River City: Just another Monday

How cities pick their leaders is a brief article in the Press Enterprise today.

It addresses Riverside's history of either having its city council elections take place among all the city's voters or to stick with allowing each ward to elect its own representative.

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Riverside has gone back and forth between the two methods of electing the city council. From l907 to l952, Riverside had the ward system. From l952 until l963, Riverside had an at-large council. In l962, Riverside set up council elections by wards, and this pattern has continued to the present.

Which method is better? Even the experts disagree.

Gary Ovitt, former mayor of Ontario, and a member of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, favors the at-large system of council election because the entire council is accountable to the whole city rather than a council member appealing to one ward or part of the city. In addition, at-large supporters point out that the best-qualified candidates may all live in one part of the city.

Those favoring the ward plan say this system tends to encourage wider voter participation. For example, under the at-large system, La Sierra had no councilman and felt shortchanged.


Some people in La Sierra do still feel shortchanged under the current system.



Also, in the Press Enterprise, was a short article on whether or not law enforcement officers use quotas when writing traffic tickets. Several law enforcement agencies responded including the Riverside Police Department.


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The Riverside Police Department released this statement through Public Information Officer Steven Frasher:

"Quotas are illegal in California and it's covered in the vehicle code. Section 41602 of the code states that no state or local agency employing peace officers or parking enforcement employees engaged in enforcement of the vehicle code or local ordinances may establish any policy requiring those personnel to meet an 'arrest quota.' Arrest quota is defined in Section 41600 as the number of arrests made or citations issued by one of those personnel, compared to a number of arrests or citations recorded by any other personnel.

"Riverside Police supervisors and managers evaluate an officer's performance by total activity produced -- citations, reports and investigations. There is no number of citations, or expectation of a number, required for officers or other employees."




News has been coming out by concerned individuals involving a traffic stop by two Riverside Police Department officers involving Ward One candidate, Letitia Pepper early this morning. Not much information is available, just that Pepper was stopped near the downtown area by two unidentified police officers who she had waved to as she passed them where they had parked their cars. Apparently, the officers did not provide their names when she asked for them.

More news of this as it becomes available but apparently it has upset people.

In Maywood, California, a corruption probe has widened into both the police department and the city council that oversaw its operations according to an article in the Los Angeles Times. Coming under scrutiny in investigations being conducted by the FBI, the State Attorney General's office and the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office are tow trucking firms which might have received kickbacks from the city's government.

Singled out was Tooradj Khosroabadi, known as "Bravo" who some called, the most honest person they had ever known in his defense. But others said that he had landed a contract with the city by offering gifts to the police department employees and city officials.

Allegations came out of the police department as well including against its police chief who had been hired for the job despite having a criminal conviction in his background.

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According to interviews and court documents, top police officials made an effort to help Khosroabadi's business succeed. Maywood Police Officer Pablo Cunningham, who has accused the department of retaliating against him for reporting an array of alleged misconduct, has said in court papers that Police Chief Bruce Leflar once called a meeting at which he pressured officers on behalf of Khosroabadi, telling them he "needs more impounds."

Leflar, who abruptly stopped showing up for work late last year, declined to comment.It was not just the chief who was allegedly applying pressure on officers, according to Cunningham's lawsuit. Cunningham said he was shown an e-mail from a lieutenant to two sergeants discussing the lack of traffic enforcement by some officers.

The lieutenant encouraged the sergeants to use whatever means necessary, the e-mail said, "to get them to see the light and get into the game."According to Colleen Flynn, a lawyer involved in a separate class-action suit against the city, Cunningham told her that officers initiating the most number of impounds were rewarded by being allowed to work four 10-hour days so they would have three days off.

Cunningham said officers targeted motorists whom they believed were illegal immigrants; their alleged offenses were derisively referred to as "driving while wet," according to Flynn.

The police department would set up checkpoints targeting Latino motorists if they were believed to be undocumented immigrants. Then impound their vehicles if there were violations.

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The city of Maywood also received a cut for each vehicle that was towed, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars for city coffers.

Many motorists had their vehicles seized at random traffic checkpoints, at which Khosroabadi would station catering trucks and let officers help themselves to free food and drinks, officials confirmed.

The checkpoints were often set up at rush hour on Atlantic Boulevard and Slauson Avenue, the city's main thoroughfares, resulting in traffic jams that backed up into neighboring cities.

Alleged offenders would be ushered to side streets where police vehicles and tow trucks would be waiting.

In another Los Angeles Times article, Maywood's vice-mayor who criticized the corruption allegedly surrounding the towing business in his city wasn't above offering up gifts to get his own vehicle out of the impound lot.


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Though he should have had to pay hundreds of dollars to the city and to Maywood Club Tow, Aguirre was allowed to reclaim his 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee for free.

Police Chief Richard Lyons waived the city's $200 fee for reclaiming an impounded vehicle, and the company owner, Tooradj Khosroabadi, opted not to charge Aguirre the standard $120 for the towing and one-day storage of his vehicle. Aguirre owes $50 for the parking violation.

Aguirre made no apologies for what he acknowledged was special treatment.

"I didn't ask for any of this. I was willing to pay all the fees, but that's not what happened," Aguirre said in an interview Friday. "I know what it looks like, and, well, you know, so be it."



In New York City, police officers claimed that they were trying to prevent a gang from crashing the National Puerto Rican Day march but instead arrested 208 people, an act that angered parade organizers according to the New York Daily News.

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"We are very disappointed and alarmed that these violations of civil rights should occur," said Madelyn Lugo, president of the National Puerto Rican Day Parade. She is demanding an explanation from Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.


The police claimed that all of 10 of them were gang members, but at least one of them said he wasn't.

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Among those arrested Sunday was Thomas Scull, an 18-year-old high school senior from Harlem, who said he was busted because he was wearing black and gold sneakers, the Latin Kings gang colors.

"They automatically assumed I was a Latin King," Scull said. "I was going to have fun. ... So now I can't wear my sneakers because the police say so?"



The city council will be looking into the situation.


New York Daily News columnist, Juan Gonzalez had harsh words about the controversial arrests.

He detailed the arrest of Nick Nieves, 16, and the son of a police lieutenant.


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Nieves was wearing a white shirt with a Puerto Rican flag and blue shorts. The yellow shirts worn by the group of strangers in front of him were promotion shirts for Def Jam records, he said, and none of them had made any attempt to break into the parade.

Suddenly cops descended on the group from all sides and began handcuffing and photographing everyone.



"They let my friend go because she was 15," he said. "But they took me and about 20 others to the precinct [stationhouse]."

Nieves said he was not allowed to make a phone call to his parents until 10 p.m. and was not arraigned until the next day.

"Because of all this, I missed my final exam in Spanish Monday morning," he said.

How many more "dangerous Latin Kings" like Nieves did cops arrest last Sunday? Or doesn't anybody in City Hall care?




New York Times Columnist Anemona Hartocollis checks in with an opinion of the mass arrests.