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City, Police

Whitewater City Manager on Police Chief on Community Outreach

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There’s a paragraph from the Whitewater city manager’s Weekly Report for March 5, 2010 that reveals all one needs to know about how these two gentlemen view community outreach.

Here’s the paragraph:

City and UWW Police Departments Hold Community Forum

On Tuesday of this week, Officer Saul Valadez and Chief Jim Coan participated in a community forum on the UW -Whitewater campus to discuss police-minority student relations. UW-Whitewater Police Chief Kiederlen and one of his officers participated as well. A student panel and audience of African-American and Latino students asked questions about police procedures. The Forum was moderated by Rick Daniels of the UW-Whitewater Career and Leadership Development Office. Chief Coan commented that he believed “we were able to clarify some misunderstandings concerning police procedures and practices. I thought that it was a very positive and productive meeting and went a long way toward building a better atmosphere of trust and understanding.”

One could not have picked a more telling quote — this is the condescending idea of community outreach as correcting others’ mistakes and errors. Such is what passes for a postive meeting. He went, he dispelled, he conquered. A genuinely positive experience comes from listening to community concerns, but that sometimes means admitting official mistakes.

Coan’s a police chief so rigid — and so deeply confused about what real community outreach means — that he probably thinks that meeting with ordinary people, and correcting them, makes him seem generous and giving of his time. Brunner’s a city manager so expecting of deference to authority that he probably thinks a quote like this shows Coan in a good light.

There’s nothing about what Coan might have learned, how he might develop better practices, or find ways to improve — as though, perhaps, he thinks no improvement could possibly be necessary.

There’s an arrogant cluelessness to these gentlemen. They live in a small town, and should be close to their constituents, but they’re as far from common thinking as any detached and aloof big city leader could ever be.

City, Police

Chief Coan Remains

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One sees that Whitewater’s police chief, Jim Coan, wasn’t hired for the public safety director’s job in Mankato, Minnesota.

Coan faced an uncertain field, and even then, he wasn’t hired. One candidate dropped out, one candidate wasn’t even currently working, and the third rival Coan faced wasn’t even a police officer. Coan sought a position that combined police and fire-fighting oversight, and his nearly twenty years of supposed leadership weren’t enough to best someone not an officer. (That’s no criticism of the fire-fighter — he served ably for many years. Yet, Coan’s supposedly amazing career offered no dispositive advantage.)

In the print press from Mankato (but sadly not online), one learns that among the community panel evaluating the candidates, a majority scored Coan last, the fourth of four. (The majority picked the candidate that Mankato finally chose, as did citizen-attendees from the meeting who completed a survey asking for their preferences.) There’s no surprise in this. One could have guessed as much, and there were clues in the coverage of the hiring process that pointed to the unlikelihood of Coan getting the job.

Credit where credit is due — Mankato proved wiser than Whitewater was in 2006, when Coan came scurrying back, hat in hand, from Hudson. Mankato avoided our mistakes, and we should be happy for them that they were not so foolish as we have been.

Coan never should have served, never should have led, never should have been re-hired. Those public officials who have defended him have done so ridiculously and wrongly. They have wrongly conflated the needs of one mediocre leader with the needs of dedicated field officers. Coan isn’t the essence policing in Whitewater — not a bit more than a papier mache animal is a living creature. Too many officials propped up a mess, and in doing so, they have allowed problems to fester, simply by looking away. They are to blame for failing to correct Coan properly for his many transgressions. An obstinate few have made themselves ridiculous to those who believe truly in the fairness and decency of America’s promise for all people.

Coan’s made a mess of his career, at Whitewater’s expense. His recent interview with the Mankato Free Press shows he’s not changed, reformed, or acknowledged his many mistakes. There was little chance any other people, in sensible communities, would be foolish enough actually to hire him.

He remains with us. Coan won’t become a better leader; he’ll likely become a worse one.

Whitewater, like every community in America, deserves real accountability, real community policing, genuine fairness, and a good police leader.

Whitewater will not have good leadership until it stops pretending that it does, or insisting that honest people look away from mediocrity.

No one owes Whitewater’s town fathers a life of lies and delusions.

There’s much good work to be done, and we are just the city where it needs to be done.

I am convinced that there is no better place in the world, in any time in history, than America. Whitewater will always be at her best when she draws closer to the free, honest, open American tradition.

The more here, the better.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 3-8-10

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Good morning,

Today’s Whitewater forecast calls for dense fog, with a high of forty-six degrees.

The City of Whitewater’s Planning Commission will meet at 6 p.m., and our Library Board will meet at 6:30 p.m.

Our public school district’s administrator will hold a two monthly listening sessions today. The English language session will run from 5 to 5:45 p.m., and the Spanish language session from 5:45 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. The sessions will take place at the district’s central office.

Over at the Gazette, there’s a story on a bill that would make legal the selling of raw (unpasteurized) milk. Even in America’s Dairyland, it’s presently illegal to sell raw milk (with minor exceptions that do not cover ordinary consumers).

At Reason, there’s an recent article about raw milk demand, entitled, “A Raw Deal.” The article offers a concise description of the raw milk debate:

Raw milk is simply ordinary milk that hasn’t been pasteurized. Pasteurization—the quick heating and cooling of fresh milk — kills bacteria that can cause food-borne illnesses. When Americans first began pasteurizing milk at the turn of the last century, testing was rudimentary and farms were far less hygienic. Milk quality varied tremendously, transit was slow and the milk that made it into cities often veered into unsafe territory. Pasteurization—which eradicated Salmonella, E. coli and Listeria—saved lives.

