Canary in the mine: Minority rule

The city has planned back to back meetings at Fairmount Park on what's going on with both parks that were to be involved in a bait and switch plan under the umbrella of Riverside Renaissance. It was almost to be as noteworthy as the bait and switch involving the Ag park that was done earlier to benefit Friends of the Airport and developer, Chuck Cox who has apparently worked as an engineer for Adkans Engineering which is Councilman Ed Adkison's construction company. However, in this latest case, it was thwarted by some very committed community residents who stood up and let themselves be heard both at civic meetings and through a very impressive letter campaign in the Press Enterprise.


The issues of parks and available open space for parks has been a hot issue in this city especially during election cycles. Two major parcels of land designated to be parks were the focus of intense attention during this past year.



These two parcels of land would be Tequesquite Park and Fairmount Park, both of which had parcels among the acreage allotted to them that were supposed to be divided off and sold off to private development firms to finance other renaissance projects. However, so far that hasn't happened due to efforts by people in this city who are committed to keeping their parks.


The Tequesquite Park Task Force was to meet Monday, July 30 at 6pm while the Fairmount Park Task Force was to meet Tuesday, July 31 also at 6pm.

Of course, during the summer many people interested in the fate of two major city parks will be out of town on vacation, but it's an election year and that's when these things are usually done. Still, at the first meeting of the Tesquesquite Park Task Force, dozens of people braved the summer heat and appeared to voice their opinions on what should be done with that park.

Few of them wanted to surrender every acre of Tequesquite Park to little league sports programs and ball fields. Many felt that there wasn't enough consideration given to seniors and families who might want a place in the park to spend time without being involved in competitive sports. Betro told them that the inclusion of ball fields had been part of the motion approved by the city council but after seeing how loud the applause was for one individual who expressed concern about the entire park being used for ball fields, he said that perhaps two ball fields would be included in the plans for the park.

Resident Eloisa Zermeno didn't believe Betro but anyone who knows her knows that she's tough to fool and asks lots of questions.



People were also confused that there were two separate task forces manned to take public input on what to do with the twin parks and how they were set up in terms of assigning representatives to serve on them. Incumbent Councilman Dom Betro was set to chair the Tequesquite Park Task Force and the item allowing them to do this passed as part of the consent calendar several council meetings ago.



Earlier this year, Betro was all for keeping part of Tequesquite Park, a park and developing the rest of it. But Betro went retro and changed his mind as the battle over the parkland promised to be a hot campaign issue in Election 2007.



Fairmount Park is set to have a strip of parkland adjacent to Market Street sold off for private development. Not too many people are fans of that plan in a city that already has less park land proportionately than the state's average, but that's where it appears the city is going.

After all, it had expected at least $10 million from the sale of part of Tequesquite to go back into its budget for Riverside Renaissance projects. That sale of course was thwarted by an effort to save that park so where's the funding to come from now?



Some people have asked with city coffers running a bit on the dry side and with a recession looming, if the city is going to sell off its park land to developers to finance Riverside Renaissance. Consequently, these developments(pun, intended) in the situation involving city parks have created quite a bit of concern. The issue of selling off Ab Brown Sports Center was taken off the meeting agenda, for now but that recreational facility remains a special area of concern.

Press Enterprise reporter, Doug Haberman weighed in on the meeting here.


(excerpt)


Novelist Gayle Brandeis suggested a skate park for youths but Nuñez and Councilman Dom Betro, who represents the ward that includes Tequesquite Park, said some other location would be better.

Jean Wong, who lives nearby on Braemar Place, recommended a "vita trail" made of rubber or some other material easy on the knees, with exercise stations along the course that people of all ages can use.

Keith Alex, who lives near the park at the base of Mount Rubidoux, garnered the night's loudest applause when he said he was concerned about noise from ball fields and does not favor a "mega sports complex."

Roger Nahas called on the task force and parks officials to be innovative and not fill the acreage with chain-link fences to delineate fields. Some grassy areas can be used for sports without being turned into formal sports fields, he said.





Tonight, it's Fairmount Park's turn at 6pm inside the boathouse at the park.




Dan Bernstein, columnist for the Press Enterprise wrote an interesting column featuring both the "strike team" as it is called over at Riverside County Superior Courthouse and the mayor's annual birthday party, which is also a fundraiser.

The "strike team" are about a dozen judges who will be arriving to try to make a dent in the 1,200 or so criminal trial load until about mid-November. The mayor's bash doesn't mean he's planning to run again, but apparently everyone thinks that Mayor Ron Loveridge is planning to go for a fifth term.




