Election 2007: We are the Borg, no the blogs.

"We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile. We are the Borg."

-- The Borg ("The Best of Both Worlds", Star Trek: The Next Generation)






I sent an email to Press Enterprise Michelle De Armond yesterday because in part, I believed that the issues she addressed were very important. I did believe that a wider net should have been cast in terms of the impact that actions like stealing and vandalizing signs as well as sending "attack" emails have because these actions have impacted other candidates besides incumbent councilman, Dom Betro and other areas of the city besides Ward One.

In fact, if you look or listen to other sources besides the daily newspaper, you will find that the so-called ruckus that is going on in Ward One is apparently mild in comparison to what's been going on for example in the Ward Five contest and even in Ward Three.

Donna Doty-Michalka who is running in Ward Five against three other candidates to fill the seat being vacated by departing councilman, Ed Adkison has probably faced the worst of it. But there's been scant coverage in the Press Enterprise about it, certainly nothing in comparison to the reams of space spent on Betro's woes. Maybe that's partly because Doty-Michalka(who incidentally according to the Press Enterprise's own archives has used that name since at least 1994) responds to it differently than the Betro camp, which is just to focus on her campaign and not rely on the media to fight her battles for her.

The allegations posted about Michalka have included that there's a copy of a microfiche of her divorce records being circulated, details about a divorce that took place decades ago(which is why it's only available on microfiche) and even insinuations about an extramarital affair, again decades ago. Interestingly enough, while there appears to be some comments circulating on her personal life, there's not nearly as much on her political positions regarding the variety of issues impacting Riverside at this time. And that's actually what the voters are looking for when deciding when to cast their votes. Many of those sitting on the fence in Ward Five along with other voters are probably very much turned off by insinuations about Michalka like the ones that have been made but they do want to know where she stands on their issues.

Questions have been raised about her association with Altura Credit Union and its relationship with the city as well as her membership in the Greater Chamber of Commerce, and how both impact her stance on the issues of redevelopment and Eminent Domain. These issues are more relevant to her campaign.


Here would be some other questions to start with.


Where does Michalka stand on the issues of the Riverside Renaissance, redevelopment and eminent domain? Where does she stand on infrastructure issues like public safety, streets and roads and public utilities? Where does she stand on public input at city council meetings? What role does she think the city manager's office should play in how it oversees the various city departments? What are her opinions on making Riverside a more environmentally clean city?

And then there's that issue that seems to supersede all others, which is traffic, traffic and more traffic.


Another candidate, William "Rusty" Bailey has been hard hit with similar allegations about his military status and the downward step that some perceive that he took after graduating from West Point Academy years ago.

A cousin of mine graduated from West Point Academy some years back and he's only an engineer with the United States military on a project. Not a general, not a CEO of a corporation and not a professional consultant. He was called up for deployment as part of his reserve status and was willing to go, but his current assignment precluded him from being deployed. It also prevents him from seeing his family very much as his work place is thousands of miles away from them.


There's nothing wrong with a West Point Academy graduate being an engineer or a social science school teacher. These are two necessary professions and it seems that teaching gets a lot less status than it deserves, given that it's one of the most difficult and valuable professions out there.

If there's concern about Bailey, it should be more along the lines of his professional stint with Riverside County's economic development agency and the decision made by four council members and the mayor to endorse him before he had even filed his candidate papers. Is it a vote of confidence for Bailey, or a vote against Councilman Art Gage? And did the other city officials back Bailey because he may have once worked for City Manager Brad Hudson?



Also, the same questions could be asked of his political stances as for Michalka. At the end of the day, it's how these questions are answered that is most important for most of the city's voters. What role will they and the decisions they make play in the future of Riverside?

As for being a cheerleader for either of these candidates, I probably wouldn't vote for either of them, based on what I've learned about their positions on several issues. And that is a decision based on their political positions not insinuations about their personal lives.




