Irvine Mayor Takes Power Trip
Irvine Mayor Christina Shea deserves a defense, of sorts.
A City Council colleague has sought a district attorney investigation into whether Shea broke any laws by leaving voicemail messages threatening to get tough with the city's Police Department over her daughter's drug-related arrest. I say it's not even a close call.
Arrogance, misuse of authority, disrespect for the criminal justice system, false accusations, pettiness and an old-fashioned I'll-show-them-who's-mayor attitude do not constitute criminal conduct.
But they sure leave the mayor with a lot of explaining to do. She has most of the Police Department mad as blazes at her, with good reason.
Naturally, the mayor has tried to shift the negative spotlight away from her deeds and onto those who made them public. Wasn't it the Romans who always wanted to kill the messenger?
All this hullabaloo came to a boil Tuesday night at the City Council meeting, where close to 50 angry police officers showed up.
If you haven't followed this soap opera, a few facts:
The mayor's 21-year-old daughter, Stephanie Shea, was arrested Aug. 10 after a police officer who pulled her over for a traffic violation found methamphetamines in her vehicle.
When Mayor Shea discovered the next week that the arrest was about to hit the newspapers, she left the first of four voicemail messages with Dave Christensen, a close political ally. She also made at least two calls that week to the Police Department.
But Christensen, an ex-cop, found the messages so disturbing, he took them to the D.A. and let the media hear them and see transcripts.
The Irvine Police Officers Assn. is upset about a lot of things on those recordings.
One is that Shea accused a sergeant of lying about details of her daughter's arrest. (Police Chief Charles Brobeck, doing his best to stay above this brouhaha, says she's just flat wrong on that.)
The cops are also outraged that she took a swipe at all of them with a broad brush: "The Police Department and how they deal with people is really pathetic" . . . "If they lie about this they'll certainly lie about everybody else over there" . . . "It doesn't make me want to defend that department at all" . . . "The problem is [this case] is going to be a real attack on the Police Department and I'm not going to back down on it at all."
