"It feels like I was fighting to stay awake..."

There's one more day to cast your vote by mail in ballot for the ongoing city council election if you live in an odd-numbered ward in the city of Riverside. If you haven't mailed it in yet, you can still drop it off at locations listed at the city's Web site. Just click the link on the front page under Elections that reads "Ballot Drop-Off Locations". Your vote is your voice. Exercise it.



The city council meeting this Tuesday will be abbreviated in deference to the election deadline. This means that the session will be held in the afternoon and it will follow the structure of the evening meetings but it will be briefer than usual and will end early. In case you haven't figured it out, campaigns and elections supersede all of the city's business, not that there's much of it that's not on the consent calendar.

Still, this leaves plenty of time to hit those post-election parties that are sure to be cropping up all over town as the ballots are being counted. It's not likely that any definitive results will be given that night, but any excuse to party shouldn't be dismissed.

Everyone will be waiting for the ballots to be counted to see if there will be a second round of elections for some or all of the candidates or if any of them will win their seats outright. Which is good news for people interested in checking out the election night parties both Tuesday night and next November. This new voting format approved by voters last year provides potentially double the parties, double the fun in comparison to the old way of doing business!

Will BASS build upon its base on the dais as GASS continues to deflate? Or will there truly be new blood on the city council? Will there be fundraisers held to both recoup on campaign costs and pay off hefty tickets from the city's code compliance division? For those who received fines or had your signs removed, next time promote a candidate who actually is already sitting on the dais and see if you are treated the same way. After all, remember who code compliance works for right now, if not after the election results are final and they're doing what someone more powerful than them tells them what to do.


Stay tuned for further bulletins.

Elio Carrion testified in the trial of the former San Bernardino County Sheriff Department deputy who shot him in January 2006. Press Enterprise reporter Gregor McGavin and other reporters have been blogging about the trial in increments throughout each day.

It's day four in the first criminal trial involving a law enforcement officer who shot an individual while onduty in San Bernardino County history.

McGavin does a pretty good job of sharing his experiences inside the courtroom with his readers.

According to McGavin's accounts, Carrion testified this morning on direct under the careful questioning of San Bernardino County District Attorney's office prosecutor Lewis Cope.

Carrion testified that he had been partying with his buddies before returning to active duty. He had wound up in a car with one of his friends who had begun driving crazily.

(excerpt)

"I told him to stop, pull over, slow down," Carrion says.

"I know what I'm doing," he says his friend replied.

The car crashed and Deputy Ivory J. Webb was present at the scene after being involved in the pursuit apparently without every notifying the dispatch unit. Carrion testified that he got down on the ground immediately after leaving the car. Webb approached him with a flashlight and yelled at him to get on the ground.


(excerpt)


Carrion says Webb was shouting profanities at him and Escobedo.

"I tell the officer I'm in the military, we mean no harm, my friend did something stupid," Carrion says.

"The officer says "Get up, get up!" and I repeat that I'm going to get up," Carrion says. "As I started to get up, he shot me three times."

Carrion lay on the ground waiting for medical assistance after being shot. He described to the jury how that felt.

(excerpt)


"How painful was it to be shot?" the prosecutor asks Carrion.

"You can't describe it," Carrion responds. "It feels just like fighting to stay awake. I remember I was going in and out of consciousness. I was trying to stay awake, trying to talk."

Cope asks him why he was fighting to remain conscious. Carrion says because "If I go out and I see black, i might not wake up next time."

"Did you believe that you were going to die?" Cope asks.

"Yes, from all the pain," Carrion says.



Here is the latest installment from this afternoon.

(excerpt)

Carrion says he thought he was doing what he was told the night of the shooting.

Under questioning from Cope, Carrion says he did not point at Webb or put his hand inside his jacket. It was hard for him to see Webb clearly, however.

"I put my hand to block the light from my eyes," he says.

"Did you ever, as you were getting up, make any movements towards the officer?" asks Cope.

"No," Carrion replies.

Cope walks to the side of the witness stand and asks Carrion if he is as far away as Webb was from him that night. He estimates the distance at about two or three feet. Defense attorney Schwartz says it looks more like four feet from where he's sitting. Cope grabs a nearby yard stick to solve the dispute.

"Thirty-six inches," he states.

Judge Smith says the record will reflect a distance of "approximately three feet."



Background information on Carrion's testimony is located here.

The Los Angeles Times also covered Carrion's testimony. The article details what played a role in leading District Attorney Michael Ramos to file charges in this case. One of the people he had consulted with before filing charges was then Riverside County District Attorney Grover Trask who had never filed charges against a law enforcement officer for an onduty shooting during his lengthy tenure in that office.

