Brief Interview with Councilmember Tony Madrigal on Free Radio Santa Cruz

by Robert Norse

Sun, Sep 16, 2007 1:24PM

Tony Madrigal calls in en route to work to discuss the SCPD and Sentinel brouhaha over his comment at City Council mentioning an incident he witnessed last Halloween during the massive police presence which suggested the possibility of racial profiling going on. He voted against the "Triple Fine Zones" for Halloween recommended the by the police department at City Council last Tuesday.

Listen now:

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Check out the Bathrobespierre's Broadsides show for a longer discussion of the Sentinel/SCPD attack on Madrigal as well as a critique of Madrigal for failing to take up the issue of racial profiling in a serious way.

For more information: http://www.radiolibre.org/brb/brb070916.mp3

§Transcript of Madrigal's Comments at City Council

by Becky Johnson (posted by R. Norse)

Mon, Sep 17, 2007 9:31AM

Becky Johnson posted this transcript of the audio portion of City Council that I played on my Sunday show.

Also, some interesting comments, lots of bigotry and personal attacks can be found at the Sentinel comment section at http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2007/September/16/ edit/stories/01edit.htm

The transcript below is archived at: http://www.radiolibre.org/brb/brb070916.mp3 where Thomas Leavitt and I discuss the Triple Fine zones and the SCPD/Sentinel attack on Madrigal.

Audio from Santa Cruz City Council meeting Sept 11 2007
Item: Triple-fine zones downtown for Halloween

TONY MADRIGAL: "My concerns from last year about establishing this triple-fine zone are still the same this year: I'm just worried about the impact that this has on communities of color and Spanish-speaking communities that may not be reached by your Spanish media campaign.

One specific issue that I had last year is your poster....I think I spoke to you about this before.... the poster, on the bottom part, had the information in Spanish. But I just don't understand why you can't have a bigger poster the same size in Spanish as in English. If you end up fining somebody the fine is going to be the same whether they are Spanish-speaking or not, yet the information to reach them is not.

I'm concerned about that.

I'm also generally concerned how effective are we at getting the information out there that it;s a triple-fine zone.

I was out there last Halloween and I must have told two, three dozen people about the fact that it was a triple-fine zone. I must have told 6 or 7 folks to not to urinate in public, because they were about to. I told them "Hey, It's triple-fine tonight. There's an officer right down there."
"Oh, Okay." A lot of folks didnt know.

And then on top of that, somehow related to the amount of personal that was out there.

I was really bothered by the fact that I witnessed a bunch of officers pat down a group of Latino youth that were standing on the sidewalk by, I think it was Community Television. They were standing by there. They werent doing anything. They were just watching everybody go by.

They patted them all down, searched them, and then left them alone.

I asked the guys "Are you bothered by this? Are you okay?" They didn't want to do anything about it, but they did make a good point.

They said "Look. They just patted us down but they are walking right past another group of kids who are making more noise than us. They don't look like us" implying that they were Latino.

I just feel to a certain degree that there might be some racially profiling going on. And those issues do concern me. I don't think thats what we're supposed to be doing on Halloween. I do understand there are all kinds of procedures the police department has to be going through and everything.

I just think there is a different way to go about making downtown safe for Halloween.

I'm inclined to not support this motion. But if you could make a note, please, about getting a bigger poster, the same size, I think that would be useful.

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