Star-Telegram.com: Bob Ray Sanders

SANDERS: Should top police jobs be appointed?

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:50 CDT

BOB RAY SANDERS

During the first-ever negotiations between Fort Worth police and city leaders under the city’s new "meet and confer" provision approved by voters two years ago, most people have paid attention only to the bargaining over pay raises for officers.

But at a time this summer, when talks stalled between the Police Officers Association (the official bargaining representative) and city officials, there was a controversial subtext to the negotiations that put rank-and-file cops in direct conflict with the department’s interim chief, Patricia Kneblick.

All of this was being played out as Fort Worth was searching for a permanent police chief to replace Ralph Mendoza, who retired this year. Kneblick is a finalist for that position, and many believe she is favored to get it. Final interviews with the three remaining candidates for the chief’s job are expected to be conducted this week, an informed source said.

The acting chief caused a row back in June when officers learned that she was proposing to "appoint" individuals to the captain’s rank, rather than filling those positions under Civil Service testing procedures.

Every one of the employee groups representing police officers, especially associations representing ethnic minorities, objected to that proposal, suggesting it would be a throwback to the days of the "good ol’ boy" system.

One police lieutenant, who was planning to take the captain’s test, took umbrage and let the acting chief know his feelings in a strongly worded e-mail message.

Noting that Fort Worth’s police department, its upper management structure and leadership selection process were envied by other departments around the country, Lt. Duane Paul said he was suspicious why there was a proposed change.

"Is it a coincidence that the last four captains promoted in this department are minorities and now all of a sudden there is a need to change the way we promote to that rank?" asked Paul, the first African-American to make captain in Fort Worth. "Prior to 2002 when I was promoted, there was never a minority captain; since that time, four have promoted and they are the last four and with potential vacancies, this number can rise. Is this the reason why the captain’s rank should be an appointed rank?

Some black officers called the proposed change the "Duane Paul Rule," supposedly designed to keep him from being promoted again.

Paul was a respected leader in the department and one of its most articulate official spokesmen until 2005, when a reality TV show exposed sexual encounters he was having with a woman in his unmarked city car.

He was suspended for 90 days, demoted from captain to lieutenant and assigned duties in the jail.

Paul clearly understands that his problems in the department "were of my own making," which is why he took his punishment without complaint and remained quiet until the two-year period expired and he was able to seek promotion again.

The department eventually relented on the captain’s issue, allowing the position to be posted and setting a date for the test. Paul took the exam this summer and placed third in the ranking, he said.

Negotiations continued on "meet and confer" and both sides have agreed on the major issues, including pay raises over the next four years.

A City Hall source said the association and the city are close to signing their first contract, which also will address the interim chief’s concern for having more appointed positions in the top ranks.

In her reply to Paul’s original message, Kneblick explained she had favored the appointment of captains "because a substantial number of large departments allow the chief to appoint the two levels of rank immediately below the chief."

She added, "It is incumbent on the chief, whomever that person is, to have the ability to appoint top administrators to be able to direct the course of the department. 'Top administrator’ today in a department our size means not just deputy chief.’ "

Because "meet and confer" makes the police department more "unionized," the source said, the chief believes managers who are not appointed would be more loyal to "the union" than the chief or the department as a whole.

So, while leaving the captains’ selection process intact, the department has decided simply to create another layer of management — five new positions — called major, just under the five deputy chiefs. Those positions would be filled from the ranks of the 13 captains, a department spokesman confirmed.

The vacant captains’ positions would be filled at the rate of one a year until they are up to full strength again, a source said.

SANDERS: Mental health parity act is a good result of the financial crisis

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:39 CDT

BOB RAY SANDERS

There was a time not so long ago when people with mental illnesses were kept in backrooms and basements, locked out of sight.

In many communities, those suffering the "unspoken" sickness who would venture outside were permitted to walk the blocks of their neighborhoods undeterred — generally tolerated, but ignored, except for the occasional jeers from children and the whispered insults of a few ignorant adults.

Many families who sheltered the person who was "a little touched in the head" often were in denial about the seriousness of the situation. But even if they were inclined to seek professional help for a loved one, they often had neither the resources nor the knowledge to provide it.

The stigma of mental illness, rooted in ignorance, coupled with the hardship of finding and paying for adequate healthcare, forced thousands of people into a lifetime of suffering.

