When is a Public Safety Forum not a community event? Answer: When TBSC sponsors it!

In previous Indybay articles we've covered how TBSC is a supposed community group that is in fact run by a small group of people: specifically friends and relatives of Analicia and Dexter Cube. No better an exploration of how a secretive small group attempts to influence public policy than looking at what was advertised as community forum on public safety that occurred on October 22, 2015 at Holy Cross Parish Hall in Santa Cruz.


In 2015 the mission statement was revised for TBSC. An important sentence has been removed. " We don't care about your political leanings." Today in 2016 prior to the election season perhaps the mission statement should read " We are a right wing media machine spreading propaganda to achieve goals in line with the GOP."




Though described through posters, flyers, that were ever-changing, social media invites as both a public safety forum as well as a fundraiser, it became almost immediately apparent that a different agenda by TBSC was afoot. In the initial flyer posted in September notice that Lynne Brown is the only named speaker followed by yet to be invited and confirmed " Representatives from the Santa Cruz Police Department , the Santa Cruz Sheriff's Office , the District Attorneys Office and others " will be on the panel. Please review attached posts referring to the forum that appeared on the closed Facebook page. The other appeared in public and was printed for distribution. It is evident that Lynne was sought out, highlighted and promoted and the others.....well, an after thought. A true public safety forum should have highlighted local representatives first and foremost. Local representatives that are far more qualified to present and answer questions.

Tickets to the "public" safety forum cost $10 a piece with no immediate information as to how low income members of the public could attend. Perhaps public safety as far as TBSC is concerned only applies to people who can afford to pay to attend forums.

The posters publicizing the event proudly proclaimed that a panel of local public safety leaders would be in attendance and they would take questions from the audience Sheriif Hart, DA Jeff Rosell, Chief Vogel and Chief Probation Officer Fernando Giraldo committed to the event, not having any prior viewing of the presentation Lynne Brown was going to unleash. Unfortunately, upon purchase of a ticket to a supposedly public forum on safety, it became apparent the event was very much a private one. Ticket holders were warned that no recording devices were allowed at the forum held at Holy Cross Parish Hall. In addition , Ticket holders were warned and must agree " to not transmit or aid in the transmitting any recording description, account , picture " of the event. The irony of this agreement , coming from TBSC can not be overstated. Remember , we are talking about TBSC, a social media site that frequently posts photos of "sketchy " people or "check out this guy! He stole my bike." Furthermore, attendees apparently consented to being recorded by TBSC only. Lastly, people were encouraged to write out questions for the expert panel but were warned that the questions the panel would answer wouldn't actually come from the audience but rather, from cherry picked questions directly selected by the forum's organizers.

Other than being sponsored by TBSC, it's entirely unclear who actually organized the forum. Though a self proclaimed charity and community group, TBSC has always been characterized by secrecy. A special committee organized the forum but no one knows who was behind the agenda that was being promoted. As the actual event unfolded, throughout the evening, it became apparent that the slate of local law enforcement leaders were actually a foil for what seemed to be a fear based right wing agenda of spreading false facts and fear more fitting for Fox News than an informational Santa Cruz forum.




After a brief introduction by ex Santa Cruz mayor and yet another local safety law and order advocate, Lynn Robinson, the event started off with a gust of dramatic fear mongering by Lynne Brown, head of the so called Electric Blue Foundation Coalition. Lynne Brown received almost an hour of time for her presentation which was heavily promoted by TBSC sponsors. Who is Lynne Brown, what's the Electric Blue Foundation coalition and why would she be invited to a local safety forum and allowed to speak prior to local law enforcement leaders? Perhaps the answer lies with what TBSC's real agenda for the forum was.

Lynne Brown is a resident of Sacramento and is married to a Sacramento Sheriff, Dwight Brown. And, it turns out that to become known as a well known public safety advocate doesn't take much. It seems to take a bunch of press releases, a Linked In account and a Facebook page proclaiming oneself as a public safety advocate, that's all. From the looks of her FB page it seems that Ms. Brown caught TBSC's eye because she's a favorite speaker at a number of Republican Women's luncheons throughout the state of CA, from Lake County and Porterville down to Orange County, promoting her safety agenda which consists of repealing prop 47 to changing all resisting arrest charges to automatic felony counts (amongst other things). link to: https://electricbluefoundation.wordpress.com/about/ Lynne posted on September 18 on Overtrun Prop 47 Facebook page " Good news for this Friday! I attended a meeting with a group who is hoisting a public safety forum nest month...The desired outcome of this forum is to begin the statewide effort to amass a roster of volunteers who ready to do every thing for making phone calls to walking neighborhood and talking to residents. We are putting together a planning committee to strategize how we will go about moving forward with our efforts to Overturn Prop 47. "

Lynne Brown does nothing to hide both her right wing and GOP politics and policies online so it's pretty apparent that the TBSC committee who organized the "public safety" event was not surprised in inviting and promoting a featured speaker with strong GOP and right wing ties and views. The proposed legislation to change ALL resisting arrest charges to felonies (SB No. 752)
was introduced into legislation by CA GOP Senator Nielson in 2015. Lynne Brown's Electric Blue Foundation helped sponsor such legislation as well as lobbying and working actively to overturn Prop 47.


