Campaigning on the city's dime?
The Riverside League of Women Voters is hosting a series of candidate forums, one for each ward election. You can find the schedule below.
Riverside political events
Speaking of elections, beleaguered incumbent, Councilman Steve Adams has come under fire in the Press Enterprise because of a newsletter he had circulated lauding his accomplishments that was paid for by city funds.
If that's not enough, Adams picked his reelection year to launch the first-ever community summit event in his ward. It attracted over 200 people but some people including other candidates criticized it as an overuse of incumbent power.
(excerpt)
This is essentially used to promote Steve Adams," said Roy Saldanha, a Ward 7 candidate. "They could have started it in a nonelection year."
Saldanha said he has filed complaints about the newsletter with the Riverside County district attorney's office and the state Fair Political Practices Commission.
Adams said there was no impropriety with either the newsletter or the summit. The Police Department organized the summit, and the newsletter was to inform residents of city projects, he said.
"We're not going to stop running the city to help someone get elected," Adams said after the summit. "We work every day. This election could wind up in a runoff, and these people still need services."
Adams said in the article that the event was sponsored by the police department and that his election rivals apparently were expecting him to wait until the runoff election was over, to help his constituents.
However, no one has said that. Elected officials serve their constituents in a variety of ways in a variety of venues. That's their job and that's what they get paid a salary to do. But it just seems strange that the first year that his ward enjoys such a big community event, it's just before the election. At the same time his rivals and their supporters criticize him for not being responsive to the ward's residents, he throws them a party.
A civics expert chimed in with an expert opinion on the appropriateness of the forum considering its timing during an election year.
(excerpt)
Douglas Johnson, a redistricting and elections expert at the Rose Institute for State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College, said the summit sounded like a presidential race with an incumbent flying in to dispense gifts.
"Every incumbent tries to play up what they've done for their district," he said by phone. "But to bring in a ton of city staff is unusual and questionable. It's an extreme display of the power of the incumbent."
Johnson added that such tactics were "somewhat of a sign of desperation to take such a risk now."
But that is exactly what Adams is, desperate. His ill-timed efforts to seek higher political office up in Sacramento at mid-term and his lack of roots in the La Sierra neighborhood that he represents have caused him to lose much ground in his reelection bid. He's almost certain to go into a runoff against any one or more of three candidates without his bread-and-butter support and campaign efforts by the Riverside Police Officers' Association that he had enjoyed the last time out. People have said it's because the leadership of the union believed his demeanor was too vulgar. If the demeanor of a politician makes a group of individuals uncomfortable, then that's one reason not to endorse that person if they agree on that as part of the criteria.
At the March 27 meeting, one candidate, Terry Frizzel criticized Adams in her speech and her words were applauded by quite a few of the police officers from the RPOA and the Riverside Police Administrators' Association. What a difference four years makes.
And who knows, maybe two or more of his rivals will move onto the next round of elections without him. It's a wide open race as is the council race in ward five.
Ballots for the mail-in election will be mailed out the first week in May and will be due the first week in June. If any winner of the election fails to get 50% of the vote, then runoff elections for those respective wards will be held in November at the polls.
An editorial in the News-Press in Ft. Myers Florida asked the following question.
Is city ready for review board?
The article pushes the city council to adopt an independent form of civilian oversight to receive and review complaints. Despite an outcry from the city's residents, the city council and mayor had opposed the creation of a board. That icy resolve began to thaw just recently and the editorial board hoped that this was a sign that the city was ready to create a civilian review board. It urged the city's residents to make their voices heard.
(excerpt)
Two council members, Warren Wright and Levon Simms, voted for a review board last October, when the council rejected it 4-2. That balance has presumably shifted with the replacement of one of the majority, Veronica Shoemaker, with Johnny Streets, who favors a board without subpoena power. Mayor Jim Humphrey opposed the board in October but has indicated he realizes there is a problem.
Tom Leonardo, elected to represent the new Ward 6, has said he’s against a board, but we hope he’s open to persuasion.This discussion must be renewed. The issue will not go away, regardless of what happens to this petition drive, or a similar one announced in January by the NAACP.
Critics say that’s because a few police officers have engendered a lot of mistrust for the police in Fort Myers’ black community. The right kind of a review board could help rebuild that trust.Let the council know how you feel.
And this is a community that remains determined to have its civilian review board, as members are circulating a petition to put it on the ballot, according to the Ft. Myers' News-Press.
(excerpt)
"The council has now made itself irrelevant," Thomas said.
If approved by voters, a seven-member review board with subpoena power would be created.
Members would be elected from each of the city's six council wards and one at large, the same as the mayor and members of the city council.It would be the first elected review board in the state, said Howard Simon, executive director of the state ACLU.
