Library’s Electronic Eye Focuses on Fearful Times

The signs of redevelopment in downtown San Diego--the new high-rises, the new restaurants, the new coffee and newspaper stands--come accompanied by joyous announcements and prearranged photo opportunities.

However, there are also increasing signs of a grittier and unpleasant reality as downtown streets fill up with the homeless and aimless. No one calls a press conference to announce that a downtown bookstore or pharmacy has hired a full-time security guard or that some of the benches at Horton Plaza Park have been removed to keep shoppers from being hassled.

There was no announcement two weeks ago when the San Diego Central Library installed five closed-circuit television cameras at a cost

of $4,000 to ensure the safety of library employees. The cameras are aimed at the service desks in the three-story building and are monitored by a security guard in the lobby.

Actual confrontations have been few, but employees at the aging library that sits on E Street between 8th and 9th avenues have felt increasingly threatened by the street people who make the building their home. Particularly in cold and rainy weather, the library is a refuge for people carrying their worldly possessions in shopping bags and talking to themselves.

Several years ago the library hired two full-time security guards--one for the main floor, one to roam the building. Recently a transient was banned from the library and sent to the county mental health hospital in Hillcrest after making repeated threats; after that, library officials decided the guards were not enough.

“The cameras give our staff a better feeling when they’re in some of the more remote sections of the building,” said William Sannwald, the city’s head librarian. “Employees deserve to feel safe.”

Sannwald would like the cameras to pan back and forth to provide a wider view to the downstairs guard. Unfortunately, he said, that’s not possible: the electrical wiring of the 35-year-old building will not take the extra load.

Sannwald said the downtown library is the only one in San Diego County with surveillance cameras. “It’s a sign of the times,” he said. “It’s a sign of what’s happening in downtown San Diego.”

Trying to Restore Credit

Uvaldo Martinez, booted from the San Diego City Council in late 1986 after pleading guilty to misusing a city credit card, has taken a step toward restoration of his public reputation. The San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday appointed Martinez, now working as a land-use consultant, to a two-year term on the Transborder Affairs Advisory Board.

“It’s not a paid position and there certainly is no expense account,” Martinez said.

Fishing for Criticisms

Everyone seems to have his own description for the hounds of the press.

A long-ago school board member habitually called reporters “that bunch of fanny pinchers.” Daniel Dierdorff, the ex-financial whiz sentenced this week to eight years in prison, referred in a deposition to “those beautiful reporters that maybe should be on the streets in Las Vegas and earning their job properly and probably more productively.”

Now William Boot, listed as a contributing editor at Columbia Journalism Review, has written a learned article in CJR likening political reporters to a school of fish. For scientific validation he cited Richard Rosenblatt, an ichthyologist (fish scientist) at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.

Fish are “oriented on one another” through sharp eyesight and sensitivity to changes in water movement. “If the first fish turn, everybody turns,” Rosenblatt said. “Any fish that gets out of the school is vulnerable prey. There’s safety in numbers.”

Concluded Boot: “For those of us who have covered national presidential campaigns, Rosenblatt’s account may sound a bit like a job description.”

There is, however, a difference: fish do not use aliases. William Boot is a pseudonym used by a veteran reporter from the Reuters news agency in Washington.