Election 2007: Waiting is always the hardest part

A ballot count update for Election 2007 provided this afternoon shows that William "Rusty" Bailey was so close, but yet so far in terms of winning the Ward Three seat outright.



Ward One:

Dom Betro: 44.7%

Michael Gardner: 32.3

Letitia Pepper: 19.7

Derek Thesier: 3.3


Ward Three:

William "Rusty" Bailey: 49.1%

Art Gage: 44.2

Peter Olmos: 6.7



Ward Five:

Chris McArthur: 41.0%

Donna Doty Machalka: 30.2

Harry Kurani: 21.1

Robert Rodriguez: 5.4



Ward Seven:

Steve Adams: 34.0%

Terry Frizzel: 25.9

Roy Saldanha: 19.1

Art Garcia: 17.1

Daniel Gressman: 3.9



Oh, and this is definitely true in the camps of Councilman Art Gage and his challenger, William "Rusty" Bailey who are anxiously awaiting until the last ballot is counted in the Ward Three election, according to the Press Enterprise.

Ballot counting resumes today of the nearly 3,000 that remain plus another several hundred which still need to be verified because they experienced some form of problem. The wait may be a short or longer one as no one knows for sure.


(excerpt)


Final semiofficial results in all four Riverside City Council races will be posted no later than 5 p.m. today, Riverside County Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore said.

Gage, Ward 1 Councilman Dom Betro and Ward 7 Councilman Steve Adams are seeking second terms. Four candidates sought the Ward 5 seat. It's open because Councilman Ed Adkison didn't seek a third term.

Of the four races, only the Bailey-Gage contest really has a chance -- a slim one -- of avoiding a November runoff.

Bailey said he was a little frustrated that all the votes weren't counted Tuesday. "I'm ready for it to be over," he said.

"It's stressful, obviously," Gage said. "I'd like to know for sure."


Last night, there was a gathering at the Templo Del Sol restaurant near the University of California, Riverside that was thrown by Letitia Pepper who had run for the city council seat in Ward One.

Pepper garnered about 20% of the votes and played a pivotal role in pushing that contest towards what is expected to be a runoff election next November between incumbent Dom Betro and grass-roots challenger, Michael Gardner. Pepper didn't win the seat herself but she still felt like celebrating and so did the several dozen people who showed up to join her and she offered her congratulations to Gardner who attended her event as well.

Gardner said that although he realized that he had a lot of hard work ahead of him, he felt confident that he would win the election if indeed what just took place was only the preliminary round.

He has every reason to feel elated at his accomplishment given how far he's come in the past four years and the process of electing a Ward One representative could come full circle if this autumn, the winner was yet again an individual who was heavily outspent by his rival who apparently this time had to dip into two different campaign war chests to try and win this election outright. It won't be known until some time today whether Betro and Gardner will actually face off in five months but it's likely that they will do so.

The grass-roots candidates taking on the establishment in Riverside. It's not like that's never been done. History often repeats itself especially since most of the time few of us learn from it. But for a change in this case, it might not be such a bad thing.

Often Ward One, especially the downtown area is treated like the center of Riverside's universe and the city hopes that some day it will be the center of the Inland Empire, the jewel of the region. But despite all the money that flows into the downtown from the city's coffer to build it up and some say, modernize it, a lot of success during the election process comes through more modestly run grass-roots campaigns.

The problem which lies in politics involving this part of Riverside that surrounds the walls of City Hall is that this time around, you had an incumbent in Betro who had risen up through one of the most successful grass-roots campaigns in the city's history yet had become the opposite of the candidate that he and his supporters had marketed the first time around. He became the Goliath that when he played the role of David, he had promised not to be.

Perhaps among other things, he started thinking that he's King Midas. He gets a huge ego, a foul temper that he vents towards his critics or even those who look at him wrong and the more power he obtains, the more he wants. Far from taking him aside to help him deal with this problem, his backers either close their eyes to it or run interference for him, casting the blame on those who are directly in his flight path. Or when all else fails, they try to paint their critics as outside agitators who do not work or play well with others.

This all began early on in his first term on the dais, when the first who became alienated from him were those who had been among his closest political allies on the campaign trail. Those who were alienated the most were the hard-core grass-roots activists who believed in what they were fighting and voting for, whereas those who had other plans were more willing to stay for the long haul to hopefully reap some dividends.


That was the most interesting thing of the Betro campaign and the dynamics of the Ward One election was when this splintering began. That being, how many people who had worked hard alongside Betro in his initial campaign were now either running against him or working for other candidates running against him this time around. Or they are sending the message that there needs to be an alternative to the Betro of 2007 which was manifested throughout this election with the slogan, "Anyone but Betro".