The police department spokesperson provided a response which is a fitting choice for the quote of the day.
(excerpt)
"We already have a civilian board elected by the people," said police spokeswoman Shelly Flynn.
"The police department reports to the city council and the city manager who have oversight authority."
No actually, what you've provided is the reason why the residents of your city are demanding a form of civilian oversight over the police department, especially after the most recent officer-involved shooting of a mentally ill man.
The federal consent decree posed on the city of Cincinnati is set to expire next week, and the final report by the monitor stated that the reforms were 90% completed. The decree imposed in 2002 after a patterns and practices investigation conducted by several divisions of the U.S. Justice Department, according to Cincinnati.com.
(excerpt)
In his final report on the Justice Department agreement before it expires Thursday, monitor Saul A. Green declared that "significant accomplishments in police reforms have taken place. ... These reforms are a strong foundation for sustained and continued improvement in policing in Cincinnati."
The Justice Department agreement, signed by the city manager and the attorney general in 2002, dictated reforms in police policy, training and officer discipline in the use of force against suspects.It followed the 2001 shooting of Timothy Thomas in Over-the-Rhine, the 15th police custody death in six years. Since, there have been two.
"I believe that the work under the (agreement) has a direct relation to those numbers," Green said. "There has been less injury and deaths to perpetrators, and fewer injuries to officers."
But the monitor stopped short of a clean record, finding only partial compliance in three areas:
The investigation of citizen complaints by internal affairs officers and the independent Citizen Complaint Authority.
"While the level of thoroughness of these investigations has improved significantly since the beginning of the monitoring process, we determined there were still investigations that did not meet the requirements, " Green wrote.
An Employee Tracking System database to monitor police conduct.
The city has resolved technical problems, he said. "What is crucial, however, is that the data and analysis in the ETS must be used by the CPD supervisors and management to manage risk and liability, and promote civil rights."For example, supervisors have been too quick to dismiss a pattern of unsubstantiated complaints, which could indicate a need for more officer training, he said.
Documentation of use-of-force incidents. The monitor noted a weakness in making sure the subjects of police force - especially by the use of Tasers - were interviewed.
In the Los Angeles Times, there was an article about the reappointment that is expected of William Bratton as police chief of that city's police department.
According to a poll, 53% of city residents supported giving Bratton a second term. However, the support registered of Bratton by members of different racial and ethnic groups varied widely.
(excerpt)
But the survey of 1,600 residents, to be released today, also found views on the chief diverge sharply by race.
While 68% of whites support Bratton's reappointment, fewer than half the minorities surveyed said they favor a second term for the chief: 47% of Korean Americans, 44% of African Americans and 45% of Latinos.
Many minority residents have not yet made up their minds, indicating the chief still has a chance to win their confidence.His reappointment was opposed by 36% of African Americans, 28% of Latinos, 14% of Korean Americans and 10% of whites, with others saying they are undecided.
The Police Commission is to decide during the next month whether to award Bratton a new contract. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other civic leaders support Bratton's reappointment.
"Today only 53%, a slim majority of Angelenos, support Bratton's reappointment as opposed to the overwhelming support expressed by L.A. city leaders," said Fernando Guerra, director of the center.
The survey also showed that while the majority of respondents had confidence in the department's ability to address crime, they had less confidence in its ability to handle misconduct and the ability of civilian review of the department than they did in a survey conducted when Bratton was first hired in 2002.
Bratton said that the department had successfully met most of the terms of the consent decree imposed on it by the Department of Justice in 2001. However, last year the federal judge overseeing its implementation refused to release the involved parties from it and imposed another three-year term on serving it out.
Randall Krouse, the Denver Police Department officer who was caught on surveillance video tasing a man in the neck was suspended for 40 days without pay, according to 7News. Krouse and two other officers were escorting Kenneth Rodriguez to a cell.
(excerpt)
Krouse warned the suspect twice and can be heard on tape asking, "Understand el Taser?"
Krouse then shocked the suspect twice, who fell over onto the bench. He shocked Rodriguez on the neck and on the back.
"I wasn't trying to be racial," Krouse said regarding his "el Taser" comment. "It just came out wrong."
As far as excuses go, that's pretty weak because Krouse for one thing had made the assumption that because Rodriguez was Latino, that he knew Spanish.
The city's independent monitor had recommended a suspension rather than termination because Krause had a good record before that incident. But originally, the police chief had hoped for a much shorter suspension of around 10-15 days. A reserve officer was fired by the department for his role in the incident which apparently consisted of writing a false report stating that Rodriguez had assaulted an officer, a "fact" not supported by the videotaped evidence.
