The recent announcement that a now-defunct law firm will pay $600,000 to a former Costa Mesa mayor, and a current councilman and his wife puts to bed an ugly chapter in that Orange County city’s recent history.
Nevertheless, it would be wrong to ignore the deeper statewide lessons from that controversy, which also spotlights the aggressive “playbook” that some police officials had used to muscle political opponents into submission.
The settlement came in a lawsuit filed in 2013 by former Mayor Steve Mensinger and Councilman Jim Righeimer and his wife, Lene, against Lackie, Dammeier, McGill & Ethir, an Upland firm that once represented 120 police unions across California and, according to prosecutors, was hired by the Costa Mesa Police Officers Association to do “candidate research,” which included intimidating and tracking Mensinger and Righeimer as the campaign turned nasty.
Punishing bad behavior is great, but shouldn’t these broader political tactics be subject to closer scrutiny, asks Steven Greenhut.
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