Canary in the Mine: Finally, a discussion

The Community Police Review Commission will hold a general meeting next week in which it will listen to its investigator, Butch Warnberg, provide a final update into his investigation into the fatal shooting of Lee Deante Brown. Afterwards, the commissioners will begun what is to be an arduous process of discussing the drafting of a public report on this shooting.

Given the obvious chill that has hit the commission in the wake of actions taken after it initiated investigations into three fatal shooting incidents involving unarmed men during a six-month period, it will be interesting to see what transpires during the process of drafting a public report on the Brown shooting.

It's truly amazing that the city manager's office, the police department and the Riverside County District Attorney's office are even allowing this discussion to take place at all, given the intrigue which had taken place during the holiday season centering around the thorny issue of officer-involved death investigations. Were it not for an engaged and vigilant community, it's not clear that these investigations would still exist, even though the CPRC's power to do these investigations is included in the city's charter. The will of the people exercised through the vote of the populace pales in the face of the presence of risk management, five wrongful death law suits and the reality that if risk management and civic liability are the city's main priorities, the community and the police department won't be the better for it. And it's difficult to ignore the five law suits that have been filed in the past 18 months with a sixth one anticipated, when examining the events of the past month or so involving the CPRC.


Brown, a Black mentally ill man was shot and killed by Officer Terry Ellefson on April 3, 2006 at the Welcome Inn of America which is located at the corner of University Avenue and Ottawa. From the beginning, questions were raised when it became clear that the information provided by the police department at its initial briefing on the shooting did not match up with that provided by at least a half-dozen witnesses to the shooting. Despite that, not one word of any part of the witnesses accounts was used by the department to construct that official-for-the-moment account of the shooting. But that's precisely one reason why the CPRC exists to do these investigations in the first place.

That briefing included information provided by Ellefson and Officer Michael Paul Stucker up to just before the point when Ellefson pulled the trigger. From that point on, even Stucker's account of the actual shooting took a backseat alongside the accounts of the other witnesses.

In fact, the last statement that was attributed to the officers about seeing a "power indicator" light on a taser during the briefing was a reference to a statement made by Stucker, but he had never specified what kind of light he had seen on the taser. If his statement is indeed true, then that light would have been the laser sight on Ellefson's X-26 taser located underneath its barrel, not the power indicator which would not have been visible to him. This was one of several inconsistencies in the initial briefing provided by the police department.

Unfortunately, the police department doesn't get a second chance to get their version right. It didn't when it botched on its account of the Summer Marie Lane shooting despite having access to the correct information included in intradepartmental memos which were written and circulated well before that date, according to that case report. So the CPRC has to fill in that gap during its briefings months later. It's also the first time the commission is allowed to ask any questions at all of anyone about a fatal incident, because the police department didn't take questions. Chief Russ Leach who will be delivering the briefings of officer-involved deaths from now on said that the CPRC can ask questions, but they probably will not be answered at that time.

On the meeting agenda is another item, which addresses issues that have recently impacted the commission stemming from meetings that took place late last year. At the most recent CPRC meeting, Chair Les Davidson mentioned that he had attended a meeting in December with other city employees in the interest of disclosing to the commission and the public how many closed door meetings with city employees had taken place where he had been present.

However, it took two months to put a discussion item on the agenda addressing changes that were to take place and were discussed and decided upon behind closed doors. And it remains to be seen if this is really going to be a serious discussion given how the questions were phrased under the agenda item.


The questions are as follows:



1) Commissioners ability to agendize discussion items without prior approval, review or alteration by any city employee


2) Do you believe that the development of a pool of investigative agencies will enhance the goals and objectives of the commission?

If yes, who should select the investigative agencies and how should the cases be assigned?


3) Do you believe that the goals and objectives of the CPRC will be enhanced if we discontinue our parallel investigation and wait until the RPD and DA’s investigation are complete?


4) How do you feel about the fact that city employees can meet in private with the CPRC chair without any public disclosure or public record of what took place, yet our meetings are required to conform to the Brown Act?




This sounds suspiciously like what Commissioner Jim Ward tried to put on the agenda for last month's meeting but his efforts were vetoed by interim CPRC manager Mario Lara, Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis and City Attorney Gregory Priamos both behind the scenes and at the general meeting. Instead, a PowerPoint presentation put together by DeSantis was presented instead, which tells you exactly who is defining the meeting agenda. Although the wording of the questions seems to imply that making these changes is *good* for the commission, probably because what they actually are is *good* for the city manager's office and what it believes is best for the police department.

At any rate, it should be an interesting discussion. Just as the selection process that took place on Feb. 21 to fill vacancies in the CPRC was interesting. Back door politics aside, it was interesting to watch city council member after city council member espouse on how important the CPRC was, with Adkison calling it "one of the most important commissions" and even Councilman Steve Adams chiming in on his support of it which apparently goes back to before his first election. Even though only one of his candidates, Peter Hubbard, made it through, Adams like the other council members appeared very pleased with the two individuals selected.

It was a rare moment of unity between much ballyhooed GASS quartet members and the so-called new guard members, which are Councilman Dom Betro and Councilwoman Nancy Hart. GASS is gone, in fact it's responsible for its own dissolution through Councilman Ed Adkison's decision not to run for election and the council's public censure via the Press Enterprise of former GASS member, Councilman Art Gage. It's not so much that he's been ousted, he's just been replaced.

It's been replaced by something else entirely, more focused on the Riverside Renaissance, less focused on micromanaging city managers. And the irony is that most of the people who protested the ouster of former city manager, George Carvalho would probably when asked, say "George who"?

What's so puzzling is that amidst all this good cheer and vocal support of the CPRC, is a city manager employed by these same individuals who has tried just about everything to weaken its implementation, obviously on the direction of those who employ him or at least a voting majority. Events which may or may not be related to the sudden departure of former executive director, Pedro Payne.