It was no surprise that substance abuse would become a byproduct of the illness as some sufferers reached out to anything they thought might help relieve the pain.

As evidenced by the number of mentally ill people among the homeless population, a lot of those suffering from mental disease simply wore out their families — so much so that the people who loved them the most simply couldn’t take it anymore, forcing those needing help into the streets.

We’ve come a long way since those days of back rooms and dark corners, but too many mentally ill people are still marginalized figures living in the shadows, walking the streets and finding it difficult to cope in any significant way.

Part of the problem has been because of the way insurance companies have covered — better, not covered — mental illness.

Help is on the way, though.

And it took a meltdown on Wall Street to get it.

During the days leading up to the big bailout of the financial institutions in this country, no one could have imaged that one of the good things coming out of this economic disaster would be more support for the mentally ill.

As the U.S. Senate last week added more ornaments to its Christmas tree of a financial recovery bill, mental-health parity was included, ensuring passage of a measure that many have been advocating strongly for more than a decade.

Even insurance plans that included some mental-health coverage were not equal to the coverage for physical illnesses and usually included larger deductibles and higher co-payments. Those plans usually had very limited time for treatment, sometimes just enough to get someone stabilized, but not long enough to maintain that stabilization.

The New York Times quoted federal officials as saying the new law "would improve coverage for 113 million people, including 82 million on employer-sponsored plans that are not subject to state regulation."

Surprisingly the new requirement will only increase premiums by an average of about two-tenths of 1 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office estimates, the newspaper said.

We’ve learned a lot since those backward days of hiding our mentally ill relatives, including coming to understand that there are biological causes for many mental illnesses that can be successfully treated with medication and therapy.

By the sheer number of people who are sick or addicted to drugs and alcohol, it is clear that most families are affected in some way by diseases we’ve turned our backs on for so long.

And with the financial crisis we’re going through, adding to the stress and pressures of already over-burdened individuals, who knows how many more will be added to the rolls?

I recall talking with a homeless person once about the number of mentally ill people on the streets.

He said bluntly: "Hell, if you’re not crazy when you hit these streets, just stay out here three or four weeks — and you will be."

SANDERS: No year to vote style over substance

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:15 CDT

BOB RAY SANDERS

Not that I would ever want to be vice president of the United States, but I do have more foreign policy experience than one of the current nominees. I’ve spent time in China, Italy, Lebanon and Turkey. Over the years I have met with public officials in Athens, Paris and Palestine.

Then, of course, there are the many visits to Rhome.

Oops! I think I just blew it with that spelling of "Rhome."

In case you haven’t figured it out, all the places I just mentioned are not located outside the United States. Every one is a city in Texas, a state like many others in the country with many towns with the names of foreign locales.

But, frankly, my visits to these exotic Texas cities give me about as much foreign policy credentials as Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s assertion that Alaska’s proximity to Russia qualified her in the area of foreign relations.

That may be overstating it a little bit, but after her Thursday night debate with Democratic VP hopeful Joe Biden, it was quite evident that the Alaskan governor is short on substance and long on style.

We had been warned that she was a quick learner, and she proved that without a doubt — primarily that she had learned the art of obfuscation and evasion.

I do give Palin credit for her stern, folksy performance in which she stood toe-to-toe with "Joe," rising above the bar that had been set incredibly low for the person who is seeking the second-highest job in the land.

She had her talking points and those two or three prepared one-liners and, dad burn it, she was going to deliver them no matter what, even if they weren’t on topic and ignored the moderator’s questions.

The Republican base, which has been energized by Palin’s nomination and her down-home naivete, must be pretty worried that their hope for winning this election lies with a person most Americans had never heard of two months ago.

What does that say about the party’s nominee for president?

You do remember Sen. John McCain, don’t you?

The more people talk about Palin, the less they are mentioning the Arizona senator.

And the more that happens, the more Americans focus on the experience (or lack thereof) of the person who would be "a heartbeat away from the presidency."

That does not bode well for the GOP ticket.

On the St. Louis stage Thursday night, it was quite clear which candidate had the experience, the command of the facts and the genuine passion to not only serve but to help lead this nation in one of the most perilous times in its history.

By no means am I saying that this election is over with still about a month of campaigning left. That can be an eternity in a presidential race.

