City Council Laments, Reacts to Recent Gang Shootings

A spate of retaliatory gang-related shootings over the last few days in Northwest Pasadena dominated the discussion at Monday evening’s City Council meeting. Councilmembers congratulated the Pasadena Police Department for swift arrests of 10 members of the gangs suspected of involvement, and some bemoaned what they saw as a lack of funding for the department’s Special Enforcement Section, which helped facilitate the arrests.

Before the Council’s short formal agenda, Police Chief Phillip Sanchez gave the Council a detailed breakdown of the shootings, which he called “definitely retaliatory in nature,” as well as the details of the subsequent arrests.

The shootings left two people dead and three wounded, one critically, in a pair of incidents in Northwest Pasadena on Friday and Saturday.

“This is all gang-related,” said Chief Sanchez. “These are people who know each other.”

In a drive-by attack Friday night on a group of mourners holding a vigil for an earlier murder, assailants in a car sprayed as many as 15 rounds from an automatic weapon, striking four of the vigil-goers. Two died, and two more are now recovering from gunshot wounds.

Then on Saturday at a vigil for Friday’s dead, another drive-by shooting resulted in the wounding of a young man with a non-threatening gunshot injury to his upper leg.

Heightened patrols by the Pasadena Police over the weekend resulted in the arrest of 10 gang members or felons, all of whom except for one were Pasadena residents. The police also seized seven illegal weapons, including a loaded AK-47.

Lamenting the violent outbreak, Mayor Terry Tornek commended the Police Department as well as the LA County Sheriff’s Department for their work, and added, “All of us — elected officials, the City Manager, the police department, the school leadership, clergy, our non-profits, and our neighbors — bear a responsibility to ending the violence. I will continue to work with the Chief, the City Manager, the City Council and the leaders in our communities to do all that we can towards ending the violence, and in making sure that every single block of Pasadena is safe for our residents and visitors.”

Following the Chief’s presentation, Councilmember Victor Gordo pointedly asked whether or not the police department had the budget to assign as much overtime to officers as they have done this past weekend.

“No, we do not,” answered Chief Sanchez, which prompted Gordo to ask City Manager Steve Mermell to place an action item on an upcoming City Council agenda for more overtime funding for the Police.

Mermell agreed, saying that he would work directly with the Chief to determine whether a new appropriation might be necessary or whether new funding might only require moving line items accordingly in the department’s $71 million yearly budget to cover such expenses.

Mermell also reported that a recent police staffing study requested by the Council Public Safety Committee is being currently handled by the Chief’s office and assisted by students from the Sol Price School of Public Policy at USC, and “will be underway in a couple of weeks.”

Gordo emphasized to Mermell the study’s importance of finding funding for the Police Department’s Special Enforcement Section, which was instrumental in the weekend’s arrests, but has now been reduced to 11 members, where previously there were two teams, for a total of more than 20 officers.

Mermell assured Gordo that the study would account for those officers.

Councilmember Steve Madison called the shootings “horrendous,” and quoting Bob Dylan, said, “You don’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind blows” with regard to the need for more police staffing.

Madison lamented the fact that in so many American neighborhoods, gang violence is the leading cause of death among young African-American men.

During the public comment section, civil rights Attorney Dale Gronemeier questioned the need for more hiring of police officers, saying that the problems demanded “smart solutions, not knee-jerk reactions.”

Kris Ockershauser of the Pasadena Foothills Chapter of the ACLU, also criticized the department’s response, saying, “ If we look honestly at our department’s standing in the eyes of residents of color, it’s clear that there is a big gap in the trust between the two. Last year, the City’s Graziano Survey of all residents… revealed that that our communities of color have significant concerns with police misconduct here. Many Northwest Pasadena residents said such conduct as racial profiling, excessive use of force and stopping them for no good reason, were major problems for them.”

Sanchez responded by reassuring Ockershauser, the Council and the residents in attendance that the police department “cares about the lives lost in Black-on-Black violence,” adding that the police move swiftly in every shooting case to bring suspects to justice.

Councilmember Gordo also responded directly to Gronemeier, saying that the Special Enforcement Section team is half of what it should be, and said that he was committed to finding funding to bring the Special Enforcement team back to its former staffing levels.

Following the shooting discussion, the Council also welcomed a new sergeant-at-Arms for their meetings, Sergeant Glenn C. Thompson.