What about that 800 Pound Gorilla?

I was talking not too long ago to a police officer who made a point of saying that although he belonged to the department's labor union, the RPOA, he did not agree with the politics of its current board. The funny thing, is that he is not the only officer who has said this, or who has made it a point to separate themselves from the union. Which makes some sense, after all, because the closer you stand to King Kong when he's out wreaking havoc, the better your odds of being stepped on. The RPOA, is often called the 800 pound gorilla in the room that no one wants to talk about....except apparently some disatisifed officers.

Maybe, it's backlash from that hideous campaign the RPOA ran in opposition to Measure II, where it basically stated that if you did not vote the way the union wanted, don't count on the police responding as quickly to save you from criminals, as it might have, well the day before the election. After all, it was about that time that the whispers started.

Several rank-and-file officers even said that they had stepped outside the official party line and voted in favor of the measure which would place the Community Police Review Commission in the city's charter. Not because they supported the CPRC, but in protest of the campaign the union was conducting, with the union dues they had put in the coffer. Hmm, that's an interesting event, to hear of officers protesting through their vote, the action taken which was payed for by their money. However, in a way it's a brave act of defiance against the RPOA to step outside the official stance. After all, if your actions were uncovered by its leadership, you might find out later how traitorous you are, when you call out for an 11-11, and no one comes to your rescue.

But contrast the anti-Measure II campaign and its lackluster response, at least publicly by the masses who are members of the union, with the 1999 parade of officers, with pale shaven heads reflecting the setting sun, marching two-by-two away from the city council meeting they had just unceremoniously crashed. Something has changed. Still, it is those officers who remember that night with perhaps, wistful nostalgia who are running the show, even one that someday might see its audience dwindle in size.

Maybe, it's the fact that this current union board arose from the ashes of the backlash that occurred after five White officers were fired as a result of their actions surrounding the shooting of Tyisha Miller in 1998. A good chunk of the current board of directors consists of former SWAT/METRO team members, which is significant considering that the METRO team was one of the units where its members threatened to resign enmasse to protest the firing of the Riverside 5, as they were called.

Source: Riverside Grand Jury report on RPD under "Findings"

Following the termination, most of the SWAT, Defensive Tactics and Field Training Officer teams offered their resignations to the department. These were not accepted, but many of the officers have requested to be rotated off these duty assignments.

Other members of the current RPOA board were supporters of Sgt. Gregory Preece, including current Vice President Chris Lanzillo, who was quoted in a March 2001 issue of the Press Enterprise newspaper as saying that Preece was the best sergeant he ever had(assuming that meant Preece's supervisory abilities).

Source: March 3, 2001, Press Enterprise

Treasurer Aaron Leigh Perkins(of "road rage" infamy) was once disciplined with a written reprimend for putting a stink bomb in Rene Rodriguez's car.

Source: Roger Sutton v the Riverside Police Department/City of Riverside deposition given by Capt. Richard Dana

Many if not all of the current RPOA board members had been in the forefront of the movement in June 1999 when over 200 officers, mostly patrol officers and detectives, decided to shave their heads bald "in protest" of the firing of the officers in connection with killing Miller. They knowingly, as one former officer-now sergeant said in August 1999, adopted a symbol associated with white supremacism. So much so, that during the officially sanctioned head shaving rally held at Ramona High School on one sunny afternoon in June 1999, some self-identifying racist skinheads were in the area and apparently confused the barbershop session, with a white supremacist revival event.


In contrast, most of the current pool of rank and file officers were hired after that turmoltous time period. Many of them have little to no memory of the Miller shooting and its aftermath. Many only know that they were recruited by a department that had recently entered into a stipulated agreement with the state, as a result, if they knew that much.

Each time, an officer vents about the union that he belongs to, I just say this. I tell him, and it's mostly men who vent, (although you would think it's the women that would feel most excluded from the "He mans women hater club" given their invisibility among its leadership) that he should get either through joining a committee or through running for a position on the board. If you are upset or feel alienated by the current leadership(and let's face it, who wouldn't?), if you don't want to put your career on the line to join a harassment/surveillance exercise against someone that the board members are mad at, especially for something stupid like the color of a police car, if you are partial to your hair and do not consider it a vestige to be sacrificed at the whims of the leadership(who might be worried about their lack of hair):

VOTE THEM OUT

Otherwise, stop complaining because no one really wants to hear about it. Don't play the apathy game and decide not to vote for the leadership of the organization in which your hard-earned money is going, and don't sit on the sidelines looking embarassed if they ever spend your money on another embarassing campaign.

