Plenty to watch in ’07

Ashley MacDonald case in review

As Orange County prosecutors go over the sheriff’s department investigation of the Aug. 25 shooting of 18-year-old Ashley MacDonald, Huntington Beach Police are reviewing their policies on the dispensing of information to the public.

Following MacDonald’s death, the media blitzed police with public records requests for the release of the names of the two officers involved, but the department refused to budge. The community only learned the names of officers Shawn Randell, 26, and Read Parker, 28, both relatively new to the department, after the sheriff’s dept. handed the case over the county prosecutors in November.

In hindsight, Chief Ken Small said that may not have been the best move.

“We’re definitely going to reevaluate how we handle media inquiries with high-profile cases,” Small said, adding that, “to the greatest extent possible” the department should release more, or as much as it can, than it has done in the past.

Police received scores of e-mails over the last four months from residents with their own questions on what occurred at Sun View Park that morning. Small said he plans to make even more case details available once prosecutors finish their investigation, and from what he was told by attorneys, that should be sometime this month or next, he said.

The Independent’s readers hotline received a number of calls, both for and against prosecuting the officers. Many mentioned that their original view of the Huntington Beach Police has not been as much changed by the shooting as reinforced.

Ocean View superintendent ousted

The search is on for new leadership in the Ocean View School District after the board of trustees placed both Supt. Karen Colby and Asst. Supt. Michael Luker on administrative leave in the last two months.

Only two days after the board swore in four new trustees on Dec. 5, the five-member group moved to change the administration. Just weeks earlier, the old board, shy one member after Barbara Boskovich resigned in April, removed Luker.

Board members would not disclose the details behind Colby’s dismissal, and some found their silence disquieting, including parents and school staff

On Dec. 12, the board read a letter from Colby announcing her resignation, then appointed Ed Sussman, a retired superintendent from the Downey Unified School District, as an interim replacement.

Colby served with the district as a teacher and administrator for 30 years.

ID theft on the rise

All it takes is one misguided swipe in the wrong ATM, and shoppers are unknowingly allowing thieves into their bank accounts.

A Nov. 15 report from the California Department of Justice stated that California is the nation’s capital for identity theft crimes, and in Huntington Beach the sting of such faceless crooks has certainly been felt during the last year.

In October, thieves targeting debit-card users compromised more than 70 accounts pilfered from cash-register pay terminals at a Ralphs supermarket on Goldenwest Street and Garfield Avenue. About $91,000 has been reported stolen, and more calls connected to the thefts come in almost daily.

Police predict things are only going to get worse. Once an identity is compromised, victims may retrieve stolen funds, but who will stop the thief from passing that information on to someone else, Det. Jim Allard asked. ID theft affects people for life, he added.

According to the California Identity Theft and Personal Property Protection Act, identity theft “can have a devastating long-term impact on victims, who are often forced to work for years and spend thousands of dollars trying to rebuild their credit and clear their names. Existing laws do not adequately protect Californians against identity theft crime.”

Although anyone could be a potential victim, even children too young to apply for a credit card, it is senior citizens who should be the most wary, police said. Targeted by all types of scams, the elderly are more often preyed upon since the majority of the nation’s wealth today is held by people 65 years and older, according to the state attorney general’s office.

Preventive measures abound to guard or monitor bank accounts, however, but no one can fully insulate themselves, police said. Any business, such as doctors offices, holds information that thieves can use to gain hundreds of identities at a time, Sgt. Det. Brian Seitz said.

Car burglars used to go for stereos — now they go for wallets and laptops left on the front seat, detectives said. Victims notice a broken window but nothing missing. Some may not even report the crime until they notice unauthorized transactions made on the card. Thieves will simply write down the credit card number and put it back in the wallet, or take the last three checks from a checkbook, Seitz said.

Pacific City, strand progress report

The city has been waiting expectantly for the completion of both these development projects to complete the revitalization of downtown Huntington Beach that will take another three to four years. The high-end developments are slated to bring in millions of dollars in sales and property taxes for the city.

The Strand, a three-acre commercial project coming up in downtown Huntington Beach, is set to feature almost 100,000 square feet of restaurant, office and retail space and a 157-room boutique hotel. The largest boutique operator in the state, Joie de Vivre Hospitality group, is set to design the hotel.

About 10-times the size of the Strand project, the 31-acre ocean front Pacific City project is under construction near the pier, sandwiched between the two hotel resorts.

The mixed-use development will also include a 165-room luxury boutique hotel, retail and restaurant space, as well as about 516 condominiums and a two-acre park.

Construction on a commercial parking structure for Pacific City will begin in March, with completion expected in December. The first phase of residential development of 136 condominiums is slated to begin in April and finished in spring 2008, with retail opening in the fall 2008 and its hotel in the spring of 2009.

Pacific City developers Makar Properties will also build a senior center in Central Park for the city in exchange for not paying $23 million in park fees owed to the city.

Work on the Strand project resumed in earnest this year after council members threatened to impose sanctions against the Los Angeles developer of the Strand CIM Group, upset over the slow pace of construction in 2005. Construction on a 500-space underground parking garage, which has caused major traffic snags on Fifth Street, is set to be completed this month. Hotel and retail spaces in the Strand will be finished by March 2008.

Ascon-Nesi residential project shelved, clean-up options on the table

Southeast Huntington Beach residents were glad to hear that plans for a residential development on the Ascon-Nesi toxic site were scrapped in November. Instead, the land will be developed for recreational use or as open space, with some small neighborhood stores.

Since 1992, various owners of the Ascon-Nesi land at Magnolia Street and Hamilton Avenue had planned to turn the property into a high-density residential development with more than 500 homes.

Locals weathered the scare of toxic materials leaking out from the five lagoons on the site after last year’s winter rains caused them to fill up to near capacity. The state Department of Toxic Substances Control was worried that the landfill’s levees might break and spill the hazardous materials into the streets and storm drains.

Seven of nine oil companies that dumped their toxic waste on the 38 acres for five decades are now funding long-term cleanup efforts of the landfill.

Several clean-up options are on the table, depending on size, cost and time to complete the process. The state department is working on picking one of those clean-up options, along with representatives from the seven companies.