But at a time when people are hurting, and when they have grown weary of an administration that has failed miserably on all fronts, they are beginning to focus.

As they focus on the real issues, they begin to have a true yearning for change — substantive change, not slogans.

I find it ironic and rather sad that just a few weeks ago a lot of Republican pundits and party mouthpieces ridiculed Democratic nominee Barack Obama and his message of change and hope.

SANDERS: Is banning books more important than reading them?

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:28 CDT

BOB RAY SANDERS

Books have always been special to me.

Even those works I might find objectionable because of some offensive content would never cause me to want to burn or ban a book.

Sunday afternoon, while many of you were watching the Dallas Cowboys-Washington Redskins or some other football game on television, a group of people met at the Central Library in downtown Fort Worth to talk about Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, one of the most banned books in American history. The discussion helped kick off Banned Books Week, which runs through Saturday.

When I was a high school student, it never occurred to me that I would spend part of my adult life defending Twain and his classic novel. Back then I never thought I would need to do that, even though Huckleberry Finn has been controversial since its publication in 1884.

It is most often challenged these days because of the racial stereotypes and the use of that word — you know, the one that has been abbreviated to simply "the N-word."

Last year, I weighed in on a controversy in the Birdville school district after one black student’s parents and a quickly organized community group demanded that the book not be taught in the district.

I said then, as I have said to other schools when the issue arises, that you can’t teach American literature without teaching Huckleberry Finn, and you can’t teach the book without teaching Twain.

For years, I’ve collected books, and a few of my most prized possessions are works that many people might find offensive.

This summer, when I conducted a discussion of Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (in conjunction with the Kara Walker exhibit), I took along my illustrated copy of the book that was published in 1896, the year author Harriet Beecher Stowe died.

One of the books I keep in a glass case, partly because it was picked out by my then 5-year-old son as we visited an old book store, is Helen Bannerman’s The Story of Little Black Sambo. That’s a book whose very title still upsets people, many of whom have never read it and only know the story from some early cartoon shows.

Speaking of controversial titles, consider Ten Little N-----s by Agatha Christie, first published in 1939. A year later, when it was distributed in the United States, the title was changed to And Then There Were None. I have copies of both.

I also hold dear my first edition copy of The Clansman by Thomas Dixon Jr., the 1905 book upon which the movie The Birth of a Nation was based 10 years later. The subtitle of that book, by the way, is An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan. Some might find it ironic that a black man would have that book.

My reason for revealing some of the titles in my collection is simply to say that no matter what the subject matter and no matter whether there may be words some find offensive, I will fight against the banning of any book.

And that brings me to the latest annual report by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, "Free People Read Freely: A Report on Banned and Challenged Books in Texas Public Schools."

The good news is that the number of challenges to books in Texas this year is down from last year. The bad news is that there are still too many people wanting to censor literature.

"There were only 43 school districts reporting 102 challenges in the 2007-2008 academic year, while last year saw 67 school districts reporting a sum of 116 challenges," the report stated.

It went on to say, "Indeed, both the rate of challenges resulting in bans and the total number of banned books decreased. Only 27 of the 102 (26 percent) challenges resulted in a banning during the most recent school year, whereas 46 of the 116 reported challenges (40 percent) resulted in the challenged title being banned during the 2006-2007 academic year."

The districts with the most challenges were Houston (the state’s largest district), Round Rock, Mesquite and Mansfield, according to the ACLU findings. Of the 20 challenges — up from 11 last year — in Houston, the district banned two books and restricted 12. Round Rock had nine challenges, but no books were banned.

Mesquite and Mansfield had six challenges each.

"In an isolated instance of district wide censorship, Beaumont ISD banned H.G. Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights from every school library in the district," the report said.

Thank God for the YWCA

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 12:55 CDT

BOB RAY SANDERS

In a stately old downtown building that still bears images of elks on many of its brass door knobs, women in trouble find refuge.

It is also a place where young children find nourishment for the body and the mind, immersed in a warm, nurturing educational environment that prepares them to eventually enter public school ready to meet the challenge and defy the odds that were against them from birth.

The building, at 512 W. Fourth St. in Fort Worth, was constructed in 1928 and was originally the Elks Club Hotel. Since 1954, it has been occupied by an organization that has been touching the lives of women for more than 100 years.

