Making the Grade: Needs improvement

Councilman Art Gage posed a question to a consultant hired by the city by asking him to play the professor and assign Riverside a grade when it came to the police department's implementation of its five-year Strategic Plan.

The city received a C- for the latter half of 2006, but a B+ for progress made during the past several months, the consultant explained.

I find it interesting that when people get news, whether it's good or bad or both, they always ask for it to be quantified either on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 to 100 or better yet, assigned a letter grade, as if they were still in school again.

Yet, it's difficult or even impossible in my opinion to take what's essentially a qualitative process and quantify it. But there's something about numerical scores and letter grades that make people feel more comfortable, a dose of sugar to go with the bitter.

There was a bit of both during the "quarterly" report given by consultant Joe Brann and Police Chief Russ Leach. The word, quarterly is in quotes because although it had been intended by the council for the police department and Brann to provide reports every three months, that's not what happened. Missteps by the city manager's office in carrying out an order and the city council's failure as a body to hold its direct employee accountable for doing just that caused a huge delay in the implementation of the promises given by the city council at a strategic plan workshop on March 28, 2006.

The problems with both the city manager's office and the city council tied in closely on a time line with problems in the police department particularly its management level that were noted in Brann's report. When these problems erupted within the city manager's office and the city council beginning last summer, community leaders were slow to act in part because the city of Riverside seems to have a population drop every August because of vacations. Also, because the department's been so insulated from the public and it's almost loathe at time for people to know if there are problems, it's hard for the public to know what's going on until problems get to the point where they are manifested in operations by the department which impact the city's residents. The important thing is that it's crucial to address these issues before they get to that point.

Brann said in his presentation that in what he called the "post-stipulated judgment era" there was a bit of a relief factor meaning that after five years of a lot of work done during tight supervision from an outside agency, the police department relaxed its efforts.


"It's not uncommon," Brann said.


And indeed, the city of Pittsburgh which was released from a federal consent decree several years ago is experiencing similar issues. It's not clear whether Walkill, New York which was placed under a state decree one week after Riverside was, has also had to address this issue.

Los Angeles hasn't even completed its decree and is already having problems, but it's hard to tell where the newer problems begin and its older issues end in that case.

It's kind of like at the end of the school year spent working in the classroom when students see the light at the end of the tunnel called summer vacation and go into the mode that it's time to do something else. Or do nothing at all. And in the news coverage of the end of the stipulated judgment in March 2006, there was some of that attitude expressed by officers interviewed by the Press Enterprise that in a sense a yoke had been lifted off of its neck. That's not much different than opinions expressed by police officers in a research paper that was conducted on the post-consent decree era of the city of Pittsburgh.

That attitude was also expressed by city officials who also patted themselves on the back for the great job they did, including at the strategic plan workshop. It was the largest display of self-congratulatory behavior seen outside of an election year.

But once oversight has been lifted by an outside agency, what do you do next? How do you move forward? How do you remind mindful of where you've come from, which you need to be to avoid the repetition of destructive patterns?

Those were issues that had been expressed by community members as a concern and more quietly by police officers, and that was why the city council had voted 7-0 to take steps to keep some framework of accountability and oversight going. Not that this is what happened right away, but at least on that particular day that had been the plan.

And it makes sense to do this, to have a plan in place to keep a reform process on track. If progress is made and goals are met in a consent decree or stipulated judgment, then reduce the oversight to a lower level to assist and audit the department as it moves on to the next stage in its development during the years after a federal or state agency cuts its strings, which are probably as critical and certainly more difficult to navigate through than the periods which preceded this stage. Because the legislation both at the federal and state levels that created the ability to implement this type of reform process is still fairly new, this process is still a bit experimental.

At the management level in the police department, there was some progress being made in some areas according to the report, but not in others and it apparently depended too much on whether or not individual people in those positions were embracing the responsibilities particularly those involving the implementation of the strategic plan. When things were done that indicated progress such as "meaningful activity", they weren't always documented.

In some cases, activity had been mistaken for results. Part of that problem Brann attributed to issues with law enforcement organizations on a larger scale. But some of these noted trends in the department aren't particularly new ones for it to address if you remember the history of Riverside.

As part of that or as the end result, the momentum which had been moving the department forward had been lost in the process of the last six months of last year.

That assessment should have come to no surprise to anyone, but the people in the dais appeared surprised and somewhat dismayed. You only get out of something what you are willing to put into it and more importantly what you actually invest in it. That's the case here as with most situations and that's what has been lacking both from the dais and from city management in the past before the stipulated judgment and now apparently after it as well.

The words were promising on certain occasions when everyone wants to look good, but the actions have not been there.

And it's not just money, although some police representatives and community leaders have said that the funding that they received to buy new equipment and create staffing positions has dried up with the end of the stipulated judgment and it's more difficult to fund things now especially in the era of Riverside Renaissance.

Contract negotiations involving all three bargaining units which represent employees of the police department reflected that change in attitude as well. But then the stipulated judgment had provided important negotiating tools for the employment unions to use because the document honored their bargaining rights, tools that were gone. Though the city-wide climate in the employment ranks that is a result of the hiring of both City Manager Brad Hudson and Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis played at least as large a role in this area.


And both the sworn division as well as the civilian division, which is in the midst of a hiring freeze, of the police department are unhappy about that.

So while money is important, it's also personal attention and interest by the city council to bring discussions on issues faced by the department to its meetings including those held by subcommittees.

