The road to micromanagement is paved with intentions

Columnist Dan Bernstein of the Press Enterprise wrote a piece on the city council meeting the other night when police officers and community members filled the chambers in protest of City Manager Brad Hudson's decision to create two "at will" management positions in the police department.

Riverside city government has a management style all its own



Bernstein's 2000 column about the last time the city government and its employees tried to influence the promotional process under then-chief, Jerry Carroll still ranks among his best to date. In this one seven long years later, he tackles a similar subject, an all-too-familiar theme and the latest misstep at City Hall.


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But that's the small picture. Shall we pan wide? This entire promotion maneuver was killed because the City Council never created the positions to which these cops were promoted.

Oops, they did it again!

If you think about how City Hall works (if you have a life, you don't), this latest episode fits a pattern. I call it top-down -- or topless -- management.

Here's how Topless Management works: The council and city manager spring into action, reasoning that Riverside Van Winkle has been sleeping for 40 years. If no one complains, full steam ahead. If people do complain, they reverse course and call it "democracy in action."


Once again, Bernstein hit this one out of the park.




"If you expect me to be a lap dog, you're nuts. If anyone expects me to be one, there will be a train wreck."

--- CPRC Commissioner Steve Simpson



Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis had recovered enough from the events at the city council meeting to go back to playing with one of his favorite new toys, the Community Police Review Commission. With the police department off-limits at least for the time being, DeSantis and City Attorney Gregory Priamos punched another attendance mark on their dance cards and headed off to the city council chambers to "advise" the commissioners on how to well, conduct commission business.

Priamos especially seemed miffed when his recent attendances to the CPRC meetings which have followed the filing of five separate law suits or claims for damages in connection with four recent officer-involved deaths were commented on, but it's hard not to notice how much things have changed in such a short period of time.

In 2004, the CPRC invited then city manager, George Carvalho, Priamos, Chief Russ Leach and the Riverside Police Officers' Association's leadership to attend workshops. All of the mentioned parties attended their workshops, several of which were lively events, but Priamos stayed away and refused to participate in his designated workshop. In past years whenever commissioners had asked him for answers to legal questions, he had not responded to their requests for several months.

Contrast that with 2006, when Priamos began dispatching one of his attorneys, Susan Wilson to attend meetings when the 2005 officer-involved death of Terry Rabb was being discussed by commissioners in preparation for their public report. Wilson attended the meetings in relation to that case, but when the 2006 shooting of Lee Deante Brown(which was also discussed) came up for discussion, Wilson stopped coming and was replaced by Priamos himself. But with the five law suits, maybe six that are currently under litigation by the city, Priamos has plenty reason to show up and observe, given the current litigation situation involving officer-involved deaths in the police department.


He and DeSantis make an interesting tag team at meetings. A contrast in appearance and stature, they complement each other and spend most of the meetings leaving their seats to go up to the podium to address a point or question raised by a commissioner whether their advice or comments were solicited or not.

Joining both of them was Asst. Chief John DeLaRosa, who sat quietly until he was asked a question about tasers and didn't seem to know much about them. He has plenty of time to get briefed on that equipment while he's in training to move up the career ladder as he should if his officers are using less lethal options that didn't exist when DeLaRosa was even a lieutenant. What's interesting about DeLaRosa besides his newly acquired habit of greeting people he encounters, is that he's risen as quickly in the ranks as any person possibly could.

In 2001, he was a sergeant and had been one for quite a while. Six years later, he's one position away from commanding the police department. It will be interesting to see how much administrative experience he's accumulated when he's moved up so quickly that he's not spent much time in any one of his last four positions.

But it's not like it hadn't been done before. After all, Carroll rose through the ranks even more quickly than DeLaRosa and then became police chief. Only when people discuss Carroll, they talk about his lack of administrative skills and experience, and that's a valid point to make as it's difficult to believe that anyone can soak up enough knowledge and experience in this area if they're moving up the ladder up so quickly that you can't see them until they're right behind you. There's no time to plant firm roots into any one rank and take what you learn with you when you move onto to the next level.

When someone quickly moves up the ladder, people talk about how ambitious and promising they are. When they slide down the chute, then the talk turns to how this person lacked the experience to be a success in that position. How quickly attitudes change about the same management candidate when the carriage turns back into a pumpkin.

Still, it appears that DeLaRosa will be following that same path as Carroll did. The only question appears to be at this point is when he will be running the police department.

Some predict that he'll fit the job like a glove. Others think that he's not strong enough to avoid getting run out of the agency like several of his predecessors. It certainly will be interesting to see what does happen in the next year or so. But ironically, the police unions decision to speak out against the "at will" positions probably has kept DeLaRosa's career trajectory on track. If he had been an "at will" assistant chief, confidence and trust in him may have eroded long before he was to become the next police chief due to that decision.

During a meeting where city employees nearly outnumbered community members in numbers, Commissioner Jim Ward, the former vice-chair sat and watched as Brian Pearcy, the current vice-chair ran the meeting. Why was that? Because while the CPRC has elected a vice-chair with Pearcy winning that election 5-3 with one abstention, the chair election has been postponed at least six months.

