Politics and process
Anew police league proposed in the city of San Bernardino according to the Press Enterprise.
Mayor Pat Morris has designed a program that will encourage the interaction between the city’s police officers and the neighborhood youth in order to build better relationships between the two. It took several months for Morris to find funding for the program but he finally did.
The program did have some critics including from the department’s police union’s leadership.
(excerpt)
I know we have a bunch of brand new guys, and you might get a guy who doesn't know what he's getting into," said Rich Lawhead, the union president. "I don't know of many guys who would sign up to do this voluntarily."
Another skeptic was Councilman Dennis Baxter.
(excerpt)
"I'd be surprised that there's even a question at this point," he said. "I would certainly do the research and find out how many people I had to staff it before throwing money at it."
But similar programs have thrived elsewhere in the country and there is hope that this will happen in San Bernardino even as the city also passed a measure approving that over $1 million in city tax funding be spent on paying police officers overtime during the period when 14 newer officers would be trained.
Tomorrow is the second and possibly final round of the interview and appointment process involving three of the city’s boards and commissions. One of them, is the Community Police Review Commission which currently has two openings due to the departures of Bob Garcia who had served two terms and Bonavita Quinto-MacCullum who had declined to be reappointed to another term for undisclosed reasons.
The loss of both Garcia and Quinto-MacCullum means that two of the four Latinos currently serving on the CPRC will be replaced by White candidates. Of the six people who were ultimately interviewed, five were White. The CPRC currently has only one African-American serving on it and that is Jim Ward.
Community members have commented on the decreasing presence of people of color on the CPRC in recent years. There have been people of color who had submitted applications to the Mayor’s Nomination and Screening Committee but very few individuals are selected by that panel’s members for interview and the majority of those have been White.
Only one current commissioner out of nine, is female.
Selections made to fill ward-specific positions on the CPRC have been more ethnic and racial diverse in that two Latinos, Ric Castro from the sixth ward and Frank Arreola from the seventh ward were appointed to serve on the commission by Mayor Ron Loveridge after he received recommendations from the council members representing each ward.
Arreola resigned only one year into his term and is currently working as a legislative aide for Adams, a development which caused some consternation in the community and apparently on the commission as well.
On Feb. 21, only five city council members attended the meeting and both Beeman and Hubbard had received three votes. Simpson and Tyrrell had received two votes. At first, it was thought that both Beeman and Hubbard had enough votes to get appointed on the commission. Mayor Pro Tem Ed Adkison had agreed with the selections of both Beeman and Hubbard, by saying that although he didn’t like moving a person off of one commission and placing them on another, that in this particular situation it was necessary to have people with “committee” experience. Earlier, Councilman Dom Betro had said that it was necessary to have Beeman and Hubbard on the CPRC, because given the “current situation”, the city needed to have individuals who could “hit the ground running”.
Of course, neither Betro or Adkison went into great detail on what this “current situation” is, but here’s a hint, it has everything to do with the recent actions of one of their direct employees. Both councilmen have been very quiet on the controversial actions that were taken by City Manager Brad Hudson’s office last month, which is particularly interesting in Betro’s case because he had initially run for office on a platform that supported the CPRC.
However, it’s an election year for him and he’s probably waiting to see what opposition he will face and from which corner before he discusses the CPRC's "current situation" publicly.
Regardless, it's the first time that any council member besides Andrew Melendrez has addressed the current status of the CPRC, even in an off-handed manner. Melendrez has brought the issue to the public safety committee which he chairs for discussion.
Beeman currently serves as chair of the Human Relations Commission and if selected to serve on the CPRC will step down from a commission which has already seen another chair resign several months ago as well as the recent resignations of at least two other commissioners serving on it. The commission had just recently hired Yvonne St. Pierre to serve as its new director not long ago and has been in a state of transition.
Beeman's selection marks the first time a community member with a connection to the Riverside Police Department will be appointed to the commission. One of her sons is a police officer employed by the city and Beeman has worked closely with the police department including as chair of the Chief’s Advisory Board in recent years. Her selection should be good news to the police department, and it appeared to be good news to members of the Riverside Coalition for Police Accountability. How the community including those members who may file complaints with the CPRC will view it remains to be seen.
Hubbard served for eight years on the Board of Public Utilities and had just termed off of it. He told the city council during his interview that he felt a “void” in his life after his stint and had worked previously as a paramedic for American Medical Response.
Both Beeman and Hubbard live in Betro’s ward. If selected, both would join Commissioner Brian Pearcy as the contingent representing that ward. Every other ward would have one representative on the commission. This trend is similar to what has happened on other boards and commissions.
After that meeting, the city council believed it had selected its commissioners but it was not to be, at least not that day. The process was reopened on a technicality.
City Clerk Colleen Nichols rechecked the rules and discovered that in order to be appointed, a candidate would need at least four votes if the entire voting body was not present at the meeting, five if it is. So the city council decided to convene again on Feb. 28 to reinterview the four finalists and then vote again on who it will appoint to the CPRC.
The breakdown of the initial votes cast at the Feb. 21 preliminary rounds of the selection process was as follows.
