Riverside 2007: Labor and other pains

Ward One candidate, Michael Gardner responded to an inquiry about his position on Riverside Renaissance after being quoted in a Press Enterprise article as saying that the people he had talked to on the campaign trail about the project had no problem with it.

Inland Empire Craigslist, a good and useful source of information on city issues and some lively discussions on Election 2007 was the forum where Gardner explained his position further.


(excerpt, Inland Empire Craigslist)



I don't think most voters are opposed to the concept of the Renaissance. The concept is to try to make some significant improvements in a fairly short time. Many voters, myself included, do not like parts of the Renaissance. For example, I am opposed to spending $10 million redoing the downtown mall. I believe the Market Street frontage of Fairmount Park needs to be returned to the Parks Department. I do not support building a Parks Department office, or any office, in the Park.

I want to look at each piece of the Renaissance as it comes up. Some, like grade crossings are necessary projects, but we need to design them for the most benefit with the least negative impact. We should not be lumping things approved and funded long ago as part of the Renaissance.

My real point in the PE article was that people are tired of being bullied and ignored by Council. The Renaissance, I think, is an OK concept. Its parts need to be looked at individually. Some are good, some are bad.






I've had several discussions with candidates including Gardner and other community members on the issue of Riverside Renaissance and most of them have said that they support the concept of the program but are apprehensive about its application for a variety of reasons. Or they support some projects but not others and wish that the projects as Gardner stated weren't lumped together under one banner.

After waiting 10 minutes yesterday for the Union Pacific train that parks every Friday evening at Magnolia Avenue to clear the street, I was reminded of the necessity of grade separations at some of the railroad crossings. Perhaps the two men who were on the verge of turning their screaming match into a fist fight in the middle of the parking lot of Magnolia and Merrill might believe that too. Add in the people who were cheering them on and those climbing over the stalled freight train to get to the other side and maybe you'd have a group of people who think that the current system with the railroads isn't working.

So some of it is necessary, but if Riverside Renaissance runs aground, it may be with what are usually long-term projects like grade separations which require coordination with the railroad companies and federal agencies to complete successfully.

And the eminent domain or threatened eminent domain especially given that many of the business owners are Asian-American or Latino is troubling as well, especially in a city which prides itself in placing monuments to civil rights leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. a heart beat away from the building where these decisions are made.

The opinions on Riverside Renaissance given by some of the candidates have mirrored those in the community as well. But the city council didn't want to hear about it. Criticize any aspect of the Riverside Renaissance especially during its unveiling some months ago and you and your opinion were as welcome as a skunk at a Broadway premiere.


Now, some months later, three out of the three incumbents who ran for reelection found out that they'll have to face off with one challenger from each of their wards this autumn. One of them, Art Gage, said in a Press Enterprise article that maybe the thumping that they received was a sign that the city's residents were unhappy with the current council and how it conducted business. Part of that might be attributed to the increasingly arrogant attitude being expressed on the dais.



Another incumbent, Dom Betro, seemed to respond by saying, bite your tongue. Candidates driven by specific issues, read agendas, apparently split the vote. But oh wait, the vote was only split among those candidates who weren't sitting council members. As a whole, their supporters made up about 56% of the votes in Ward One and Ward Three. Who will these voters choose in November?










Inland Empire Weekly is a local newspaper and features some very interesting articles including one on code enforcement in the city of Riverside. This well-written story focuses on home owner Johnny Corina who was receiving a lot of visits and tickets from code compliance to the point where he felt his property was being specifically targeted by the city for other reasons.

Several city employees including "Matt" who would not release their names apparently agreed with him.


(excerpt)



According to Matt and two others—an active code enforcement officer who also asked to be anonymous, and a senior official of one of Riverside's largest labor unions—residents have become unwitting pawns in internal municipal politics, while city employees are victimized by unofficial, dangerous and possibly illegal policies.

According to Matt, a city code enforcement officer was ordered by Code Enforcement Manager Mark Salazar to tow Corina's pickup truck from his home. The officer arrived at the address and saw that the pickup had just eight hours earlier been tagged with a “72 move-or-be-towed” notice—meaning Corina still had about 64 hours before the pickup could be impounded. When the officer called dispatch and said he couldn't legally tow the vehicle, Salazar accused him of ignoring a direct order and insisted the truck be removed. When the officer still refused, Salazar dispatched two other code enforcement officers to tow Corina's vehicle onto his property, drop it in the driveway, and then tag it with a “10-day inoperable vehicle on private property” notice. The officers also refused, citing city law.

Both Matt and the anonymous code enforcement officer we interviewed say the Westridge Road episode was hardly an isolated case. Throughout the city, they say, residents are being handed code citations not because the alleged violations are so onerous, but because Salazar is intent on driving up his department's statistics in order to please the City Council. To accomplish this goal, they say, Salazar last year told code enforcement officers—during a meeting at which Matt was present—that they were each required to issue at least “one ticket-book's worth of tickets” (or 25 tickets) a day.

