The answers to the questionnaire were sent to us by the candidate via email and have been edited for brevity and clarity.

There has been mounting evidence showing that Black people in Long Beach are disproportionately stopped and searched by police, whether it’s while they drive, ride a bike, or ride public transportation. If elected, how do you plan on addressing this?

We need complete police reform. It is my firm belief that any organization is only as moral as the top. Guidance by example and intention is the key factor here. I had an hour-and-45-minute personal conversation with our police chief and my conclusion is that he is unworthy of the job. He does not understand the inherent bias of the police, the deep corruption, the systematic racism which permeates our police department and all he told me was how great everything was. 

He could not even acknowledge the truth about what happened on May 31. He would not admit that officers shot rubber bullets at peaceful protesters kneeling in the street, nor at reporters. I guess he just can’t believe the videos and photos taken. He stayed up in his office the entire evening and watched our city burn with no personal directive.

So in answer to your question, I call for the immediate dismissal of Chief Robert Luna. We must do a national search for a new police chief. If we promote from within, we will promote the same dysfunction, the same prejudice, and the same culture of our police department that is defined by the unequal treatment of our people.

I believe ethics training on a yearly basis is imperative for every officer.

I believe that officers need a college education at minimum. Making life and death decisions are too important for the minimally educated. I expect diversity training (like we do in real estate) with continuing education being mandatory as in almost every other profession.

All of these suggestions should happen. But if we do not have a City Council willing to step up and do the hard work of oversight and actual firing of bad officers then we get nowhere.

I think we need a ballot measure to shift where the Citizen Police Complaint Commission reports to. I think their findings should go in full form to the City Council behind closed doors for the Council to vote on the findings. I believe a redacted form should be given immediately to the public (as these are personnel issues).

We recently reported that there is little transparency and guiding policy around the police department’s use of invasive surveillance technology, such as facial recognition software and thermal cameras originally designed for the military. How will you ensure that officers are properly using this equipment and that residents’ privacy is safeguarded?

I believe transparency, accountability, and responsibility are the keys to our Reform Movement. The police must be held accountable. We can only do that with transparency. Just this past year we found out that the police were using Tiger Text (an app that makes text messages disappear) when dealing with stopping citizens. This was to prevent any discovery and to protect the bad actors. When finally brought out in the open by Stephen Downing of the Beachcomber, suddenly the department was put on the spot and had to cease its use. If you want a government that is responsive to you, then you must take away these contriving apps that cover up their bad intentions. 

We simply must have a new chief and an operations inspections officer. We don’t need all the $250,000 salaried assistants to the chief and all the other highly paid management staff in the police department, which has inflated every year. We need to streamline and get back to basics. The more they have, the more they can hide. Simple math. Ultimately we need an audit done of the police department by an outside agency, since our current city auditor has been compromised. We need to know and we need to know now if we are to reform the department.

Officers involved in killing or injuring civilians are almost never fired, even after a civil jury finds that they violated a person’s rights, according to police misconduct lawsuit data we compiled. In some cases these same officers were later rewarded with promotions and commendations. Yet police misconduct has ruined lives and cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in payouts. Do you believe officers named in these lawsuits should be held personally accountable, and if so how?

You hit on a persistent problem with our corrupt department. Did you know that our chief was involved in a misconduct lawsuit that cost the city a lot in settlement costs, yet he has been rewarded throughout his career for keeping his mouth shut and never saying anything against the police even when they have done wrong? Is this whom you want as your police chief?

I would suggest as a reform that no one with more than three complaints on them should serve in our police department. (We just fired one officer in 2018 who had 18 complaints, and it took a decade to fire him). We have spent $31.5 million in lawsuits in the last six years for police brutality, wrongful death, excessive use of force, etc. There are almost $100 million in settlements pending as City Attorney Charlie Parkin keeps appealing the cases with the intent that these abused people will run out of money to proceed, get exhausted, and go away or just give up from the grief and stress. Is this the city attorney you want? I don’t.

I believe that officers should be held personally liable along with the city that hired them in so much as the city has not trained or educated nor supervised them properly. If it is an entirely rogue officer, then personal responsibility must take precedent.

I find it strange that a cosmetologist must go through 1,500 hours of training yet these officers who are so powerful over us, making life and death decisions, are only required to do 700 hours of training. That is patently absurd.