From whence shall come police accountability in Riverside?

The consent decree is set to expire in 192 days, or, six months and 11 days.

With time ticking until the end of the consent decree between the State Attorney General's office and the city of Riverside, this is a question that even after five years still begs an answer...

The answer is, there is no mechanism of accountability in place.

Many people in Riverside, representing all political stripes may disagree with this assessment. But the facts are, is that very little has changed inside the police department since the city entered into a stipulated agreement with the state in 2001.

TO BE CONTINUED....

Then on the Other Hand....

Last night at City Hall, the Executive subcommittee of the Human Relations Commission met to discuss among other things, the recent violence in the Eastside and the police department's response.

Lt. Alex Tortes, who's worked in the Eastside for many years, presented a strategy which he said the department enacted on Aug. 9. That date was in between two speeches given by Acting Chief Andrew Pytlak and Chief Russ Leach, respectively, which presented the "Let's talk tough and get tough" philosophy of policing.

Tortes, who is not a fan of the suppression type of policing that was batted about by some of the department's administrative heads, told the committee that instead of flooding the neighborhood with police officers, the department had put together a task force to cull out the active gang members who participated in the recent shootings, with surgical precision. Take out the scalpal instead of the broad sword, in a matter of speaking.

The task force consists of Tortes, as supervisor, Sgt. Brian Dailey who heads the Police and Corrections Team and Sgt. Frank Assuma, who is in charge of the gang unit. They put together a list of active gang members, including those who were in violation of probation or parole and have active warrants. The shooters involved in 13 out of the 16 most recent shootings were rounded up. Some of them would be prosecuted on weapons charges by federal agencies, so that instead of being sent to serve long prison terms in California's state prison system(inside, are prison gangs calling the shots in the local neighborhoods of many Southern California cities)they will be doing time in federal institutions.

So, why the differences in action plans presented for policing in the Eastside? What was that all about?

Two completely different plans of action, from one department. Does this indicate that there is a struggle within management of how to police in the city of Riverside?



Marchand rally through the Eastside sparks feelings of deja vu

The Latest Round of Occupation in the Eastside

RPD occupation strategy, 2005


It happened in 1997.
It happened in 2002.
It's happening again in the summer of 2005.
The Eastside is being occupied by the forces of the Riverside Police Department.
Chief Russ Leach, at times channeling LAPD Chief William Bratton, told community residents at a recent meeting that it was time to talk tough about crime and the gangsters in the streets.

People agreed. After all, people can not buy gas, pay utility bills, play in their yards, sit in their yards or walk home from a party without getting shot at in Riverside. Violence, including gang violence which plays some role here, is cyclical and it's that time in the biorhythem of life in this city again.

Leach fresh off of his vacation stint in Maui took the reins of the department away from Chief-in-training Andrew Pytlak and appeared before the Eastside Community at a meeting sponsored by current councilman and mayoral candidate Ameal Moore to be blunt, to talk tough. He said his troops were in the Eastside to do arrests, not smile and wave at people.

Smile and wave? Since when have cops done that in the Eastside? That's for functions sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce and the Mission Grove and Orangecrest Neighborhood Watches. Cops come to the Eastside to get tough, or they do not come at all. And it's tough to see them smile and wave if they stay inside their squad cars, windows rolled up, until there is someone to chase and arrest.

An interesting idea, proposed by more than one middle-management officer, was to ask police officers to get out of their squad cars, take off their shades and talk to people from one end of a block to the other. Unfortunately, that frightens some of them more than chasing after a suspect. The idea that maybe everyone in a neighborhood isn't a suspect....

Leach continued:

"What are we?," Chief Leach said, "We are an occupying force for a short period of time."

And in between?

"We are going to be here," Chief Leach said, "We are going to stay here."

What he meant was that after the most recent exercise in suppression had ended, the department would go into a maintenance mode. But what is maintenance, a time period when police presense in the Eastside is less, because the troops have been moved to another neighborhood to put out the next fire. Not before scheduling the next return date about two hot summers from now.

This is the state of community policing in Riverside, California, four years, five months and 11 days into the stipulated judgement, with only six months and 25 days remaining until the state cuts our police department's strings loose.
Supression.
Regroup.
Pullout.
Maintenance.
Supression.

For a good definition of Community Oriented Problem Solving Policing(COPS), check out Norm Stamper's book, Breaking Rank:A Top Cop's Expose of the Darker Side of Policing

It makes sense in that it actually involves the community rather than the community standing back while the police come in full force to do their thing, before leaving again to move to the next hot spot. But after spending over $10 million on reforms, and hours spent training officers how to better do their jobs, that concept still has not come to Riverside.

