If we must tee off on the Huntington Beach Police Department and its brass for running one of the most oppressive law enforcement agencies in the county–and you know we must; it's in our contracts–then it is only fair that we single out the same coppers for praise when they do something truly amazing. So here it goes:
You, HBPD Chief Ken Small, shown here, are a real mensch.
That wasn't so hard.
Why do I feel so dirty?
The reason for pointing the upward turned fickle finger of fate at Small, as opposed to the one we usually cast in the direction of that town's police folk, concerns the chief's decision to opt out of using cameras at intersections to catch red light violators.
Bully, Chief Small, bully bully bully!
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As reported today in the Register,
Small's council overlords had asked a company to study the use of
red-light cameras at 20 city intersections. Redflex Traffic System did
the survey for free–with the understanding it would get the contract
if the city had cameras installed.
But Small courageously stepped forward to opine–correctly. Go
figure–that such cameras are costly, increase rear-end collisions and
may cause more serious traffic accidents than they prevent.
Now if he'd just do something about his department's historic
rep for having the most–how does one who travels often through Surf
City put this delicately?–um, overly enthusiastic police personnel
when it comes to confrontation in all of Orange County.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.