"We have engaged...the Borg"

-- Picard (The Best of Both Worlds I)




De Armond's article was interesting if somewhat focused at being for Betro and against Save-Riverside, but what piqued my interest further was a statement that she made that appeared to call out Ward One candidate Letitia Pepper for not calling off the "attacks" of the "local" bloggers.

It would have made more sense if De Armond, given her decision to make such a statement, would have asked the same of all the other candidates running for election because the issues she raised in her article impact other areas of the city besides the downtown. But it appears that not even the other candidates running in the Ward One election were held to the same standard as was Pepper because neither Michael Gardner or Derek Thesier were asked to call off the "attacks" of the "local bloggers".

As a "local blogger" who has written on the city elections, I didn't know that I was a member of some consortium of blogs apparently under the control of Pepper. I wasn't aware such a consortium of blogs existed and De Armond didn't really elaborate much on that statement she had made in her own words, not those that were attributed to any of the interview subjects in her article.

I was reminded of the alien species, the Borg, who made their debut in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the best of the franchise. They were supposed to be the worst villains ever faced by the best Enterprise crew, but instead they were unintentionally funny and didn't look like they could stand up to a Ferengi, the other newly created species, let alone the Klingons or Romulans.

But the purpose of the Borg collective was to assimilate other species that they encountered into their own collective. They were all lumped together because they pretty much all looked alike and they have one purpose which was to spread their influence throughout the galaxy and eventually the universe.

The Press Enterprise apparently has decided to assign similar characteristics to local bloggers in that apparently we're all of one mind and we're trying to "attack" people so that they will think like us. In reality, we're all different people who blog for different reasons and often on different things. We are not the Borg, we don't belong to a collective and Pepper is a political candidate running for office, not the Borg queen.

The one thing that I hope people do in city during this election is cast their votes and that people also register to vote if they have not. And that the information that people need to make a decision on who to vote for is accessible to them no matter where in the city they live. Elections are also a good opportunity to debate and discuss issues including the Riverside Renaissance and the role of redevelopment and eminent domain in that process and in this city.

If the Texas-based Belo Enterprises is going to c0ver River City in all its complexities, I would hope that it would spend some time getting to know the people in this city first before it makes such sweeping statements. They have had and continue to have reporters who actually do this, which is why some of the sweeping statements made in De Armond's articles as well as those by Jurupa Valley-based reporter, Sandra Stokely have really surprised me in how both have uniformly applied labels to people in this city.

And while we're at it, it's the few large corporations which are purchasing more and more media outlets nationwide that are exhibiting characteristics more in line with the Borg.




Local activist Jon Lonberg won his case against the city of Riverside in U.S. District Court after presiding judge, Stephen Larson ordered the city to pay him $221,000 and to install ramps for 189 curbs in the city to accommodate individuals using wheelchairs, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times. Hopefully, City Attorney Gregory Priamos will advise the city council to pay out the verdict and fix the curbs. That would be the smart thing to do.

It's not surprising that Lonberg won the case, given how many intersections are still inaccessible to those using wheelchairs in this city. It's not uncommon to see people in wheel chairs navigating their way down the street or bike lanes because the sidewalks are inaccessible to them.


(excerpt)


"It couldn't get much better than this," Lonberg said. "This will send a message to Riverside and other cities that courts won't tolerate intolerable delay in making services available to everyone."

In his 24-page decision, Larson ordered the city to repair sidewalk ramps that violate the federal Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 and state access laws dating to 1968.

That legislation requires public agencies to develop detailed plans and to install accommodations for the disabled whenever sidewalks, crosswalks and other pedestrian ways are built, repaired or altered.

In setting damages, Larson noted that Lonberg had repeatedly encountered improperly constructed ramps, including nine he tried to use at least 100 times each near his home.

"Although the plaintiff may not have suffered a physical injury as a result of the city's discrimination, there is no question he has suffered a very clear harm both to his dignity and his ability to become a self-reliant member of society," Larson wrote.