What's also been going on in the employment ranks both last summer and then more recently, with the "at will" employment situation a few weeks ago. There's a strong sense in the police department that DeSantis is trying to run its operations which mirrors concerns and complaints raised by other departments in this city.

However for the police department, things started to improve including in the areas of management and in the implementation of the strategic plan in the early months of 2007. About the same time the city actually had put into place the plan that it had promised nearly a year ago.


"It's in a much better place than it was six months ago," Brann said.



A bit of that was evident in Leach's presentation on what actually did happen in the past six months, when he produced a much better, informative and detailed presentation than he gave before the city council last October.

Not that last October's update didn't provide any information but there was a dearth of information provided for many of the goals and objectives of the strategic plan, most notably in the areas of personnel and training. Not a peep had been said on objective 1.5 of the strategic plan which was one of the backbones of last night's presentation and nothing was said about new training programs including that which will address mental health intervention, until it was brought up through comments and questions by the city officials or members of the public. I raised that issue and was duly chastised by the governing body and other individuals.

A police department's ultimate goal is to as was said by several individuals, fight crimes. However, without paying attention to personnel, without paying attention to training especially the creation of new training to address new challenges and without paying attention to continued policy and procedure development, implementation and enforcement, you will not have the tools to carry out your primary objectives. You need a foundation to build your house or it will fall down. If there are cracks in the police department's foundation or it's not built properly then soon enough, problems will manifest themselves as they have many times before. What is history, if not to learn from?


Brann's presentation was good, and it was honest and his comments and criticisms were constructive and well pointed. The city council seemed taken aback to the point where it was almost funny or it would have been if it wasn't a serious issue. Even though months ago, city officials had said they wanted to retain Brann to report an honest assessment of the police department, but still, they appeared a bit dismayed at what he said. As if they hadn't seen some of the criticism coming and they should have if they'd been paying attention to what's been going on outside the Riverside Renaissance Plan.

But they quickly recovered and several of those sitting on the dais who are up for reelection this year began giving campaign speeches. Especially Councilman Steve Adams who made a lot of comments about the police officers, perhaps to send a message to the union heads in the audience that he's not pleased they opted not to endorse him. Some people have said that Adams' demeanor had a lot to do with that decision.

But Adams continued on which caused some consternation in the audience.

Councilwoman Nancy Hart brought up the issue of mental health training being created and implemented by the police department, an issue which had come to the public safety committee the previous day.

Dom Betro, who represents the first ward also praised himself and his colleagues.



"This council has remained fully involved," Betro said.



But Betro also addressed the issue of transition from an external form of oversight to an internalized one, a process that obviously has been a rocky one for the police department particularly those at its highest levels. But no, the city council as a body hasn't been involved nor has it paying attention if the news related last night is so surprising to its members.

Councilman Art Gage who had asked to be assigned a grade asked how the police department could receive an A+ and one obvious answer to that question is for all those with a stake in the process to remain engaged and vigilant.

Former State Attorney General Bill Lockyer said time and time again that the reason why he took sanctions against the city of Riverside and its police department was because all attempts to reform in the past never took root and flourished. Always, they withered up and the situation returned to what had existed before those efforts had been made. The stipulated judgment was what some called an extreme measure to turn that historic tide and to an extent it did.

However, it's still only a tool for change, it's not long in duration and it's only going to prove to be as effective as what's done after its dissolution. That applies to Riverside, and it applies to the other cities and counties that have faced or are facing similar reform mandates as well. The past year, the city started to see some of those older patterns reassert themselves for whatever reason. Hopefully, the city government and the police department will take what it learned last night and the lesson of last year to keep moving in a better direction so that past doesn't become prologue once again. That is what needs to happen to ensure that the city is not revisited by its past mistakes.

But that means that the city government can't take the great concern it expressed yesterday and then the next day, it's business as usual. Put the department back on the shelf to gather dust.

The city council chambers was crowded with police officers, city staff members and community members who sat and listened to a two-part presentation on the progress of the police department and its implementation of the Strategic Plan during the past year.

But what was noticeable was that several community leaders were absent, as both the NAACP's local chapter and the Eastside Think Tank went unrepresented. They should have been out to bear witness to the report and advocate for progress with the implementation of the strategic plan and holding the city's feet to the fire on this important process. They should have been here as surely as they have been to city council speaking out on the other issues such as the "at will" situation several weeks ago.

That troubling situation manifested by city management with the benign neglect of the city council received the questioning and examination that it needed to, as the check and balance system that Lockyer had also referred to did just that. But the process and progress of the implementation of the strategic plan deserved and still deserves the same attention and focus, because for one reason, problems in both of these areas are so interconnecting and in a large sense, stemming from a common source that it's really almost difficult to separate the two.

On the department's side, both union heads were in attendance which was a good thing to see. That hasn't always been the case in the past. Quite a few of the command staff was there including the not-often-seen Deputy Chief Dave Dominguez.

Brann said in his report that the next two quarters were crucial and they are. It remains to be seen if the police department and the city will continue to push for that improvement that they need to get on track and stay on track. It's up to the community and its leaders to hold them to it and be vigilent.

Words are great, but actions are what speak louder and they are what ultimately will make a difference in terms what kind of police department is the end result of the reform process. The city government has to back up their words with actions and not just only during election years because a healthy department needs to be so during every year, not just those that enjoy election cycles.