290: East Palo Alto double homicide 2001

290.

Published news advisory by Lurene Helzer for Bay City News, June 14, 2001, “East Palo Alto Double Homicide Wednesday Night”.

Like the story shown above, this regards a violent incident reported by law agencies early the morning of June 14, 2001. It involved what police were calling a double homicide. It was a married couple.

East Palo Alto was an unincorporated region of San Mateo County until 1987, but I still had to contact three different agencies for comment by 6:45 a.m. when I sent the story out to Bay City clients. News stories about the small city near Palo Alto are confusing. (This introduction to story had to be corrected on February 25, 2009 because East Palo Alto is now a city.)

For many reasons, these semi-attached, semi-serviced or unincorporated residential areas of counties are not big generators of public revenues, historically. They’re not average California cities. They are difficult to police. They are often discussed – if discussed at all -- as violent crime zones. They’ve been centers of both racial discrimination and racial controversy.

Washington D.C. is a similar case, but it is not, legally, an eastern version of North Richmond, CA or East Los Angeles, CA. Also, the District of Columbia’s status has changed slightly since 1960 with the 23rd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and is still in dispute in early 2009. Whatever the status, though, Washington D.C. does not have the same legal profile or history as superficially similar areas of California.

All of these residential areas have high rates of violent crime, but only the nation’s capital has a legal status specifically mentioned by the U.S. Constitution. The district was only meant to serve as a workplace for elected U.S. Senators, U.S. Representatives and their staffs in the first place. When these residents of Washington vote, they do so as residents of whatever state “sent” them, not as residents of Washington D.C., per se. (Again, this is in debate, 2009.)

It’s confusing. The best way to explain some areas of the state is with a political cartoon. Imagine California’s 2009 Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger drawn as he physically is today inside the editorial section of The Los Angeles Times. Beefy, rich, spectacular. In the cartoon, he represents international glamour combined with intellectual achievement; the great state of California!

Now, look down and see the governor’s right leg drawn as terribly damaged in the frame. That fictional leg is labeled “Unincorporated California.”

Of course, these were the good days when the story was written, the summer of 2001. Schwarzenegger was not yet serving as California’s governor. In early February of 2009, with the whole state financially busted, Mr. Schwarzenegger – poor guy -- is sketched as starving, selling beat-up tourist maps on Hollywood Boulevard.