"We are here to make arrests. We are going to get complaints. We are profiling criminals. We have carte blanche within the law."

In other words, accountability be damned. Consent decree be damned. Let's just forget about that now, while we go about and do our business. We never make mistakes. If we do, do not think of telling us so, or we will spend valuable time telling you that you are wrong. And so forth. Read any manual on parimilitary watchman style policing in inner city neighborhoods and these words will start feeling familiar.

It might seem petty, in the face of all the violence, to even talk about the issue of accountability, but it is always an important componant of any police/community interaction, even one that is requested in a moment of desperation. The wise thing to say would have been, our police are coming in, but they are going to be held accountable by their supervisors, watch commanders, everyone up and down the chain, and most importantly, me for what they do. If they do something "over the line" then come to me, come to the area lieutenant(Alex Tortes) and there's the Community Police Review Commission. That would have given evidence that even given the department's decision to send its forces into the Eastside for the umpteenth time, that it at least has learned something in the past five years.

Oh well, maybe by the end of the next consent decree, perhaps...

Interviews involving Norm Stamper and Community Policing

Norm Stamper Q&A on Community Policing

(excerpt)

Does your vision of community policing include a civilian review board?


I am a very strong supporter of civilian review, civilian oversight. In fact, I believe that we need civilian participation in policy making. I have said for twenty years that we are the people's police, that we belong to the communities that we serve. And that means vastly increased citizen participation in virtually everything that we do. That means a review of citizen complaints and allegations of police misconduct. The question is how to structure it.... I am a believer in the need for radical re form, which some would call revolution, and that is not a word that I use lightly. I think it is time for a fundamental, sweeping change in the way that we think about who we are, who we're here to serve, and what we do. For me that means getting out in to the community, talking about community policing and massive community organization and mobilization. I'll take the risk of helping to raise expectations, knowing that if they are not met that the crash, the fall, can be quite damaging. I don't think we have a choice. We have to believe that something can happen in this country. I think we have to believe that police officers and people in the community, including blind-and-loyal supporters, as well as critics and ideological adversaries, can actually find a way to make a difference at the neighborhood level. I believe that people are looking for a method that will allow us to put our best intentions to work. It's absolutely frightening in some neighborhoods to think about what community policing might really mean. Because for me it does mean direct citizen action. And it means a banding together of the disparate and different forces in the neighborhood and the community, all of whom are aligned under a desire for safety and civility and sanity on the streets. I don't care if you are from the far left or the christian right, or any other philosophical orientation, what matters to me is do you reject violence as a way of life. Do you want to make these streets safe for your children and yourself? If you do, let's find a way to work together. Leaders have to be living emblems of what they represent, what they stand for, what they believe in. I have worked very hard in my life to be able to stand in front of a group and say what is in my heart or in my head... I have to believe the same thing about beat cops and detectives, sergeants and captains, and people in the community. If we can create situations in which we can share our visions and not be embarrassed or ashamed of them, and raise expectations in that process, we damn well better get about that business.

Alternet interview with Stamper

Four steps forward, three steps back...

With the chief away, the underling will play, and that is exactly what Deputy Chief Andrew Pytlak has done. Whether it is using the chief's parking spot instead of his own, or rehearsing his role as the future head of the RPD, not a second has been wasted of the last two weeks...

You can have a conversation with people, in the community or from the department, about the future of the department and its next chief, without dropping names most notably Pytlak, quite successfully. Even though Chief Leach has not stepped down, it is already a done deal in City Hall about who will fill his shoes. Someone has spent the past year campaigning for the job very diligently even though no current job opening has officially been announced.

Bad news to the community which has watched and waited for the new, improved police department to emerge from its five-year stipulated judgement.

Bad news for those who were proponants of community orientated problem solving policing, over the older paramilitary style.


For one thing is clear, when it comes to policing, Pytlak is strictly by the book, the dusty worn out guidebook used for years by those in the "Old Guard".

Unpleasant fortune telling aside, it was a busy two-week whirlwind stint for the chief-in-training.

Thrown into his lap has been the strife which has shown itself in the city through a series of shootings, Pytlak appeared at a community meeting at Zacatecas, to present the police department's planned suppression plan. That the Eastside community caught between a rock and a hard place had agreed to enter into, through the Eastside Think Tank's leadership.

