The pitchfork-and-torch crowd must be disappointed by Mayor Lovely Warren’s handling of the crisis involving her deputy mayor. Leonard Redon was recently charged with speeding and DWI. He offered his resignation, but Warren refused to accept it. That doesn’t mean he won’t be held accountable. Redon still faces serious legal charges.
Warren seems to have learned from her less-than-deft handling of the speeding scandal in January. In that case, Warren’s obfuscation prolonged the story — and her own pain — much longer than if she’d just come clean immediately.
With Redon, though, Warren seems to have gotten it together. Whether or not you agree with her decision to give Redon another chance, she was forthright about the incident and her reasons for handling it the way she did. She sent out a press release the morning after Redon was stopped, and her spokesperson held a press conference later that day. That’s progress.
I do wonder, though, if Warren sacrificed the high ground when she misled everyone about her own speeding stops earlier this year. Warren wasn’t driving — that was her uncle, who was head of her security detail at the time — but she was in the vehicle. Her uncle worked for her, and if she had told him to slow down, especially after being stopped the first time, he would’ve undoubtedly listened. It might’ve appeared hypocritical for Warren to bring the hammer down on Redon so soon after her own ethical crisis.
Now, about the DWI charge. Like Nestor Ramos, my colleague at the D&C, said in a column last weekend, no one is immune. And I, too, have had relatives arrested for DWI, and another who nearly died in a DWI-related accident. If it were up to me, a nondrinker, anyone who had even one alcoholic beverage would be forbidden from getting behind the wheel.
Redon reportedly used personal time following the incident to seek counseling. I hope he spent part of that time with MADD to see firsthand the lifelong effect this careless choice can have.
This article appears in Mar 26 – Apr 1, 2014.
Rather than being disappointed, most of us are happy that she has finally done something right. Let’s hope the trend continues. As regards Redon, we should want to see him handled by the legal system as we would be handled. No worse, but no preferential treatment either. The problem with the multiple traffic incidents involving Warren and her uncle is that he received preferential treatment. And of course, she tried to lie about it.
Clarification, she didn’t “try” to lie about the speeding violations of her uncle, she did lie.
And I agree that it’s a step forward how she has handled the situation with Mr. Redon’s DWI arrest, although that case is far from settled at present.
Mayor Lovely Warren: Crisis Management A+; Leadership N/A.
Did I say NA? I meant NR.