From Acorns to Oaks: Reviews and recommendations

The Press Enterprise's editorial board weighed in on the recent controversy involving statements made at a recent candidate forum involving Ward One candidates. The board titled their editorial, "Vile campaigning".

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Name-calling and innuendo distract from discussions of vital city issues. Pepper said she didn't intend to slur Betro's Italian heritage. She merely wanted to comment on Betro's governing style. Comparing a city official to a murderer and a tyrant is no more excusable than smearing the man's ethnicity.

Such rancor reflects poorly on the city. It is wonderful that people are passionate about city affairs. But aspirants to city government should channel their passion into constructive solutions and debate. Slurring opponents is simply low politics.



The board raises a good point about not using references to dictators like Mussolini, period, but what's strange about its stance is that it's based on information included in a second article written on the incident. If you remember, when Press Enterprise writer Sandra Stokley wrote this article on the forum, there was no mention of the controversial incident at all. It was only in her second article written on April 27 where it was raised as a serious issue.

It's not clear why there was a delay in mentioning an incident that involved a sitting councilman storming out of a meeting amidst allegations of cultural slurs. It might have taken place after the reporter left the forum if she had left early. If she was present, she may not have considered it newsworthy at the time. It's not clear what would have then happened to change her mind and decide it was an issue worth reporting on after all though it's most probable that some intensive lobbying took place from some corner.

Stokley is an experienced reporter with the Press Enterprise who usually covers the Jurupa Valley/Rubidoux area and she's very good at her job.

The Press Enterprise has lost more than a few of its veteran reporters who apparently have departed in disagreement with how the current owner, Belo Enterprises, does business. Mike Kataoka who covered courts, Lisa O'neill Hill who covered police issues and most recently, a newer reporter, Joan Osterwalder, who covered the Riverside City Council meetings.

The editorial board has not published a list of the candidates it intends to endorse in the city council election that has a mail in deadline in June, but it's probable that for Ward One, that candidate will be Betro.





Spokane, Washington may be getting an ombudsman to help restore the faith of its residents in their police review commission, according to an article in the Spokeman Review. This proposal was recommended by consultant, Sam Pailca, who stated in a report that the ombudsman should be appointed by the city's mayor and should report to him.


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The Spokane Police Department is generally trusted and supported, but citizens clearly want stronger external oversight that's independent from the police department, the report notes. It says the Office of Independent Police Ombudsman should:

•Serve as an alternative forum for citizen complaints.

Under the current system, a citizen can only file a "request for review" of a complaint with the seven-member Citizen's Review Commission if the police chief has not disciplined an accused officer. That restriction prevented the commission from reviewing a controversial neighborhood incident last year involving an off-duty police officer that Chief Kirkpatrick had asked it to review.

"Chief Kirkpatrick's quest for meaningful review and openness was stymied by the commission's narrow jurisdiction," the report notes.

•Have a dedicated budget separate from the Spokane Police Department. The annual budget for a similar ombudsman's office in Boise is currently $269,000 a year, including staff investigators.

•Have the power to actively monitor open investigations _ additional clout the current review commission lacks.

The ombudsman should either conduct simultaneous investigations or direct the police department's internal affairs investigations. It should have unimpeded access to all case information. "Subpoena power is of the utmost importance" for those investigations, the report says.

•Review police department policies and recommend changes. This will allow the oversight officer to look at police "patterns and practices," not merely individual cases.

•Conduct special inquiries.

•Publicly report complaint investigation statistics and its own activities. The closed-door approach in the current oversight system "is not a good match for the engaged citizenry of Spokane," the report notes.

The report also recommends the eventual establishment of a Citizens' Advisory Board to help the ombudsman with community education and outreach.



The article stated that it was clear that the residents of Spokane whose input was received wanted a stronger form of external oversight. Whether that is what they will be getting remains to be seen. For the most part, cities and counties try to implement the weakest and least independent form of oversight that they can to appease their law enforcement agencies and to protect themselves from exposure to civil liability in the form of law suits.

That happened in Riverside, California in 1999 and 2000 when the Mayor's Use of Force Panel first recommended that a civilian review board be installed. An ad hoc committee was created which included city council members, use of force panel members, Human Relations Commission members and one representative each from the Riverside Police Officers' Association and a community organization. This committee review models from Berkeley, Long Beach, San Diego County and San Jose.

What came out of the committee by a narrow margin was the Berkeley model. However, what came out of the city council was the much weaker Long Beach model, after then Councilwoman Joy Defanbaugh(who wasn't on the panel) received a copy of that rejected model from one or more of the city council members on the panel even though that model was not included in the official report back to the city council. Likely it was either former council members Maureen Kane and/or Laura Pearson. The possible reasons why either or both might have done so was that Kane was worried about her reelection prospects in 2001(where she lost to Frank Schiavone) and Pearson had been endorsed for her reelection by the Riverside Police Officers' Association.

So basically, the city council had rejected its own ad hoc committee's recommendation and implemented a weaker form of civilian review. Which was characteristic of that city council, because that body had put together an ad hoc committee originally to head off a possible ballot initiative which had been gathering signatures that would have called for a Berkeley model of civilian oversight. The city council only implemented some form of civilian review because the community called for it. The city council ultimately implemented a weak form of civilian review because the city's interests called for that.