Say what? Yes, it's true. There was, DeSantis claimed, only one election for chair and that's not really the truth. Over a month ago, an election was held to appoint the new chair and when the votes were cast, Ward was leading Commissioner Les Davidson, 4-3 but then interim CPRC manager Mario Lara(who looks way over his head in this position), DeSantis and Priamos came and said that even the new members, Steve Simpson and Peter Hubbard, had to cast votes. This was due to language in the city's charter which said that officers had to be elected at the first meeting or the election had to be postponed at that time.

Hubbard cast his vote for Davidson, even though he was brand new and had no real experience with either of them on the CPRC because he had cast his vote before even attending his first meeting earlier this month. Simpson took the opposite approach and refused to cast a vote, telling the commission and city staff members that he couldn't vote either way until he knew how each candidate operated.

Simpson would prove to be an interesting new commissioner in his public meeting debut. Hubbard just sat back quietly and even fell asleep at some point.

So that left the vote for chair of the CPRC at 4-4 with one abstention. Then the move by Pearcy who for some unexplained reason was in tandem with Priamos as both suggested postponing the election until September and then Priamos came up to the podium and whipped out a plan for the CPRC to create an ad-hoc committee using members from the oft-absent policy and procedures committee to staff it. Priamos wore out quite a bit of expensive shoe leather walking to and from the podium to his seat.

Ward's agenda item finally got to be discussed after months of delay by Lara, DeSantis and Priamos who seems to view the state's "sunshine" law, the Brown Act, as a tool to reduce and restrict public participation in government. It's a stance he has taken regarding city council meetings and subcommittee meetings. It's clear he applies it to boards and commissions as well.

Ward's first issue was the placement of items on the agenda and the issue of the city manager's decision to approve the agendas before they could be posted. Priamos explained his reason by calling the agenda item too "vague". The wording of the item was to discuss the recent series of events that took place in the intercession between the commission's meetings in November and January.

Ward then mentioned a series of private meetings that had taken place between him, Davidson, Leach, DeSantis and Priamos late last year, where changes to the CPRC's operations were being discussed. It was something that community members had long suspected, but this was the first meeting where it was put up for discussion. Only it wasn't really a discussion that the commissioners felt able to fully participate in last night, any more than Ward and Davidson did at the private meetings, where they were simply in the audience watching a staged production unfold in front of them. At one point of one private meeting, Davidson apparently said the following.


"They aren't asking us what to do. They are telling us what to do."



That is about as far as Ward's comments got on those private sessions before Pearcy objected to raising that issue as long as Davidson was not present at the meeting. With three city employees including two who had attended the meetings in question sitting in the audience, it was clear that no discussion would take place at this meeting. Especially after DeSantis ran up to the podium insisting that the private meetings were only "small discussions".

Commissioner Jack Brewer said he had no problem with sending copies of the agenda for DeSantis and Priamos to review.


"But they have no right to tell us what to put on an agenda," he said.



Simpson put his positions bluntly as he did most of his comments at the meeting, which elicited some pretty interesting reactions from the three city employees.


"Could this train wreck been avoided by talking to Mr. Ward," Simpson said, "I agree with Mr. Ward."


At that point, Priamos ran up to the podium.


"It's not our intent to censor any commissioners," Priamos said.


However, the discussion that Ward had attempted to initiate about the private meetings that took place last year, while the city residents slept has been tabled until further notice. DeSantis chose this moment to mention that consultant Joe Brann was conducting a research project of best practices for boards and commissions and would be presenting his recommendations at a future meeting. The city had hoped for April, DeSantis said, but Brann had said he wanted to sit in on some meetings to see the commission in action.

DeSantis spoke of Brann's impressive credentials, of course not mentioning the fact that it apparently took his boss, City Manager Brad Hudson, quite a while to do the task the city council had set for him to do which was to negotiate a contract with Brann to help with the implementation of the police department's Strategic Plan. Which should come to no surprise given the tremendous expertise both Hudson and DeSantis exhibited in contract negotiations with the city's six labor unions last summer. Because after all, the city had searched far and wide during its recruitment process for a city manager with an extensive background in this area. Actually it's true that it did, only it didn't take any of the candidates it attracted through open process seriously because the whole time the city council had its eyes on someone else.

The most contentious subject that was allowed to be discussed was the issue of parallel investigations of officer-involved deaths, which for now will be done as they have been done in previous cases. However, the reason why that is so is because there haven't been any fatal shootings or incustody deaths since Oct. 19 last year. If and when there is a fatal incident, it appears that Leach and/or Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco could issue a mandate forbidding their investigator to interview witnesses, according to what DeSantis said on this issue.

It seems that Pacheco has decided that his agency will conduct its own investigation of officer-involved deaths from now on. The only problem is that Pacheco's "new" process was described by then Supervising District Attorney Sara Danville at a public forum in January and it appeared to be more of a review process than an actual investigation and if that's so, then it's no different than their former process.

