Bonnie Dumanis Releases Butterflies to Honor Crime Victims

Another mayoral hopeful, this one actually declared, is Republican district attorney Bonnie Dumanis. On Friday, April 15, she and her friend and political ally county sheriff Bill Gore held a Citizens of Courage Awards Ceremony for National Crime Victims’ Rights Week. As reported by the Union-Tribune, “dignitaries and law enforcement officials released about 100 butterflies to honor local crime victims.”

It wasn’t mentioned that the wingding was held at the rooftop Beach bar of downtown’s W Hotel, with “complimentary hors d’oeuvres, a no-host bar, and an opportunity drawing,” according to a release by the Crime Victims Fund, which charged admission of $10 a head (“which is waived for media representatives”) as a fund-raiser. According to the group’s Internal Revenue Service report for 2009, filed last November 22, it raised $41,994, made $15,492 in grants, and spent $44,000 on unspecified “contract services,” reporting an end-of-year deficit of $25,295.

Presided over by family law attorney Meredith Levin, the board includes Sheriff Gore; onetime GOP city attorney candidate Leslie Devaney; former assistant chief of police, now Qualcomm executive, Bill Maheu; San Diego executive assistant chief of police David Ramirez; and Phyllis Shess, a deputy district attorney under Dumanis.

In a telephone interview last week, the fund’s executive director Patti Colston said the group’s past financial issues had resulted from the loss of revenue it had been receiving from a discontinued prison-labor program at the state’s Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility on Otay Mesa, but there are plans for future growth.