Talk:Lupe Valdez

Untitled
Over and over again a partisan (Republican) poster is posting a laundry list of criticisms of the Sheriff and "citing" articles that don't say what the laundry list claims they do. This entire article is beset by POV. I have edited the article to try to approach NPOV. I have created a section regarding the Sheriff's term in office, where IN CONTEXT, PROPERLY WRITTEN, NPOV information about the criticisms she has received should fit. Just listing a bunch of charges with a "citation" link is not fair, and is not representative of the Sheriff's tenure in office as a whole, which is what I've tried to add. Let's avoid laundry lists, and try to phrase things as complete sentences that ACCURATELY REFLECT the sources they are "citing." Wikipedia should not be a place where opponents of a candidate (who is targeted by Republicans viciously for being a woman, for being Hispanic and, of course, for being a lesbian) can carpet bomb indiscriminately. Kirkland (talk) 18:45, 2 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry, dude, facts are facts. Counter with facts of your own. Stop censoring viewpoints you don't agree with. Novasource (talk) 19:38, 2 June 2008 (UTC)


 * This laundry list is NOT factual. It's a list of assertions with "citations" that often do not support the bullet point to which they are linked. The style does not fit with that of standard Wikipedia articles, which are written in the form of paragraphs, NOT laundry lists of attacks. You are allowing Wikipedia to be used to push propaganda. That entire section in question screams POV. Yes, it has "cites" but if you read the cites, the bullet points do not accurately reflect the content of linked articles, or take quotes out of the articles from the Sheriff's political opponents and assert them as "facts."


 * Please re-look at the content that I wrote. It was just as cited and supported as the content I replaced. Like any public figure, the Sheriff's record has its ups and its downs, but the article you restored does not reflect that in any way. I believe the structure I put in place -- a separate section for her term as Sheriff is not only more clearly organized and better written, it still provides an opportunity for valid criticisms to be placed in paragraph form with proper context.


 * Though sporadic, I have been a contributor to Wikipedia for years, mostly nitpick clean ups of vandalism. I do not want to see Wikipedia be used as a platform for propaganda, but right now this article is clearly anti-Lupe Valdez propaganda. Much of the content in question was almost certainly authored by a "gentleman" the Sheriff fired in 2005, as was the case with similar vandalism on this page last summer. Kirkland (talk) 21:48, 2 June 2008 (UTC)


 * What is this content "that [you] wrote"? As implied by your prior edit comments, your wholesale deletions are simply an attempt to censor contrary viewpoints, and you're justifying this by branding the contrary views as "Republican".


 * Novasource (talk) 12:57, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The information you are insistent on restoring is not accurate. There is no salvaging much of it, because the laundry list of charges DOES NOT accurately reflect the content of the articles linked to. Obviously, you have a bias against the Sheriff. You do not recognize that that laundry list of unsubstantiated charges (and yes, almost all of those "charges" are unsubstantiated -- either they misrepresent the content of the linked "cites" or they "spin" the cites as negatively as possible) is incredibly POV? And look at your last edit, you restored negative POV content simply because that is clearly the tone YOU want for this article. You even called the Sheriff a "bad Dem" in your edit note. Your own bias is at least as pronounced as mine is, but at least I'm willing to be upfront about mine.


 * Also, the information you restored is wrong. That a candidate with three opponents takes 51% of the vote is NOT a sign of weakness. Candidates with more than two opponents, even incumbents, are expected to face a run-off. The fact that this was a solid accomplishment was discussed in some of the articles related to the election that were cites in my content that you, in your bias, removed without consideration. Why are YOU trying to CENSOR Wikipedia?

This page has twice now been revised to include partisan misinformation against the Sheriff. The Sheriff hasn't been trying to use this page as propaganda, and the other side shouldn't, either. Is there a way to lock the page to prevent Check28 from vandalizing it again? User:Fireball1244 17:22, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Just wondering, it looks like there are a few knocks unnecessarily taken at the article's subject here. I point in particular to the part indicating that she is not expected to last longer than one term because she's inexperienced... That sounds very biased to me, maybe even vandalism. I'm going to question the neutrality of this article since it seems to be a continuing problem. Also, the bottom sections called "Accomplishments" (even the fact that there are duplicate sections) need some major cleanup as they seem to be opinions and poorly written. Brakbudy 01:05, 11 November 2007 (UTC)brakbudy

Khervey (talk) 03:00, 26 October 2016 (UTC)I came here to learn about the current sheriff and was surprised at its claims. Army officer? I found the rest of the biography incredulous, so I went looking at references. Most are dead links. Everything that can't be substantiated should be deleted--as soon as possible since voting has startedKhervey (talk) 03:00, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Very biased information
The following information was removed from the main page because it appears as if it was written by her own campaign manager. In fact:
 * The Dallas County Jail remains unfixed and still has inspection problems.
 * Several items in both lists are hardly anything more than perfunctory tasks expected of someone marginally competent for a job.