The only law enforcement officer to be so charged in Riverside County was D.A. investigator Daniel Riter who was actually indicted on murder charges by a criminal grand jury and prosecuted by the State Attorney General's office.


(excerpt)


Dist. Atty. Michael Ramos said last year that he and other prosecutors had listened to the tape several times and that all of them heard Webb order Carrion to get up twice before shooting him.

Webb has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and his lead lawyer has said Webb believed he saw Carrion reach for a weapon when he fired.

Carrion, who joined the Air Force after high school and became a military police officer, is home for the trial on temporary leave from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, where he returned to desk duty last year.

The airman spent 3 ½ months recovering from wounds to his chest, shoulder and left femur, which was shattered. He has been unable to resume his duties on patrol because of his injuries, and his civil attorney says Carrion is unsure whether the military will allow him to continue his career in the military.





The Los Angeles Times' Editorial Board is inspecting the chief in terms of whether or not William Bratton who heads the city's police department should receive appointment to a second term or not.

It urged the police commission to take careful consideration of his entire tenure at the position so far. The May Day incident pretty much put discussion of Bratton and any future he or any other candidate would have leading the LAPD to a halt for the time being.



(excerpt)


Meanwhile, Bratton talks a good game on openness and accountability, but he has seen his department become more closed to public review than at any time in its recent history. This is largely because of court rulings and other decisions beyond his control, but Bratton bears some blame as well. He has, for instance, done little to discourage efforts to thwart public access to records in police shooting cases, and he has rebuffed council attempts to examine his management. If Bratton is reappointed, he should use his stature as chief to press harder and more publicly for greater openness. Indeed, the commission itself needs to strengthen its commitment in this area, setting policies that expand police accountability and insisting that Bratton advance them.

It is not likely that the continuing MacArthur Park inquiry will suggest that Bratton had a hand in any wrongdoing. In fact, his actions in the wake of the incident have been exemplary. But he cited command failures, and he is the chief, responsible for command. Was his oversight of the event planning appropriate, and was it typical? The commission cannot wait for a final report, which will take months. But before it acts, it must know exactly where the breakdown was, what Bratton's responsibilities were and what he can do to ensure that something similar will not happen again. Once the commission has answered those questions to the satisfaction of itself and the public, it should move swiftly to conclude its evaluation of the chief.



It's likely the commission and city council minus Bernard Parks' vote will reappoint Bratton to serve as police chief. It's just as likely that Bratton will throw words like "accountability" and "transparency" around while continuing to batten down the hatches. In fact, the more he uses those words in mixed company, the more one can be certain that behind the scenes, there's much going on that Bratton would rather no one knew about.


At the LAPD's blog, Black leaders in the city supported Bratton's reappointment.



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Los Angeles Urban League Police Roundtable leader Earl Ofari Hutchinson said, "We support Chief Bratton's reappointment. We stand behind him. He's done a number of things that we are certainly proud of in this community."

The Youth Advocacy Coalition's Lita Herron remarked, "We see the ethnic makeup of the police force changing to be more representative of our international city. We are very pleased with Chief Bratton's work."

Listed below is full list of community leaders in attendance who voiced their support of a second Term for Chief Bratton:

•Earl Ofari Hutchinson, President, Los Angeles Urban League
•Cecil "Chip" Murray, Retired Senior Pastor, First AME Church
•Eddie Jones, President, Los Angeles Civil Rights Association
•Ed Scott, PHD, Educator
•Ingrid Spasser, Educator, Entrepreneur
•The Reverend Dr. Frederick O. Murph, Senior Pastor, Brookins Community AME Church
•Lita Herron, Youth Advocacy Coalition
•Lawrence Tolliver, Jr., Businessman
•Skip Townsend, Gang Intervention Specialist

What's interesting about this announcement is that when polls have been conducted not amidst community leaders, but community residents, Bratton doesn't fare nearly as well. In fact, the only racial group that gives him a fairly high approval rating are Whites. African-Americans, Latinos and Korean-Americans all score him considerably lower. Also, it's much more likely that the residents of these three communities in Los Angeles will encounter the police officers in the field, instead of in private or public meetings with members of the department's command staff including Bratton.

Bratton's not the first police chief to try to formulate good relationships with community leaders and he won't be the last. Politically, it makes sense to do this, even though it's clear that there's a bit of a bridge that needs to be built between some of these community leaders and their communities given the disparity in approval ratings both have given Bratton.