Still, from the first day it opened shop, the Community Police Review Commission was restrained by the city to even fulfill the powers which were dictated first by ordinance and later by the city's charter. The commission wound up being included in the charter because of the political maneuvering being done by members of the city council who were financially backed by the RPOA.

Not too long ago, GASS quartet member Ed Adkison cast the blame at GASS castoff Art Gage for catalyzing the action that put the CPRC in the charter out of the city council's easy reach.

Of course, while city residents were breathing a sigh of relief that the CPRC finally would be protected from political attacks by city council members, all of whom represented wards where the measure to put the CPRC in the charter had received a majority vote, they should have instead been preparing for the city to intensify its efforts, especially when the officer-involved shootings of 2006 took place and civil litigation in connection with four incustody deaths began to be filed in both federal and state court against the city.

It's been 18 months since the city hired City Manager Brad Hudson, who entrusted the care of the CPRC and the other city departments to his assistant city manager, Tom DeSantis. At this point in time, the CPRC has lost its executive director, five commissioners have resigned and the CPRC has had its investigations into officer-involved shootings suspended at least once. It's become the focus of secret meetings and has held secret elections which became a lightning rod for controversy after actions taken by the city manager's office and the city attorney's office.

At last week's meeting, one of the commissioners who was appointed chair of one of the standing subcommittees asked for a ruling by City Attorney Gregory Priamos to determine whether or not that committee has to inform the public whenever it is meeting. Legally speaking, Priamos is obligated under the state's Brown Act to tell him, yes you do.

But then, last week's meeting was interesting in that it was being evaluated by a consultant hired by the city to prepare a list of recommendations on improvements to the CPRC. The commissioners felt like they were being graded in a sense and it showed in their behavior which deviated somewhat from their earlier meetings. That's natural in the sense that when individuals feel like they are the subject of a qualitative process like an analysis or an audit, they tend to wonder how they stack up on a quantitative scale.

That was apparent when the same consultant, Joe Brann, delivered his first quarterly report to the city council about the police department's implementation of its strategic plan. As you know, there were many problems followed by some improvement. Brann was fairly specific when discussing the areas of his concern and listed them. However, it didn't take long before a city council member, in this case Gage, asked for a quantitative evaluation, in the form of a letter grade. He and the council members who didn't ask received one with an explanation but it's interesting that the bottom line appeared to be to them, how they stacked up rather than what was going on with the police department and what to do about it.

Still, the CPRC especially its chair, Brian Pearcy, spent the entire meeting either bumping down public comment to the end(a first for this body) or not taking it when both the established procedures and the laws required it, i.e. during the hearing of discussion items. This happened because since Pearcy has been chair, the process for handling discussion items during the meeting had changed. The only clue of why that may be was some mention of memos about how meetings would be conducted that came from an unspecified office. How many guesses are needed to determine which one?

Previously, it was that the commission discussed the item first, then took public comment, then took a vote on a motion. However, more recently the commission instead has had its discussion and then moved directly to the vote, and if it has allowed public comment, it hasn't been until after the vote was taken. It's likely that Pearcy bypassed public comment at the last meeting because he was in a hurry to attend another meeting and in fact did leave early. It's also probable that public comment was bypassed because Pearcy and other commissioners felt like they were under a microscope and that it was important to control as much of the meeting's discussion as possible to make a good impression which would be difficult to do if public comment was added to the mix. That's what often happens in these situations and is again, part of human nature.

But Priamos is entrusted by his employers, the city council, to provide Brown Act training to the members of all the city's boards and commissions. Given the recent high turnover on the CPRC, he's obviously fallen behind given that many of the problems with the Brown Act in this meeting involved newer commissioners.

Pearcy eventually left this meeting and then Vice-Chair Sheri Corral took over the meeting and she didn't seem to be as nervous as Pearcy had been. She immediately reopened public participation.

Interestingly enough, Priamos and DeSantis chose to not attend this meeting, the first time either has not been in attendance since those private meetings both attended that were held at City Hall in December. Perhaps they didn't want to send a bad impression either?


Right now as things stand, it appears that the city government has the CPRC that it wants. It also appears that the city government now has the CPRC that it needs. Whether that changes in the future remains to be seen. The future remains unwritten.


In Spokane, the Spokeman Review's editorial board supported the hiring of an ombudsman though it did raise some concerns about the implementation.


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But merely creating the position isn't enough. The city would have to hire someone with the courage to inquire without fear or favor and the curiosity to pursue the best practices in law enforcement.

One of the keys to the Boise system is that Murphy has become an expert. We suspect that if Spokane already had such a position, the Police Department wouldn't be sideways with the courts on its strip-search policy. Or, in this case, its lack of one.

The cost of the position is a legitimate concern. The annual budget for the Boise office is $269,000. But if the city of Spokane were to take on a learn-from-its mistakes posture, it could save money on all those countersuits it files against residents with legitimate legal cases.

It's too late for the city to reject oversight and say, "Trust us." This position, or something like it, is the only credible answer.



It's interesting that the editorial board reads the community as being skeptical of gifts given to it by its city officials, especially in its stance against the city's filing of SLAPP suits against complainants. Trust isn't something that's just given, it's earned.





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