In fact

The hubub about Interim Chief Chris Vicino seems eerily like another such tussle for prominence and power as Pasadena enters a period of transition.

You have to love a newspaper that claims it doesn’t publish anonymous character assassination, then goes on to do exactly that:

AN Internal affair

Untwisting the links between a dead ex-cop and an alleged ‘ethnic cleansing’ campaign inside the Pasadena Police Department

By Andre Coleman 07/31/2008

A personal professional standard of mine is to sit down face-to-face with anyone I write about — whether that’s the mayor, a gang member or the chief of police.

The results of such discussions are not always pleasant. For instance, after an April Fools Day edition a few years back in which the paper humorously depicted then-Superintendent Percy Clark as illiterate (and took aim at Cardinal Roger Mahony, police Chief Bernard Melekian, former LA Times Editor John Carroll and the last pope), Clark, who is African American, viewed the teasing as racist and I ended up explaining what happened to some not-so-happy members of the NAACP.

And in my childhood home of Altadena, several unhappy neighbors let me know exactly how they felt — by mail, email, phone and face-to-face — after I wrote a column last year suggesting that some African Americans use race as a crutch.

Neither experience was pleasant, but I believe everyone in the public eye should give people a chance to sit down with them and do more listening than talking when it comes complaints about the way they do their jobs.

But how does one talk with the authors of anonymous letters, two of which we received over the past few weeks regarding not only the recent death of retired Officer Dave Richter, a resident of Arcadia, but also the performance of Interim Police Chief Chris Vicino?

Sorry Andre, but your story remain unsubstantiated and, sorry to say, worthless. I’m sure it has some value to those folks who send anonymous missives claiming all sorts of nefarious goings-on, but news? Not in the least.

Paul

Paul