It is well past time to call out the Pomona City Council for their egregious behavior during a City Council meeting nearly four months ago on February, 6, 2023.
By Julian Lucas
Published 06/06/2023 9:11 Am PST
Updated 06/06/2023
Last original paragraph retracted.
Pomona’s Mayor Tim Sandoval lost control of his meeting, and failed to stop his fellow Council Member, Robert S. Torres, son of Congresswoman Norma Torres and current candidate for the California State Assembly, from berating a member of the public from the dais.
The incident occurred during the beginning of the meeting on the agenda item listed vaguely as “ MAYOR / COUNCIL MEMBER COMMUNICATIONS. Reports on conferences, seminars, and regional meetings attended by Mayor and City Council and announcements of upcoming events, and also items for future City Council consideration as requested by Mayor or Members of the City Council.”
No one in the public could have known from reading the agenda that this was the time that the Council would address two recent events within the last couple of weeks that involved the murder of three teens in the area:
On Saturday night, January 28th, a 17-year-old Pomona boy and a man were killed in a shooting at a house party in Pomona.
A few nights later, on Thursday, February 2nd, a 15-year-old boy was killed in a shooting at Montclair Plaza. A second shooting victim was wounded. At least four people have been arrested as suspects in connection with the incident at Montclair Plaza shootings. The Montclair Police Department said detectives served search warrants in Pomona and arrested three suspects: two 20-year-old men and a 16-year-old boy.
Understandably, emotions ran high discussing these youth deaths and arrests in the recent weeks. Mayor Sandoval issued a call for “all community members to come together to bring forth change,” and Council Member Nora Garcia applauded several organizations in Pomona who have directed their efforts to helping teens - Gente Organizada among them. Even Council Member Torres, in the first part of his speech, spoke in favor of the organizations in the City who worked with teens and spoke of the need for the City Council to “engage the community” to do more to solve its problems.
However, after Torres announced that he had been instrumental in working with the City to secure a 4 million dollar federal grant for La Casita Teen Center at Palomares Park, he launched into what can only be characterized as a personal verbal attack on Jesus Sanchez, founder and former Executive Director of Gente Organizada, who now serves as the organization’s Economic Justice Director.
In the past, Sanchez has been an outspoken critic of public officials who have used violent incidents such as the aforementioned as an opportunity to expand police presence. He has maintained that it is the wrong approach to the problem - insisting that the best allocation of resources are those that address the root of the problem. In the past few years, Gente Organizada has published several reports that have pointed out the inequities of arrests and incarcerations in the city.
Sanchez had not yet spoken in this meeting, but Torres took exception to the fact that Sanchez shook his head at some of his comments.
Torres’ diatribe against Sanchez began by warning members of the public that “we have individuals here who I call divisive individuals, who represent themselves, and they don’t represent this community. And the bottom line is each one of the City Council members here have been elected to represent this community whether you like it or not, Sir.” Here, Torres began addressing Gente Organizada’s Jesus Sanchez directly, continuing: “And the sad part about it is this - we need more police presence - whether you like it or not. We need to hire more police on the street.”
Torres’ comment about expanding police presence elicited a quiet rumble of dissent from the audience.
Mayor Sandoval attempted to interrupt Torres, saying “Ro-, Ro-, Ro-,” but Torres continued: “the fact that you have a few officers patrolling the streets at one time is flat-out dangerous. And if you talk to the residents of Pomona . . . they want more investment in public safety. And . . . If you knock on that door, Jesus, (Here, Torres addresses Sanchez directly, while knocking 4 times on the dais) and you tell them to defund the police . . . they will throw you out.”
This is the part of the meeting when Sanchez, from the audience, directed an expletive at Torres. It is easy to pin culpability on the person who is yelling and swearing in the audience, but upon examination, Sanchez was provoked. It is not the job of public officials to incite the audience in the way that Torres did.
From that time on, it became a cacophony of voices. Other members of the audience and City staff members chimed in. At various junctures, Mayor Sandoval tried to address both Torres and Sanchez, by repeatedly calling them out by their first names. Sandoval also called out several times to Police Chief Ellis.
From the audience, Sanchez yelled that he was angry that Council Member Torres took the topic of the teen deaths only to turn it around and make it about him. Sanchez said, “that’s the message here tonight. All of you haven’t done shit. And the kids are fucking dying.”
The Mayor’s response was: “I want him removed,” and called for the Police Chief to do so.