Chuck Washington, the mayor of Temecula participated in an interesting question and answer session in the Press Enterprise on the role of the mayor and city council in terms of how both relate to their constituents.





Meanwhile, some community members are scratching their heads at news that according to City Hall, they apparently are not considered "stake holders" in the Community Police Review Commission. Questions have been asked in terms of who are the stake holders in the process after a statement made by Interim Executive something-or-another Mario Lara concerning the status of a report being conducted on the seven-year-old body by a consultant hired by the city manager's office.



If anyone has any questions about this, direct them to Lara if you can finding him at City Hall in some cubicle some place, far away from the CPRC's small cubicle on the sixth floor.

It's hard for me to address his words without going into a long explanation of the tumultuous history of civilian review in this city and the current relationship between it and a city government which is either indifferent to it or hostile. That current city government has the city manager's office and city attorney's office doing its bidding in terms of what has happened to the CPRC during the several years since it delivered its first(and likely, last) sustained finding on an officer-involved death, in this case that of Summer Marie Lane in 2004.



The law suits filed in the wake of the Lane shooting and the incustody deaths of Terry Rabb, Lee Deante Brown and Douglas Steven Cloud in the past two years presented more of a quandary for the direct employees of the city council and they've acted accordingly. The current poker match by commissioners in regards to the issuance of its public reports, both majority and minority, on the Brown shooting reflect what the CPRC has become in the wake of actions taken by the city manager's office, the city attorney's office and the police department since the secret meetings began allegedly in January 2006 between these agencies and two CPRC commissioners.

The first one took place before the ink on the finding issued on the Lane case had enough time to dry. The Lane case served as a backdrop for the Brown case which is currently being hashed out by the commission.

If the majority of the commissioners on this body were so sure about their conclusions on the Brown case and the rationale used to reach them, that report would have been completed and distributed for public consumption months ago. Instead, they are balking because they can't or won't release their report until lone holdout, Jim Ward releases his minority report stating that in his opinion, the shooting violated the department's use of force policy.



Ward told the other eight commissioners that he would provide copies of his minority report after they provided a completed copy of their majority report. All eight of them blanched at his words. But that's usually how it's done. If there is an em passe between members of the commissioner in terms of issuing a report on an incustody death, then after the discussion is completed, both parties submit their respective reports containing their position on the incident and the rationale that brought them to that point preferably backed up by evidence provided by both the CPRC and police department's investigations.

After the reports are released, those who have signed onto the majority report are given the opportunity to provide a response to the minority report.

But what commissioners on the majority side have said is that they want to read the minority report and go back and change their majority report or they want in several cases, to suggest changes to or concur on some portions of the minority report even as they swear that its content will not change their contention that the shooting was justified.


Why are they so concerned, so concerned that they refuse to issue their public report on a shooting that most likely has already been adjudicated by the police department?

Because unlike the majority of them, Ward clearly read the entire collection of evidence gathered by both the CPRC's own investigator, Butch Warnberg of the Baker Street Group and the police department's own investigative team. Unlike Ward, the other commissioners have not read anything but their own investigator's report, which consequently puts them in an unenviable position of having to concern themselves that Ward has evaluated a piece of important evidence that they and Warnberg may have missed.


After all, how many commissioners who are evaluating the state of mind held by both officers involved in the Brown shooting have even read or listened to the interviews given by both to investigators? How many of them have listened to the belt recordings provided by both officers?



After all, they apparently believed that both officers knew what the other was doing at the time of the shooting when statements by the officers' said otherwise. Several also believe that Officer Michael Paul Stucker had performed a mental evaluation on Brown when there's no evidence that he either did or said that he did so presented by anyone.



So it's clear they didn't evaluate the officers' statements in their own words and likely, didn't listen to the recordings either. So what is their basis for evaluating the officers' state of mind then?


These two pieces of evidence are the best place to look for the officers' state of minds yet there's all this talk of what their states of mind were from commissioners who when asked if they have reviewed this material answer with a blank stare or a comment about Monday morning quarterbacking, which by the way, is the task assigned to them in these situations.

So this game continues. The public is denied the majority report because the majority of the commissioners fears the minority report. The city manager's office is doing its thing with the police commission because it doesn't fear the commission so much, but the police department and the financial liability it might cost the city in wrongful death civil litigation.