“One of my colleagues instructed his supervisor that a quota system was illegal,” Matt says. “That was passed on to Salazar, who repeated his order—25 tickets a day—or face termination. The officers were literally in fear for their jobs, so they were going out and writing tickets as fast as they could, working through their breaks and lunches.”





The code officers were also pressured to have no more than 20 cases open at a time so they closed out cases without the problems being resolved. Any attempt to challenge this system led to claims of insubordination against that employee.

It got bad enough, the officers said, that a group of code compliance officers were stationed in the Corporate Yard, a location most famous for being the setting of racism in the form of a hostile environment against Black public works employees that resulted in heated meetings with city management in the late 1980s and a major law suit filed in U.S. District Court in 1997.


(excerpt)


According to sources, the 72-Hour Abatement Team was an unofficial group of three senior code enforcement officers and their supervisor, Joe Estrada, each of whom were targeted for “removal” after running afoul of management. To accomplish this goal, city officials in March 2006 exiled the team to working out of an unheated, un-air-conditioned metal shack in the “Corporate Yard”—a Lincoln Avenue property where the city stores its trash trucks and buses. The shack had previously been used as a soil-testing laboratory, Matt says, and was filled with hazardous materials, including boxes labeled “Radioactive—Do Not Open.”

“The shack was basically a killing station for getting rid of unwanted officers,” Matt says. “The team members were all top code enforcement officers, as far as seniority. Management took away their laptop computers and gave them to officers with less seniority, so there was no computer access at all. All the fire extinguishers in the place were expired. There weren't enough chairs for everyone to sit down. The surfaces were covered with about an inch of soil—Joe Estrada had to clean the soil off with a push broom.”

If Matt's claim that officials posted the team to the metal shack in order to get rid of them is true, they succeeded. Within months, one officer resigned, another was fired, and a third wound up on long-term stress leave. Estrada took the job of code compliance manager for the city of Rancho Mirage. Reached for comment, he confirmed the existence of the team, but refused to discuss the matter further, saying the matter “was headed for court.”


Also included in the article is an interview with Gregory Hagans who is president of the SEIU Local 1997 who also was one of the plaintiffs on the racial discrimination, harassment and retaliation law suit filed in 1997. He explains how an SEIU steward in the code compliance division was the target of an attempt by City Manager Brad Hudson to remove him. Two other officers in that division faced retaliation as well for their union activities

It's no secret in the city employment ranks how Hudson feels about union representatives and those who are active in the city's labor unions including the SEIU but also others like the Riverside Police Officers' Association and the Riverside Police Administrators' Association. The article mentions the appearance of both unions at a city council meeting in late March to protest the creation of "at will" positions in the police department from the captains' pool.

Hagans' views on the situation existing between Hudson and the city's unions.


(excerpt)


“It took one year before the city manager even came and introduced himself to the troops,” Hagans added. “He's out there doing these firings and chopping heads off, and they didn't even know what he looked like. He's out of touch with the community and he's out of touch with his workers. You've got a city management that shows no dignity or respect for its employees. Now, we have a dignity-and-respect article in our contract, but they don't seem to care about that. To them, we are just fodder."




If you took a poll among the ranks of the city's workers, would they agree with this or disagree? What do you think?



Speaking of code compliance, it was quite busy sending officers out to take down election signs of certain candidates that the city deemed had posted them in violation of the city's ordinances. Some of those who were targets of this ahem, campaign were Letitia Pepper, a candidate in Ward One who posted her signs along with a notice of who to call if anyone witnessed these signs taken down by code compliance.



Ticketed by code compliance was the RPOA for some banners they displayed telling people to vote for Ward Five candidate, Donna Doty Michalka and Ward Seven candidate, Roy Saldanha. They received tickets to the tune of several hundred dollars. Were all parties treated equally under the law? The jury remains out on that one.












Let the LAPD investigate!



This is the message being sent by the Los Angeles Times to the city council in that city in response to news that this body planned to interview officers in the police department even if it meant issuing subpoenas to the department after Chief William Bratton said that some of those who supervised the melee are not available for comment.


(excerpt)


It's true that the council has power under the City Charter to subpoena witnesses. So do other city officials, such as the zoning administrator and the city treasurer. Those subpoenas, by the way, are to be issued by the Police Department. Just imagine the scene — an LAPD officer serves a subpoena on members of the LAPD command staff against the wishes of the LAPD chief, interfering with an LAPD investigation.