68.95.142.112 (talk) 02:28, 16 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Fixing the Dallas County Jail
 * Repairing the damaged Dallas County Jail system that she inherited has dominated the Sheriff's term in office. In order to correct the problems that have been causing the jail to fail inspection, the Sheriff has:


 * 1. Worked with the Dallas County Commissioners Court to hire over 500 new detention service officers for the Dallas County Jail system. These new officers, when coupled with the drop in jail population, have brought the jail in line with mandated guard-to-inmate ratios.


 * 2. Authorized the use of overtime to provide sanitation supervision. The Dallas County Sheriff's Department budget does not include funds for officers to supervise inmates doing sanitation work. The Sheriff has had to spend beyond her budget in order to bring jail sanitation up to legally required standards, and will continue to do so until the Commissioners Court provides adequate funding for these legally-required positions.


 * 3. Pressed the Commissioners Court to order the Dallas County Maintenance Department to be more thorough and prompt in dealing with Jail maintenance requests. In September 2007, the Commissioners Court authorized Maintenance to use overtime hours as required to bring maintenance in the jail up to legal standards.


 * 4. Worked with the Commissioners Court and the Parkland Health System to turnaround healthcare in the Jail. The previous healthcare vendor was unable to provide adequate care within the budget authorized by the Commissioners Court. Parkland is receiving nearly twice as much in funding as the previous provider, and has dramatically improved healthcare.


 * 5. Implemented part of the new Parkland Health System contract -- a screening program that prevents ill individuals from spreading diseases in the Jail by requiring that arrested individuals undergo a medical screening prior to being brought into the Jail. Studies by both the Dallas County Sheriff's Department and the Dallas Police Department indicate that, on average, this process takes less than 30 minutes. Over 50,000 individuals have been screened prior to being brought into the Jail since this policy was put in place, and the result has been far lower rates of disease transmission within the Jail.


 * 6. Demanded the installation of a new smoke evacuation system. This legally-required upgrade to the Jail has not yet been delivered by the Commissioners Court, and until it is installed the Jail cannot pass inspection. In September 2007, the Commissioners Court finally approved the upgrade, but installation will take up to one year.


 * 7. Contracted for the building and installation of new laundry facilities. The previous Jail laundry was incapable of meeting the legally-required uniform change out rate of once a week. The Jail's new laundry machines, which were built by a company in Dallas County, use far less water and electricity, and are capable of bringing the Jail up to legal standards, all while working half as long each day as the previous laundry facility.


 * 8. Supervised construction on the South Tower Jail. Due to be opened in early 2009, the new Jail facility will be organized around a "direct supervision" model preferred by the Sheriff. This model requires less manpower to monitor inmates, and has been successfully implemented by Sheriff Valdez in the intake sector of the current Jail facility.


 * Because of her intense focus on changing conditions in the Dallas County Jail, Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price has taken to calling Sheriff Valdez "the clean up woman." Such a reference can be seen in the filing announcement videos linked above.


 * Other Initiatives
 * Though she has worked most noticeably on the situation regarding the Dallas County Jail, Sheriff Valdez has also overseen the expansion and improvement of other Department activities.


 * 1. Under Sheriff Valdez, the Department's DWI Enforcement Task Force, which is funded by a grant and only in use when sufficient officers requesting overtime hours are available, have expanded the scope of their operations, leading to record levels of DWI stops and convictions.


 * 2. Sheriff Valdez worked with the Dallas police chief and Dallas City Council to revise "Phase 2" of the Department's multi-step plan to take over responsibility for all Dallas highways. As of January 1, 2008, the new Phase 2 will go live, and Sheriff's deputies will patrol, police and clear all Dallas County Highways south of Interstate 30.


 * 3. In order to correct problems that arose under her predecessor, Sheriff Valdez instituted new policies for the awarding of Department contracts. This ended a controversial commissary contract that favored friends of the previous Sheriff. The new contract established under Sheriff Valdez's rules brings in $1.5 million more a year than the previous contract. This money is used to fund jail programs that would otherwise have to be paid for with tax dollars.


 * 4. Sheriff Valdez brought in a third party vendor to prepare and grade anonymous tests used to evaluate candidates for promotions. Promotions are now issued based upon these test results, and subsequent to this change the diversity amongst those receiving Department promotions has risen a great deal.