After all, why else would the city manager's office be so interested in micromanaging the department as some have claimed to the point where allegations were made by those inside the department that this office was interfering in the promotional process? Why do this?

Why indeed?


At any rate, given the current pace of discussion, expect the CPRC to release its report on the Brown shooting by oh, about 2010.



An interesting footnote is that once Chair Brian Pearcy began taking the lead on the commission towards exonerating the officers, the city manager's office stopped sending representatives to the meetings on this case to sit in.

This is all very interesting but how much did the Brown case really impact the decision at City Hall to hollow out the commission?

What some further research will show is that what really brought around the campaign to weaken the CPRC and render it less effective was the Lane shooting and its aftermath.

This became clear after Officer Ryan Wilson, who shot Lane, began submitting briefs and deposition excerpts as part of his law suit filed in Riverside County Superior Court to either be granted an administrative appeal hearing by the city or to have it compel the CPRC to change its finding. If it weren't for Wilson and his supporters in his law suit, much about what lie behind the flurry of activity in the past 18 months would remain unknown.

The public was left pretty much in the dark while all this was going on, much the same as it's been left out of the current plan to improve the commission. But just like the Wizard of Oz had trouble keeping attention away from what was going on behind the curtain, so did City Hall have in keeping all of its actions involving the CPRC covered in a shroud of secrecy.

The controversy over the secret meetings behind closed doors at City Hall spilled out during CPRC meetings despite efforts by the city manager's office and the city attorney's office to thwart Ward's attempts to put a discussion of it on the meeting agenda. It took months for City Hall to even allow the CPRC commissioners to hold discussions regarding the changes taking place in their midst and to keep the community at bay with promises to improve the panel that it likely will never keep.

In the midst of all this, is Champaign, Illinois, a city hundreds of miles away from Riverside where a battle is going on over whether or not civilian review should be implemented in that city with per usual, the politicians wanting no part of it and the communities particularly those which are Black and Latino saying some sort of outside oversight is necessary. That's a divide that's been seen in many cities and counties that have grappled with the issue of implementing civilian review.

That included Riverside, California.

To say that the city officials in this city had to be dragged kicking and screaming into even considering civilian oversight would not be an exaggeration. In fact, discussions involving civilian review go back even before the era of the 1990s where the communities pushed and the city officials pulled away, a dynamic that mirrors that which has taken place in nearly every jurisdiction that has created and implemented mechanisms of civilian oversight.

In the early 1980s, the Human Relations Commission created a subcommittee called LEPAC, which in longer terms was the Law Enforcement Policy Advisory Committee. A controversial incident involving the attack of one of the department's canine officers against a woman with Parkinson's Disease in her own home led to community protests which led to among other things, LEPAC.

This committee produced policy recommendations for the police department, most of which were ignored. At one point, Chair Mary Figueroa tried to push the committee further by trying to obtain subpoena power for it, but the city council nixed that proposal. This sent a loud message back to the community that LEPAC was just what Mayor Ron Loveridge would later call civilian review boards, a "symbolic gesture".

It was essentially a toothless tiger and it was called such at several meetings that took place in the community regarding the issue of civilian review in Riverside that took place after a controversial police shooting in 1998.


After the shooting of Tyisha Miller, then Chief Jerry Carroll attended a LEPAC meeting where community members also attended. The agenda as was, quickly flew out the window and Carroll was left to answer tough questions from community members outraged about the shooting.

When the resolution was approved by the city council to create the CPRC in early 2000, the plan was to phase LEPAC out.

LEPAC in its final months was also the forum for an examination of the department's oft-amended use of force policy(#4.30) and the development of the Early Warning System which was one of the recommendations submitted by the Mayor's Use of Force Panel and one that later would be mandated by the state attorney general's office through its consent decree with the city.

Years later, we have a city government in place that doesn't believe its current mechanism is a "symbolic gesture", more like a downright nuisance that might wind up costing the city money lost in civil litigation if it sustains allegations of excessive force in connection with incustody deaths committed by Riverside Police Department officers. The city has acted accordingly.

The community, which apparently are not considered "stake holders" in the process by those at City Hall was shunted to the sidelines where it remains today outside the gates waiting to see what the city will do next without any voice in the process. By design.




Did NBC Dateline bribe a lieutenant with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department to participate in its television show that conducted stings on alleged sex offenders? A law suit filed against the show by the estate of a former deputy district attorney in Texas who committed suicide raises that question, according to the Press Enterprise.


Working police radios are in short supply for the Los Angeles Police Department according to the Los Angeles Times.