"Food fight!" and other civic adventures
The Press Enterprise's editorial board let it rip on March 13 when it weighed in on the recent controversy regarding the disruptions and expulsions at several recent city council meetings and compared the situation to a "cafeteria food fight".
Council Dishonor
The Board takes the city council to task for interrupting speakers, arguing with city residents and tossing its behavioral code by the wayside and strongly urged the city council to clean up its act and bring decorum to the dais.
The city council had recently sent a proposal by Mayor Ron Loveridge to make further changes to the code of conduct at least in terms of how the public is supposed to behave but nothing in relation to how the elected officials behave themselves.
Press Enterprise columnist, Dan Bernstein, provided a hilarious account here of the infamous Feb. 27 meeting of the city council when four city residents were escorted out of the chambers by police officers. Well, actually only three because Marjorie Von Pohle told the officers that they would have to carry her.
(excerpt, Bernstein)
A week ago, three women (including a 90-year-old) and a PIP (the owner of PIP Printing) were barred ("You're out of order!") from the Riverside City Council chambers.
Tuesday afternoon, two of RPD's finest (though maybe not busiest) were stationed at the front of these chambers. (They normally blend into the back.) Yes, the city manager has a concealed-weapon permit. So does his assistant. But with memories of Three Women & a PIP so fresh, the need for frontline back up was apparently overwhelming.
Barely any of the city council appeared at the evening session of its weekly meeting. Missing were Loveridge and council members, Frank Schiavone and Nancy Hart who were attending an event for cities in Washington, D.C. Councilman Steve Adams also missed the meeting due to an injury he suffered to either his knee or his foot. At least one person said that he had broken his leg but no further details were available.
The afternoon session had been cancelled, due to a lack of quorum because Councilman Dom Betro was still en route from the D.C. event. This led to the rescheduling of most of the agenda items from that meeting.
The city council's failure to achieve a quorum naturally led to discussions about the upcoming city council races. Former mayor, Terry Frizzel who is running in the seventh ward has qualified after verification of her signatures through the voters' registrar office and so has her fellow competitor, Art Garcia so there will be a quorum at the ballot box for the seventh ward.
Today at 5 pm is the deadline for filing candidate papers and signatures for those interested in entering the fray of the ward 5 election race.
Good gracious! There's actually a controversy about the placement of the cameras in the city council chambers! It seems that Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis is the culprit behind the movement of the cameras owned by Charter Communications so that the backsides of city residents and not their faces will be seen by the viewing audience at home. You can read all about it in the Press Enterprise article here.
DeSantis, who was recently ordered by City Manager Brad Hudson to micromanage the library system, earned himself one of those huge face shots on the newspaper's Web site as writer Doug Haberman dealt with this issue, interviewing city residents who thought it was ridiculous and done so that people watching wouldn't know who they were and city officials who thought it was a great idea and why hadn't they done it sooner?
Schiavone gave what is already the quote of the day when he laid it all out in the news article.
(excerpt)
The people who speak at council meetings should be talking to the council, not television viewers, so how they appear on television screens shouldn't matter, Schiavone said.
"If they're not speaking to the camera," he said, "why is that an issue?"
Betro belabored the recent events at the city council meetings, insisting that it prevented the city council from doing its business but didn't examples of how in the past and even last night, he barked, "out of order" to the mayor or mayor pro tem, contributing to what the Press Enterprise editorial board had called a "cafeteria food fight". He wanted to take the camera issue to governmental affairs which means that by the end of that meeting, they'll probably put fuzzy blue dots over city residents' backsides lest anyone watching recognize whose was whose at the podium.
This latest action involving the placement of the video cameras is in response to comments made by several speakers to elected officials that they encountered many people in Riverside who saw them speaking on television and said they agreed with what they had said. So obviously whether or not the face or the back of city residents faces the camera is an issue for some people and it's most likely that the people who really an issue over it are the one who are suddenly implementing these changes.
It's silly and petty for the city government to behave this way, but silly and petty appears to be its choice of behavior in recent months so this latest decision fits seamlessly with its previous ones.
If the city council wants to look better on television than they have lately, regardless of which side of them the camera is capturing, perhaps they could market themselves and come out with a collection of action figures. But there would have to be multiple versions of the DeSantis action figure, one for every city department he's been assigned to micromanage.
