LA Weekly

VIDEO CLIPS FROM CITY COUNCIL meetings don't usually achieve cult status, but Carson isn't just any city and its council may be one of the most dysfunctional, and entertaining, around. Viewed on YouTube more than 500,000 times, a 43-second clip shows a hefty Latino woman walking away from the podium, then swatting an older blond woman on the back of the head with a handful of papers.

 

(Click to enlarge)

 

(Click to enlarge)

 

(Click to enlarge)

The "victim" pauses, then, with what YouTube viewers dub an "R2-D2 scream," falls to the floor and rolls in seemingly agonizing pain. "I love how she gasped, yelled, held her head and climbed down to the floor and acted like some dinosaur bit off a chunk of her skull," wrote one of the more than 600 viewers who commented on the video in both English and Spanish.

"I haven't laughed this hard in years and years. The video's a riot," wrote another, and, somebody added, "I wish the city council in our town could be this exciting."

The "Carson City Council Smack" — the blonde was awarded a best-actress "Keithie" by viewers of Countdown With Keith Olbermann — is bringing fresh, unwanted national prominence to a tattered and industrialized Los Angeles suburb best known as the home of the L.A. Galaxy. But behind the February 6, 2007, videotape is the story of a vicious fight for control of this town of 95,000, still reeling from an FBI sting in the first half of the decade that unveiled a corrupt City Hall — and led to indictments of two former mayors and most of the City Council.

The "assailant" in the year-old video, who was charged by the Los Angeles District Attorney with misdemeanor battery, is former mayor Vera Robles DeWitt, a bail bondswoman who, the day before, had submitted 12,000 signatures in her effort to recall Carson Mayor Jim Dear.

The "victim" is Jan Schaefer, an elderly trailer-park resident appointed by Mayor Dear to the city's powerful Public Works Commission and one of the mayor's staunchest supporters.

And the lead is played by Dear, Carson's 55-year-old mayor, who from his seat at the head of the council dais last February promptly asked police to arrest DeWitt, who was Carson's first Latina mayor in the 1980s, but who lost her seat in 1992. Dear, who publicly refers to her as "Vera 'The Evil' DeWitt," added his own melodrama to the incident, calling for a doctor to administer to Schaefer and falsely claiming she was hit "right in the eye."

The strands in this petty drama, which has left the residents of Carson wondering whether they are getting decent services like crime protection while feuding parties duke things out, are in the hands of a Los Angeles Superior Court judge who will decide this summer whether Carson City Clerk Helen Kawagoe, California's longest-standing elected official, who has held the office for 34 years, correctly counted the signatures on the Dear recall petitions.

Kawagoe, who refuses to divulge her age, recently prevailed in striking from the court record allegations by DeWitt and her followers that Kawagoe had grown too "feeble-minded" to accurately count the signatures seeking to put the Dear recall on the ballot.

The YouTube video is not DeWitt's first brush with video fame. It was in the lobby of her bail-bond office — across the street from Carson City Hall — that Samuel L. Jackson's character was gunned down in Quentin Tarantino's blaxploitation tribute, Jackie Brown, whose poster hangs on the wall.

The former mayor, who agreed to talk to L.A. Weekly after declining comment for months, despite invitations from Inside Edition and Dr. Phil, says she cringes at the thought of having to view the video, and insists that Schaefer called her a dirty name. "She probably looked at the mayor [for her cue] and decided to go for it," DeWitt complains.

Last fall, DeWitt had to fight a charge of contempt of court after she violated a restraining order that barred her from coming within three yards of Schaefer. The incident unfolded at a courtroom hearing when DeWitt stepped behind Schaefer's seat to retrieve her purse, and Schaefer's friends shouted "Nine feet! Nine feet!" and accusingly cried out, "She did it again! She did it again!"

Now, DeWitt says, "my lawyer can't represent me in the restraining order, because we had to call him as a witness."

DeWitt later won her contempt hearing, but, putting a finer point on the ridiculousness of Carson city politics, the judge told her to wait in court until Schaefer and her coterie had safely entered the elevator. "They make her out to be a little old grandma," says DeWitt scornfully. "She's not a sweet little patootie."

By January 18, DeWitt must decide whether to stand trial and clear her name or accept the district attorney's plea bargain. She wants to plead to a "disturbing the peace" charge and get the restraining order lifted, while the D.A. is pressing for a tougher deal. DeWitt sees a larger battle, in which she could face jail time and lose her bondswoman license, granted by the state, all because she wants Dear out. "It's scary. This is oppressive," she says. "I'm paying the price for recalling this guy."

DEWITT HAS SPENT $45,000 to recall Mayor Dear, the latest upheaval in a city wracked by scandals that have left its citizens disillusioned and deeply suspicious. Three years ago, Daryl Sweeney, Carson's colorful and popular mayor, was sentenced to 71 months in prison for acting as ringleader in a bribery scheme involving the city's biggest trash hauler.

Sweeney and other city leaders sold their votes for $600,000 — which officials at Browning/Ferris Industries agreed to pay to land a 10-year, $60 million contract. Sweeney was the first of two mayors and two council members nabbed during a secret federal probe launched in 2000. Former council members Raunda Frank and Manuel Ontal pleaded guilty, along with former mayor Pete Fajardo.

Their conversations, taped when a council member wore a wire, only confirmed what Carson residents suspected all along — something was rotten at City Hall. Residents had long complained that the City Council spent hours in meetings closed to the public, forcing residents to "wait hours to speak," recalls Sharon Gilpin, who has worked as a political consultant for DeWitt. When the council emerged from its closed-door meetings, its public votes were like "a dance" in which "the motions were passed in seconds."