the ocean and is used by...
May 29, 2024 - In an email to alumni, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Hillel Rabbi, Michelle H. Fisher, politely expressed her concerns about ongoing anti-Israel protests at the university and expected disruptions at the upcoming graduation ceremony. A large pro-Hamas encampment had been installed in April, contrary to Institute policy, on the Kresge Oval, an expansive grassy area connecting the dorms to the student center and classrooms. Outside agitators contributed to the general...
UPDATE: The planned demonstration grew larger than Answer Coalition had even anticipated. However, there carefully worded press releases celebrating this face entirely omit the fact there were openly pro-Hamas (terrorist) participants who called for the death of all Jews and worldwide intifada (bloody revolution). Also, a public statue of a revolutionary war hero was defaced and park rangers assaulted. It ended up an antisemitic, anarchist embarrassment. The Answer Coalition has been asking its...
May 29, 2024 - Downtown Santa Monica Inc, the nonprofit, quasi-governmental agency that is responsible for the cleanliness, security, and prosperity of that area, is being accused of conflict of interest among some of its board members, poor money management, and general dereliction of duty and incompetence. The borders over which DTSM assumes control are Ocean Avenue on the west, Lincoln Blvd., on the east, Wilshire Blvd. on the north, and the SM 10 Freeway on the south. A majority of its...
June 26, 2024 - The Santa Monica Police Department has once again put online for public viewing their daily arrest log. In the past, SMPD daily arrests were reported automatically in the City's Open Data Portal and were available for two weeks. But on May 1, the department switched to a new records management system, and the arrest reports were temporarily discontinued, according the SMPD spokesperson Lieutenant Erika Aklufi. "We lost several automated reports during the switchover including...
May 10, 2024 - Today we received a press release from Sally Kornbluth, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explaining why she had called police in early this morning to take down (finally) a provocative and disruptive pro-Gaza (pro-Hamas terror organization) encampment that had planted itself in the Kresge courtyard - a central point connecting the student dorms, the student center and cafeterias, and the classroom buildings. The encampment, she admits in her statement, was i...
May 15, 2024 - Last night the Santa Monica City Council devoted slightly over three hours in a 9-⅓ hour meeting to the topic of the Gaza conflict in the Middle East. Freshman councilmember Jesse Zwick had brought forward a resolution calling for a "negotiated bilateral ceasefire" in the military actions Israel is conducting to root out the terrorist organization Hamas. Hamas broke the previous ceasefire on October 7, 2023, brutally raping, torturing, and murdering Israelis and other citizens, ki...
May 10, 2024 - Santa Monica Mayor Phil Brock released a statement today that he adamantly opposes the distribution of needles in public spaces and does not want any public money spent on activities that involve the distribution of needles outdoors anywhere in the city. "My position on the distribution of syringes in any of our city parks, around our schools, recreation areas, or business districts is simple. It must not occur under any circumstances. In addition, I am adamantly opposed to any...
May 8, 2024 - In the midst of a hurricane of "anti-Israel" protests on college campuses around the country, the University of California's Academic Senate Executive Council is once again reviewing the idea of requiring all students wishing to be admitted to take an "ethnic studies" course with curriculum designed by the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council. The ESFC has been known to despise Israel in the past, at least as far as it is inhabited by any Jews, but since October 7, they have been...
May 2, 2024 - The Santa Monica Coalition says they have discovered evidence that Santa Monica officials, including the City Manager, were aware that money given to the Venice Family Clinic was specifically designated for distributing clean needles to drug addicts in the city's parks. The Santa Monica Coalition is a group of business owners and residents who seek to restore safety to the city. They have filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles County and the Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer...
April 17, 2024 - Differing views were expressed by speakers at a hastily convened rally opposing the free needle distribution program at Reed Park yesterday, but everyone agreed on one thing: needles do not belong in public parks. Approximately 70 people attended the rally Tuesday morning, including Channel 7 News and several other public and private news outlets. The small attendance belies the true opposition to the county program. 22,000 signatures have been collected opposing the distributio...
April 17, 2024 - Since at least yesterday, the Frontier Communications website and phone payment system have been down. It is not possible to log in to pay bills nor to make payments at the self-service-only toll-free number. Technical Support has a recording that says, "We are experiencing a technical issue with our Internet support system platforms and are unable to take calls or chat. We are working quickly to resolve the issue and apologize for inconvenience. We hope to be up and running...
April 5, 2024 - As 54 downtown businesses are in the process of legally withdrawing from the private non-profit organization, Downtown Santa Monica Inc, charges have been leveled that the city-controlled operation wastes the money they collect from assessments on business and property owners. Downtown Santa Monica Inc is not a Business Improvement District, in which the businesses themselves run and decide on improvements, additional security, and other matters. Instead, DTSM is controlled by...
A pedestrian was killed early in the morning of April 1 in an apparent automobile accident at Ocean Avenue and Colorado Avenue. Police were called at approximately 5:30 am and sealed off the area for their investigation. The driver of the vehicle remained on-scene and cooperated with the police. The pedestrian victim was declared dead at the scene. The identity of this individual has not been provided by authorities. By 11:20 am, police had concluded their investigation and reopened the area to...
March 28, 2024 - When a married couple of muckraking journalist filmmakers were visiting their home country of Ireland this fall, they were shocked at how quickly the public's attention turned from the horror of the October 7 attack on Israel to the plight of the Gazans losing electricity. "We just noticed that everyone wanted to move quickly away from Oct. 7 and start talking about Gaza and ceasefires," Phelim McAleer told the Daily Mail in an interview. "And we know there would be no Oct. 8...