Today, the situation is different. Testing for the presence of such pathogens is much more precise, and farms are far cleaner. While processing milk remains a good choice for milk shipped to the population as a whole, there are a group of food rebels who would rather drink their milk straight from the cow. Some say they prefer the taste, calling it richer and more robust. Others say that pasteurization kills beneficial enzymes and helpful bacteria along with the baddies. Whatever their reasons for drinking the raw stuff, the proliferation of raw milk devotees willing to take a small risk for better dairy makes regulators unhappy, and they are looking for ways to crack down on milk speakeasies.

If adults can smoke — and however foolish, it should be legal to do so — then they should be able to drink unpasteurized milk. The truly foolish act, though, is banning a kind of milk in a dairy state.

Twitter

Recent Tweets, 2-28 to 3-06

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Recent Tweets from FREE WHITEWATER on Twitter

City, Police

Mankato Free Press: Miller Chosen as New Public Safety Director

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From the Mankato Free Press story:

MANKATO — Todd Miller, an experienced police chief who most recently served in Texas, will be Mankato’s next director of public safety….

Miller will be replacing Jerry Huettl, who is retiring after more than 28 years with the city.

Mankato City Manager Pat Hentges, who chose the new director, said in a news release he was impressed with Miller’s strong endorsement from past and current co-workers. Community representatives, city employees and elected officials also had “an overwhelmingly positive” reaction to Miller.

See, Miller Chosen as New Public Safety Director.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 3-5-10

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Good morning,

Today’s forecast calls for patchy fog, later becoming sunny, and a high of forty-three degrees. That’s a forecast, I’d guess, for today’s weather and Whitewater’s future.

On this day in 1770, the Boston Massacre took place, during which British soldiers killed five colonists. Massachusetts attorney John Adams successfully defending the soldiers, leading to their acquittal.

There’s a website from an historical society, the Boston Massacre Historical Society, dedicated to preserving information about the massacre.

They have videos about the event, including historical re-enactments (where the results, of course and fortunately, fall short of the original).

Here’s one:

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li7fIijSZnY

I find their dedication to history — to remembering the past truthfully — admirable. more >>

Economy, Libertarians

From Cato@Liberty: “Six Reasons to Downsize the Federal Government”

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Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute offers Six Reasons to Downsize the Federal Government, and by doing so, assure Americans more freedom and greater prosperity:

1. Additional federal spending transfers resources from the more productive private sector to the less productive public sector of the economy.

2. As federal spending rises, it creates pressure to raise taxes now and in the future.

3. Much federal spending is wasteful and many federal programs are mismanaged.

4. Federal programs often benefit special interest groups while harming the broader interests of the general public.

5. Many federal programs cause active damage to society, in addition to the damage caused by the higher taxes needed to fund them.

6. The expansion of the federal government in recent decades runs counter to the American tradition of federalism.

For more, see DownsizingGovernment.org.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 3-4-10

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Good morning,

Today’s forecast for Whitewater calls for a sunny day, with a high of thirty-seven degrees. Balmy.

There are teacher conferences in our public school district today, so students have no school.

Wired remembers today as a great day in science: March 4, 1877: The Microphone Sounds Much Better. Here’s why microphones started sounding better —

1877: Emile Berliner files a patent caveat for a new kind of microphone. It assures the future of the telephone, but not fame for Berliner.

Alexander Graham Bell had already invented his telephone, but without Berliner’s carbon-disk or carbon-button microphone, telephones would have sounded terrible for decades. And they may not have been capable of surmounting such great distances, hindering one of humanity’s most important advances….

Berliner’s patent application improved on the existing design by adding a layer of carbon particles in between two contacts, one of which acted as a diaphragm for catching sound waves. Movements of the diaphragm created varying pressure on the carbon particles, allowing more or less electricity to pass between the contacts.

Bell paid $50,000 for Berliner’s microphone patent (about $1.1 million in today’s money) and began manufacturing telephones using the technology in 1878. But controversy dogged the patent, which was eventually thrown out, much to Berliner’s dismay. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1892 that Thomas Edison, and not Berliner, invented the carbon microphone.

In truth, neither can claim total credit.

As Bell executive W. Van Benthuysen told The New York Times (.pdf) in December 1891, the idea of transmitting speech by varying the current between two contacts as they are affected by sound waves was common knowledge in some circles, having appeared in published works as early as 1854 — well before either Berliner or Edison (who filed a similar patent) claimed credit for the idea in 1877….

Nonetheless, Berliner reputedly went to his grave in 1929 convinced that Edison had stolen his idea. Before that, he did receive ample credit for another crucial invention: the lateral-cut vinyl-disc record, whose design is still prized by hipsters and purists alike. Before that, everybody was using Edison’s phonograph cylinders, which took up much more space, and were difficult to duplicate.

Berliner’s vinyl records were used in toys from 1888 until 1894, when his company began selling records using a logo of a dog cocking its ear towards a record player. Modified versions of the “His Master’s Voice” logo have been used by record companies around the world, including RCA in the United States. It now forms the retail entertainment chain HMV’s logo….