His suppression plan included a cop car on every corner, and a combined effort to crack down on the violence, by different divisions including Field Operations, Special Operations, Gang Intelligence and the Police and Corrections Team. The community leaders gave a collective nod, to everything that Ptylak suggested.

Except it turned out that Ptylak had not informed the Eastside Think Tank that there was yet another tool in its arsenal that would be put to use by the department. Not even Lt. Alex Tortes, who has been the area commander of that neighborhood for years.

Instead, it is councilmen Frank Schiavone and Steve Adams who drop this bombshell at the city council meeting on Aug. 9, with the cooperation of City Attorney, Gregory Priamos. The item was placed on the agenda under the emergency exemption of the Brown Act, the one reserved for natural disasters, riots and terrorist attacks.

What was the solution to what everyone can agree on, is a crisis?

SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS

Not just anywhere. Not downtown. Not at the bus terminal(a havin for drug dealers) but University Avenue. Not in Casa Blanca, which has also seen its share of shootings and death recently, which is within Schiavone's ward. It is an election year, and as someone dryly observed, Schiavone would get hung if he tried to push that over there.

Schiavone and Adams however pushed it on University Avenue, long a haven of sex workers, johns, drug dealers and as Chief Leach would put it at a public meeting, "too many pedestrians".

So the city council was about to pass an emergency action to put cameras on University Avenue, when there was no one from the Eastside which University splits in half, to respond on the issue, whether to agree, or disagree.

Several city residents balked, after getting over our initial shock and spoke, urging the council to put the issue to a public forum, in the involved communities. Fortunately, several city council members balked as well, and the body voted instead to create a broader action plan to address the most recent spree of violence within the city's limits. That plan will be put together by the city manager's office.

Pytlak was very disappointed in the vote, and as he stood with Lt. Robert Meier making fun of those who spoke against Schiavone and Adams' motion, he gave a fine example of the philosophy and professionalism he plans to bring to the department when he becomes its next chief.

After the meeting, I went home and after 10pm, when I walked around the block, I saw in the back, a squad car parked with no one inside it. On closer perusal, I saw a young bald White male officer slouched in his seat, so he could not be seen, perhaps taking a breather on a night where there's an officer on every corner in the Eastside neigbhorhood.


Eastside seige

The other alleged RPD pedophile back to work soon?

First of all, this is not a commentary on former RPD officer Adam Brown who plead guilty to federal charges in relation to his involvement and participation in a child molesation ring in Wisconsin.

Before Brown's outing as a pedophile by the FBI, there was former officer Vince Thomas who had been charged by the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office with 33 counts of "lewd behavior" with a teenage girl, who had been living in his home, over a threee year period. Thomas' case was tried twice, and both times the jury deadlocked after considerable time spent in deliberations.

After the second mistrial, the DA declined to retry Thomas, and dropped the charges. Thomas took that as a sign that it was time to go back to his old job as a Riverside Police Department officer.

Prosecutor Laura Robles remains convinced of his guilt, and expressed some concern about him returning back to his career as a police officer.

The status of Thomas's departure from the RPD has caused some controversy. His attorney Grover Porter said that Thomas had resigned before he could be fired by the department. Deputy Chief Andrew Pytlak said that Thomas had been fired and had planned to contest the department's decision through the arbitration process. Since the criminal case has reached its conclusion, Thomas is free to do just that.

Michael Gardner who chairs the CPRC, was asked his opinion on the matter for unknown reasons. A man of considerable understatement when it comes to questioning the integrity of a police officer, Gardner admitted there could be "some amount of community concern" if Thomas returned to work.

"In reality, it may not be fair if the guy is truly innocent," Gardner said. "If he's not, he probably shouldn't be a police officer anywhere."

So should be be an officer, or not?

It's a question the usual cast of talking heads can not or will not answer, because those who can provide those answers without fear are not usually placed in positions of leadership within this city. But for those who called me to tell me that they had allowed Thomas inside their homes to take police reports with their children in the vicinity, how could or would their fears be alleviated if Thomas returns to work? The truth is, they can not be lessened, simply because two juries were unable to reach a verdict in terms of whether or not Thomas had molested a teenage girl, whose care he was entrusted with as her legal guardian, according to civil court records.

A police officer's character and integrity must be beyond reproach. The standards they must adhere to, should be higher than those of civilians because of the powers they exercise and the responsibilities their positions require them to carry. Can anyone in the community look at Thomas, and not think that he may have molested a child, because while his guilt was not proven, his innocence was not either, and there are always some people on a jury who refuse to convict a police officer even if he clearly committed the crime in question. For some people, the mere idea that a police officer could commit so heinous a crime is too far outside the realm of possibility to even allow them to fairly deliberate on a criminal case where an officer has been accused of such a crime.

