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This is my first post to E-democracy in ten years.
It's nice to be back. I hope to contribute from time to time on issues affecting
the Latino community of Minneapolis.
On January 8, 2004 Gente de Minnesota endorsed the nomination of William McManus for Chief of Police of Minneapolis. Gente de Minnesota is the largest Spanish newspaper in Minnesota. It has a weekly readership of 30,000. The following is a translated version of the endorsement. Gente de MN # 306 1/8/04 Editorial Lets support the Mayor of Minneapolis and his candidate for Police Chief This week we attended a meeting with the Mayor of Minneapolis and his candidate for Police Chief William McManus. We became very impressed by the commitment of the Mayor and his candidate to work hard to solve the problems of crime and the lack of trust between the communities of color and the police. Originally, we were hoping that the Mayor would appoint an African American or a person of color to be Police Chief. We believe that a minority Chief would be more sensitive to problems that we face in the Latino community. But after reading about, and becoming more familiar with McManus, we have decided to support his nomination. McManus has the ideal professional and academic experience to face the very difficult task of being the Police Chief of Minneapolis. He served in the police force in Washington DC for 26 years, where he moved up the ranks from policeman to assistant Police Chief. He also served as Police Chief in Dayton, Ohio for the last two years. He has a masters degree in Administrative Sciences from the University of Johns Hopkins. As Police Chief in Dayton, Ohio where half of the population is African American, he built a reputation of zero tolerance to crime and to abuses from the police. The nomination of McManus is supported by diverse groups including many leaders of the African American community in Minneapolis. The two African American members of the City Council of Minneapolis, are supporting McManus. McManus knows well the Latino community, his wife Lourdes is originally from Peru, and his family speaks Spanish at home. We believe that his personal and professional experience make him the ideal person to solve many of the problems that Latinos face with crime and the police. We need in our community a police force that will treat us with respect, which we can trust, and that will help us solve the problems of muggings, gangs and the crime that we face. Only if these problems are reduced substantially, we would consider that McManus has done a good job. We believe that the City Council should ratify the nomination of McManus. On January 16 the City Council will vote on the nomination of McManus. He currently counts with the support of 6 of the 13 members of the City Council. The council members that have decided to support McManus are: Paul Zerby, Barret Lane, Natalie Johnson Lee, Don Samuels, Paul Ostrow and Dean Zimmermann. Rybak needs at least one more vote to obtain the majority needed from the Council to ratify McManus�s nomination. Until now Robert Liligren and Gary Schiff, council members that have some of the largest Latino communities of Minneapolis, have not supported the nomination. If you agree on our endorsement of William McManus you can call council members Robert Lilligren and Gary Schiff to tell them why they should ratify this important nomination. Alberto Monserrate
President LCN Media (Latino Communications Network) Publishers of Gente de Minnesota,
Vida y Sabor, and the Minnesoata-Iowa Hispanic
Directory
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