Riverside political events
Speaking of elections, beleaguered incumbent, Councilman Steve Adams has come under fire in the Press Enterprise because of a newsletter he had circulated lauding his accomplishments that was paid for by city funds.
If that's not enough, Adams picked his reelection year to launch the first-ever community summit event in his ward. It attracted over 200 people but some people including other candidates criticized it as an overuse of incumbent power.
(excerpt)
This is essentially used to promote Steve Adams," said Roy Saldanha, a Ward 7 candidate. "They could have started it in a nonelection year."
Saldanha said he has filed complaints about the newsletter with the Riverside County district attorney's office and the state Fair Political Practices Commission.
Adams said there was no impropriety with either the newsletter or the summit. The Police Department organized the summit, and the newsletter was to inform residents of city projects, he said.
"We're not going to stop running the city to help someone get elected," Adams said after the summit. "We work every day. This election could wind up in a runoff, and these people still need services."
Adams said in the article that the event was sponsored by the police department and that his election rivals apparently were expecting him to wait until the runoff election was over, to help his constituents.
However, no one has said that. Elected officials serve their constituents in a variety of ways in a variety of venues. That's their job and that's what they get paid a salary to do. But it just seems strange that the first year that his ward enjoys such a big community event, it's just before the election. At the same time his rivals and their supporters criticize him for not being responsive to the ward's residents, he throws them a party.
A civics expert chimed in with an expert opinion on the appropriateness of the forum considering its timing during an election year.
(excerpt)
Douglas Johnson, a redistricting and elections expert at the Rose Institute for State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College, said the summit sounded like a presidential race with an incumbent flying in to dispense gifts.
"Every incumbent tries to play up what they've done for their district," he said by phone. "But to bring in a ton of city staff is unusual and questionable. It's an extreme display of the power of the incumbent."
Johnson added that such tactics were "somewhat of a sign of desperation to take such a risk now."
But that is exactly what Adams is, desperate. His ill-timed efforts to seek higher political office up in Sacramento at mid-term and his lack of roots in the La Sierra neighborhood that he represents have caused him to lose much ground in his reelection bid. He's almost certain to go into a runoff against any one or more of three candidates without his bread-and-butter support and campaign efforts by the Riverside Police Officers' Association that he had enjoyed the last time out. People have said it's because the leadership of the union believed his demeanor was too vulgar. If the demeanor of a politician makes a group of individuals uncomfortable, then that's one reason not to endorse that person if they agree on that as part of the criteria.
At the March 27 meeting, one candidate, Terry Frizzel criticized Adams in her speech and her words were applauded by quite a few of the police officers from the RPOA and the Riverside Police Administrators' Association. What a difference four years makes.
And who knows, maybe two or more of his rivals will move onto the next round of elections without him. It's a wide open race as is the council race in ward five.
Ballots for the mail-in election will be mailed out the first week in May and will be due the first week in June. If any winner of the election fails to get 50% of the vote, then runoff elections for those respective wards will be held in November at the polls.
An editorial in the News-Press in Ft. Myers Florida asked the following question.
Is city ready for review board?
The article pushes the city council to adopt an independent form of civilian oversight to receive and review complaints. Despite an outcry from the city's residents, the city council and mayor had opposed the creation of a board. That icy resolve began to thaw just recently and the editorial board hoped that this was a sign that the city was ready to create a civilian review board. It urged the city's residents to make their voices heard.
(excerpt)
Two council members, Warren Wright and Levon Simms, voted for a review board last October, when the council rejected it 4-2. That balance has presumably shifted with the replacement of one of the majority, Veronica Shoemaker, with Johnny Streets, who favors a board without subpoena power. Mayor Jim Humphrey opposed the board in October but has indicated he realizes there is a problem.
Tom Leonardo, elected to represent the new Ward 6, has said he’s against a board, but we hope he’s open to persuasion.This discussion must be renewed. The issue will not go away, regardless of what happens to this petition drive, or a similar one announced in January by the NAACP.
Critics say that’s because a few police officers have engendered a lot of mistrust for the police in Fort Myers’ black community. The right kind of a review board could help rebuild that trust.Let the council know how you feel.
And this is a community that remains determined to have its civilian review board, as members are circulating a petition to put it on the ballot, according to the Ft. Myers' News-Press.
(excerpt)
"The council has now made itself irrelevant," Thomas said.
If approved by voters, a seven-member review board with subpoena power would be created.
Members would be elected from each of the city's six council wards and one at large, the same as the mayor and members of the city council.It would be the first elected review board in the state, said Howard Simon, executive director of the state ACLU.