Dom Betro: Chani Beeman, Peter Hubbard
Ed Adkison: Peter Hubbard, Steve Simpson
Nancy Hart: Beeman, Sharon Tyrrell
Andrew Melendrez: Beeman, Tyrrell
Steve Adams: Hubbard, Simpson
It’s possible that this weekend was a busy one as several city council members probably went seeking votes for their favorite candidates and one might envy the fly sitting on many different walls. Far from being simply mechanisms from which the public can volunteer its service to the city, many boards and commissions have dealt with and even wrestled with politics, including the CPRC which faced challenges to its existence since the date of its inception in 2000. Entire voting blocs were shaped on the city council through the election process in order to try to get rid of it.
The city's voters thwarted that process in 2004 when they voted to place it in the city's charter but the political battles apparently had just begun when only months later then interim city manager Tom Evans replacing full-time executive director, Don Williams with part-time director, Pedro Payne. After enjoying a brief stint as a full-time executive director, Payne resigned on Dec. 31. A statement released by the city read that Payne had resigned to pursue other commissions. The community knowing how happy he was in his current job didn't buy that explanation.
Payne was the fourth city employee of color to depart from the management ranks at City Hall, since Hudson's hiring. His interim replacement, Mario Lara, who replaced him had worked as an analyst under Hudson and Asst. City Manager, Tom DeSantis. When asked at a meeting what his qualifications were to fill Payne's shoes, DeSantis basically said Lara had worked for him. Well, it seems like quite a few people in directorship or management positions at City Hall had worked for either Hudson or DeSantis which may satisfy those two men, but to many who have watched what has gone on, it seems like more of the same nepotism which has always been a problem in Riverside.
Before Payne's sudden resignation, the CPRC had been micromanaged by Hudson and DeSantis to the point where its members could not even submit a meeting agenda unless it was vetted first by the city manager's office. When Ward had tried to put an item on the agenda for the meeting last month, Lara had shown that he knew which side his bread was buttered when he forwarded Ward's item to DeSantis and then to City Attorney Gregory Priamos who sent it back saying it was "too vague" and the description of the item was over 20 words long. Instead, DeSantis' power point presentation on the proposed changes to the CPRC was placed on the agenda instead.
This month, Ward's agenda item which addressed the recent changes involving the CPRC was included on the agenda in the form of four questions and in its entirety was well over 20 words long. It's amazing that the city manager's office is allowing this discussion to take place at all, but after the community started protesting its recent actions including through their elected officials, what choice did they have?
Mayor Pat Morris has designed a program that will encourage the interaction between the city’s police officers and the neighborhood youth in order to build better relationships between the two. It took several months for Morris to find funding for the program but he finally did.
The program did have some critics including from the department’s police union’s leadership.
(excerpt)
I know we have a bunch of brand new guys, and you might get a guy who doesn't know what he's getting into," said Rich Lawhead, the union president. "I don't know of many guys who would sign up to do this voluntarily."
Another skeptic was Councilman Dennis Baxter.
(excerpt)
"I'd be surprised that there's even a question at this point," he said. "I would certainly do the research and find out how many people I had to staff it before throwing money at it."
But similar programs have thrived elsewhere in the country and there is hope that this will happen in San Bernardino even as the city also passed a measure approving that over $1 million in city tax funding be spent on paying police officers overtime during the period when 14 newer officers would be trained.
Tomorrow is the second and possibly final round of the interview and appointment process involving three of the city’s boards and commissions. One of them, is the Community Police Review Commission which currently has two openings due to the departures of Bob Garcia who had served two terms and Bonavita Quinto-MacCullum who had declined to be reappointed to another term for undisclosed reasons.
The loss of both Garcia and Quinto-MacCullum means that two of the four Latinos currently serving on the CPRC will be replaced by White candidates. Of the six people who were ultimately interviewed, five were White. The CPRC currently has only one African-American serving on it and that is Jim Ward.
Community members have commented on the decreasing presence of people of color on the CPRC in recent years. There have been people of color who had submitted applications to the Mayor’s Nomination and Screening Committee but very few individuals are selected by that panel’s members for interview and the majority of those have been White.
Only one current commissioner out of nine, is female.
Selections made to fill ward-specific positions on the CPRC have been more ethnic and racial diverse in that two Latinos, Ric Castro from the sixth ward and Frank Arreola from the seventh ward were appointed to serve on the commission by Mayor Ron Loveridge after he received recommendations from the council members representing each ward.
Arreola resigned only one year into his term and is currently working as a legislative aide for Adams, a development which caused some consternation in the community and apparently on the commission as well.
On Feb. 21, only five city council members attended the meeting and both Beeman and Hubbard had received three votes. Simpson and Tyrrell had received two votes. At first, it was thought that both Beeman and Hubbard had enough votes to get appointed on the commission. Mayor Pro Tem Ed Adkison had agreed with the selections of both Beeman and Hubbard, by saying that although he didn’t like moving a person off of one commission and placing them on another, that in this particular situation it was necessary to have people with “committee” experience. Earlier, Councilman Dom Betro had said that it was necessary to have Beeman and Hubbard on the CPRC, because given the “current situation”, the city needed to have individuals who could “hit the ground running”.