The local newspaper which backed Betro's goals for the downtown area and had endorsed him, then took that ball and ran with it, in terms of ridiculing that slogan and those who repeated it every chance it got. It also looked out for him whenever he had problems with his campaign. Betro gets a paper cut and the media including the Press Enterprise editorial board rushes to the rescue.

Other candidates like Donna Doty Michalka and especially Letitia Pepper get eviscerated on the campaign trail by other candidates in their respective wards and the same publication is noticeably silent. The newspaper never mention comments made by the Betro campaign team that a vote for Gardner was really a vote for the "crazy lady". The newspaper also ignored comments by that same team when it began hitting up campaign contributors for needed funds that if these donors didn't cough up more dough, they would force Betro into a runoff with the "crazy lady" who wanted to ruin the city.

Of course, they also ignored the fact that Betro appeared to have difficulty remaining at a candidate forum without either storming off in a huff or accusing other candidates of planting their supporters in the audience while he never was very far from his own. Apparently, that was also the fault of his rivals, according to the Press Enterprise including its editorial board.


Unfortunately for Betro's team, if they need to hit people up for even more money during the long, hot summer, they'll have to come up with another scare tactic besides the "crazy lady" who apparently brought in enough votes to keep them at work campaigning for a bit longer.

The individuals who were the activists have stayed true to their grass-roots efforts. They didn't begin as grassroots activists and use that process and that title as stepping stones to get some place else. They didn't bring themselves up the ladder while ensuring that those who worked alongside them were left behind or even stepped on during this upward trajectory. Far from being the activists who came out of nowhere or the agitators who didn't attend the appropriate community meetings where people apparently go to get introduced to proper society, they still have roots in activism through other neighborhood organizations outside the downtown area. I guess it's only the folks in the downtown that think that every other neighborhood orbits around them.

These activists brought that with them to the election process and related the message that would later be reiterated by the voters in this city. That being, that there needs to be a change of the guard on the dais even if at this point most of these voters couldn't agree who the new guard should be.

You can like them or dislike them. You can agree with them or disagree with them and then you can go and look at the tallies for Election 2007.

What we're seeing in Riverside in recent years is time, effort and tons of money spent building up voting blocs on the city council. What we're seeing soon after is those same blocs get torn down in future election cycles by voters fed up with city council members who are no longer independent. It happened to GASS. It remains to be seen whether its successor, BASS will suffer a similar fate.

The GASS quartet which was painted as the villains behind the ouster of former City Manager George Carvalho in 2004 didn't last much longer than he did and soon began to deflate after as one person who attended a city council meeting said, it began eating its own beginning with Councilman Art Gage. Then came BASS, which settled in and began grooming Gage's proposed replacement, a young neophyte who worked as a teacher at Riverside Poly High School. Before William "Rusty" Bailey even filed his papers, he was endorsed by four sitting city council members and Mayor Ron Loveridge.

They endorsed Bailey because they called him a "team player". Ironically, the student outshone one of his mentors in Election 2007 garnering the highest percentage of votes received during the preliminary round of any of the candidates. Still, the only people who tend to view elected officials endorsing each other or a challenger as something appealing are probably those sitting on the dais and their supporters. To others, it resembles cronyism too much and if there's one thing that the voters have shown this week is that they want elected officials who are responsive to their constituents and think for themselves.

BASS is seen by many, as simply a more egocentric, ruder version of its predecessor. Whereas GASS members used to roll their eyes and sigh loudly at city residents who addressed them from the podium, BASS took it a step further and began calling their constituents liars and ordering the police officers to remove people from the podium including elderly women. This quartet also dispatched City Attorney Gregory Priamos to send city residents who spoke at city council meetings letters threatening them with arrest if they "disrupted" future meetings.

Whereas GASS was initially voted in office in a futile attempt to eliminate the Community Police Review Commission and micromanage Carvalho, BASS is more heavily slanted towards the interests of development, redevelopment and eminent domain, not necessarily in that order. Instead of micromanaging the city manager, they have apparently given him and his minions their blessing to micromanage various departments in the city.

And BASS managed to pretty much nullify the CPRC much more effectively than GASS ever could, simply by allowing the city manager to run it into the ground.


So what of Election 2007?


The final ballots in the preliminary round of Election 2007 in Riverside are having their signatures verified by the city clerk's office and they will be counted on Thursday before the final results are announced for the election.

Waiting to be counted are several hundred ballots from the four different wards that were dropped off earlier this week before the deadline. However, supporters of the candidates who placed in the top two spots in each ward are already gearing down for the finals to be held at a polling site near you in November.