And it indeed would be interference. Many on the council appear to forget that Bratton's reports to them have been preliminary. Numerous investigations are going forward, including those that will produce an after-action report, use-of-force reports, an inspector general's report, a report on the lawsuits arising from the incident, perhaps an FBI report and, at some point, a full report to the Police Commission and the public. There is no evidence that the investigation processes are flawed, that they are designed to cover up what happened or that anything would be gained by the council beginning its own, competing probe.

The council wants answers and is entitled to get them. When it wants to ask Bratton questions, he should show up and answer them. But by announcing its intention to bring in lower-level sworn city employees for questioning — especially employees who have the right not to answer — the council is simply assuring that it will get more of the silent treatment.



Actually, the city council responded in frustration to a police chief who was saying one thing but doing another. Promising transparency in the investigation while circling the wagons around the department even further. As the newspaper noted in an earlier editorial, Bratton talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk when it comes to allowing scrutiny into his department.

What the Times will find out is that months will go by, the investigation will still be incomplete, the city council will still be frustrated and want answers and the employees involved will still be unavailable for comment. However, it's important to go through the process to get to that point first.



In the L.A. Weekly News, there's a comprehensive article on the May Day incident involving over 60 LAPD riot officers who stormed a park, striking people congregated peacefully with their batons and shooting less lethal bullets at them.

There's a lot of commentary on the decision by Bratton to demote Deputy Chief Cayler "Lee" Carter in response to the criticism of the community against the police department after this latest incident was broadcast around the world.


(excerpt)



Bratton has been unusually brutal in describing Carter’s leadership at MacArthur Park. Before the City Council on May 30, Bratton blamed a “command-and-control breakdown.” Without any prompting, and with mounting indignation, he lashed out, saying, “Chief Carter for 19 minutes marched with that [Metropolitan Division] platoon, actually the three Metro platoons, across the field on 11 different occasions. He could’ve stopped it. To the best of our ability, and based on our understanding, he did nothing.”

“He did not what?” City Councilman Bill Rosendahl asked.

“He did nothing,” Bratton answered. “He went along for the ride.

“So that’s a command-and-control breakdown,” the chief continued, “from my perspective, when I have a two-star chief of police, who’s the senior person on the scene in charge of 600 police officers, who marches behind 100 officers using less-lethal weaponry and ammunition, moving a group of agitators into a larger crowd of 4,000 people.”

It was the most devastating attack by a Los Angeles police chief on one of his trusted brass in recent memory.

A few moments later, Bratton added, “When I talk about command-and-control failure, the two senior ranking members, who between them have over 70 years of experience in this department — and they did nothing! Well, basically, the action I took against them within 24 hours I think speaks to my state of mind relative to my lack of confidence in their ability to continue commanding in this department.”





But who picked them? Who promoted them to be his right-hand men? Who was the one who said that he had a quote from former president, Harry S. Truman on his desk stating that the buck stops here?





Towards the end of the rather descriptive article, the writer gets a bit cynical.





(excerpt)



Somehow, Bratton manages to dodge blame. Maybe it’s his incessant use of that crackerjack phrase “transparent and accountable” that saves him from scrutiny. Whatever it is, Los Angeles is witnessing the work of a political and public-relations genius. Residents just better hope that more old people, women and children at public rallies aren’t terrorized after the razzmatazz is over.



I know the feeling.





How to undermine civilian review has received response as people learned that some of the "suggestions" they could come up for nullifying the Community Police Review Commission if they wanted to do so and had that power have indeed come to pass and the roles that certain parties at City Hall and the police department have played in ensuring that the "hollowing out" of the CPRC is receiving a refreshing dose of clarity as well. The list of actions is growing longer for ideas, as I'm sure the list will be growing longer for what is in store in reality. Hudson and Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis have the time and energy to micromanage the CPRC while last year, they dropped the ball of even ensuring that the promises made by city council members regarding the implementation of the police department's Strategic Plan were anything but shuttled to the sidelines for months.

And per usual, the community members will be on the sidelines watching the city try to, as community members have said, nullify its form of civilian review. When Hudson etal decided to "change" or "fix" the CPRC, did they go to the community for input on what it felt needed to be done?

Of course not. After all the first thing the employees in the city manager's office did when they actually believed they might have to meet with community members was to apply to the police department for concealed weapons permits. Enough said.


And so it all began explained one of the probable origins for the beginning of what many have called the dismantling of an independent civilian oversight process in Riverside, courtesy of documents provided as part of the opening brief submitted by the attorney of Riverside Police Department Officer Ryan Wilson as part of his law suit to get the CPRC to either kick out its finding of excessive force against him or change it to "clear him" in the shooting of Summer Marie Lane in 2004.

Wilson apparently has the full support of his boss, Chief Russ Leach, who according to the brief was "furious" and "outraged" with its finding against his "fine" officer. Leach was also piqued at the "watch dog groups" and yours truly, for expressing opinions on the Summer Marie Lane shooting or mentioning Wilson's name too much, actions that took place a month before the CPRC released what most likely, will be its last controversial finding. He feared that said parties would make his life and that of Wilson's "a bit miserable" if he promoted Wilson to detective or apparently, allowed him to take a NBC reporter on a ride along.