Question, is it true that for every non sworn employee who has resigned from the police department lately, that the city manager's office has left that position open instead of filling it?
This just came in from the California Legislative Bulletin:
Romero and Leno to fight police secrecy
Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), Chairman of the Assembly Appropriations Committee, have introduced legislation to overturn a recent California Supreme Court decision that has effectively shut down public access to civil service and police commission hearings and records associated with police misconduct. The authors have agreed to work together to achieve a new balance between peace officers’ special needs for privacy and the public’s right to know about serious police misconduct and the fairness and effectiveness of the systems by which cases are adjudicated.
Leno has introduced AB 1648. Attorneys representing CNPA and the ACLU drafted the bill over a period of months. As indicated in the legislative intent section, the bill would “. . . abrogate the holding of the California Supreme Court decision in Copley Press v. Superior Court (2006) 39 Cal.4th 1272, and . . . restore public access to peace officer records and to meetings and hearings that were open to the public prior to that decision.” The bill would also require police agencies, pursuant to the public records act, to disclose basic factual information associated with discipline, a sustained complaint or charge, or a finding the officer’s conduct was out of policy, such as name and badge number, summary of allegations, charges and discipline imposed.
Although SB 1019 has been introduced as a spot bill, Romero is working with CNPA and representatives of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief William Bratton on language that all can support.
The bills are expected to be referred to the Senate or Assembly Public Safety Committee and will likely be heard sometime in April.
For those who have been following the erupting situations in the cities of Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco in the wake of the Copley decision, this development should not be surprising.
Not surprisingly, the police unions have already voiced their opposition to this bill including the San Jose Police Officers' Association and the San Francisco Police Officers' Association. The Los Angeles Police Department's protective league is also set to oppose the pair of bills.
In Duluth, Minnesota, the Native American Commission is discussing whether or not to implement civilian review , according to this article at KBJR-TV. This discussion is in the wake of concerns about how the local police department is handling cases involving Native Americans.
**Update**
The grand jury looking into the case involving the officer-involved shooting of Sean Bell by five New York City Police Department officers is preparing to release its decision on whether or not it will be issuing indictments against any of the officers in this case.
Council Dishonor
The Board takes the city council to task for interrupting speakers, arguing with city residents and tossing its behavioral code by the wayside and strongly urged the city council to clean up its act and bring decorum to the dais.
The city council had recently sent a proposal by Mayor Ron Loveridge to make further changes to the code of conduct at least in terms of how the public is supposed to behave but nothing in relation to how the elected officials behave themselves.
Press Enterprise columnist, Dan Bernstein, provided a hilarious account here of the infamous Feb. 27 meeting of the city council when four city residents were escorted out of the chambers by police officers. Well, actually only three because Marjorie Von Pohle told the officers that they would have to carry her.
(excerpt, Bernstein)
A week ago, three women (including a 90-year-old) and a PIP (the owner of PIP Printing) were barred ("You're out of order!") from the Riverside City Council chambers.
Tuesday afternoon, two of RPD's finest (though maybe not busiest) were stationed at the front of these chambers. (They normally blend into the back.) Yes, the city manager has a concealed-weapon permit. So does his assistant. But with memories of Three Women & a PIP so fresh, the need for frontline back up was apparently overwhelming.
Barely any of the city council appeared at the evening session of its weekly meeting. Missing were Loveridge and council members, Frank Schiavone and Nancy Hart who were attending an event for cities in Washington, D.C. Councilman Steve Adams also missed the meeting due to an injury he suffered to either his knee or his foot. At least one person said that he had broken his leg but no further details were available.
The afternoon session had been cancelled, due to a lack of quorum because Councilman Dom Betro was still en route from the D.C. event. This led to the rescheduling of most of the agenda items from that meeting.
The city council's failure to achieve a quorum naturally led to discussions about the upcoming city council races. Former mayor, Terry Frizzel who is running in the seventh ward has qualified after verification of her signatures through the voters' registrar office and so has her fellow competitor, Art Garcia so there will be a quorum at the ballot box for the seventh ward.
Today at 5 pm is the deadline for filing candidate papers and signatures for those interested in entering the fray of the ward 5 election race.
