Peoria Pundit

Dear Chief Settingsgaard:

Today is your first full day on the job. When you were sworn in yesterday, there were three people on the City Council who will not be there today.

Hopefully, you know that with the new group who will be sworn in today, there will be a new way of doing things.

In the past, the people who sat on the City Council — especially those who were members of the now dethroned “progressive” wing of the council — expected and received certain, shall we say, considerations from the former chief, John Stenson.

During his tenure, Stenson fixed parking tickets for council members. He interceded in a domestic dispute that policy dictated should have resulted in the arrest of a current council member. He
gave officers permission to stage a fake arrest in which an “attorney” was actually a stripper who bared her breasts on video tape. He was accused of interceding on behalf of the a previous city manager’s
relative, who had been accused of being involved in a robbery.

He arrested a man, then serving in the military Iraq, for refusing to hand over a videotape of a high school fight, even though Stenson — by his original admission — never identified himself as a police officer. Stenson raked in tons of money working an an off-duty security guard, even though he already is one of the highest paid employees of the city and is on call 24 hours a day. He also wore his uniform during these stints, an apparent violation of state law that every official in the city seemed willing to overlook. In fact, in-uniform moonlighting is a problem throughout the entire department. That might be a problem you want to look into.

Chief Stenson generally wore out his welcome among the rank and file. They thought Stenson was a fairly good street cop, but poorly suited for management.

These new guys — two who defeated incumbents and a third who will be named later to full the seat of the at-large member who defeated the incumbent mayor — all ran on campaigns that stressed the need to devote more time, effort and money to essential services than did previous council.

It was heartening to read that you consider “quality of life issues” of primary importance. Hopefully, that translates into enforcement of laws and ordinances designed to make neighborhoods liveable.

This article also notes that there is some racial strife on the force. That’s unfortunate, but not unexpected. Also, remain skeptical. There are folks here in Peoria who loose clout if racial tensions are not on a low boil. These are the folks who accused you of being a racist before they had met you or studied your record.

You will eventually have to deal with the Journal Star. You will find that most of the reporters are competent, some do a very good good job and others who, well, leave something to be desired. But it’s not them you have to worry about; it’s the editorial board. Most if not all of these people were hired before the paper was purchased by the current owners, and they cannot be fired under terms of the sale. These people enthusiastically endorsed the guys who lost the most recent municipal election. They used the editorial page to lie and distort the records of the guys who won the election. The Journal Star editorial board will spend the next two years — the 2007 at-large election — to try to get their favored “progressive” candidates back in office.

If these editorialists perceive you as on the side of the “essential services first” crowd, they will turned their poisoned pen on you. They will lie and distort your record. Count on it. The Journal Star — like the progressive candidates they endorse — begrudge every dime spend on essential services — like police salaries — as money that isn’t being spent building baseball diamonds, health clubs for Caterpillar executives, riverfront museums, etc.

Therefore, take your message directly to the people through radio and television whenever possible. Start a blog. Anything to dilute the JS’s power over the message. Be sure, however, to respond to every question from a reporter. Return every telephone message. Don’t give them a single reason to ignore you.

And above all: Don’t let this city’s politics get you down. Most of the people who live here are decent people who simply want to be safer, even if we don’t all agree on the best way to go about it. Show you are generally concerned — and show a little progress in “quality of life” issues — and we’ll be eating out of your hand. Just don’t play politics with us, and don’t lie and dissemble, and you will get along just fine.

This entry was posted 4 years, 9 months ago on Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005 at 8:56 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.