Election 2006: Adams' antics?

The Press Enterprise wrote an article about the Riverside Police Officers' Association's decision not to reendorse Councilman Steve Adams, himself a former police officer, for the Ward Seven election.

This contrasts with the election only four years ago, when the RPOA not only endorsed Adams but its members did much of his door to door campaigning for him. However, this time around, the RPOA's Political Action Committee chair said, it wasn't going down that road again.


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"We were the ones that led the charge for Steve when he was elected four years ago. We are still waiting for him to lead the charge on one thing for us," the union's political action committee chairman, Don Miskulin, said by phone.

So what changed the RPOA's mind? Two things, really or actually two issues.

The long, hot summer of 2006

Number one on the list, was his failure to advocate on their behalf during labor negotiations that took place during the long, hot summer last year when six out of six bargaining units said that they had experienced the worst contract negotiations in recent history. Several unions including the RPOA and its fellow police association, the Riverside Police Administrators' Association filed civil litigation against the city in Riverside County Superior Court. These two unions, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the SEIU's General Unit also made appearances at city council meetings and all four filled the chambers with their members. Why were they there? Because all the labor unions who are comprised of this city's employees who are not "at will" reported that they were treated unfairly during negotiations and that the city did not exercise good faith when the parties were sitting at the bargaining table.

At least three labor union heads alleged that their members were retaliated against for their involvement in the labor negotiations or for speaking out at the issue during public meetings.

In the end, the city council was so agitated by what the RPOA did last September that one of its members(who is currently endorsed by the RPOA) Councilman Dom Betro attended the Group's meeting at the Coffee Depot and complained about how community leaders had spoken in support of the RPOA on that occasion.

Not long after the appearances at city council meetings, all six labor unions representing city employees signed their new contracts with the city. Still, it's election time now and the memories of the long, hot summer are clearly coming into play in terms of endorsement decisions.

"At will" employees in the police department?

Then there was the situation that erupted several months ago when the RPOA and the RPAA received wind that at least two management positions in the department were being converted to being "at will" and their contracts were being signed off by the city manager's office. Representatives of both organizations congregated at City Hall and spoke out at a city council meeting. Before that, the item authorizing these changes and the accompanying supplementary appropriations of salaries and fringe benefits had been pulled off of the agenda. Three days after that, Councilman Frank Schiavone said he had returned from a vacation in Mexico to an onslaught of phone calls and messages about the situation.

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The Riverside Police Officers Association, however, was disappointed that Adams did not stand up for them during contract negotiations when they felt that city officials were bargaining in bad faith, Miskulin said.

They also say Adams should have stopped a recent controversy when two police captains were promoted to higher positions with "at will" contracts, meaning they could be fired at anytime.

"Steve should have been the one who stood up and pounded on the desk, saying, 'This is wrong,' " Miskulin said.

Instead, it was Councilman Frank Schiavone who put a stop to it, he said.

It apparently was Schiavone who addressed the situation, albeit three days after the item was withdrawn. He had called City Attorney Gregory Priamos at 9 p.m. on the Sunday night preceding the meeting and asked for an explanation. He said he also asked Priamos if what the city council was essentially doing was approving money for employment positions which did not exist. Priamos said yes, according to Schiavone.

When I asked Schiavone who the people were who had called him, he did mention Adams as one of them.

More information on that situation is here.


What also happened according to RPOA representatives was that Adams was misrepresenting the RPOA's current stance on his candidacy on the campaign trail. If that's true, then that's the most troubling thing. The RPOA's members said that he was handing out old campaign brochures listing the RPOA's past endorsement of him. Old signs listing that as well have also apparently appeared in Ward Seven as well.


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"This is the kind of thing we don't appreciate," Riverside Police Officers Association President Ken Tutwiler said, clutching one of the campaign brochures. "This is wrong."

Adams said he brought the old brochures to show voters at the forum that he kept promises made during the last campaign.

"That was absolutely appropriate. That was the facts," he said. "I didn't say they were endorsing me now."




But Adams should be handing out new campaign brochures not old ones. But wait, he did that not too long ago at the city's expense and many residents in his ward complained about it.

The RPAA(comprised of lieutenants and above) which recently registered its PAC(no doubt in response to the kind of year that it had) has joined the RPOA in its endorsement this time around for veterinarian, Roy Saldanha.

As for Adams? Well, he's still being endorsed by the Riverside Fire Fighters' Association which has endorsed all the incumbents for reelection and the Greater Chamber of Commerce PAC which is well, endorsing all those pushing the Riverside Renaissance on the rest of us. Oh, and Schiavone's endorsing him too.




More news on the May Day incident where Los Angeles Police Department officers rushed MacArthur Park and hit people with batons and fired less lethal munitions at them. According to the Los Angeles Times article this morning, the department had reduced the number of police officers it had stationed at the rally.


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Three platoons of the highly trained Metro Division, which were originally set to be at MacArthur Park for the end of the immigration march and rally, instead were sent home or to other assignments, including one in South Los Angeles, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it involves ongoing investigations. (The size of a platoon varies, but sources estimated that the total number of officers moved were 50 to 80.)