Of course, neither Betro or Adkison went into great detail on what this “current situation” is, but here’s a hint, it has everything to do with the recent actions of one of their direct employees. Both councilmen have been very quiet on the controversial actions that were taken by City Manager Brad Hudson’s office last month, which is particularly interesting in Betro’s case because he had initially run for office on a platform that supported the CPRC.
However, it’s an election year for him and he’s probably waiting to see what opposition he will face and from which corner before he discusses the CPRC's "current situation" publicly.
Regardless, it's the first time that any council member besides Andrew Melendrez has addressed the current status of the CPRC, even in an off-handed manner. Melendrez has brought the issue to the public safety committee which he chairs for discussion.
Beeman currently serves as chair of the Human Relations Commission and if selected to serve on the CPRC will step down from a commission which has already seen another chair resign several months ago as well as the recent resignations of at least two other commissioners serving on it. The commission had just recently hired Yvonne St. Pierre to serve as its new director not long ago and has been in a state of transition.
Beeman's selection marks the first time a community member with a connection to the Riverside Police Department will be appointed to the commission. One of her sons is a police officer employed by the city and Beeman has worked closely with the police department including as chair of the Chief’s Advisory Board in recent years. Her selection should be good news to the police department, and it appeared to be good news to members of the Riverside Coalition for Police Accountability. How the community including those members who may file complaints with the CPRC will view it remains to be seen.
Hubbard served for eight years on the Board of Public Utilities and had just termed off of it. He told the city council during his interview that he felt a “void” in his life after his stint and had worked previously as a paramedic for American Medical Response.
Both Beeman and Hubbard live in Betro’s ward. If selected, both would join Commissioner Brian Pearcy as the contingent representing that ward. Every other ward would have one representative on the commission. This trend is similar to what has happened on other boards and commissions.
After that meeting, the city council believed it had selected its commissioners but it was not to be, at least not that day. The process was reopened on a technicality.
City Clerk Colleen Nichols rechecked the rules and discovered that in order to be appointed, a candidate would need at least four votes if the entire voting body was not present at the meeting, five if it is. So the city council decided to convene again on Feb. 28 to reinterview the four finalists and then vote again on who it will appoint to the CPRC.
The breakdown of the initial votes cast at the Feb. 21 preliminary rounds of the selection process was as follows.
Dom Betro: Chani Beeman, Peter Hubbard
Ed Adkison: Peter Hubbard, Steve Simpson
Nancy Hart: Beeman, Sharon Tyrrell
Andrew Melendrez: Beeman, Tyrrell
Steve Adams: Hubbard, Simpson
It’s possible that this weekend was a busy one as several city council members probably went seeking votes for their favorite candidates and one might envy the fly sitting on many different walls. Far from being simply mechanisms from which the public can volunteer its service to the city, many boards and commissions have dealt with and even wrestled with politics, including the CPRC which faced challenges to its existence since the date of its inception in 2000. Entire voting blocs were shaped on the city council through the election process in order to try to get rid of it.
The city's voters thwarted that process in 2004 when they voted to place it in the city's charter but the political battles apparently had just begun when only months later then interim city manager Tom Evans replacing full-time executive director, Don Williams with part-time director, Pedro Payne. After enjoying a brief stint as a full-time executive director, Payne resigned on Dec. 31. A statement released by the city read that Payne had resigned to pursue other commissions. The community knowing how happy he was in his current job didn't buy that explanation.
Payne was the fourth city employee of color to depart from the management ranks at City Hall, since Hudson's hiring. His interim replacement, Mario Lara, who replaced him had worked as an analyst under Hudson and Asst. City Manager, Tom DeSantis. When asked at a meeting what his qualifications were to fill Payne's shoes, DeSantis basically said Lara had worked for him. Well, it seems like quite a few people in directorship or management positions at City Hall had worked for either Hudson or DeSantis which may satisfy those two men, but to many who have watched what has gone on, it seems like more of the same nepotism which has always been a problem in Riverside.
Before Payne's sudden resignation, the CPRC had been micromanaged by Hudson and DeSantis to the point where its members could not even submit a meeting agenda unless it was vetted first by the city manager's office. When Ward had tried to put an item on the agenda for the meeting last month, Lara had shown that he knew which side his bread was buttered when he forwarded Ward's item to DeSantis and then to City Attorney Gregory Priamos who sent it back saying it was "too vague" and the description of the item was over 20 words long. Instead, DeSantis' power point presentation on the proposed changes to the CPRC was placed on the agenda instead.
This month, Ward's agenda item which addressed the recent changes involving the CPRC was included on the agenda in the form of four questions and in its entirety was well over 20 words long. It's amazing that the city manager's office is allowing this discussion to take place at all, but after the community started protesting its recent actions including through their elected officials, what choice did they have?
Labels: Backlash against civilian oversight, Black city employee watch, City elections, CPRC, Making the grade
posted by Five Before Midnight | 9:14 AM
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