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Once again, MidPen kicks out Review from event
Mark Noack's blog, posted by Mark Noack, Review staff writer, 12 hours ago
Excerpt
Sheriff Greg Munks came out to tonight to talk to the residents of Moonridge. So did Supervisor Don Horsley, Mayor John Muller, City Manager Magda Gonzalez and enough deputies, county officials and Moonridge residents to fill up the neighborhood meeting hall.
It was perhaps the largest gathering of public officials on the Coastside since Farm Day. In fact, the only folks who were conspicuously absent were the media. I was the only reporter who showed up, and when I walked up to enter the meeting hall I was promptly told by a MidPen Housing employee that I wasn’t allowed inside.
Could I listen to the meeting outside? Sure, he said. Then he shut the door on me. The Sheriff’s public information officer approached and told me that I would have to wait in the “press area” – a bench on the side of the courtyard, intentionally out of listening range.
I sat down on the nearest bench, and the PIO told me I was sitting in the wrong spot. She pointed to a bench about 30 feet farther away. I ended up leaving with steam probably coming out of my ears. What I really wanted to do was give everyone around a piece of my mind, even though that would’ve been a really bad idea with the number of officers with firearms around that evening.
The big irony here is that the meeting tonight was supposed to be a fluffy good news kind of event, the type that public servants usually love to see in the newspaper. Top officials from the Sheriff’s Office arranged the gathering in an effort to rebuild bridges with the residents of Moonridge and to share their efforts to better deal with mental-crisis situations.
The elephant in the room, of course, was the Serrano shooting back in June, which understandably remains a sore spot for many Moonridge neighbors. I was told that Sheriff’s officials had preemptively told residents they would not answer questions about the shooting. That might be a wise decision, given that the Serrano family currently has a civil-rights lawsuit pending against the county.
