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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (April 20, 2006)
CAROLEZOOM news briefs COP SEX COSTS CITYANOTHER $900,000 The city of Eugene has settled another cop sex abuse lawsuit for $900,000, according to an April 7 memo to the mayor and council. Roger Magaña was sentenced to 94 years in prison in 2004 for using his police power to rape, sexually abuse, assault and harass a dozen women over six years as a Eugene po- lice officer. Another Eugene officer, Juan Lara, was convicted of a lesser sexual crime spree and sent to jail for two years. After the convictions, 14 women sued the city for the sex abuse they suffered at the hands of Eugene police. The city previously paid $1.1 million to settle six lawsuits. The recent settle- ment brings the total paid by the city to $2 mil- lion. Seven cases are still pending, seeking more than $20 million in damages. A federal judge ruled last month that the cases can go forward and noted evidence of the pervasive failure of the Eugene police chief and police officers to stop Magaña despite complaints and evidence of abuse. The judge described 13 separate inci- dents where 12 women and one man allegedly had reported Magaña’s sex abuse to at least 16 different police officers and a municipal judge without the city stopping the cop crimes. In the most recently settled case, a woman alleged that Magaña threatened to arrest her or have her child taken to coerce sex from her on numerous occasions. Magaña allegedly threat- ened to kill the woman if she told. Magaña was convicted of official misconduct related to the woman. Ironically, the woman weakened her law- suit by complaining to police and city officials about the abuse. The police and city officials did nothing to investigate, but the city success- fully argued that the complaints indicated that the woman was not sufficiently fearful of retal- iation to merit a waiver of the notice and time- liness deadlines for filing lawsuits. The city was also helped by Magaña’s choice of victim, a woman suffering from mental illness. In the criminal trial, the prosecutor accused Magaña of intentionally selecting mentally ill and other weak targets who would not be believed if they complained. City Police Chief Robert Lehner promised two years ago to conduct an internal investiga- tion, discipline any officers who failed to act on complaints or abuse and report to the public on how the sex crimes had gone on so long despite so many complaints. But the report never hap- pened, and no other officers or city officials have apparently been held accountable. — Alan Pittman HOW TO FIX PLANNING City Club of Eugene’s second in a two-part series on land-use planning Friday, April 14 re- hashed some of the first session’s concerns and added some new perspectives, including a plea from Roxie Cuellar of the Lane County Homebuilders for activists on all sides to take a “personal inventory” to defuse cynicism and polarization in the community over planning. “It’s hard to plan when you are assuming battle lines,” said Cuellar. “We need to reduce polarization with the common goal of good planning.” Others on the panel had a more practical approach. Rob Handy of the Eugene Neighborhood Leaders Council outlined six recommendations for improved city planning, including formal planning for neighborhood design, city staffing of independent neighbor- hood advocates, reestablishing the Citizen Involvement Committee, more effective public • No one has done more to build the local arts scene over the past 24 years than Lois Wadsworth. Her sophisticated yet accessible arts reporting and critiques have helped foster Eugene’s fledgling arts community of the 1970s into a vibrant scene that pumps millions into the economy and helps define Eugene today. Now she’s retiring. But don’t panic. She promises to return as a contributing arts writer after a few months relaxing at home and traveling. “I can’t stop reading and writing,” she tells us, “and the visual arts continue to grow in interest for me.” Lois, one of the five women who started the paper, actually came up with the name What’s Happening in 1982 and was around for the name change to Eugene Weekly in 1993 when the paper was evolving beyond just a calendar and entertainment guide. “There was a lot of resistance to the name change,” she says, “but we were doing more hard news and needed a name that wasn’t quite so hippy-dippy.” She’s cranked out thousands of reviews of film, theater, books, poetry and visual arts, in addition to features and hard news stories over the years. And she served as EW’s editor-in-chief for several years in the early 1990s. While still writing for the paper, she went back to school at the UO and earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism. She honed her writing skills under Lauren Kessler at the UO, and learned about film from Steve Bové and Bill Cadbury. Many of us, in turn, have learned volumes about the arts through her perceptions and sensibilities. To work with her over the years has been a great joy. An informal gathering of the Lois Wadsworth Fan Club is “what’s happening” from 6 to 9 pm Friday, April 21 at DIVA downtown, and she will be the guest of honor. • Judging by the letters to the editor in the R-G and the superficial “Apologize and move on” R-G editorial last week, Bonny Bettman’s fears are being realized. Most people are focusing on the personalities involved, and hardly anyone is taking seri- ously the deeper issues that caused her to go public — primarily the lack of trans- parency and accountability in city government. Let’s not begrudge Bettman for trying to shine a little light on the dark side of our city administration. • More than 300 people rallied at the UO on April 13 against Rep. Sensenbrenner’s anti-immigration bill, HB 4437. They raised their voices in unison to protest the legislation, which would build a 700-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, turn illegal immigrants into felons and make it a crime for nonprofits like Centro Latino to aid people without papers. Those protesters, and the speakers who addressed them, had something important to say. But you wouldn’t know it from the R-G’s April 14 coverage, which zoomed in on the one obnoxious heckler who spewed hate at the top of his lungs to disrupt the rally. The headline on the front page of the City/Region section: “Lone dissonant voice disturbs UO rally.” The jump’s head- line: “Dissenter wants wall along border.” About as many words were devoted to the lone heckler’s message as to the 300-plus demonstrators’ message. • Earth Day brings out tree-huggers and twirling, barefoot meadow-dancers, and also some crazy-ass reactionaries whose ideas float like little brown clouds over the tulips and bunnies of joyful spring days. In an Earth Day statement published by the Ayn Rand Institute this week, institute board member Michael S. Berliner wrote: “The fundamental goal of environmentalism is not clean air and clean water; rather, it is the demolition of technological/industrial civilization. Environmentalism’s goal is not the advancement of human health, human happi- ness, and human life; rather, it is a subhuman world where ‘nature’ is worshipped like the totem of some primitive religion.” • They looked more like retired football players than federal judges. That’s because senior Judges Ted Goodwin and Edward Leavy were wearing jerseys numbered “50” over their more somber clothes at a gathering of local lawyers and judges last week in the ballroom of the DAC. Two 50s total 100 years of judging for the two Ninth Circuit stalwarts who started their careers on the bench in Eugene. Richard Nixon appointed Goodwin to the federal court and Reagan appointed Leavy. MC of the century celebration was attorney Ralph Cobb, with attorney Rohn Roberts chairing it. Speakers were Circuit Judge Mary Ann Bearden and U. S. District Court Judges Ann Aiken and Michael Hogan, who sang his version of “Don’t Fence Me In” for Ted Goodwin, who grew up in Prineville. • Across the street from the busy Saturday Market and Farmer’s Market downtown is the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza, which is getting some negative attention since our Slant blurb April 6 on the County Commission cutting off electrical power to the youth group that has reserved the podium every other week over the spring and summer. A lot can be done to curb intoxication and drug trafficking on the plaza, but cutting electricity for speakers? Makes no sense. In fact, a better idea would be to encourage speakers, which would draw more people to the plaza and drive out the drug dealers. APRIL 20, 2006 9