The police department spokesperson provided a response which is a fitting choice for the quote of the day.
(excerpt)
"We already have a civilian board elected by the people," said police spokeswoman Shelly Flynn.
"The police department reports to the city council and the city manager who have oversight authority."
No actually, what you've provided is the reason why the residents of your city are demanding a form of civilian oversight over the police department, especially after the most recent officer-involved shooting of a mentally ill man.
The federal consent decree posed on the city of Cincinnati is set to expire next week, and the final report by the monitor stated that the reforms were 90% completed. The decree imposed in 2002 after a patterns and practices investigation conducted by several divisions of the U.S. Justice Department, according to Cincinnati.com.
(excerpt)
In his final report on the Justice Department agreement before it expires Thursday, monitor Saul A. Green declared that "significant accomplishments in police reforms have taken place. ... These reforms are a strong foundation for sustained and continued improvement in policing in Cincinnati."
The Justice Department agreement, signed by the city manager and the attorney general in 2002, dictated reforms in police policy, training and officer discipline in the use of force against suspects.It followed the 2001 shooting of Timothy Thomas in Over-the-Rhine, the 15th police custody death in six years. Since, there have been two.
"I believe that the work under the (agreement) has a direct relation to those numbers," Green said. "There has been less injury and deaths to perpetrators, and fewer injuries to officers."
But the monitor stopped short of a clean record, finding only partial compliance in three areas:
The investigation of citizen complaints by internal affairs officers and the independent Citizen Complaint Authority.
"While the level of thoroughness of these investigations has improved significantly since the beginning of the monitoring process, we determined there were still investigations that did not meet the requirements, " Green wrote.
An Employee Tracking System database to monitor police conduct.
The city has resolved technical problems, he said. "What is crucial, however, is that the data and analysis in the ETS must be used by the CPD supervisors and management to manage risk and liability, and promote civil rights."For example, supervisors have been too quick to dismiss a pattern of unsubstantiated complaints, which could indicate a need for more officer training, he said.
Documentation of use-of-force incidents. The monitor noted a weakness in making sure the subjects of police force - especially by the use of Tasers - were interviewed.
In the Los Angeles Times, there was an article about the reappointment that is expected of William Bratton as police chief of that city's police department.
According to a poll, 53% of city residents supported giving Bratton a second term. However, the support registered of Bratton by members of different racial and ethnic groups varied widely.
(excerpt)
But the survey of 1,600 residents, to be released today, also found views on the chief diverge sharply by race.
While 68% of whites support Bratton's reappointment, fewer than half the minorities surveyed said they favor a second term for the chief: 47% of Korean Americans, 44% of African Americans and 45% of Latinos.
Many minority residents have not yet made up their minds, indicating the chief still has a chance to win their confidence.His reappointment was opposed by 36% of African Americans, 28% of Latinos, 14% of Korean Americans and 10% of whites, with others saying they are undecided.
The Police Commission is to decide during the next month whether to award Bratton a new contract. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other civic leaders support Bratton's reappointment.
"Today only 53%, a slim majority of Angelenos, support Bratton's reappointment as opposed to the overwhelming support expressed by L.A. city leaders," said Fernando Guerra, director of the center.
The survey also showed that while the majority of respondents had confidence in the department's ability to address crime, they had less confidence in its ability to handle misconduct and the ability of civilian review of the department than they did in a survey conducted when Bratton was first hired in 2002.
Bratton said that the department had successfully met most of the terms of the consent decree imposed on it by the Department of Justice in 2001. However, last year the federal judge overseeing its implementation refused to release the involved parties from it and imposed another three-year term on serving it out.
Randall Krouse, the Denver Police Department officer who was caught on surveillance video tasing a man in the neck was suspended for 40 days without pay, according to 7News. Krouse and two other officers were escorting Kenneth Rodriguez to a cell.
(excerpt)
Krouse warned the suspect twice and can be heard on tape asking, "Understand el Taser?"
Krouse then shocked the suspect twice, who fell over onto the bench. He shocked Rodriguez on the neck and on the back.
"I wasn't trying to be racial," Krouse said regarding his "el Taser" comment. "It just came out wrong."
As far as excuses go, that's pretty weak because Krouse for one thing had made the assumption that because Rodriguez was Latino, that he knew Spanish.
The city's independent monitor had recommended a suspension rather than termination because Krause had a good record before that incident. But originally, the police chief had hoped for a much shorter suspension of around 10-15 days. A reserve officer was fired by the department for his role in the incident which apparently consisted of writing a false report stating that Rodriguez had assaulted an officer, a "fact" not supported by the videotaped evidence.
Labels: City elections, civilian review spreads, consent decrees and other adventures
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