Supporters of Betro and Ward Three candidate, William "Rusty" Bailey are still hoping that they will collect enough votes by the time the last ballot is tabulated to squeak into office. That appears to be a very real possibility for Bailey, but a tougher road for Betro who will need to capture about 80% of the remaining votes to be counted to avoid a runoff with Michael Gardner.

The contests in Ward Five and Ward Seven also are expected to hold runoff elections between the top two vote-getting candidates in each ward.

Expect fundraising to begin in earnest beginning this summer given how much money was spent by some candidates in this race. One councilman running for office apparently went through his funds that he had put aside for his planned mayoral race, along with those he had raised to try to hold onto his seat. After his performance in this election, perhaps he should put those ambitions on hold for the next four years.

The mayoral race is a popularity contest, given that the position doesn't really hold much power in a city that runs on a city council/city manager model of government. But you do need a lot of money to win it.

Campaign coffee mixers may be replaced by campaign barbecues or whatever it takes to bring the money into the coffers to the tune of thousands of more dollars particularly for the incumbents who will be fighting to retain their seats. Don't be at all surprised if you see some serious fundraising taking place among their rivals as well, especially by Bailey and Michalka in Ward Five.

Announcements are expected to be made from various organizations on who they will endorse in the upcoming races. Grass roots activists from several organizations will be holding events tonight to reflect on the past few months and what lies ahead.


Precinct walking will also resume in earnest. What happens in the next five months will probably go a long way in deciding who will be elected.

Some of the incumbents who thought they might sail right in on the heels of Riverside Renaissance might be scratching their heads right now. Perhaps they are meeting with their high-priced political consultants and most devoted campaign volunteers to figure out where they fell short and what to do during the next six months.



They really shouldn't be so confused about the loud message sent to them by the voters in Riverside but it remains to be seen how much if anything they have learned. Hopefully enough to park their egos for a while and start listening to all their constituents, not just the ones who make them feel good.






Things are broiling in Los Angeles as numerous concerns have been raised about the Los Angeles Police Department. The latest involves complaints by its Black officers against a recent promotion, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The promotion of Capt. Richard Webb to oversee the Professional Standards Bureau, which oversees the department's internal misconduct case investigations has angered members of a union of Black LAPD officers because Webb had once been sued for using racial slurs and displaying a picture of a hangman's noose in his office. What's interesting about that is that it wasn't long ago that a Black LAPD officer who had worked in the department's 77th Division filed a complaint about seeing a picture of a noose hanging at the station.

He nearly paid for that complaint with his career, after the department's version of the Internal Affairs Division reopened an old insubordination investigation against him and put him in the limbo of being unofficially suspended without pay for nearly two years. The Board of Rights ultimately cleared him of all the allegations and he collected back pay and headed back to work but not at the 77th.

It's not clear what happened to the officer or officers who were hanging the nooses. Maybe they got promoted too. Maybe that's part of an interior decorating program at the LAPD.

The city settled the law suit involving the department's new internal affairs director for $155,000.

About the controversy of his upcoming promotion, Webb had this to say.


(excerpt)


"I am proud of my 28 years of service to the city and to the LAPD and am proud of accurately reporting what suspects say in the field," said Webb, who is slated to rise to the rank of commander effective July 1.

"Unfortunately, some people I have dealt with over the years say things that decent people don't like. I still have to report things that are distasteful. Except for course and scope of duty such as reporting hate incidents or conducting administrative investigations, I have never used derogatory terms in my professional career."


Well, that's what Webb is saying now, but that's not what he said when he was questioned abut the matter in a deposition in relation to the law suit. During that process, Webb had admitted to using a racial slur repeatedly since he was a child.

He had been sued for among other things, treating a White female officer badly because she dated an African-American man and treating Black and White employees differently while disciplining them. Allegations that sound fairly familiar. They should because the last time they were played out inside a courtroom, they came with a hefty price tag attached.


The head of the Oscar Joel Bryant Foundation wasn't moved by Webb's litany.


(excerpt)



In a letter to Bratton, Sgt. Ronnie Cato, president of the Oscar Joel Bryant Foundation, said many African American officers who are members of the group were shocked and disappointed at Webb's appointment because of what Cato said was his past use of the term.

The organization "cannot and will not stand by and allow managers like Capt. Webb to continue their discriminatory treatment of minorities," Cato wrote. "Because of Capt. Webb's negative history toward African Americans — which appears to be a part of his upbringing — we are asking you as the general manager of this department to reevaluate the decision to promote Capt. Webb or at the very least, reconsider his assignment to the sensitive position at Professional Standards Bureau."

