Election 2007: The Editorial Board speaks

In case anyone's forgotten or didn't write down the city council candidate endorsements announced by the Press Enterprise's editorial board a while back, it has graciously provided a second opportunity to do so less than one week before the election deadline for mail in ballots.



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Riverside voters should look for candidates who will keep pressing for large-scale civic improvements while fostering a more open temperament on the council. On those grounds, Betro, Bailey, Michalka and Garcia stand out in this election.

I'll leave the endorsements up to the professional election watchers and just say, pick your candidate and cast your vote by the deadline if you live in an odd-numbered ward in Riverside. It's a very important action to take and if you didn't register in time to vote in this election or aren't registered to vote, please take this step. Voting is your right, but it's dependent on whether or not you choose to exercise it. And whoever gets in is the ward representative for the next four years.

The United States Supreme Court decided not to hear an appeal filed to overturn a lower court's decision to give a man convicted of killing two Riverside Police Department officers a new trial, according to an article published in the Press Enterprise.

Officers Dennis Doty and Phil Trust were shot to death about 25 years ago by a paraplegic man they came to arrest on a warrant. The 9th Circuit in the Federal Court of Appeals tossed out that verdict and a death sentence because it decided that he had inadequate counsel during his trial and when the presiding judge realized it, he failed to act.

It's not surprising the case was remanded given that the Supreme Court receives hundreds of petitions to hear cases a year and grants a minuscule number of those that pertain to constitutional questions it wishes to address.



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"The case will be back in a courtroom in Riverside County in due course," said John T. Philipsborn, who represented Daniels on appeal.

"It was a huge wound for the community, and it will reopen that wound," Donna Doty Michalka said Tuesday by phone. She was divorced but said she was on good terms with ex-husband Dennis Doty when he died.

She attended the six-month trial. "It's been on my mind," she said. "I don't relish sitting through it again, along with the former officers and friends."

District Attorney Rod Pacheco said his office will take the case to trial "as soon as possible."



Jackson Chambers Daniels, Jr.'s attorney of choice had been a local one.



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Andrew Roth was Daniels' counsel of choice for his murder trial, but Riverside County Superior Court Judge Gerald F. Schulte ordered Roth off the case after prosecutors said Roth might be called as a witness.

Roth said Tuesday he has not had such a tactic used against him since.

"I think the court made a mistake, granting the district attorney's motion to recuse me, and all the appellate courts agree now," Roth said. "That was a significant factor in the need to reverse the case because of the inadequacy of counsel," he said by phone.






The opening arguments began yesterday in the case of a San Bernardino County Sheriff Department deputy who is facing criminal charges in connection with an officer-involved shooting in January 2006.

Prosecutor Lewis Cope asserted that former Deputy Ivory J. Webb told several different accounts of his actions leading up to and including the shooting of U.S. airman Elio Carrion after a pursuit.



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"It will be up to you to decide whether Mr. Webb should have shot him," Cope said. "He was not under threat, he knew he was not under threat, and he shouldn't have fired."




Defense attorney Michael Schwartz disagreed, saying that Webb feared for his life when he fired the three shots at Carrion.


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"He felt this was it. He wasn't going to make it home tonight, and he had less than two or three seconds to make a decision, by himself," Schwartz said. "The nightmare that has been this case for my client began this night, on Jan. 29th, 2006."




The San Bernardino Sun article this morning provides more details of the beginning of the trial include events depicted on a video recording of the incident which was viewed around the world soon after the shooting happened.

The Los Angeles Times also is covering the shooting trial.


An update is available here, where Schwartz outlines his defense that Carrion was shot because he failed to obey Webb's commands even though the video tape shows him complying with Webb's order to rise before he's shot.


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"(Webb) did not want to shoot," Schwartz said. "He actually showed a lot of restraint that night."

During nearly two hours of opening statements, Schwartz said Webb had described Luis Fernando Escobedo's driving of the Corvette as a "menace."

Escobedo, 22, pleaded guilty in November to drunken driving and evading police. He was sentenced in January to six months in jail.

"They were a menace and a threat to everybody on the road," Schwartz said. "They had to be stopped."



And in a sense, they were, which was why everyone involved is hashing it out inside a courtroom this week in front of a jury.







"It was quite apparent...it all broke down."


---LAPD Chief William Bratton, to the Police Commission




Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Police Chief William Bratton gave a presentation of the status of investigations being done by his department of the May Day incident to the city council according to an article in the Los Angeles Times.

In his report, Bratton blamed what happened on a "breakdown" involving the department's commanders, in what he called an "aberration".

Apparently, the police commission including its president, John Mack was disturbed at what Bratton's report detailed and said that they had serious concerns about the police department's actions during that incident that led to dozens of individuals assembled at MacArthur Park being hit with batons and shot with less lethal ammunition.


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"Our entire commission is deeply, deeply concerned about this incident and [we] want to make sure that we not only have a very thorough, objective, and fair series of investigations, but indeed that we find some solutions to many of the problems and issues that have been raised," Mack said. "And in instances where individuals have been found to have crossed the line and operated outside policy, that they will be held accountable."

Bratton said he too was concerned that proper procedures were not followed in giving the dispersal order, but he said the problems began with poor planning and communications.

"Based on the preliminary findings, I believe that the main reason for the department's controversial actions and large use of force in response to an environment of rock and bottle assaults on our officers by a small group of agitators … was quite simply a command and control breakdown," Bratton said.

"It began at the planning stages and dominoed throughout the event itself."






Still unanswered was which officer actually made the decision to "disperse" the entire park rather than a smaller section of it because there was a captain and a commander onscene, but the order to shoot less lethal munitions was actually given by a commander standing over a block away from the park. Another department representative present during the briefing also said that the actual order to disperse given by a hovering helicopter only in English to a crowd that was predominantly Spanish speaking was in itself, illegal.

Bratton said that Commander Louis Gray, who had been involved in another controversial handling of a demonstration in 2000, issued the order of his superior, Deputy Chief Cayler "Lee" Carter. Carter himself never issued a single order even after his officers were hitting people including media representatives with their batons and shooting them with less lethal munitions.

Bratton admitted that he was at a loss to explain why Carter, who was soon demoted from his rank, failed to take any action whatsoever.



The incident triggered dozens of citizen complaints and at least four investigations by federal and local agencies. Several civil law suits have also been filed in relation to the injuries suffered by several media representatives including one reporter who suffered a broken wrist.


Community activists responded to the report in an updated article by the Los Angeles Times and criticized it as being inadequate.




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Council members, including Ed Reyes, who represents the MacArthur Park area, said Bratton's report spent too much time discussing "agitators" throwing bottles but not enough on who was responsible for force by officers "that crossed the line."

"I'm disconcerted," Reyes said. "The issue of accountability needs to be addressed more. If we can't show accountability, how can we regain the public's confidence?"

Peter Bibring, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said he was disturbed at how far short the report fell.

"We were promised an open and thorough investigation, but what was shown had critical facts omitted," he said. "It made no mention why thousands of peaceful participants were ordered to leave the park and were made the subject of police use of force."





A retired police officer in San Luis Obispo who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder had engaged in a shootout with deputies from the local sheriff's department and was later found not guilty by reason of insanity. This week, he was released from a mental hospital.




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"This is a guy who was a police officer and a lawyer and lived his whole life without getting in trouble until his medications were modified by this doctor. Anybody with this condition, bipolar, has to be on medication," defense attorney Robert Sanger said.