Good gosh, write in your own stuff if you think it criticizes her too much. It's not like your hands are tied. If you thing the phrases used are slanted, then straighten them up a bit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.194.210.84 (talk) 03:38, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

BLP review
This article was the subject of a complaint to the Wikimedia Foundation (OTRS) and has been identified to be not currently compliant with our Biographies of Living Persons policy. I and possibly other administrators or senior editors will be working on the article to correct these problems.

Identified problems are:
 * Undue weight given to criticisms section
 * Not all cited sources are accurately reported or summarized

I have no intention of whitewashing this article - Ms Valdez' term obviously has had a wide variety of critics. However, the article must be Wikipedia policy compliant. It must find a better, policy compliant balance of reporting criticism with fairness and accuracy. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 22:01, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the BLP fixes. I think your rewording is much better than the original.
 * FYI: I did some minor copyedits, mainly tightening up spacing and a couple of spelling fixes. The diff engine shows as a major edit, but a side by side of your latest edit and my edit shows they are vastly similar.
 * Novasource (talk) 01:51, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Controversy section
Saw a post about this article by (Raven) on WP:BLPN, started going through the sources in the controversy section, but decided it can't be salvaged as-is and would need to be completely re-written *in prose* with high quality sources, so I removed it to paste here for now, because the current version blatantly violates of WP:NPOV and WP:BLP. There are no topics, especially not articles about living people, where it would be appropriate to have a bullet list of complaints like this. Here's the material I removed for anyone who's interested in re-writing it:

2008 re-election
She faced criticism from her opponents and the Dallas Morning News.

Controversy
Valdez's tenure has been marked by a number of controversies, including:
 * Allegedly poor communications inside the department, with county officials, and with the press.
 * Dallas County jails still failing state inspections, though with improving levels of compliance at least partly due to Dallas County spending "millions" to improve sanitation and jail health.
 * Declining arrest rates for driving while intoxicated and alleged disproportionate DWI arrests of Hispanics.
 * High levels of overtime.
 * Using trainee jail guards in the jails.
 * Taking 2 years to successfully pass her Texas Peace Officer Certification examination after being elected.
 * Engaging in campaign activities while in uniform. However, according to state law in Texas, it is not illegal for elected law enforcement officers, including sheriffs and constables, to campaign in their uniform.
 * Grant applications management controversies.
 * Failing to update promotion lists via testing, and promoting some staff without currently valid lists.
 * Allowing some deputies to use take-home cars outside county Commissioners' Court-approved guidelines.
 * Violating "long-standing policy" in Dallas County, which was upheld by a state district judge, by authorizing the Discovery Channel to film a documentary without gaining required Commissioner Court permission. This prompted the Commissioners Court to unanimously seek (and ultimately get) a restraining order against the Sheriff.
 * Eliminating patrol officers and moving all of them to freeway patrols for a goal of "boosting ticket revenue".
 * Stop honoring immigration and Custom Enforcement requests for certain offense detainees. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott demanded she reverse this policy.

Per WP:BLPREMOVE, please put a draft on this talkpage for consensus before re-inserting if in the future an editor feels this is worth re-writing. —PermStrump ( talk )  02:49, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you . I removed two more similar sources from the article and put them in the box above. The "Sanctuary City" bit may be re-incorporated, but at this point the article still needs some work, to say the least. Raven (talk) 03:09, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion: You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. Community Tech bot (talk) 00:52, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
 * LUPE.Valdez2015.jpg

Balance in Controversy
It seems clear that this article on Lupe Valdez is very polarizing, however there is a middle ground where editors can meet.

Having lived in DFW for most of her time as sheriff I find it odd that there is little mention of anything that might be considered negative regarding her time as sheriff.

I personal don't feel that having a section on "Controversies" is what is needed, since the article seems to take a chronological walk through her life, I think that verified - reliably sourced information that might not make a campaign site is appropriate.

I would suggest that we either split the Section "Election as Sheriff" into two one covering her election the other on her first term or rename this section as "Election and First Term as Sheriff".

I think it would be worth noting her:
 * Failing the state licencing test is worth noting along with the fact she took the test without submitting the proper documentation.
 * Having a gun issued to her that went missing, was found in the property room but not checked in. This one should be well worded to not place blame only state what high quality sources identify.
 * Her record on immigration while sheriff.

Others that might be worth mentioning would be:
 * County commissioners' temporary restraining order against filming at the jail.
 * Amount of funds raised and endorsements during her governor campaign.

Thoughts? Preston A. Vickrey (humbly) (talk) 23:23, 7 November 2018 (UTC)