You’ve promised to hire 180 new police officers and earlier this year you told us, “We love our LBPD in Long Beach for the most part, and we just need much more of them.” Yet you also say the police budget should be cut by 30 percent and that many functions currently performed by police should be handled by more capable city employees, such as mental health professionals. How do you reconcile those two positions?

I did promise to hire 180 new officers. There is a reason. When talking with the chief, one of his excuses for why he couldn’t fire the bad apples was that he didn’t have enough officers. We must set that excuse to rest once and for all. 

It is so depressing that in 2008 the council voted to stop community policing. Look at those results. All our substations are locked to the public with 8-foot-high iron fencing. We have no Police Advisory Committees, we have no street or horse officers, we have no one walking the streets. We lost the very essence of what kept our people safe without violating their rights.

I am calling for a 30-percent reallocation from our police budget right now. Look at the math. New officers will cost us a lot less than the old guard under an old contract that gave them everything. Only new officers will save us money. We need to have a complete review and reform of our department and get the salaries back into our stratosphere. 

I would like the reallocation of funds to go to hiring social service workers and mental health providers and use some for transitional housing. The things the police are doing they do not have the skillset for. I would like to reinstitute the teams we used to have with one officer, one mental health provider, and one social service worker to do calls for service for domestic violence, homelessness, “acting” out behavior, autism-related calls, etc. Sometimes we do need the police at one point or another, but our first approach should be to de-escalate and solve the problems.

With the savings we get from new officers and stopping the 40-percent outrageous overtime of the old guard police officers, we can afford these programs. 

Your platform, as posted on your website, does not mention the impending climate crisis except in passing under a section spelling out your position on tree felling. With seven miles of coastline, much of it within the district you seek to represent, Long Beach stands to be especially affected by rising sea levels. If elected, how do you plan to combat the climate emergency?

Climate change is real.

The City of Long Beach needs to get into long-term planning. Our High Flood Zone Map of the city is actually an ocean level rise map, which shows almost all of the Third City Council District under water. The Second District is fortunate in so much that we are on a 50-foot shale bluff above the sea. But if we do nothing, only a bridge will let us access our homes.

I will promote the creation of an Ocean Level Rise Fund to save up for the transformation of our breakwater. I hope to expand that to include all other avenues to protect the city. The subsequent effects of climate change will alter our city forever.

I will promote a 10,000 trees planting program to add oxygen to the air and reduce the carbon within the city. I will ask that Parks, Recreation & Marine Department take over the median strips and trees from Public Works like they used to. We have lost so many ancient trees due to bad management of Public Works.

I want a “no net loss” tree program. No tree taken down without another planted in close proximity. I want a full-time urban forester to coordinate with our arborist to manage our tree population. I would like to re-invigorate the organic waste energy producing plant and build another for the city.

Although out of the city’s jurisdiction, I would urge the Port of Long Beach to install more electrical plug-in points so ships at the port no longer need to stay on idle. That creates more pollution than a moving ship.

I would like to see us reconfigure “Diesel Death Row” so that big trucks no longer idle on the 710 Freeway spewing exhaust to the Westside, which has a 35 percent higher cancer rate than the rest of the city.

I am concerned about people driving around the blocks of their apartments for 40 or more minutes trying to find parking. The exhaust is not helpful. I suggest we create more parking for the cars we have to stop this needless round and round driving and to assist our people. 

We have a lot of common sense work to do.

COVID-19 has created a grim outlook for the city’s budget in the coming years. It’s likely that if elected you will be faced with tough financial decisions in the next few budget cycles. How do you plan to protect the most vulnerable in Long Beach—such as elderly and low-income residents—who most rely on city services while balancing budget holes?

I want a full, single-line audit of this city, which was done several years ago, and then hidden by the city manager so no one would see the results. They were not complimentary.

It is clear our city staff has expanded beyond use.

We started with 2,000 city employees and we are now well about 6,000. Our population has only decreased. We went from 470,130 five years ago to 467,354 today. In this upcoming recession/depression, we will be losing far more in population. In the 1992 recession, we lost approximately 44,000. Expect it to be worse.

We need to cull the middle management of this city. Writing a pink slip is devastating to folks, so let us be as polite as possible, but we simply cannot afford our central services with so much City Hall staff. We will need to reduce salaries of all management. Again, if they choose to leave in this recession, then let them. We cannot afford to piddle about with excessive salaries and benefits that will directly affect the services we give to those in need.

A complete re-organization of our city is required to meet the challenges ahead.

