Bee Opinionated: Dog park fiasco + A homeless death in Vacaville + Monopoly gone wrong

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Robin Epley here with The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board. I hope you had a great weekend — it was nice to finally see some rain!

Unfortunately, rain does put something of a damper on my ability to walk my dog, Juno. Too bad I can’t take her to a large, unused, nearby field to romp and play now that the city is shutting down the unofficial dog park at the Sierra 2 Center.

During the pandemic, dog ownership skyrocketed. More than 23 million people nationwide — nearly one in five Americans — adopted a pet during the pandemic, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

“For many of us, taking our new pups for a walk was an escape from the loneliness of COVID isolation. It was a way for us to socialize safely when we couldn’t go to work, the mall, the movies or anywhere else,” I wrote last week when I heard the news.

Opinion

“But just because a place isn’t purpose-built doesn’t mean it can’t serve that purpose. Sometimes communities happen organically. This one did, and the city shouldn’t squash that magic under the boot of bureaucracy.”

At any rate, the next Sacramento City Council meeting promises to be a good one. Local dog owners are howling mad. (I’ll see myself out…)

Naming Names

“You could say, as doctors at Fairfield North Bay Medical Center did, that he died of multiple organ failure after an untreated urinary tract infection caused sepsis. Or you could say that the cause was really the 1987 motorcycle accident that took his sight and part of his frontal lobe more than half a lifetime ago, when he was 24. Over the next few years, his brain injury robbed him of his sanity and safety, too.”

James Mark Rippee, who was blind, severely mentally ill, homeless and the subject of an in-depth profile by metro columnist Melinda Henneberger back in August, died Tuesday at the age of 59.

“The next person who tells me ‘It’s so sad, so sad’ as if nothing and nobody could have changed how Mark’s life ended I’m going to smack,” his sister Catherine Rippee-Hanson said.

Who’s to blame? Let’s start with Gov. Gavin Newsom, who vetoed state Sen. Henry Stern’s “Housing that Heals” bill, “which would have guaranteed the right to treatment for severely mentally ill and unhoused Californians like Mark,” Henneberger wrote.

Next, how about then-chairman of the Assembly Judiciary Committee, Mark Stone, who killed proposed legislation by state Sen. Susan Eggman who wrote her bill after meeting with Rippee and his sisters in the wake of Henneberger’s August column. Eggman’s legislation would have expanded California’s definition of “gravely disabled” to make it easier for people like Rippee to get help.

And let’s not forget California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, who agreed to let Stone’s decision stand — a waterfall of failure on every level.

“Mark thought the voices he heard were being broadcast by extraterrestrials from a military submarine using ‘mind warfare’ to turn ‘almost every single person in my life against me.’” Henneberger wrote. “Unseen guilty parties were, he told me, doing all sorts of unethical experiments on homeless people. And in that last delusion, was he altogether wrong?”

Do Not Pass Go

Deputy opinion editor Josh Gohlke used the unusual case of a shooting over a game of Monopoly gone wrong to represent America’s ongoing obsession with guns, and our increasing tendency to use violence.

“Such shootings represent a tiny and not particularly representative sample of a brand of violence that went from bad to worse during the pandemic. Murders surged more than any other crime over the past two years, and four of five American murders are committed with firearms,” he wrote.

Nearly 49,000 Americans died by bullets last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a record toll and the highest per capita since the 1990s. But only about one in 70 were killed in what the Gun Violence Archive defines as a mass shooting. The number of people lost in what the FBI defines as an “active shooter incident” is even smaller — just 0.2% of firearm deaths.

“Perhaps partly because it evolved from a diversion designed for the less than lighthearted purpose of demonstrating the oppressive perils of capitalism, Monopoly is enraging,” Gohlke wrote. “There’s even research suggesting as much: One survey found that it’s far more likely than any other board game to lead to disagreements, hurt feelings and violent misuse of game pieces.”

Opinion of the Week

“...Given those poor results and their rich history of rejecting popular verdicts they don’t like, it’s remarkable how gently most of these candidates are going into a well-deserved and, with any luck, long-term retirement.” — Josh Gohlke again, on the overall surprising concessions from election-deniers who stumbled on their run at higher office.

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Happy holidays,

Robin Epley