Canary in the Mine? Not sustained

The judges are coming to Riverside from the outside to handle the overwhelming case load that is in the criminal court system, according to today's article in the Press Enterprise. I guess that means that divorces, adoptions, custody battles and probate hearings will continue in the family courts uninterrupted.


Retired judges drafted to address caseload



Two retired judges have been temporarily added to the roster bringing the sum total of judges and commissioners up to 71 out of the 135 that are needed to handle a backlog of 1,000 cases. The Riverside County District Attorney's office points fingers at the judges and the defense attorneys point fingers at the District Attorney's office. And round and round and round it goes.




Former Riverside County Sheriff Department and Riverside Community employee, Bill O'Rafferty's sentencing has been postponed, according to this article in the Press Enterprise.

Instead of sentencing O'Rafferty, Judge Erik Michael Kaiser will consider whether or not he will be receiving a new trial, after one of the jurors wrote a letter to the court expressing concern about a conversation that took place during jury deliberations. Apparently, one of the jurors had a connection to law enforcement which he or she didn't reveal when questioned during jury selection.


(excerpt)


Peter Murray, O'Rafferty's attorney, said the Jan. 12 letter to the court indicated that the juror was concerned about a conversation that may have suggested one of the jurors, who remarked about "the concept of good cops and bad cops," may have a connection to law enforcement.

"What this raises is what exactly went on in that jury room that is causing this juror such angst. That needs to be explored," Murray said.

"The question here: Is there cause to disclose the information that could lead to the potential of a new trial," he said.

In Riverside, prospective candidates in the upcoming city election are still taking papers. Ward 1 resident and former Community Police Review Commission member Mike Gardner apparently will be facing off with incumbent Dom Betro this June. He will join local attorney Letitia Pepper and anyone else willing to compete for the position of presiding over what developers and city officials have referred to as the "jewel of the city".

The Community Police Review Commission has updated its findings online. What was interesting to note during the past year was how many of those allegations received "not sustained" findings. Of the complaints surveyed from January to November 2006, there were 62 allegations receiving that finding. The definition of a "not sustained" finding is one where "the investigation produced insufficient evidence to prove or disprove the allegation".

The three largest categories receiving those findings are the following.

Discourtesy: 21

Improper procedure: 18

Excessive force: 10

It's not surprising to see improper procedure and discourtesy allegations top the list because more complaints are filed and placed in these two categories by the police department's Internal Affairs Division than in any of the others. It's also not that surprising to see that the number of not sustained excessive force allegations have placed that category in third place, given that there was actually a similar trend in 2005 when seven not sustained findings were reached for excessive complaints. What is somewhat surprising is the higher number of not sustained findings for complaint allegations.

Without knowing what the findings reached by the police department were for these allegations and what the city's final disposition is, it's hard to compare the trends seen in the CPRC's findings with those reached during other stages of the process. The only complaint where a comparison could be made was one that was deliberated by the CPRC in November and covered 10 allegations involving four police officers. For that complaint, the CPRC determined that all 10 of those allegations were not sustained. However, a letter written by the city to the complainant was included as part of a Pitchess motion in a related criminal case. According to that letter, each of the 10 findings was determined to be exonerated by the city, which means that very likely the department exonerated the officers as well.

It's hard to make an evaluation on any one complaint even one involving many allegations of misconduct. What is interesting about this situation is that not only did the CPRC and the city/police department disagree on the findings on the allegations, but they disagreed with the quality of the investigations as well. The CPRC determined that the investigation failed to reveal enough evidence to reach a finding, yet the department had no such difficulty. Most of the time the CPRC determines that enough evidence is provided by the police department's own investigation to reach a decision on a complaint finding, according to statistics provided by six years of annual reports.

When asked about the nature of not sustained findings, members of the CPRC have said that it is often a case of having to evaluate the versions of the account provided by the police officer(s) and complainants unless there are witnesses, audio recordings or other evidence to assist them in this process. For the police department, the task of evaluating statements by the different parties appears to be much simpler.