So the city has essentially put an end to independent and parallel investigations by the CPRC, but then again, with three shootings of unarmed men in about six months, all of which are either being litigated or may be litigated, it really had no choice in the matter. But by doing so, the city has essentially cast a no-confidence vote against its police department in the area of officer-involved deaths, or maybe it's just the risk management division that has done so. Again, if you know your history, this was also done by prior city employees in the past.

If the city was confident in the police department's use of lethal force, it would not be threatened by a commission of its own creation conducting its own independent investigations of these deaths as granted through ordinance by the city government and reaffirmed by the city's voters, and reaching its own findings. But through what the city has done, it has clearly shown the residents of the city that this just isn't the case in technicolor.

I remember reading the book, Breaking Rank by a retired police chief, Norm Stamper and at one point, he wanted to know what was going on with his police department so he assembled a panel of people to review its practices. He didn't put friends of the politicians or as Simpson would call them, "lap dogs" on it, he put the toughest critics he could find. He put representatives of different community organizations who had criticized the police and the director of the local chapter of the ACLU. He did this in part because he had enough confidence in what he was trying to do to subject it to the toughest scrutiny he could find and in the end, he got a fairly good report card from his panel. At the very least, such a process is an important learning tool for everyone involved in it.

But Riverside has taken the opposite route with its officer-involved deaths by instead in the future, closing off the ability of an independent panel to investigate and review them, by restricting their access to witnesses, delaying evidence from the police department and changing its interpretation of Governmental Code 3304(d) at every turn, including at last night's meeting. So in contrast to Stamper's position, there seems to be a lack of confidence all of a sudden by the city towards its own police department and by these actions, the city's leadership has put that on display for everyone to see. You can't blame city residents for noticing the neon lights out there.

Mayor Ron Loveridge made an interesting decision in 1999 to convene his own task force to address the issue of force used by the department's officers. Seven years later, the city government probably would not have allowed that committee to reconvene and reexamine the same issue to see how far the police department has come.

And in the end, it is actually civilians at City Hall who are micromanaging the department's investigations into these incustody deaths and controlling that process, through actions like this against the CPRC, just as surely as they tried to micromanage the management positions in the police department last week. But they are doing so in this case, because the more money that is spent litigating these law suits and paying them off, the less there will be for Riverside Renaissance.


There are probably those who are reading who are no doubt cheering these latest developments, but if they know and understand their history, they really shouldn't. Short term gratification doesn't equate the long-term impact this micromanagement of one of the city's boards and commissions by the city manager and city attorney's office will have on the police department and especially its relationship with the communities it serves. The hard won lessons involving LEPAC clearly have not left their mark as they should have, but this particular path seems to be etched so deeply that the city appears unable to deviate from it as it's been unable to do so in the past. The city attorney's office sees civic liability and the city manager tries to handle it by micromanaging both the messenger and the involved agency while the city council pretends not to notice what is going on until a crisis emerges, whether it's in the community or among the ranks of the police department. Or in the case of this week's city council meeting, both. Business as usual, in the city of Riverside.

The community understands this, but maybe the next round in the classroom will just be for other students who are behind the learning curve. For those who fail to understand that it is through micromanagement of the CPRC that the city has found its path towards micromanagement of the police department.



"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."

---William Shakesphere

Better news on civilian review is coming in from other places.

Galveston, Texas is the setting for a new police review board, if the city's residents have their way. Galveston County Daily News writer, Heber Taylor makes his case that the creation of a form of civilian oversight would be beneficial for the city because it would allow people to file complaints and feel that there was some outside oversight of that process.



Review board, good for Galveston



He cites a recent incident in Galveston as part of his argument.


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Recently, Don Ciaccio, a member of Galveston’s ethics commission, asked for an investigation into the October 2004 arrest of Ryan Sullivan, who was the owner of a health club.

Sullivan and police gave vastly different accounts of that arrest.

Police charged Sullivan with assaulting a peace officer. A jury acquitted him.

Sullivan’s version is that an off-duty officer attacked and choked him in a nightclub. He has filed a civil suit.

The courts are the best place to resolve the conflicting accounts of this case.But there’s a larger issue here — the public’s confidence in the way police handle complaints against officers and how they take steps to prevent problems.




Meanwhile in Columbia, Missouri, the NAACP held a candidate forum addressing the issues of civilian oversight and police-community relations in that city, according to an article in the Columbia Missourian.

The last account of that city's process of examining civilian review was that the governing body had hired a consultant to provide an assessment of different forms of civilian oversight. The different candidates running for election in the third and fourth wards of the city were split on the issue of creating a police review commission though the majority supported some form of civilian review.


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Third Ward candidate Gary Kespohl said he supported a review board but wants to make sure they would use their time wisely.

"I am opposed to having a civilian review board on every complaint to the police department," Kespohl said.

His opponent Karl Skala said Columbia was in need of a review board.

"We need to sit down and work this out," Skala said. "We need to do this the right way."