The YWCA has long been more than a roof and a bed for those seeking shelter and guidance and hope when faced with the some of life’s most difficult and unpredictable circumstances.

Few people today who attend meetings, weddings or parties in the Y’s elegant Great Room — a space often rented out on weekends and evenings — have any idea that just beyond those walls miracles are happening in people’s lives.

Until a recent visit to the building and a guided tour of the programs offered by the YWCA, I was unaware of the scope of its mission and the work that goes on every day in a place I thought I knew well.

The Y offers two residential programs, one for women who are transitional homeless, divorced or the victims of domestic violence who have no other place to go. The other, My Own Place, is for young women "who age out of foster care" at 18 and need help moving to independent living, said Judi Bishop, executive director of YWCA Fort Worth & Tarrant County.

The first girl who showed up for My Own Place, three years ago arrived in a cab, Bishop recalled.

"Everything she owned was in a black plastic bag," she said.

Bishop explained that many of the young people who come to the program have been "couch-surfing teens," meaning that they stayed mostly wherever someone would let them spend the night, often sleeping in a different place each evening.

Women can stay in the My Own Place program for up to two years, with two requirements: They must work and go to school.

In both residential settings, which provide comfortably furnished single rooms for the women, they are taught life skills and given financial training and computer instruction.

At the other end of the spectrum, the YWCA is working to touch lives at an early age in a way that is sure to have an impact far beyond what most would predict for the children served.

Through three early childhood development programs in downtown, Poly and Arlington, the Y is providing extraordinary child care and education for homeless children and those of the working poor. In fact, the Y is the only child-care facility for the homeless in Tarrant County, Bishop said.

The homeless kids are picked up from shelters and taken to well-equipped and superbly staffed facilities where they are treated with extravagant care. Those looking through the windows of those classrooms would never guess they were looking at poor children, and that’s exactly the way Bishop wants it.

At the time I visited, there were 95 children in the downtown facility, 120 at Arlington and 60 in Poly.

In addition to the academic training, the children eat breakfast and lunch together, family-style, with the teacher, learning to use silverware and simply pass food to someone, Bishop said. They also play house, getting lessons in laundry and vacuuming.

There is a development plan for each child, and there is a concentrated effort to work with the parents in the process. When the kids get to kindergarten in public school, they are indeed ready, and they are tracked for the first three years after enrolling in school.

Now with all that, you would think the YWCA had enough on its plate. But with the slogan of "Eliminating Racism; Empowering Women," it’s no surprise that the agency has created a Department of Racial Justice, which began operation in 2006.

Throughout the year, the department conducts dialogues on diversity in which individuals (in groups of 10 to 12 people) commit to engaging in discussion on race twice a week for four weeks. Since January, more than 250 people have taken part, said Marcy I. Paul, director of racial justice.

Congress should learn from the financial meltdown, but will it?

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 12:55 CDT

BOB RAY SANDERS

Seven years ago this month we watched two New York City skyscrapers disintegrate before our very eyes.

An enemy, using commercial jetliners as missiles, had attacked us, leaving a gigantic hole in lower Manhattan comparable to the wounds left in most Americans’ hearts.

It was a tragedy that shook financial institutions, crippled the entire airline industry and set our government on a course of massive deficit spending trying to finance two wars.

In the past two weeks we’ve witnessed a series of other disasters as humongous businesses again wavered, crumbled, morphed and disintegrated as the world once again watched in disbelief.

The giants of Wall Street — their stone/steel/glass towers still standing — have fallen so hard that the effects will be reverberating throughout the country and the world for years.

And once more the folks in Washington are wrestling with decisions on how to use taxpayer money to combat a crisis that should have been foreseen and forestalled. It is one that will smother the nation in debt that will likely take decades to erase.

This most recent catastrophe cannot be blamed on some fanatical foreign enemy.

The culprits responsible for this devastating failure of investment banks, mortgage lenders and the nation’s largest insurer are Americans, armed not with exploding airplanes but with the weapons of greed and nonsensical deregulation.

Our leaders in Washington, who for the most part have been asleep at the wheel or intoxicated with the wines of the special interests, have been forced to work hastily to bail out Wall Street because some institutions are just "too big to fail," we’re told.

Never mind the individuals who have been the victims of some of these institutions. I suppose they are just too small to really care about.