Both staff and the Mayor called for a break, but even after the Mayor stood to leave the dais in order to walk toward the audience, and even while he was walking behind Council Member Torres and some of the other Council Members, Torres continued to taunt Sanchez: “Dude [he said to Jesus Sanchez] . . . Don’t be flipping people off. Don’t represent yourself like that. And, if you are the type of person who likes to dish it out, try to be the type of person that can take it.”
It’s been reported that after speaking with the Pomona Chief of Police Ellis, Jesus Sanchez removed himself from Council chambers.
When Gente Organizada’s Jesus Sanchez was escorted out, Mayor Sandoval told the remaining members of the organization that they should ‘keep him in check since he represents all of you”. When they replied that Council Member Torres represents the entire Pomona City Council and the Mayor should ‘keep his own Council Members in check, the Mayor disagreed and said that Council Member Torres “represents himself.” The double standard was definitely in play that night at the Council meeting.
On the original videotape, Torres’ last comment to Sanchez is audible, but shortly after, the videotape is muted for the next 7 minutes or so. During this time, the Mayor is seen on screen, speaking to several individuals including staff and security officers, at least one member in the audience, along with several other Council Members.
However, the official ‘scrubbed’ version of the videotape, does not include Torres’ last comments to Jesus, nor does it show the muted film footage of all that ensued during the break.
While there are no laws that require the City to show the full tape, it appears shady when the city’s original tape was specifically edited for public review. This raises the question of transparency. How can city council members including the mayor campaign and include transparency as a core value, but take time to edit something so minuscule as a city council meeting not being butterflies and unicorns as they often imply.
In addition, while it appears no laws were broken, a public meeting where the Mayor allows a member of the Council to single out, target and slander one member of the public reflects poorly on the entire City Council. It is the job of the Mayor to keep the individual members of the Council in check. At times during the meeting, the Mayor did try to interrupt Council Member Torres, but Torres disregarded him. This should be addressed. There is a risk here that this kind of action could become the norm, with any Council Member choosing to ignore the Chair. In this case chaos, rather than order, would rule.
The Mayor needs to reaffirm his role to the Council as Chair, and the Council needs to reaffirm that they are a body dedicated to representing and making decisions on behalf of the public - rather than attacking them.
The kind of behavior, exhibited on February 6th, could very well have had a chilling effect on public participation. No member of the public wants to feel like they could be potentially singled out and publicly ridiculed as a consequence for their attendance at a public meeting.
The appropriate remedy is for the Mayor to apologize to the public directly and schedule a meeting with the Council to discuss and adopt norms and protocols for public meetings. Currently, it does not appear that Pomona has anything on the books concerning such for its Council Members, other than referring to Robert’s Rules of Order. That said, there's an existing version of Robert's Rules recommended by League of California Cities called Rosenberg's Rules of Order, which states that:
While this particular rule applies to the conduct between Council Members, it would seem like this rule would apply to the conduct between Council Members and the public as well.
No meeting should begin with elected officials taking jabs at people. It needs to be made very clear that Council Members should only speak directly to members of the public if they are seeking clarification on issues that the members of the public addressed in their comments during the time allotted for public participation. It is not the job of an elected official to berate, argue or debate the public from the dais. The job of an elected official to take on the role of active listener - it is not always easy, but officials were elected to respond to the public's concerns.
It is important that the Council determine clear requirements for agenda items that include more specificity - preventing abuse of the topic in the future. It’s very hard for the Mayor to call out ‘point of order’ when the topic has not been defined.
Ordinarily, cities and school districts begin meetings with recognition of typically positive things that are happening in the district. This sets a positive tone for the meeting. No one should be surprised about the topic. This means that the agenda should be specific enough so that members of the public can decide beforehand whether they want to speak on a topic.
Once the Council passes a set of protocols or norms, these should be posted so that the public can hold the Council accountable. The City of Pomona, though a fairly large City, lacks a newspaper that consistently reports on its Council meetings. In lieu of this kind of reporting, it is particularly necessary that the Council have systems in place to hold themselves accountable to the public who elected them in the first place.
The bottom line is politicians should not be attempting to catapult their careers over the deaths of two Black kids.
The Pomonan delayed writing about this incident out of respect for the families, friends and loved ones of the victims, and offers sincere condolences to all who have been adversely-affected by these deaths.
Download transcript of the Pomona City Council Member Robert Torres’ speech here
Julian Lucas, is a photographer, a purveyor of books, and writer in training, but mostly a photographer, but don’t ever ask him to take photos of events. Julian is also the owner and founder of Mirrored Society Book Shop.