One obvious way to address this dilemma would be to require police officers to activate their department-issued and quite pricey digital audio recorders during all professional contacts with the public and not just those initiated by police officers, as is mandated by the current policy. The majority of contacts made by police officers with the public are initiated by the public through calls for service and if that trend is also noted in similar statistics regarding filing complaints, then many of the complaints investigated do not have the benefit of recordings which may assist greatly in making a determination on an allegation.

The CPRC forwarded two recommendations to the police department asking the department to expand its audio recording policy, the last time was 2005. Both times, the police chief and the police union said no. Although there are probably some officers who engage in this practice because good officers know the recordings can both help them in criminal cases and protect them from any false allegations made against them so they switch them on accordingly. Hopefully, the numbers of good officers who engage in this practice will grow to the point where the policy recommendation and the issue of policy expansion itself will be moot.

Having more statistics would be more helpful.

I sent the city manager's office a CPRA request asking for the statistics on the instances where the CPRC and the police department's Internal Affairs Division both forwarded different findings, both in terms of numbers and percentages. I also asked for those same figures in regards to whether the city manager's officer backed the CPRC's finding, the department's finding or came up with an independent finding. I received a letter back from this office informing me that the documents, thus the statistics, I had requested did not exist.

They don't exist? How could that be?

City Manager Brad Hudson and his employees had been working in Riverside for a year at that point and still hadn't figured out that such information deserved to be recorded? It's a little late for them to plead ignorance on the importance of record keeping, like they did with their handling of the Summer Lane shooting which back then they essentially blamed on being the new kids on the block, even though Hudson at that point had six months experience with the city. Next time would be different in terms of the decision making process you'll see, they said. With three cases in various stages in the process, we just might.

The more likely explanation is that they didn't and don't keep records of this information because if the records don't exist, they can't be disseminated to the public which is entitled to read them under the CPRA and thus the actions of this office can't be scrutinized and those performing these actions can't be held accountable for them. In other words, these two men do not want the public who pays their salaries and funds both the city manager's office and the police department through shopping locally to know what it is that they are or are not doing. Now, the two men are joined by an interim executive director who when asked what his qualifications were to be in that position, Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis essentially answered, he used to work for me and he'd sat in a few meetings with the police department's representatives on the issue of citizen complaints.

If you exclude the fact that the current acting executive manager used to work for either Hudson and DeSantis like nearly every management employee in City Hall has these days, his qualifications pale beside those of the man he replaced. Former executive director, Pedro Payne had been trained to do his job by former commissioner and retired police chief, Bill Howe for over six months.

After witnessing the actions of Hudson and DeSantis during the past year, this explanation appears very plausible as to why the statistics apparently were not recorded. It has been disheartening to watch, as well as disheartening to realize that many of the city employees who espoused their support for a stronger, more independent investigative and review process even arguing for independent legal counsel in several cases, never meant a word they were saying and apparently were biding their time to take action.

The questions remain, is there any way for the CPRC and its executive director to obtain this critical information, or to keep records of these statistics themselves? After all, former interim city manager Larry Paulson and City Manager George Carvalho kept these records, in fact the CPRC included some of these statistics in its earlier annual reports. But then there was a reason why Carvalho is considered one of the best city managers in the state and the country and Hudson is considered an above average economic development director.

This along with the questions above are ones for the ages, right up there with one burning question that still puzzles me, which is how DeSantis managed to procure a concealed weapon permit from the Riverside Police Department without even living within the city limits and thus within the department's jurisdiction. A gun permit he probably would still have, if the Press Enterprise had not been curious enough to check out who at City Hall was taking out these permits.

How could that be? It's like someone said, you could write a series proposal, submit it to one of the Big Three and here comes your next soap opera. O.C. watch out! It's no longer on the air but it did manage to establish a record for itself besides being the television show that Councilman Frank Schiavone once wanted the city attorney's office to sue.