Thomas's integrity has been tainted, and that extends to his professional life, so he must never be allowed to return to work in the Riverside Police Department.




DA gives up on trying Officer Vince Thomas on molestation charges

It's Raining in the Bucket

More rain drops continue to fall in the bucket....known as Rivercity, even as the annual monsoons that blow through the county have left the city bone-dry.

There has been a recent upswing in shootings involving African-Americans and Latinos in the Eastside neighborhood, the magnitude of which are as bad as those that occurred in 2002. Remember back that year, when civic leaders and community members broke bread in the vacant lot adjacent to where 13 year old Anthony Sweat, a Black teenager, had died after being shot by Latino gang members? The city broke its promise to that community, plus nearly dropped the ball earlier this year when the fate of the city's only gang intervention program, Project Bridge, was on the chopping block once again. Project Bridge, a favorite bargaining chip, or pawn of both the city council and Police Chief Russ Leach could be one of the solutions to the remerging crisis of violence involving youth in one of Riverside's most economically depressed neighborhoods. Will it be allowed to fulfill its mission, or will it be bled dry and neglected by a city council backed by developers who sees the Eastside simply as an obstacle preventing two of the city's prime locales, Downtown and the University areas, from realizing their full potential as tax revenue generators. Is it true instead that the Eastside neighborhood, populated increasingly by Latinos, less so by African-Americans, is being allowed to die on the vine economically and spiritually, so that the city's redevelopment agency(aka the City Council) can come along and pick up the property cheap, or grab it through eminient domain, citing the ongoing problems with "blight" in the neighborhood?

The police department will throw more men at the problem, and likely at some point, the METRO/SWAT team will revisit the area, but in the long term, will things change or merely set up for the next round of an ongoing situation which has stretched out over 15 years, since the "tough on gang violence" laws catalzed a metamorphis inside the street gangs which has caused them to become mirror images of the gangs operating inside the state prisons that according to the police department, are calling the shots(pun intended) in the Eastside.

Time to revisit the adage, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, certainly it is worth much more than a bad one. Not to mention the adage that all children matter in this world, not just the White middle-class ones.

Project Bridge on the crossroads

Community steps up to save Project Bridge
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The CPRC just received the first excessive force case involving a stun gun in its five-year history. Members of an African-American family alleged that they were assaulted by four police officers, and that one of them, a woman was tased in the breasts twice by Officer Rod Anthony W. Fletcher. According to that woman, Fletcher had held her in a chokehold earlier, telling her he was going to put her to sleep now. Then he had told a civilian to get his taser from the squad car. That civilian ironically, was on criminal probation, while none of the members of the family were, although the fact that the young man was a son of a states corrections official no doubt more than balanced that factor out. The other officers allegedly involved to varying degrees were Sancho Lopez, Nicholas Vasquez, Robert Olsen and Sgt. Patrick M. McCarthy.

Attempts to receive copies of the officers' reports were met with a long wait in the lobby of the Orange St. Station and two different excuses as to why only an abbreviated version of ONE report would be available. One civilian employee said that only the first page of a police report was public information, while a case was "open". Her supervisors said that the officers had not completed their reports yet.
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Former police officer and convicted child molester Adam Brown is back in the local news again, not too long after he plead guilty to federal charges in relation to his involvement in a child molestation and porn ring in the Midwest....


From the Los Angeles Times

IN BRIEF: THE REGION / RIVERSIDE
D.A. Wants Ex-Officer to Face Sex Abuse Charges
From Times Staff and Wire Reports


The Riverside County district attorney will seek to extradite a former Riverside police officer sentenced Friday in Wisconsin to more than 30 years in federal prison for his involvement in a nationwide child pornography ring.

Adam James Brown, 32, pleaded guilty in March to charges of traveling across state lines with the intent to engage in a sexual act with a minor and producing pornography.

Investigators said Brown also molested four Riverside County boys under the age of 12 during his time as a police officer, leading to a 65-count case.
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Det. Joe Miera, from the gang unit testified recently in a criminal trial involving a man charged with a possession of a gun while a felon. Apparently, this means that the pesky internal investigation that was done involving him, by the Internal Affairs Division, is a thing of the past. Let's hope if that is true, it is for the right reasons, not for the sake of expedience or the wrong reasons.

The news is not as good for the pack of patrol officers who were investigated by the same division for undisclosed violations. Apparently, when that investigation is concluded, Leach will make some sort of announcement about the situation.