Good gracious! There's actually a controversy about the placement of the cameras in the city council chambers! It seems that Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis is the culprit behind the movement of the cameras owned by Charter Communications so that the backsides of city residents and not their faces will be seen by the viewing audience at home. You can read all about it in the Press Enterprise article here.
DeSantis, who was recently ordered by City Manager Brad Hudson to micromanage the library system, earned himself one of those huge face shots on the newspaper's Web site as writer Doug Haberman dealt with this issue, interviewing city residents who thought it was ridiculous and done so that people watching wouldn't know who they were and city officials who thought it was a great idea and why hadn't they done it sooner?
Schiavone gave what is already the quote of the day when he laid it all out in the news article.
(excerpt)
The people who speak at council meetings should be talking to the council, not television viewers, so how they appear on television screens shouldn't matter, Schiavone said.
"If they're not speaking to the camera," he said, "why is that an issue?"
Betro belabored the recent events at the city council meetings, insisting that it prevented the city council from doing its business but didn't examples of how in the past and even last night, he barked, "out of order" to the mayor or mayor pro tem, contributing to what the Press Enterprise editorial board had called a "cafeteria food fight". He wanted to take the camera issue to governmental affairs which means that by the end of that meeting, they'll probably put fuzzy blue dots over city residents' backsides lest anyone watching recognize whose was whose at the podium.
This latest action involving the placement of the video cameras is in response to comments made by several speakers to elected officials that they encountered many people in Riverside who saw them speaking on television and said they agreed with what they had said. So obviously whether or not the face or the back of city residents faces the camera is an issue for some people and it's most likely that the people who really an issue over it are the one who are suddenly implementing these changes.
It's silly and petty for the city government to behave this way, but silly and petty appears to be its choice of behavior in recent months so this latest decision fits seamlessly with its previous ones.
If the city council wants to look better on television than they have lately, regardless of which side of them the camera is capturing, perhaps they could market themselves and come out with a collection of action figures. But there would have to be multiple versions of the DeSantis action figure, one for every city department he's been assigned to micromanage.
Question, is it true that for every non sworn employee who has resigned from the police department lately, that the city manager's office has left that position open instead of filling it?
This just came in from the California Legislative Bulletin:
Romero and Leno to fight police secrecy
Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), Chairman of the Assembly Appropriations Committee, have introduced legislation to overturn a recent California Supreme Court decision that has effectively shut down public access to civil service and police commission hearings and records associated with police misconduct. The authors have agreed to work together to achieve a new balance between peace officers’ special needs for privacy and the public’s right to know about serious police misconduct and the fairness and effectiveness of the systems by which cases are adjudicated.
Leno has introduced AB 1648. Attorneys representing CNPA and the ACLU drafted the bill over a period of months. As indicated in the legislative intent section, the bill would “. . . abrogate the holding of the California Supreme Court decision in Copley Press v. Superior Court (2006) 39 Cal.4th 1272, and . . . restore public access to peace officer records and to meetings and hearings that were open to the public prior to that decision.” The bill would also require police agencies, pursuant to the public records act, to disclose basic factual information associated with discipline, a sustained complaint or charge, or a finding the officer’s conduct was out of policy, such as name and badge number, summary of allegations, charges and discipline imposed.
Although SB 1019 has been introduced as a spot bill, Romero is working with CNPA and representatives of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief William Bratton on language that all can support.
The bills are expected to be referred to the Senate or Assembly Public Safety Committee and will likely be heard sometime in April.
For those who have been following the erupting situations in the cities of Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco in the wake of the Copley decision, this development should not be surprising.
Not surprisingly, the police unions have already voiced their opposition to this bill including the San Jose Police Officers' Association and the San Francisco Police Officers' Association. The Los Angeles Police Department's protective league is also set to oppose the pair of bills.
In Duluth, Minnesota, the Native American Commission is discussing whether or not to implement civilian review , according to this article at KBJR-TV. This discussion is in the wake of concerns about how the local police department is handling cases involving Native Americans.
**Update**
The grand jury looking into the case involving the officer-involved shooting of Sean Bell by five New York City Police Department officers is preparing to release its decision on whether or not it will be issuing indictments against any of the officers in this case.
Labels: Backlash against civilian oversight, civilian review spreads, public forums in all places, What is past is prologue
posted by Five Before Midnight | 3:27 PM
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