Which is interesting because the police chief had no such qualms when he made the final decision to back his own officer nor did he express any such qualms. And that's as it should be in terms of how he makes his decision on his officers if indeed it was his decision to make at that point in the city's history. As it is part and parcel of a police culture to not be concerned about how the community feels about the decisions that a department makes and to regard any upset by the community as just a nuisance. But as a rationale for any decision not to promote Wilson, as they say, this dog don't hunt.

But why this reasoning was given should be clear at this point and will surely become even more clear as time goes by and both parties in this law suit continue to pencil whip each other through written documents. It's interesting what information is being given and how it's providing an unflattering view of how and why a civilian board has been the focus of a campaign by City Hall to undermine it during the past year.

And this is before the city has even filed its brief on this case, which no doubt will shed more light on its role.

The recent actions involving the city manager's action regarding the management positions in the department that drew crowds of police officers and others to City Hall make one wonder what kind of decisions Leach is still allowed to make.

There is always the sobering possibility that if Leach hadn't made that decision, he may not have remained as police chief. After all, not long after making that decision, he received the first five-year contract as a police chief in the city's recent history. Why was that action taken when it hadn't been taken when Leach was hired even though community members felt that it might be necessary to provide such a contract, given the revolving door policy with police chiefs during the previous decade?

The question is, should it have been his decision to make involving the Lane case in the first place? And was it really his decision?

And how did Leach make it? If he's so concerned about how community members including the parties who apparently irk him most would react to him promoting Wilson, then he must be even more concerned with how the police union would react if he took action against Wilson himself. After all, the community at most could make his life "a bit miserable". The police union can and certainly has in the past, "fired" police chiefs. Leach is smart enough to know which party is really of concern here.

But a declaration submitted by Leach's boss, Hudson suggests that perhaps Hudson did make the decision because basically what he's stating is that he did, but completely ignored the CPRC's contribution to the process except to say that its work product would not be included in Wilson's personnel file. What Hudson did say is that the city took action "in light of the finding by Internal Affairs" that the shooting was within policy.

A statement which could have been given by his predecessor John Holmes, the last city manager to work in a city that didn't have civilian oversight. Nothing's changed in terms of accountability to the community when it comes to the department's incustody deaths no matter what the charter states.

After the finding was issued, Leach began attending meetings at City Hall regarding the CPRC where in the past, he had kept his distance as most police chiefs do when it comes to civilian review. Not the public meetings, but more private conferences that took place involving the city manager's office, the city attorney's office and several commissioners beginning in January 2006, probably while the ink was still drying on the Wilson decision.

How many meetings were involved, is not clear but there were at least two or three, according to the commissioners who attended them and all that players attended a public safety committee meeting involving the CPRC last January. What is clear was that two commissioners reported back to their body on a meeting that took place last December with the same parties where as ex-chair, Les Davidson put it, we're not being asked what we think we should do, we're being told what will be done.

Those parties who delivered that message to the commissioners have made it clear through their actions if not their words that the community falls into that category as well.

It took a while for commissioners to begin resigning, in what would first be a trickle then a hemmorage of departures. Four resigned, two were thinking about it and another one is apparently trying to jump ship as well. Pedro Payne, the prior executive director, had been serving when the commission made the decision to sustain an excessive force allegation against Wilson. Obviously, he didn't make friends at City Hall when he did so, and maybe that's one of the reasons why he joined the exodus of Black and Latino management employees exiting City Hall since Hudson and DeSantis were hired.

To community members, Leach had said he supported the CPRC and actually came up with fairly good recommendations to help make it stronger and more independent. People were impressed with his vision.

However, the problem often is that police executives are more than happy to agree with a process until it disagrees with them or places them in a difficult position. And it's clear if what is presented in Wilson's brief is the truth, then Leach clearly has problems with his own "vision".

But chiefs are always between a rock and a hard place in many ways and have to be different things to different people, hence the confusion when on one day, they purport civilian oversight of their departments, then the next they are "furious" with them. It's the difficulty of the positions they hold and the fine line they walk across which is one reason why many police departments have had to address serious problems.

And so, the CPRC continues on, a ship seriously leaning on one side after having been hit on all sides. Just like its much weaker predecessor LEPAC did during the same decade where the police department started going into its downward spiral that ultimately led to its stipulated judgment with then State Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office.

Some old, entrenched patterns are very difficult to change despite strong efforts by those to institute reforms in order to break old patterns and create new ones. The faces have changed perhaps, but the path itself seems awfully familiar if you're a student of local history.

It remains to be seen whether this is one of them and whether this old adage is true. What is past is prologue.