LETTERS : Recruiting for ‘Volunteer’ Firefighters at Irvine Station

For years Irvine residents have been provided with outstanding police and fire protection--fundamental services that each taxpayer expects and deserves.

Few are aware that although Irvine has its own Police Department, the city contracts for services with the Orange County Fire Department for its fire protection and emergency medical care (paramedics). This department has always provided a high level of service. We should be proud, content and confident that if someday we find ourselves in need of these professional services, we will undoubtedly receive the utmost in quality care and protection--or will we?

The County Fire Department is currently recruiting for “volunteer” firefighters to help supplement the manpower at one of Irvine’s fire stations. The plan is to provide one additional fire engine at Station No. 26 (Walnut and Yale avenues) and to man this engine with “volunteers.” (“Volunteers” are compensated for each response to the station.)

When the professional engine company is committed to an alarm, the second engine would be manned by “volunteers,” coming from their homes in the immediate area. This is an old concept that may sound good to some, but think about the potential consequences.

Why, in a growing city such as Irvine, should we be expected to accept anything but the best services available? For example, if Engine No. 26 is committed on a dumpster fire when my house catches on fire or my child is lying unconscious in the street or my wife is seriously injured and trapped in a traffic accident, then I expect that they will get the highest quality protection available.

To me, that means paid professional police and fire personnel. Not a salesman or a computer programmer or a plumber, but men and women whose very career is to protect our community.

If there, indeed, exists the need for additional equipment and manpower, then I suggest manning a second engine company with paid professionals or providing better access to that area for the other engines currently located in our city.

These top-of-the-line engines are only as good as the men who operate them.

I urge residents to take immediate notice of the implications involved in this program and to protest its implementation.

CRAIG D. ANDERSON Irvine

County’s Investigation Into ‘Privatizing’ Jail Operations

I am writing this letter in response to your article on Supervisor Ralph Clark and his investigation into “privatizing” the Orange County Jail (Orange County section, Jan. 9).

The problems in the Orange County Jail can best be solved not by privatization, but by establishing a “department of corrections” and staffing the jail with correctional officers instead of deputies.

The Sheriff’s Department recruits aggressive young men and women who want to be police officers.

Their training consists largely of street police-oriented raining. They are, by and large, trained to meet confrontation with force. They are not trained in the psychological manipulation of people. They graduate with 600 hours of training in police procedures and immediately go into a correction or jail situation for two to four years as “turnkeys”--correctional officers instead of police officers.

Because they are not now doing what they initially wanted to do or were trained to do, about 60% leave during their stay in jail, usually to work for other agencies. Those who stay have forgotten almost everything they learned in the academy by the time they leave the jail.

In one recent 12-month period, the Sheriff graduated 106 recruits from the academy. According to my calculations, it cost county taxpayers more than $2 million to train those 106 recruits. Within two years, most of them will be gone and the costly process will start all over again.

The solution is to build a detoxification center that will immediately pull 200 to 300 inmates out of the jail. Almost every county in this state has at least one detoxification center. The standard rule is that they are run by agencies other than the Sheriff’s Department. Then develop a correctional officer concept, separate from the Sheriff’s Department.

In San Diego County, correction officers receive 120 hours of training instead of 600. The turnover rate is less than 10%, compared to 60% here. There are no suits pending against the county, compared to $300 million in claims filed against this county, and medical and stress retirements are rare.

The Orange County sheriff has repeatedly stated that by using correctional officers, less qualified people would be hired and therefore contraband would appear in the jail, turnover would remain high and violent incidents would increase. This has not been the case in San Diego County.

GEORGE P. WRIGHT Santa Ana

Wright is criminal justice instructor at Santa Ana College.

The Red Cross’ Refusal to Accept Blood From Lesbians

Great!” Dr. Benjamin Spindler and the local Red Cross are providing real leadership once again.

Spindler refuses to accept blood from one of the safest sources around because he has no confidence in the intelligence and educability of his “regular donors.” He will accept blood from lesbians as long as the public doesn’t know, but turns down 40 pledged pints because of what people might think.

Red Cross blood screening depends heavily on self-reported facts from potential donors. If his regular donors know so little about Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome that they don’t know what makes a group high or low risk, how can he be sure they’re giving him accurate and sufficient information?

Does it occur to him that it might be his responsibility (as medical director of blood services for the Orange County American Red Cross chapter) to provide accurate information and allay any “confusion” that might exist? Not only does he perpetuate misinformation by his actions in canceling the blood drive, but we also lose out on a source of safe blood during an admitted blood shortage.

Spindler acknowledged that blood donations from lesbians involve the least risk, but he said that he believed “the public could not distinguish between what was a high-risk group and what was not.”

Both Spindler and The Times compound the problem: How many people read the Orange County section’s headline “Fear of AIDS Leads Red Cross to Cancel Lesbian Blood Drive” (Jan. 9) an concluded that the Red Cross thinks lesbians are a high-risk group? One has to continue to Page 9 to find out that even Spindler himself believes the opposite.

Gay leaders attribute the Red Cross’ action to “blatant homophobia.” Surely the only explanation for Spindler’s action is his own, or his fear of the public’s, homophobia. Perhaps it is time for The Times to run a series on this social disease that victimizes all of us (straight and gay) and does profound damage to our society.

I have to question the local Red Cross’ judgment about sources of safe blood, and their commitment to public education to improve the quality of donated blood, after reading about the recent decision.

JULIANA MULROY Newport Beach

The Plan to Close Westminister’s Boos Fundamental School

Regarding the upcoming decision by the Board of Trustees for the Westminister School District concerning school closures (Orange County Digest, Dec. 27):

Closing up to three elementary schools (Virginia K. Boos, John F. Land Jr. and Ada E. Clegg) is high on the list of alternatives. As a parent of a child at Boos fundamental school, I am aware of the concern over low enrollment. As a college educator, I also am aware of the need to provide alternative forms of education for the children of the district.

If one looks at the private sector, schools range from highly structured to Montessori. All are essential in order to best serve children with their different educational needs.

If one looks at progressive school districts such as Irvine, one finds numerous examples of alternative forms of education.

Boos parents and teachers were fortunate in their efforts to establish one such alternative school last year. A fundamental school is dedicated to providing a well-disciplined, highly structured learning environment with emphasis on the basics (reading, writing, language arts and mathematics) and where homework is mandatory.

Foremost, a fundamental school is defined by its high degree of parent participation in the educational experience of their children. This requires parents, teachers and students all working together to achieve a common goal.

Parents at Boos have thought long and hard about the educational needs of their children. It is my firm belief that our educational program must be allowed to continue intact. To ensure the necessary enrollment, Boos needs only to advertise, a provision that has heretofore been denied.

MARY K. ANWAR Westminster

I am very much concerned about the possibility of the Westminister school board’s closing Boos fundamental school, which my child attends. I think it is time for the school board to look at the quality of education in the school and not just go by location, age of school and ease of busing.

Boos is the only designated fundamental school in the Westminster School District. It has well-defined program and an active parent support group with thousands of volunteer hours donated yearly. The education process is working well here, and more children should be channeled into the program.

Closing Boos and dividing the children will only destroy the groundwork that has been laid.

JOEY VAN CAMP Westminster