Just-released Department of Justice numbers again show racially disproportionate arrest rates in San Jose.

San Jose has more of one type of arrest than many cities with significantly larger populations. And local police are arresting Latinos at a rate well beyond their respective proportion to the general population. In fact, San Jose has more arrests of Latinos than San Diego and San Francisco has total arrests.

No, this isn’t a four-month-old story on public intoxication, but it may change that story’s ending. It is the story of another charge that also relies heavily on police discretion: the charge of “resisting arrest”—also known as 148(a). And the numbers should re-orient the discussion around the public intoxication issue from being about sobering stations and breathalyzers, to the common dominator of both arrest patterns—police practices at the time of arrest.

Last week, I attended a brainstorming session at City Hall.  The purpose of the gathering was for ideas to help Downtown during the recession. The group included the Downtown Association, land owners, developers, business owners, arts advocates and others. Individuals presented their ideas to the group.  One example was sponsoring an overnight camp-out in Downtown parks by the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Another was closing SOFA to cars every Friday allowing for a pedestrian-oriented evening. Other ideas included a 24-hour theater festival, music festivals, murals and free parking. And another was that the city could give away free Downtown land for an architectural design contest.

I thought to myself, “What could we do during a long-term recession that costs the city zero dollars and would actually bring more revenue to the city?” My idea: allow card rooms to locate in Downtown again.

SJI’s free marketplace of ideas & opinions is open for business. In the words of the Academy Award-winning director Cameron Crowe: “Say Anything.”

Residents of District 7 will be the biggest losers if Madison Nguyen is recalled from office. Only one of its past three representatives, George Shirakawa, Jr., was able to serve out his term. Shirakawa’s father died in office. Terry Gregory’s term was cut short by a gift scandal. Now, if Nguyen loses her seat in a recall, District 7 residents will for the third time be penalized with a mid-term transition. As a diverse community with issues to solve and a larger development pipeline than other council districts, the area does not need to bring a new councilmember up to speed.

Allow me to quack poetic about the efforts of a local team of artists from San Jose State University who collaborated behind the scenes on an installation for last year’s 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge in downtown San Jose. Just last month, the project Tantalum Memorial took home first prize at transmediale.09, an international festival for contemporary art and digital culture in Berlin.

Guest Column

By Steve Borkenhagen

Downtown San Jose has suffered for decades from a severe lack of retail activity. We have a number of entertainment venues, museums, restaurants, bars, offices and (more recently) housing, but we have not had a vibrant retail area in the heart of our city since the 1960s. Generations of South Bay residents have never experienced retail excitement in Downtown San Jose. The San Jose Public Market has the potential to change this.

This past Tuesday, members of the San Jose City Council, city executives, and city staff got together to try and arrive at some about possible solutions for San Jose’s budget mess. They found none. According to the Mercury News, some of the “solutions” that were kicked around included keeping libraries open for only three days, closing some park restrooms on weekdays, and raising all kinds of fines and fees for expected city services.

But rather than cutting city departments evenly across the board, why doesn’t the council and the city manager’s office re-examine just what city departments are essential to the workings of a major, modern American city. In other words, should some city departments be eliminated alltogether?

Guest Column

By John Conway

As a founding member of the San Jose Restaurant and Entertainment Association, I want to bring you up to speed on developments regarding the public-private partnership that is evolving to share the fair costs of a new policing model for our downtown Entertainment Zone.

Captain Sullenberger flies an airplane and Superintendent Skelly leads a school district, both potentially perilous professions. Captain Sully became a hero and Superintendent Skelly became a goat.  What is the difference that led to these two men being characterized so differently by the media?

Last week at the Rules committee, there was a standing- room-only crowd to support our request to use $1.9 million to fund the citywide school crossing guard program on a temporary basis (three fiscal years) out of the $9 million the City receives from the tobacco settlement monies.

It’s rants vs. raves in this week’s episode of San Jose Inside’s open forum. All opinions on any issue are welcome.

Just about everyone who watches television knows that Feb. 17 was supposed to be the historic day of the digital TV (DTV) transition—that is, the last day for full-power TV stations in the United States to broadcast in analog. After that date, they were to broadcast in digital only, meaning if you wanted to continue receiving over-the-air broadcasts on your analog TV, you needed to purchase a digital-to-analog converter box.

Well, as of last week, the federal government put the final touches on delaying the date until June, because despite the transition being hyped for God knows how long, 6.5 million people apparently still weren’t ready yet.

During the Feb. 5 edition of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” the host offered the following: “[Dick Cheney] has caused far more terror in this country in the last seven years than any terrorist.”

Last Tuesday I had the same exact meal as two million people—two eggs, two strips of bacon, two pancakes, and two pieces of sausage. I feel like a jerk saying this, but I have never felt more connected to my fellow Americans, or our collective condition.

Coming before the Rules Committee on Wednesday, Feb. 11 at 2 PM in Room 118 is a memo regarding the 64 year-old crossing guard program. In a nutshell, the memo asks that the City of San Jose use $1.9 million from the $9 million tobacco settlement monies (which the City receives every fiscal year from the tobacco industry and will receive for the next 25 years) to fund the crossing guard program on a temporary basis (for three fiscal years) to ensure that the program stays intact despite our massive $65 million deficit. After three years, our economy ideally should improve and the funding for the crossing guard program can be re-evaluated

The weekly open forum for discussion of any and all issues of concern to SJI’s regular bloggers and casual users is hereby called to order.