We must eliminate positions, programs, and stupid waste from the budget that are not critical. Taking care of the elderly, the marginalized and the low-income populations of this city is a priority. We cannot call ourselves civilized if we let these our brothers and sisters be harmed.

I want to see a completely revamped business department. I want business licenses to be lowered so our people can live. I want Health Department licenses lowered, and all other business-related licenses. I want a first-time small business licensee for $50 and no more than $50 for the health certificate.

I want a new $50 business license for kiosks and a $50 one for peddling, restricted to a specific district. I would love to see our downtown mall turned into a real mercado with local shops, awnings arched across the street, blue and sparkle lights, and bands playing. 

I want a real mentoring and educational program to teach small businesses how to do business. Quicken, QuickbooksPro, accounting, payroll, Payroll taxes, Workers Compensation, Income taxes or where to find a good CPA. So many people know how to make a great apple pie but they do not know how to run an apple pie business. 

Over 80 percent of our people work outside the city. We have no jobs here. Creating new small businesses and supporting them would make an excellent future tax base and will redirect working people back into working within the city.

I would like to see our senior center assisted, as it has grown a little long in the tooth. It is a huge space and we could integrate the community into this building with great results. Even a community police mini-station would be a good idea.

I would also like to foster cooperative living for elderly. I especially want such facilities for our LBGTQ people, who often do not have family to support them.

What lessons has the coronavirus pandemic taught you about local government’s role in public health?

The pandemic has taught me that we need coordinated effort all the time. The lack of consistent policy from the federal government has been damaging in our fight against this virus. Locally, although we followed LA most of the time, I am grateful after countless calls to the city that we are finally tracking the LBGTQ community as we have a number of immunocompromised individuals in our city.

The Second District is home to many beloved bars and music venues that contribute to the city’s culture and are now at risk of shuttering for good due to the pandemic restrictions. Do you have a plan to help them weather the storm?

As I said lower the business licensing fees and health fees, lower zoning fees, etc.

We need more parking on our corridors to re-establish business success. We had lost 30 businesses on Broadway before the pandemic due to this horrid Broadway Road Diet. The parking meters on Fourth Street are counter-productive and should be tossed.

The city has done such a poor job of reaching out to our restaurants and bars that they both have formed their own associations trying to get some leverage with the city. If we had a really competent councilmember they would have been listened to immediately. They are asking for leeway for inspections and enforcement. They can barely keep their doors open. 

They want a consistent policy, as opening and closing costs lots of money and they have run out.

I want to propose a trolly running from Belmont Shores, through Broadway and Fourth Street to the East Village and back for free. We did that before in the early 1990s. It cost us $50,000 for the Christmas season and saved our businesses.

I think having a bike and e-scooter path in the middle of outside dining is dangerous and not well thought out. We should have just closed down the lanes while we were doing this new expansion. We have bike lanes on all adjacent streets. We have already had collisions, and I do not think we will reduce the number of accidents as people are drinking in the street.

According to the county’s homeless count, an average of 207 people exit homelessness every day, while 227 people become homeless. How will you help create affordable housing in the midst of a recession with public funding being curtailed due to budget deficits?

I want to create housing—transitional and permanent—for the homeless. We did this once with the Village at Cabrillo, but that was due to the McKinney Act, and we have no more abandoned military housing to take over. We will need to set aside money from our budget to build housing. I have stated this before.

I presented to the City Council container homes over five years ago. Now all we need is the land. The city can repurpose the Golden Shore RV park at the entrance 710 freeway for cooperative living. We have vacant land on Spring Street and Atlantic Avenue, and Long Beach Boulevard. We have vacant land all over the city. 

It is so imperative that we reform the Multi-Service Center. We have stupid “office worker friendly” hours from 9 a.m. to noon, then close down the entire shop before it reopens from 1 to 4 p.m. This is an embarrassment to the city and our intention to help others. There is one phone line that actually tells you not to leave a message because they will not get back to you. Try it. I was shocked.

We need a 24/7 working facility. We also need to can the workers we have up there right now. The stubborn uncooperative staff up there is not needed. We need people with a passion to help others. I got the grand tour twice, and the place is 98 percent vacant with only 15 homeless begging for something from the front desk that ignores them. This shame must be changed now.

No developer in the city has built one affordable housing unit. That is just a fact. I will ask for federal and state grants to help funding housing. We haven’t really reached out for years, and it is available. Perhaps we need to have a new group at City Hall. The grant writing group. During these hard times that might be a good idea.