Kensington in the Spotlight
February 22, 2015
Recently, I’ve had a few calls from friends around the country asking bluntly, “What the heck is going on in Kensington?”
For those of you who missed it, our little town has been the subject of some notoriety since it was revealed that an off-duty police officer ( and three other colleagues) drove to Reno, NV (about 3 hours) for a weekend of fun and promptly lost his gun, badge, handcuffs, and ammunition to a prostitute.
Journalistically, the best part of the story was how the gun was recovered the next day, when the woman’s pimp apparently shot himself during a dispute when he was attempting to pawn the items.
Our local police chief “investigated” the matter for 8 months but only suspended the officer when the story became public. As you might expect, the community was a bit upset at the chief’s delay. Over 250 folks turned out for a police board meeting on the issue.
He’s now our former chief, although the suspended officer is still on the force.
Kensington is a small upper-middle class community in the East Bay hills. Our major claim to fame, until now, was that Daniel Ellsberg lived here. Over 70% of the population have, not only college degrees, but advanced degrees. The community is off the beaten track, and most of us like it that way. There are no major roads that would lead anyone to come here, unless you were on the way to your home, and most of the time when you tell someone you live in Kensington the reaction is “where’s that?”
Chief Greg Harman in happier times
Plus, we pay a yearly assessment, so that we can have a police department of 10, dedicated to patrolling our streets to protect us from the rest of the world. We also have an excellent elementary school which makes this a great place to raise a family.
The spotlight that has been shining on us over the last few weeks, has been very uncomfortable.
I have no new information to reveal about what will happen next and most of you probably don’t want to know about the politics of a small, wealthy community in the Bay Area, but there are some things to note.
First, the chief and the 5-member police board to which he reports, have screwed up big time. The chief, who also acts as general manager, will no longer be serving us, and for the second time in ten years, we are looking for a new commander.
Second, a large part of the problem is based in the combination role the police chief is asked to fill. Police Chief and General Manager is just an untenable combination, which the board is finally looking into changing.
Third, a small group of dissidents is using the incident to further their own, long-standing goal of ousting the three majority board members. Additionally, they want us to combine our police force with the neighboring town of El Cerrito, which may make sense financially, but not from a public safety perspective.
This story will continue to play out over the next year. Hopefully out of the national or state-wide spotlight. My hunch is we’ll have a recall election, which will fail, and we will separate the two top posts in town, and then there will be a ballot initiative to combine our police force with our neighbor, which will also fail.
The whole battle will be quite acrimonious, and make for lots of local hand wringing, but in the end, everyone will go back to ignoring the our little town and we can all get on with our lives.