Lt. Mark Tappan, vice president of the organization, said Cato was speaking for the foundation board and many other members in raising concerns about Webb.




Chief William Bratton responded to this latest crisis as chiefs often do, through their spokesmen and by saying that he would never promote someone who was not qualified, which apparently is supposed to imply that he would never promote a racist. But did he? Or perhaps using racist slurs is one way of showing how one is qualified to hold a management position in the LAPD.

It didn't take the LAPD very long to provide one good reason for the Los Angeles Times rethink the editorial it published several days ago about the "now vanishing police culture" in that department.

Not long at all.




In the Los Angeles Times, there was also an article about how the number of complaints filed against employees of the Los Angeles Police Department has increased by 3% this past year. The number of officers and civilian employees who were the subjects of those complaints and left the department either through termination or resignations has increased as well.


The department sustained 21% of all complaints received which is higher than the national average of 15%.

Activists in Los Angeles who are playing close attention to the LAPD especially in the wake of the May Day incident are still very concerned.


(excerpt)


The report comes a month after the department was accused of using excessive force to break up an immigrants' rights rally in MacArthur Park.

"The average citizen should be concerned that complaints against the police are up because it signals that something is wrong," said Pete White of the Los Angeles Community Action Network.

His group filed a complaint Tuesday alleging that officers used excessive force on a woman in the skid row area.

LAPD officials said the increase in complaints can be explained, in part, by the fact that the police force has grown in size and that the department has taken steps to ensure that citizens are not discouraged from filing allegations against employees.

"We investigate, we pursue, every complaint that comes in," said Sgt. Lee Sands, a department spokesman.

However, police commissioners said they were somewhat concerned about the increase as well as how the department was handling many allegations.

Commission President John Mack asked the department to report back with more information on the handling of complaints of "discourtesy," saying that only 2.7% of the 2,822 complaints for that category last year were sustained.



Most of the complaints that are sustained fall in the "neglect of duty" category which had a 16.3% sustain rate.




As if the beleaguered LAPD doesn't have enough scandals on its plate, KNX radio released a story about a homeless mentally ill woman who allegedly was assaulted by four police officers several blocks away from the department's headquarters.

The woman was pepper sprayed, punched, kicked and then hogtied before being carried off to a squad car. A complaint was filed by Peter White of the Community Action Network about the incident that took place last weekend.


(excerpt)


Sgt. James Canales of the Central Station confirmed that an incident occurred that was being investigated, but he would not provide details. ''An arrest investigation is being conducted, an administrative investigation is being conducted,'' he said.

White said the officers pounced on the African American woman who weighed less than 90 pounds and beat her with billy clubs then doused her in pepper spray. They then hog-tied her, kicked and punched her, before carrying her by the hands and feet to a police car, White said.

''The officers could have easily restrained her and moved her on, but that's not what happened,'' White said. White did not know the woman's name.



It's not Margaret Mitchell, the name of another petite Black mentally ill woman who was shot to death by a LAPD officer in 1999. But eight years later, it still appears that the LAPD is having serious issues when dealing with mentally ill people of color.

The Los Angeles Times also picked up on this emerging story of Faith Hernandez who was approached last Saturday afternoon by police officers because she was living in an "illegal cardboard structure" in downtown Los Angeles.

The police department offered the following version of events.


(excerpt)


"One of our officers approached her, told her she was being detained for that investigation, and she immediately took off running," Smith said. "She punched one bicycle officer in the head as he was trying to detain her, and then she kicked several officers. She also spit on several officers, and she attempted to stab the officers that were trying to detain her, with an ink pen."

The officers responded by hitting her on the legs with a small police baton, kicking her once and using pepper spray, Smith said. Four officers — three men and a woman — were involved, he said.



Witnesses to the incident which they said lasted at least eight minutes offered accounts that differed greatly from that released by the department.


(excerpt)


O.C. Hasson, 60, who lives on 6th Street, said that from his bathroom window he saw the woman running away.

"They threw her down, she tried to get back up, and they threw her back down. And when she tried to get back up again ... they started hitting her," Hasson said. "They allowed her to get up after that, and let her go almost across the street, as if they knew she couldn't get away. And then one of the officers took his foot and tripped her on the ground, and they dragged her a little bit, and they were still beating her."

Hasson said he had seen police harass downtown homeless people in recent months, but nothing like this.

"It's the worst thing that I've experienced," he said, "the worst thing I've ever seen."





In San Bernardino, the trial continued involving a former San Bernardino County Sheriff Department deputy who is facing attempted voluntary manslaughter and related charges.

