Mendez should resign

Gary Mendez is Rio Hondo College's current Board of Trustee Member representing Area 4, which includes Los Nietos, Santa Fe Springs, South Whittier and North Norwalk.Recently Trustee Mendez has become a rather hot topic both here on campus and in the surrounding community. Unfortunately for both Mendez and Rio Hondo it's not for anything particularly exemplary but for something quite the opposite.

As was reported in the Whittier Daily News last week as well as Rio Hondo's own El Paisano, Trustee Mendez was recently arrested after an incident at Maggie's Pub in Santa Fe Springs.

After being called to the pub, officers found the 40-year-old Trustee sitting in his car.

This is where the situation takes a twist. Apparently, after a consenting search of Mendez's person, officers found a spring-loaded knife in his pocket. At best the discovery is a misdemeanor and, while not a happy find, it's nothing to get worked up about.

The plot thickened following a procedural background check. Officers discovered Mendez had two warrants out for his arrest, the first warrant was given for driving with a suspended license and the second for failure to appear in court.

According to court records, Mendez was convicted of driving on a revoked or suspended license on Jan. 12, 1999, a total of 11 years prior to this recent arrest. Some of you may be asking "what's the big to-do?"

So far Mendez has committed a misdemeanor offense and apparently doesn't really care about traffic violations. That would be true, but for somebody who represents a whole community and is a figurehead for Rio Hondo, misdemeanor offenses or traffic violations are nothing to scoff at.

While anyone can run into problems, like forgetting to pay a traffic ticket, the everyday person will eventually run into a situation where they have to deal with the matter at hand.

Usually though, this would need to happen before a complete decade has passed. In all honesty to not have to face consequences you really have to go out of your way to avoid any kind of situation that might turn the warrant up.

Warrants aside, what we should really be concerned with is the situation that led up to this. Mendez had become enough of a problem that someone at Maggie's Pub had to actually call the police because as the Whittier Daily News reports he was refusing to leave.

This seems to be a habit for Mendez. Five years ago he was appointed board president only to have the title stripped from him by his fellow trustee members and then censured for his actions. The reason for this?

An apparent verbal altercation with then President-Superintendent Rose Marie Joyce.
According to Joyce, the incident occurred after she accused Mendez of having Rio Hondo staff book him an oceanfront room at a Hawaiian hotel for a conference.

Following the accusation Mendez told former-President Joyce "You are going to kiss my (blank)."

Incidents continued when Lillian Gonzales of the Mark Twain Democratic Club stated she preferred to keep her distance from Mendez in an article for the Whittier Daily News.

Gonzales describes an incident in which Mendez stood up during a meeting for the Democratic Party's Los Angeles County Central
Committee and began yelling.

Now we have this indiscretion with Mendez and his knife. While we can't really assume he always carries it, can we safely assume he doesn't?

And if he is carrying the knife on campus shouldn't this be something to be concerned about?

Nobody is saying Mendez is going pull the knife on anyone, but if a student was found to be carrying a knife on campus you can rest assured that swift and decisive action would be taken without exception.

Mendez may be an elected official, but that doesn't entitle him to any kind of special treatment.

So what's it all boil down to? Simple.

Mendez is an elected official who represents
Rio Hondo College. He is a representative who was making enough of a scene at a bar that the police had to be called only to discover a knife and discover past incidents.

There is only one conclusion anyone should make from this and that is that Mendez must resign from his position as Trustee member for Rio Hondo.

We cannot have a man representing our college that would so easily disregard the law and allow a decade to pass before dealing with the consequences of his traffic violation. Can we really forgive a person who is known to have a haughty personality, and has been officially reprimanded in the past?

The Editors of El Paisano say firmly and resolutely, no. We stand and quite seriously repeat ourselves, Trustee Mendez resign from your position because your actions are inexcusable.