The redeployments occurred shortly before a group of agitators began throwing bottles and other debris at the remaining officers. As crowds grew and tensions rose, officers came under attack, sources said, and commanders scrambled to get some of the departed officers back.




Some arrived just as the confrontation began. The sources said it was not clear why commanders ordered the platoons to depart.


Unnamed sources from the department also said that the commander in charge and his or her supervisor were no where to be seen when the incident occurred. Whether having more officers would have alleviated the situation or simply escalated it further is a question that couldn't be answered. But where were the supervisors, especially the one who made the decision to broadcast an order to disperse in English only from a hovering helicopter? And why did the officers decided to rush the park when if there was violence being done towards them, it was by another group of individuals away from the park?

Chief William Bratton continued to criticize his officers' actions towards the media but also against people relaxing in the park who had no warning that they were going to be running in terror from those hired to protect and serve them only minutes later.

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On Thursday, Bratton offered a more detailed and pointed critique of the police actions, particularly those involving Telemundo anchor Pedro Sevcec, who was broadcasting from under a canopy. He was pushed to the ground while on live television as police shoved through.

"Here you have a tent clearly [for the] news media," Bratton said. The anchor "wears a suit and tie and there is clearly cameras … and the knocking over of cameras in the tent — that behavior is not under any circumstances justified."

He also said he was troubled by reports that police used force on women and children who had gone to the park to play.

"The idea that officers would be firing — some of these devices send out five or six projectiles with one shot — that is a concern," Bratton said.

As is the fact that many of the injuries caused by batons and less lethal munitions were to areas of the body that most police officers are informed as part of their training could cause serious even lethal injuries, i.e. the head and the neck.

Multiple investigations including one by the FBI continue. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa cut his trip to Central America short in order to come home and deal with the crisis that occurred the moment he left town, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Mayor returns home to deal with crisis

Villaraigosa had been left with the inenviable task of explaining an incident that he had known nothing about until he got off of the plane in several different countries and was asked by the media there to respond to reports that the LAPD's officers had attacked men, women and children in a park in Los Angeles.

He will be addressing the media from City Hall today at 3 p.m.

Marc Cooper, of the Nation wrote a column on the actions by the LAPD.


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NO DOUBT many of the immigrants who witnessed the violent conclusion of Tuesday's rally in MacArthur Park thought it was deja vu all over again. Tear gas, gunfire and clubbings by unaccountable and poorly trained police have all been sadly common realities in the day-to-day political rough-and-tumble south of the border.

But the uniformed forces that charged into the MacArthur Park rally with clubs a-swinging and firing more than 200 rounds of foam bullets were hardly a strongman's brutish carabineros. These were, instead, the highly trained and well-educated officers of Chief William J. Bratton's LAPD.

With Bratton's training academy now using the mistakes of the past as teaching points, and with the department leadership having demonstrated an ongoing commitment to remolding the once-notorious traditional internal culture of the LAPD, a return to what seems like the bad old days of the Daryl Gates era just wasn't supposed to happen.

Indeed, during last year's pro-immigration-reform marches — several times the magnitude of this week's rallies — the LAPD maintained a relaxed and laid-back posture. Most of the rank-and-file and command staff I interviewed during those events seemed to be downright happy with their assignment. Whatever preparations the LAPD had made to suppress any violent outbreaks were well hidden.

All of this made Tuesday's high-profile police presence and the heavy-handed response even more baffling and unexpected.



Cooper goes on to detail the behavior caught on some of the same video cameras that were later slammed to the ground when police officers hit reporters with their batons or shot at them with their less lethal shotguns providing them with a first-hand experience at what they have covered at previous demonstrations in Los Angeles.

Another Los Angeles Times article depicts the difference a year made in the coverage of the May Day event by Fox news affiliates in Los Angeles.


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The May Day march, though, is a perfect storm of ratings and relevance for the local news — an event of social import with deep-seated undertones of class and ethnic conflict that don't normally get a contextual airing amid the typical soup of info-tainment.

Last year's inaugural march and demonstrations were massive, peaceful and impressive, marred on TV only by Valdez's sputtering, somewhat out-of-body tête-à-tête with KFI-AM provocateurs John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, who had been ridiculing the idea that Latinos had the city at a standstill. Valdez argued back that "you took this country, you killed people in order to take this country for yourself."

Those comments got Valdez in hot water, but it was, even though not journalistic, a window into the city's divide about the role of illegal immigrants in the workforce. A year later, many more of these people worked, and turnout for the May Day march was much smaller.

It left the local news, like the cops, itchy and overprepared. Then came the apparent small minority of bottle-throwers who touched off another chapter in the history of L.A. police brutality.

Various journalists were roughed up, but only Fox's Gonzalez made YouTube.com, the reporter screaming "You can't do that!" as she was shoved by a cop. The melee was so newsworthy, it pushed other stories deeper into Fox 11's newscast Wednesday night. That would be Britney in concert at the Anaheim House of Blues and the "undercover report" on the emo music scene "sweeping the nation."


Letters on the incident can be found here.