Oh, I understand where we are in this crisis. The situation is so grave that to do nothing would be more devastating than to risk the $700 billion to $1 trillion it may cost the nation to save what is left of our fragile economy.

I’m angry about this, and every average American ought to be just as mad.

It’s not the bailout per se that upsets me most but the fact we allowed these gigantic institutions the latitude to often treat Wall Street like it was the Las Vegas Strip or, as I’ve said before, as a collection of giant Ponzi schemes.

It bothers me that rather than providing true over- sight of these financial behemoths and our overall economy, we had this administration, corporate executives and stock market gurus all play- ing cheerleaders trying to convince us that our econ- omy was fundamentally sound.

For several years we have seen CEOs run corporations into the ground and bail with their multimillion-dol- lar parachutes, leaving many employees and stockholders without any means to escape the impending disaster.

Members of Congress are right to insist that heads of the failed businesses being rescued by the taxpayers are not allowed to bail out carrying bundles of cash under their arms.

And, yes, there has to be more oversight than just the secretary of the Treasury Department or the head of the Federal Reserve Bank.

While there is an obvious urgency here, Congress is also correct in insisting on "deliberate speed" (to borrow an old Supreme Court phrase) rather than hastily passing a plan we will regret.

Millions of people in this country are hurting, most of whom see no relief in sight.

For those losing their homes, who can’t afford insurance for their families or who find it difficult to put food on the table, it must be doubly painful to see Washington rush to the aid of the fat cats on Wall Street.

Iraq caused the U.S. to lose focus in the war on terrorism

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 12:55 CDT

BOB RAY SANDERS

All around the country on Sept. 11 the nation paused to remember.

There was the image of ground zero, where the twin World Trade Center towers once stood, juxtaposed with the visuals of a solemn president and a new memorial honoring those who died that day at the Pentagon.

The sound of silence would be interrupted by the wail of a lone bagpipe, and later a reading of the names of victims who had died in New York City.

Seven years later and the United States of America, although having moved past its long night of mourning, still had time to demonstrate its collective grief for those who perished in the worst attack on American soil.

The events of 9-11 would lead us to declare war on an elusive enemy and, in so doing, took us to a place where more than 4,000 Americans have died.

Iraq is still very much a part of this nation’s conscience as many more Americans return from that country scarred for life, and as candidates for president argue whether the "surge" worked.

But I wonder if we’ve forgotten the other war — the one most Americans believe was the correct war to fight.

Do we even remember Afghanistan?

On Friday, I saw a story from The Associated Press story with the dateline Kabul. Written by Jason Straziuso, it began:

"Insurgents killed two U.S. troops in Afghanistan on the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks Thursday, making 2008 the deadliest year for American forces since U.S. troops invaded the country in 2001 for sheltering Osama bin Laden."

I recall how hopeful the nation was with the military progress being made against the Taliban, and how confident we were that the bearded bin Laden would be forced out of his hiding place or die in it.

You do remember Osama bin Laden, right? He was the man who had everything to do with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and nothing to do with Iraq.

If only the nation could have stayed as focused — as it seemed, at least — as it was back on Jan. 29, 2002, when President Bush made his State of the Union address.

Standing next to first lady Laura Bush in the House gallery, and decked out in his brilliant tribal robe, was a smiling Hamid Karzai, who was then chairman of the Afghan Interim Authority.

While there was no banner hanging from the rafters declaring "Mission Accomplished," that scene was clearly meant to convey such a message.

But the president, obsessed with another Middle Eastern tyrant, would lead the nation to another war.

It was a major blunder on several fronts, including taking our focus and our resources away from the effort in Afghanistan.

There has been a resurgence of the Taliban, and American casualties are mounting in the country in which we thought a military victory had been achieved in 2001.

Last month, more U.S. troops died in Afghanistan than in Iraq, and the total number of American deaths in the Afghan region has reached more than 520.

Rather than argue about the impact of the so-called "surge" in military forces in Iraq, someone had better start paying attention to the surge in violence in Afghanistan.

The nation’s fighting on two fronts, and we’re talking about pigs

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 12:55 CDT

BOB RAY SANDERS

As a rule, political discourse — no matter how crude or nonsensical — has never surprised, much less shocked, me.

But over the past few days, with all the important problems facing this country and the world that the next president of the United States will have to tackle, I was a bit astounded that the major issue presented to the public was about ... lipstick.

