Bruce family representative ticketed on ‘BLK MAN AVE’
The parking ticket received by Chief Duane Yellow Feather Shepard, a relative of the Bruce family who is serving as their spokesperson. Photo courtesy Chief Duane Yellow Feather Shepard
by Mark McDermott
Chief Duane Yellow Feather Shepard was in Manhattan Beach last Tuesday, visiting Bruce’s Beach, the property owned by his family nearly a century ago. The taking of that property and Los Angeles County’s attempt to give it back, combined with the City of Manhattan Beach’s refusal to apologize for its racist-inspired use of eminent domain in the taking, have brought Bruce’s Beach into the national spotlight.
Shepard is the family’s spokesperson, and he’s been blunt in his criticism of Manhattan Beach. He has taken aim at the city in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and on regional and national television news programs. He has suggested that the City Council is continuing the city’s legacy of institutionalized racism and has argued that even if the County restores the land to the Bruce family, the city will not be off the hook.
“The restitution and punitive damages, Manhattan Beach is going to have to pay,” Shepard told the New York Times. “We’re going to keep up with them until we get it.”
But last Tuesday, Shepard found out he would have to pay — a parking ticket, for parking on Manhattan Avenue during street sweeping hours. That morning, he was visiting the plaque at Bruce’s Beach Park, which a council-appointed task force is in the process of rewriting to better reflect the actual history, because he’d been asked to provide input. He was there all of eight minutes, and when he returned to his car, he found a parking ticket tucked on its windshield.
That alone didn’t bother him, but when Shepard looked at the ticket, he got a shock. The location of his car was listed as, “124 Blk Man Ave.”
“I said, ‘Wait a minute. I’m not on Black Man Avenue,’” Shepard recalled. “I sat in the car for about five minutes trying to figure it out. And then I looked at the signs and said, ‘No, this is Manhattan Avenue.’”
When Shepard returned to his home in Los Angeles, he Googled to see if any such street name existed. It didn’t. Then he called parking enforcement, who confirmed no such street existed. He then sent an email to several people, including local press, community activists, Supervisor Janice Hahn, and Mitch Ward, the former council person and first Black mayor in Manhattan Beach, who has been supportive of restorative justice for the Bruce family.
“I called the parking enforcement people and they don’t have a street named that in Manhattan Beach,” Shepard wrote. “They said I can contest the ticket. Which I will do. Have I been the victim of a hate crime?”
On Wednesday, Ward emailed City Attorney Quinn Barrow, City Council, and Mayor Suzanne Hadley.
“Why is this happening, even coincidentally, to the most outspoken member of the Bruce family — Duane Shepard, Chief Yellow Feather?” Ward wrote. “Surely this isn’t code we use for Black folk‘s cars?”
Ward suggested that if the city’s ticketing system automatically generates Blk Man Ave as an abbreviation that it be changed. If it was manually entered, Ward suggested, the person who issued the ticket should be advised the abbreviation is not appropriate. “If he or she knowingly entered such codes with hateful intent, inquire further about their motives…Learn whether your employees use minor or major covert racist activity while representing the City of Manhattan Beach and while on duty even when writing street sweeping tickets.”
“Above all please consider the optics for our city with any of the technology you use to output materials to the public on behalf of the City of Manhattan Beach,” Ward concluded. “All residents of Manhattan Beach deserve your attention to the smallest of things that are perceived as racist and disrespectful to Black and brown folk here in this town whether we are residents or visitors like Mr. Shepard.”
Councilperson Richard Montgomery shot back an email eleven minutes later.
“You surely know better than to assume any ‘racist actions on behalf of our police department!’” Montgomery wrote. “Location BLK is an abbreviated form of the word BLOCK. Anyone in law enforcement or mapping or planning would know this. Instead of copying everyone you did with this ‘accusation/ assumption’, why not call Chief Abell or me? Is it because it was given to someone that is agitated with CMB already? I sure hope you are as quick to apologize for insulting MBPD as you were to accuse them, Mitch.”
Ward quickly replied.
“Montgomery, have you been sleeping over the past year?” Ward wrote. “Instead of a quick defensive reaction, why not understand the optics of this particularly at this point in our history. Your blind response is a perfect example of the problem. I suppose we need to look to others to help us learn and grow, something as small as changing the way our police use abbreviations to avoid misunderstandings is a very low bar.”
Mayor Suzanne Hadley interceded within an hour.
“I’d sure appreciate your help in lowering the temperature on this,” she wrote. “This seems to me an unfortunate combination of perhaps bad luck, perhaps auto-complete, and perhaps innocent human error. Not sure how going from zero to 60 on this helps MB, the officer who wrote the ticket, our MBPD, or the owner of the vehicle.”
Hadley’s email was not part of the larger chain, which she noted, but directly to Ward. She said her thoughts on the ticket were that “parking tickets are given to cars, not people,” and that Montgomery’s reading of “BLK” meaning block rang true. She asked Ward to wait for MBPD Derrick Abell’s explanation. She also questioned why he included the press in his emails.
“I’m 100 percent sure Chief Abell has an explanation that will satisfy all,” Hadley wrote. “Not all wrongdoing is intentional, hateful, or racist. Some things just are. I trust the Chief. I’d appreciate your giving him a chance before jumping to conclusions or involving the press.”
Ward did not appreciate the request. In a response to the entire email chain, he said Hadley’s suggestion was an unethical breach of judgment.
“Handling the City of Manhattan Beach’s business ‘within the family’ is NOT the way any of the city councils I ever served on handled public concerns and complaints such as the serious one above: ‘Have I been a victim of a hate crime?’” Ward wrote.
In response to an inquiry, Abell said the ticket location had simply been entered incorrectly. He said that a recently hired Community Services Officer issued the ticket on the 2600 block of Manhattan Avenue.
“It is unknown why the CSO put the wrong address,” Abell wrote. “The device used to input the information for the citation is essentially a hand-held device, the keypad of which is small; it is believed she mistyped the data, which would explain why she entered the wrong address. As it turns out, she issued two citations at that same location, and the other citation was entered incorrectly as well. It should be noted the CSO has since received training in the use of the parking ticket device to prevent this situation from occurring again.”
Abell said there was no racial intent in the use of the abbreviation.
“I want to make it very clear that none of the abbreviations that are utilized for our parking citations throughout the city of Manhattan Beach have any nefarious racial or any other derogatory undertones,” he wrote. “These abbreviations are utilized for parking citations throughout all other areas of our city. In addition, the ‘BLK’ abbreviation is a common abbreviation utilized by many other law enforcement agencies throughout the State of California to describe the hundred ‘Block’ of the parking citation location.”
Shepard said he’d not heard any explanation, much less an apology, from the city. He said he suspected that the officer saw him, but even if it was an innocent mistake, the entire episode represented the kind of comical incompetence he has come to expect of the city.
“I’m sad for the residents of Manhattan Beach, that they keep going through this Keystone Cops show that they’re putting on on their behalf,” Shepard said. “It just goes to show you. I mean, we’re not antagonizing these people in any way, but they still keep falling over themselves, trying to embarrass us or disenfranchise us from what we are owed. It’s just crazy.” ER