Sgt. Rodrigo Reyna-Sanchez (left) and Officer Mark Meftah. Photos: EPD.
The City of Eureka has retained Bay Area law firm Sacks, Rickets and Case to conduct an independent investigation into a series of violent, misogynist and racist text messages allegedly sent by EPD officers, including Sgt. Rodrigo Reyna-Sanchez and Officer Mark Meftah.
An agreement on file with the city shows that the firm, which has offices in San Francisco, San Diego, Palo Alto and Phoenix, Ariz., was hired on March 19, just two days after a story in the
Sacramento Beerevealed the demeaning messages allegedly exchanged by Reyna-Sanchez and Meftah, if not others within their squad.
Eureka City Hall, with its then-new Eddy Alexander-authored branding unfurled. File photo: Andrew Goff.
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At
its Tuesday night meeting, the Eureka City Council will return to the
oft-delayed and rerun camping ordinance that City government has
taken up and rejiggered several times over the past few months. (See
here
and here
and here
for previous episodes).
What’s
the nut of the ordinance? Basically, the point of it is to restrict
camping in high-profile areas of the city while at the same time
threading the legal needle laid down by the Ninth Circuit in the
Martin v. City of Boise decision, which held that it was
HACHR Executive Director Lasara Firefox Allen | Screenshot from video of Jan. 5 Eureka City Council meeting
After hours of discussion and hearing from dozens of community members during a meeting on Tuesday night, Eureka City Council unanimously adopted a resolution allowing for mobile syringe exchange programs (SEPs) to operate within city limits during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The decision, which follows the council’s recent vote to temporarily ban SEPs entirely, amends the city’s local emergency declaration related to the pandemic to temporarily allow for mobile-only exchange, until the council can rewrite and adopt a more permanent syringe ordinance.
Although the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) not subject to city jurisdiction has continued to operate a SEP in Eureka, City Manager Miles Slattery said that the program is strained. “While they have increased to three days and have seen a lot more people, they don’t feel that they’re me