Lonberg sued the city over 10 years ago to fix over 12,000 barriers to the disabled in addition to installing over 7,000 curb ramps.

Another federal judge had said that the city had showed a pattern of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. Now the city's learned it will cost them to keep that up.



The Los Angeles Police Department just received more bad news in the wake of the May Day incident where about 60 of its riot officers stormed a park, hitting people assembled peacefully with their batons and shooting less lethal shotguns. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, the independent monitor assigned to the department as part of its federal consent decree stated in a recent update that this incident may have shown that there's are serious problems and even deterioration in the department's training and supervision of its officers.

Monitor Michael Cherkasky released his regular report on the progress and problems with the consent decree between the city and the U.S. Justice Department that has been in place since June 2001. It was supposed to be dissolved in federal court last year, but the judge presiding over it vetoed that and extended it by at least three years. The reason given by the judge was that the decree required the LAPD to have had specific reforms including its early warning system in place and working for two years and those items had not even been completely implemented yet.



(excerpt)


Cherkasky, a former prosecutor, said the incident raises several concerns.

"Specifically, with regard to the incident itself, the questions of command, control, strategy and tactics at the scene, as well as deviation from departmental policies and procedures relative to permissible uses of force, must be fully examined," he wrote. "Likewise, questions relative to the composition, training and readiness of the Metropolitan Division must be answered."

The monitor said the incident should not obscure that the LAPD has made "significant progress" in reform in the last six years. However, Cherkasky's report raised concerns about some elements of the LAPD reverting to bad practices of the past.

"Change is difficult," Cherkasky wrote. "It is particularly difficult in large organizations, and it is not unusual or unexpected that vestiges of pre-change behavior may, at times, be revealed. The challenge for the department is how to respond when this occurs."

Cherkasky, who did not return calls for comment, wrote that in addition to monitoring consent decree compliance, he also will be watching how the department handles the MacArthur Park investigation.




His careful analysis shouldn't surprise anyone who viewed the videos of what happened that day at MacArthur Park or has been following its coverage since. And questions quickly emerged about what those who supervised the 60 or so police officers in the Metro Platoon B were doing when all hell was breaking loose around them.

The top commander who was one of the department's eight deputy chiefs has already been demoted and replaced. His second-in-command has been transferred. So far, the 60 riot officers involved in the incident have been reassigned away from the Metro Division.

For all the protesting done by Police Protective League President Bob Baker, the only officers who have been disciplined in this situation have been those at the top of the police hierarchy, not those at the bottom which is how it should be until the investigations are completed and the level of misconduct is determined.

It's probably an ongoing struggle for any law enforcement agency that is trying to reform its patterns and practices that have been etched in stone for years to not take several steps backward for every step forward. However, the question is what will the LAPD do in response to both the May Day incident and the latest report by the monitor of the consent decree? Will its responses show that there is any real substantial change to the LAPD and how it conducts business? It's times like this that serve as a benchmark to how far a law enforcement agency has truly come and it seems that circumstances faced by the LAPD allow it to do so at least 3-4 times a year. But what is it actually showing?

The LAPD is the one agency that nationwide has become in a sense the poster child for reform and it always has been. The Christopher Commission, the Rampart Blue Ribbon Panel, countless other committees and finally, the U.S. Justice Department have all taken their hand at fixing what's wrong with the police department, but have any really succeeded? Everyone wants to say that they were the ones, but have those who ultimately will even attempted it yet?

Because the observations which often come out of that department by those from the outside looking in, is that the culture that pervaded it back in the days of Chief William H. Parker is still tightly woven into its fabric. What Joe Frederick who wrote a recent opinion piece as well as a much longer historical analysis of the LAPD called the "warrior culture".




The handful of cities that have completed federal and state court-ordered mandates to reform their practices have faced similar problems.