While I know farm animals might be a constituency in some parts of the U.S. of A., I could not have imagined that a few weeks from perhaps the most historical presidential election since this country was founded, I and other voters would be asked to think about pigs.

Don’t get me wrong. There have been many times when I’ve thought of politicians as hogs, asses, chickens, ostriches, snakes, buzzards, skunks — well, you get my drift.

But I never thought I would be overcome by a media blitz with commentators and politicians obsessing over a century-old cliché.

"You can put lipstick on a pig, but ... " (You can finish the sentence because of the number of times you’ve heard that expression).

Isn’t that trite saying sort of like, "You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ... " (Go on. You can fill in the blank).

I can’t believe the flap that developed last week after Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama described his rival’s economic plan as being like putting "lipstick on a pig."

Republican presidential nominee John McCain, and some of his supporters, considered that an offensive and sexist comment about vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin because of a quip she made during her acceptance speech at the National Republican Convention.

"What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?" Palin asked in her first nationally televised speech. Then pointing to her mouth, she added: "Lipstick."

When the so-called controversy first erupted, I promised myself I would not write about the trivial, sophomoric and vindictive charge from the McCain campaign. I had assumed it would last no longer than half of the 24-hour news cycle, especially with the 9-11 anniversary coming that Thursday.

However, not even 9-11 could push the hogs away from this trough.

I really don’t want to talk about this, and it is a subject that the politicians and the pundits should allow to fade away. Besides, do pigs even have lips?

Leave the lipstick on the cosmetics counters at whatever department store you prefer. And please leave the pigs to their sty. Makeup can best be debated by the folks at Maybelline, Revlon and Max Factor.

Can’t we just dispense with the barnyard analogies altogether? After all, it is all bull. And as a guy from Texas, I know bull when I see it, hear it or step it.

Oops, sorry. That line takes us back to the barnyard.

But so what? That horse already has left the corral; don’t bother closing the gate now.

Or is it just that the chickens are coming home to roost.

Speaking of chickens, politicos shouldn’t count those eggs before they hatch.

Oh, but after you’ve finished counting the eggs, watch out for that mule you may have hit between the eyes with a two-by-four.

Mansfield ought to honor Steve Noonkester as it renames the public safety and court building

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:59 CDT

BOB RAY SANDERS

One of the worst places you can ever be is in the middle of a name-change dispute, especially when it involves names of people considered to be heroes.

But let me jump into one sticky mess.

In Dallas this past spring, there was a huge blunder by the city when it invited citizens to vote on renaming Industrial Boulevard, which runs along what one day will be a revitalized Trinity River project.

Citizens overwhelmingly voted to name the street in honor of the late United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez, but city officials were expecting a name that would speak to the street’s location rather than an individual’s name.

After much rancor, the Dallas City Council voted to rename Industrial "Riverfront Boulevard," with some council members suggesting that another street could be named for Chavez.

When members of the Hispanic community accepted the possibility of an alternative, they decided that Ross Avenue would be perfect because of its relationship to the Latino community that has grown up around it. The problem is, Ross is named for two pioneering brothers, and there is always resistance to replacing one person’s name with another.

While I think it would be more appropriate for the Chavez moniker to be added to a street not already named for a person, I’ll stay out of the Dallas fight.

But I will join the one brewing in Mansfield, which recently adopted a policy allowing the naming of city-owned buildings for people, with the proviso that a person so honored would have to be dead for a year before such action could be taken.

The policy was passed after a group of residents began a drive to have the Mansfield Public Safety and Municipal Court Building named for the late Public Safety Director Steve Noonkester, who died last year.

City Councilman Mike Leyman wants to name the building for a fallen Mansfield motorcycle officer, Danny Cordes, who died 22 years ago after being struck by a dislodged cargo trailer. Cordes apparently is the only Mansfield police officer to die in the line of duty.

Noonkester’s name is not eligible for consideration until November, the one-year anniversary of his untimely death due to complications from aneurysm surgery. Cordes’ name obviously can be voted on at any time.

Leyman brought up the issue at the Monday City Council meeting, calling for a public hearing on the matter, but did not get the necessary two other votes to have it placed on the agenda, according to Belinda Willis, the city’s public information officer. So, the issue is still there, likely to be debated at least through November.

