The Weekly Newspaper of El Segundo
Herald Publications - El Segundo, Hawthorne, Lawndale & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 110, No. 21 - May 27, 2021
Inside
This Issue
Certified & Licensed
Professionals.....................10
Classifieds............................4
Crossword/Sudoku.............4
Entertainment......................3
Legals............................. 4,8,9
Obituaries.............................2
Pets......................................12
Police Reports.....................2
Real Estate.......................5-7
Sports.............................. 3,11
Weekend
Forecast
Thank You to Our Often-Unsung
Heroes from ES Public Works
The El Segundo City Council proclaimed May 16 - 22 as National Public Works Week at their recent meeting. Public Works Director Elias Sassoon accepted the recognition on behalf of his team. Thank you
to Public Works professionals who serve the public every day with quiet dedication. Photo courtesy City of El Segundo.
Coffee With the Cops: Dominique Alvarez
Works to Keep El Segundo Informed
By Kiersten Vannest
El Segundo prides itself on its safe neighborhoods
El Segundo Author Dick Upton; Master Chronicler
of General Custer and the Indian Wars
By Duane Plank
We will start with a Thursday morning
trivia quiz…What do George Custer, the
United States general who became famous
(infamous?) after he and many of his charges
were annihilated by the coalescing of three
Indian tribes on a deadly battlefield back
in late June of 1876 along the Little Bighorn
River in the Montana territory, and
Hall of Famer “Prince Hal” Newhouser, a
southpaw pitcher for both the Detroit Tigers
and Cleveland Indians, have in common?
A General and a Prince?
Tick-tock… Does anyone know the
answer? And the answer is: both men are
subjects of serious interest to El Segundo,
author, publisher, and resident Richard
“Dick” Upton.
Upton has a keen interest in history,
especially the historic timeframe surrounding
the life and death of Custer. One of
his books, of which more than 50 have
been published, featured the Battle of the
Little Bighorn, known to the Lakota and
other Plains Indians, as the Battle of the
Greasy Grass, and commonly referred to
as Custer’s Last Stand. It was an armed
engagement between combined forces of the
Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho
tribes and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of
the United States Army. The battle, which
resulted in the defeat of U.S. forces, was
the most significant action of the Great
Sioux War of 1876. On June 25–26, 1876,
it took place along the Little Big Horn
River in the Crow Indian Reservation in
southeastern Montana Territory.
and low crime rate. This is in large part
thanks to the work of the El Segundo Police
Department (ESPD) and people like Dominique
Alvarez, a crime prevention analyst, and
community engagement officer for the city.
Alvarez grew up in a small town called
Los Banos, California. Her mother was a
dispatcher, and after completing a degree
in Global Studies and Liberal Arts with an
emphasis in Media Studies, she began to
work in city government as an intern. Eventually,
she landed a job at the El Segundo
Police Department.
“When I first wanted to work for a police
department, I wanted to do dispatch because
my mom was a dispatcher,” says Alvarez. With
some insight into life at a police department,
Alvarez wanted to dip her toes and learn
more before diving into police training. This
resulted in a job as a police assistant in the
records division, where she wrote reports and
learned codes.
After a while, with some retirements and
internal movement, Alvarez saw the opening
for her current position.
“It had a lot more to do with social media
and working with the community and everything
else that I went to school for,” she says,
“I was thinking: this is what I need to do, this
is what I enjoy doing.”
A typical morning for Alvarez looks like
reading through crime reports from the night
before and logging them. At the end of the
month, she looks through the accumulated
reports and logs and analyzes what type of
crime is happening in which parts of the
city and decides the best course of action to
prevent further crime.
For example, a common incident that appears
in her reports for El Segundo is property
crime. This is often boiled down to something
as simple as leaving a door unlocked or leaving
valuables visible in a car. While she says, it’s
rare that something big lands on their table,
theft continues to be a regular report.
Over the course of the pandemic, Alvarez
explains, there was a spike in theft of catalytic
converters, a part of a car’s exhaust system
that contains valuable metals. In response to
this, they began sending units overnight to
highly trafficked areas and kept their lights
on, and the city saw a significant decrease in
the number of thefts.
Another major part of her job is getting
the word out to the citizens of El Segundo.
Due to Covid restrictions, most news and
outreach throughout the pandemic has been Dominique Alvarez works for the Crime Prevention and Community
Engagement department of ESPD.
See Dick Upton, page 10
See Dominique Alvarez, page 6
Friday
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Saturday
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Sunday
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