Ms. Brown's efforts were seemingly so valued by TBSC's Analicia Cube that prior to the paid event at Holy Cross church, Ms Brown appeared on a local radio call in show where she was interviewed by Monica Karst of the Santa Cruz Socialites. For those who aren't familiar, both Santa Cruz Socialites and TBSC have had a lot of linkage of late, so much so that one might even call them sister organizations. Describing themselves as a local women's "empowerment" group, the Socialites seem to be delving into the political sphere with a number of active TBSC members being spotlighted by the Socialites for special "awards" for public service. This being the case, perhaps it's not a surprise that Lynne Brown got to lobby local "socialites" for her agenda. The original post regarding the upcoming radio spot has since been removed.

At the TBSC public safety event, Ms Brown started her presentation with her contention that CA is literally awash in crime both violent and non violent. After a not so brief attempt to scare the beejeezus out of attendees, she then proceeded to spotlight the case of a traumatized daughter who lost her mother to a violent murder in the Fresno area. The presentation implied that the murderer had been released from prison via realignment and therefore Prop 47 should be repealed. Ominously at the end of this segment Ms. Brown solemnly warned the audience that “The Boogie man is coming through everyone’s window. Locking people up makes us safer, it may not be the most humanitarian.”

The Boogie man aside, questions arose as to why a handful of representatives from Take Back Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz Neighbors and the Santa Cruz Police Officers Association (all listed as co sponsors of the event) turned to this Sacramento based speaker to be such a large part of the local event which was advertised as being a forum on public safety. The forum was promoted on many social media sites including the Santa Cruz Police Department's own blog site and yet the first hour of the event seemed almost entirely devoted to the conservative's drive to re implement CA's prison's first approach to dealing with crime.


As an aside, for those wondering about Ms Brown's qualifications and connections, it turns out that there is no official Electric Blue Foundation as an official CA organization. At least an inquiry to the CA Secretary of State revealed nothing by that name. Subsequent to her visit to Santa Cruz, an expose on Lynne and her supposed foundation was reported on Indybay: https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2015/11/05/18779716.php?show_comments=1 Almost immediately after the article appeared on Indybay, both the Electric Blue Foundation web site and the Electric Blue Foundation Coalition Facebook page were taken down. One has to wonder why shedding light onto the Foundation's dealings would bring such an immediate response. What does remain is the EBF's Go Fund Me page which seems to have originally been created to raise money for Lynne to travel the state to attend her GOP women's luncheons. Cryptically all that remains is the final comment ““Because some people misuse funds that they have obtained through GoFundMe campaigns, our campaign funds have been put on hold until we answer certain questions about our campaign. We feel that GoFundMe is treating us like we're the criminals or like we're responsible for those who misuse funds. Because of GoFundMe 's failure to address the problem with those responsible for fraudulent actions, and instead putting holds on funds of legitimate campaigns, we will be closing our campaign. We will not continue to support GoFundMe with the fees that they take from each donation. And we do not appreciate being treated like the criminals who, like everything else, ruin it for those of us who act morally and lawfully. Please cancel your donations to our campaign so that we may remove it. Thank you."

Odd.

After Lynn gave her boilerplate GOP women's luncheon speech, the local police chiefs, the DA and head of SC county probation were finally allowed to speak. This being a TBSC event, questions were not allowed from the audience directly but rather pre screened and selected by the event's TBSC organizers. It wasn't entirely clear the extent to which SC law enforcement leaders were on board with the pitch being made by Lynne Brown directly and TBSC leaders indirectly. It might be that some or all were in on the effort to persuade potential voters to repeal Prop 47, or it might be that they were unaware of what TBSC organizers were up to and decided to ride out the forum trying to appear unaligned. This would be an interesting question to pose directly to our public servants who appeared at the event.

Finally, at the closing of the forum, Take Back Santa Cruz's founder, president, grand leader to which no TBSC event or occurrence without her permission may occur, Analicia Cube appeared on stage to rally the troops. (and the audience was overwhelmingly TBSC core members). Ms Cube read from a glossy pre printed post card (presumably printed up at TBSC expense) which was in fact a “call to action” to lobby and campaign for amendments to Proposition 47. The specific amendments to change Prop 47 were spelled out as well as who and how to lobby were as well. It was very clearly the culmination of the evening and ultimately the evening's main purpose which was to mobilize the audience to become involved in the political campaign to change the law.

Though advertised as a fundraising event for PRIDE, a local effort to keep kids out of joining gangs, an admirable and worthy cause promoted and run by SCPD, one has to wonder if instead of blatant lobbying by a leading GOP "public safety" speaker might it not have been better to actually allow a true community event by letting any audience member actually engage their public servants directly? Or perhaps a balanced panel discussing the pros and cons of Prop 47 would have been a better approach for a "community" event. If so much of the public safety discussion was going to be dominated by attempting to demonize and lobby against Prop 47, wouldn't it have been more honest just to characterize the forum as what it really was, the opening salvo in the 2016 election to overturn Prop 47? Furthermore, who were the actual event organizers? Was it just TBSC with the other 2 organizations, SC neighbors and the SCPD police union as signers on? Or were TBSC, SC Neighbors, the SC police officers union and local public servants lobbying locals behind the facade of a fundraising effort? Why was there such secrecy surrounding this supposed public safety forum ? No recording devices allowed? Why? Is there something that Take Back Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz Neighbors and the Santa Cruz Police Officer's association want to keep quiet from the rest of the community? These and other questions will be examined in the next article on the local politics of "public safety."