For what it’s worth, if the city is going to rename the building at all, it most definitely should be for Noonkester, a man who leaves behind a dynamic legacy — one that I’ve been an eyewitness to over the years.

That is not to take anything away from Cordes, still revered by those in the department and a hero to many. But Noonkester’s impact on the city and its public safety institutions in particular are much greater in comparison. Noonkester, who was instrumental in bringing the city’s fire and police departments together under one banner of public safety, was also a highly regarded and very innovative prison warden.

In the days when he was police chief running a jail and prison that housed out-of-state inmates, he had the reputation of overseeing one of the least violent institutions in the country, one where inmates respected him and the guards because Noonkester and his staff gave respect to the prisoners.

On one of my visits there, a prisoner from Oklahoma told me that he literally had to be hogtied and dragged onto the bus to be brought to Texas. But he was so impressed with how the Mansfield facility was run, he said, officials would have to hogtie him to take him back to Oklahoma.

At a time when prisons around the state and the U.S. were plagued with gang violence, often centered around racial divisions, I recall reporting that in the Mansfield prison, "blacks and whites, Bloods and Crips gang members, and Christians and Muslims actually get along."

In fact, during a Juneteenth celebration in 1998, I watched black gang members and black children taking turns trying to force a member of the Aryan Brotherhood (with ties to the Ku Klux Klan) into the water of a carnival-like dunking booth. The white supremacist had volunteered for the role.

And just last year Noonkester took a public stand against the then-mayor of the city, who was attempting to pass an ordinance to make it tougher on sex offenders to live in the city.

Calling it a "feel-good ordinance," the chief told me then that he had plenty of data from experts around the country that prove such laws do not prevent sex offenses but instead tend to drive offenders underground, making it more difficult to keep an eye on them.

In teenage pregnancy, the boys are equally at fault

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 12:56 CDT

BOB RAY SANDERS

After publication of a recent column that mentioned Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s unwed 17-year-old pregnant daughter, I heard from several people upset that I would dare mention the child or the family’s "private matter."

There were those people, however, angry not because I brought up the subject of teenage pregnancy, but because I never mentioned the boy who had fathered the child.

"Nobody ever talks about the boys," one reader wrote. "Girls don’t get pregnant all by themselves."

Let me say up front that I don’t cut males any slack for their role in producing the hundreds of thousands of babies born to teenage girls in this country every year.

For years I have been one who talks to (and about) young boys and men who don’t take responsibility for their actions, including engaging in out-of-wedlock and unprotected sex.

For several years I made annual appearances at one Dallas high school, which had a very high teen-pregnancy rate, to hold an assembly with boys only. With the principal observing, we had frank — sometimes heated — discussions about sexual activity, respect for females and themselves, and about simply being accountable for their own deeds.

I’ll never forget that during one of those sessions, an arrogant young man stood up, proudly announced that he had fathered a child, and basically dared me to say anything about it.

"I have just one question for you," I told him. "Since you are a father, are you taking care of your baby?"

"My mother sends her money every week," he proclaimed.

"Your mother is sending money?" I asked. "Your mother, who I am sure is working hard to take care of you, now has to take care of your child?"

"Yeah," he said, to the jeers of his fellow classmates.

"Let me just suggest that you indeed sired a child. But you are no father."

Most of the other boys applauded.

After the assembly, that student and two other young dads came to me and talked privately about responsibility and the peer pressures they had in their macho world in which it was considered admirable to get a girl pregnant but not so cool to be seen taking care of a baby.

Then there was a time when I made regular visits to the school for pregnant girls in Fort Worth. On one of my visits, I arrived just as staff members were breaking up a fight between two girls that took place right in front of the principal’s office.

When I learned what the girls had been fighting about, I begged the principal to let them come to the assembly. In referencing the fight, which all the students were aware of, I told them why the girls had been battling: They were both pregnant by the same 22-year-old man.

I told the group, "Instead of them fighting each other, they should have been teaming up to go after his sorry behind."

The girls in the room cheered.

A couple of weeks later, in preparing a story on teenage pregnancy for public television, I got a chance to meet the young man at the home of one of the girls — the one he said he truly loved and planned to marry after she graduated from school.

He had been in the military, he said, and he had not planned to get anyone pregnant, much less two girls.