In January 2006, Deputy Ivory J. Webb shot Elio Carrion while Carrion was complying with orders to get off the ground.

On Tuesday, the man who shot the footage that was seen around the world took to the witness stand, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Jose Luis Valdez testified that he had heard Webb issue the order for Carrion to rise off the ground. His testimony was quickly challenged by Webb's attorney, Michael Schwartz in cross-examination.


(excerpt)


Valdes, a used-car salesman who lived across the street from where the Corvette crashed, testified that he watched Webb and Carrion argue for three minutes before he began filming. Carrion was sprawled on the ground outside the car.

Valdes testified that he ran inside to grab his camcorder after watching the officer shouting curse words and "throwing … many kicks" at Carrion or in his direction.

Valdes, who spoke through a Spanish translator in the San Bernardino courtroom, told prosecutor R. Lewis Cope that the night was so clear that he could see Carrion's hands as the airman followed the deputy's command to "get up."

He said he never saw the airman move his hands toward the officer.

But during a brisk cross-examination, Webb's lead attorney, Michael Schwartz, read back Valdes' initial statements to police when he said it was so dark he doubted the officer could see into the Corvette, where the driver was still sitting.

Schwartz also noted that Valdes initially told detectives he ran to get his camera when he saw Carrion getting out of the car.

"It was a confusing night," Valdes responded.

Schwartz questioned why Valdes had never told police about the exchange between Webb and Carrion, or the alleged kicks by Webb, that he said he witnessed before recording the incident.

Valdes retorted: "Have you ever seen a police officer shoot someone without a reason? Anyone would get nervous."




The latest news about the email scandal that was uncovered in the Port of Seattle Police Department mentioned a review that was conducted and showed that the department botched its own investigation, according to the Seattle Post Intelligencer.


(excerpt)


At least 32 port officers -- nearly one-third of the department's force -- sent, received, viewed or knew about dozens of inappropriate e-mails spreading derogatory and stereotyping comments, photographs and video images aimed at blacks, Asians, Arabs, Hispanics and women. The Seattle P-I first reported the matter in January.

By letting police conduct their own investigation, the port's executives turned over the query to a department that would in the process violate port policy and past practice by cutting the port's labor relations and human resources staff out of discussions and disciplinary decisions, according to the review.

"The Police Department appeared determined to keep the process internal and to minimize the scope and impact of the investigation and was given too much leeway to operate in this matter," the report stated.



This news is simply shocking. No really, it is shocking to probably a diminishing number of individuals that a department both wanted to keep its investigation completely outside the cope of outside scrutiny and that it failed to conduct an objective, thorough investigation.

But the investigation done by an outside agency at the request of the Port of Seattle Commission did mention that the police chief was "weak and fearful" and that the department lacked the resources to do an investigation that it lacked the expertise to handle proficiently.




Update in the civil trial involving the officer-involved shooting death of Malcolm Ferguson in New York City.


(excerpt)



Late this afternoon in the Bronx Supreme Court, the jury of six decided in favor of Juanita Young in the civil suit against New York City in the killing of her son Malcolm Ferguson from seven years ago. After the week and a half trial, the jury deliberated late afternoon yesterday and for almost four hours today, returning with a verdict that supported Juanita's claims of excessive force by police officer Louis Rivera. The jury awarded Juanita more than what was asked for (her attorney Seth Harris asked for $7.5 million - the jury awarded her $10.5 million. They increased the punitive damage amount from $5m to $7m), a clear message that Rivera was in the wrong!

More to come - thanks to everyone who have been so wonderfully supportive of Juanita and her family!

Press conference tomorrow morning, 10am, in front of the Bronx Supreme Court (Grand Concourse entrance).


Statement from the family of Malcolm Ferguson:

Seven years is a long time to wait for justice. But in a society where the poor and disenfranchised live and die in obscurity, we are thankful for our day in court. We are grateful for the chance to bear silent witness for our beloved Malcolm, a true victim of the social parasite that is police brutality.

But as we've said all along, this case is bigger than Malcolm Ferguson, it's reach beyond Louis Rivera and the officers who stormed 1045 Boynton Avenue on March 1, 2000.

This case is about every person who has ever been demoralized and brutalized by police, and every police officer who wrongly believes they are not answerable to the people they serve. The law applies to everyone. And today, this jury of six men and women sent a strong message that a badge is not a pass to commit murder.

The conscience of the community has spoken, and the answer is a resounding, "No more".

The family of Malcolm Ferguson wish to thank the jurors for their thoughtful deliberation and service. And we thank those here and across the nation who have cried, prayed or stood in solidarity with us in the fight against police brutality. The struggle is far from over.