The city of Pittsburgh was the first to emerge from a federal consent decree several years ago. Here is an excellent study done by the Department of Justice's Office of Community Policing on how Pittsburgh has fared post-consent decree.

Here's the original letter written to Pittsburgh's legal council in 1997 by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.


(excerpt)


As you are aware, the Civil Rights Division has been conducting a civil investigation of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police (the "PBP") to determine whether its officers are engaging in a pattern or practice of violating individuals' federal civil rights. As a result of our investigation, we have determined that the City of Pittsburgh, the PBP and the Department of Public Safety (collectively, the "City") have violated the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (42 U.S.C. § 14141). Our investigation pursuant to the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (42 U.S.C. § 3789d(c)) into possible racial discrimination against African-Americans is still ongoing. I have authorized filing a civil suit in United States District Court to remedy these violations. We would be willing to defer filing suit, however, if you are interested in negotiating a voluntary settlement in the form of a consent decree to be filed with the complaint.

Our investigation has revealed the following facts: (1) PBP officers engage in a pattern or practice of the use of excessive force and of making false arrests and performing improper searches and seizures; (2) PBP officers use racial epithets or racially insensitive language against African-Americans; (3) the municipal defendants fail properly to investigate complaints of misconduct; (4) the municipal defendants fail adequately to discipline officers who engage in misconduct; and (5) the PBP fails properly to supervise its officers.

The allegations listed in the letter by the Civil Rights Division mirror those that have been made against other departments which have also been placed under federal or state consent decree. Lack of supervision, improper stops and searches and failure to implement an adequate complaint system are three serious problems that are commonly found in outside investigations of the patterns and practices of law enforcement agencies.

Pittsburgh was the first department to be placed under a federal consent decree in connection with legislation being passed by the U.S. Congress that allowed the federal agencies to do this with local law enforcement agencies. Pittsburgh dissolved the majority of its decree in 2002 and bifurcated the rest of it for two more years. The rest of it, consisted of the citizen complaint process which was actually under the scope of the city, not the department. Even by 2002, complaints had lagged in the system for over two years before seeing any resolution.

The city of Wallkill in upstate New York entered into a consent decree with the New York State Attorney General's office in 2001, about two weeks after Riverside began its own stipulated judgment.

Wallkill's reports on the progress of its reform mandate can be found here at the Police Assessment Resource Center, an excellent site.




Riverside's police department faced a similar situation, only it was not defined by any one incident, or a single moment in time, as was the case with the LAPD. It was defined instead by a longer period of time where nothing seemed to be happening in certain areas of its operation at the higher levels of command. After a vigorous five-year reform period by the department, the process stalled several months after the dissolution of the stipulated judgment, in part because of the inaction of the city council in terms of abiding by promises it had made and its inability or unwillingness to hold the city manager's feet to the fire on the job he was supposed to have done to implement the council's mandate.

The Riverside Police Department also received a quarterly report in April that related similar difficulties to what the Los Angeles Police Department is facing in that there was not a uniform forward progression by the department's management personnel in terms of implementation of the objectives of the five-year Strategic Plan. That like Los Angeles, there still is some tendancy to not embrace what is new, but the old ways which played a large role in attacting both the federal and state investigators to Riverside in 1999. Interestingly enough, while Riverside had completed its own stipulated judgment, it experienced its problems at the same time chronologically as the LAPD. Both are entering into their seventh years since both entered into their respective reform agreements.

Perhaps it's the place in time where both are currently at that's critical for addressing these issues and as much whether or not they are still bound by their court-ordered mandates. Though having some form of oversight from the outside whether it's the consent decree in Los Angeles or the quarterly audits of the Riverside Police Department's implementation of the Strategic Plan seems to be important as well.

After all, former chief and current consultant Penny Harrington has told me many a time that true change takes at least 20 years to be realized, because it takes that long to change a department's culture which is often steeped in racism and sexism and that's if those who work within it are dedicated to doing so because it involves years of difficult work.




Much more information including the quarterly progress reports on the LAPD consent decree entered into in 2001 can be found here at its Web site.

A vigil will be held involving the May Day incident this evening in Los Angeles.

Also, LAPD Chief William Bratton told a radio station that former Deputy Chief Cayler "Lee" Carter, Jr. will be retiring. Carter was recently demoted by Bratton as a result of the May Day incident.


The police department also fired a rookie officer who never was subjected to a background check while being hired, according to a news story in the Los Angeles Times about how at least a dozen new hires had slipped through the cracks because the background investigator hired by the city had failed to do the checks. The rookie in this case was fired because there were circumstances in his background which would have caused him to fail the background check, the department said.

Perhaps because the employees in the division conducting the checks were too busy downloading pornographic material on their work computers as discipline was recently handed out to several employees for this type of misconduct.





In the New York Daily News, there's an op-ed piece written by Franklin Smith, who heads the city's Civilian Complaint Review Board about the importance of maintaining close ties between the community and the police department and that the board could be a useful tool for doing so.


(excerpt)



Over the past few years, through an increased reliance on technology and an emphasis on efficiency, the CCRB has made dramatic improvements in its investigative process. In 2006, the agency closed 53% more cases than it did in 2002, and did so faster-the average case is now closed just over 5-1/2 months after it is filed, 15 fewer days than five years ago. And complaint filings continue to grow - from 4,612 in 2002 to 7,669 in 2006.

Although the CCRB was not set up to be a monitor or auditor of police department activities or policies, we regularly advise the police commissioner when our investigations reveal a troubling pattern or practice. In the past few years, we have recommended that the NYPD improve search-warrant execution policies and officer training in strip-search procedures, among others.

Our recommendations have resulted in policy changes that improve conditions for civilians and police officers alike.

Still, the CCRB is not, and cannot be, the solution to all problems between the police and the communities they serve. Although we spend a great deal of time and effort on community outreach, many New York City residents are still not familiar with our agency and the many ways to file complaints.



The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department also received a report card from attorney, Merrick Bobb which showed improvement in terms of how it handled and investigated complaints but showed problems with how discipline was allotted out in certain cases.



(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)



In most cases, the department investigates complaints thoroughly and objectively, Bobb found. He said investigations were inadequate in about one in five cases, faulting sheriff's managers in those cases for failing to interview all pertinent witnesses, writing biased or incomplete reports or improperly documenting investigations.

"The LASD's commitment to the fair investigation of citizens' complaints has strengthened considerably," wrote Bobb, who was hired in 1993 to monitor the department's reform efforts following allegations of excessive force and concern about the citizen complaint process.

The department handles complaints about deputies differently from the Los Angeles Police Department. Pursuant to a consent decree, the LAPD must formally investigate all complaints through its internal affairs unit. The Sheriff's Department handles complaints from the public informally at the station to which the deputy is assigned. Sheriff's station supervisors can request formal internal affairs investigations of citizens' complaints. Bobb found that just 3% of complaints lead to formal investigations.

The report also concluded that the department too often agrees to reduce discipline imposed on deputies who violate department policies ranging from the use of force during arrests to unsafe driving of patrol cars and off-duty incidents, such as drunk driving.

In one instance, a deputy received a three-day suspension for making racially insensitive comments in a telephone conversation with a member of the public and for telling the caller, "I don't have time for this," before hanging up. After the deputy complained about his punishment, a captain put the suspension in abeyance, meaning it would be imposed only if the deputy committed a new offense.





A report was also conducted by the Los Angeles Police Commission and discoverd that out of 850 complaints involving racial profiling, none were sustained. So, it's coming up with guidelines to improve the quality of the complaint investigations. One reason why, is because out of 23 reviewed by the city's inspector-general, four were found to involve suspicious circumstances.