Rain in the forecast?

The weather forecast stated it might rain, but I'll have to see it to believe it.


On Friday, both parties in the case of Ryan Wilson v the city of Riverside took to the courtroom presided over by Judge Dallas Scott Holmes to plead their respective arguments in a terms of whether Wilson, a Riverside Police Department officer should be granted an administrative appeal hearing.

First there was the written legal briefs.

Wilson's attorney, Peter Brock had argued that Wilson should be granted a hearing to appeal the finding delivered to him by the Community Police Review Commission that he violated the department's use of force policy when he shot and killed Summer Marie Lane in 2004.

The city led by Scott Tiedemann argued that the report issued by the CPRC on the case was advisory only, had been roundly ignored by City Manager Brad Hudson and Police Chief Russ Leach according to their declarations and deposition testimony respectively.

Oh, and then they blamed it on a third party, which I guess as supposed to be me.

The judge issued a tentative ruling which was to deny Wilson's writ "under a close call", but then the oral arguments began and things got very interesting.

As before, Brock blamed the CPRC. Tiedenmann blamed the media. Both attorneys representing both parties said that they agreed on the shooting. It was the public who didn't.


The case law presented was Caloca v the County of San Diego. A court case filed by a San Diego County Sheriff's Department deputy to contest a finding by that county's oversight board.

Holmes didn't seem too impressed with Caloca and insisted that the language used in connection to the finding against the sheriff deputy was much stronger than that used by the CPRC against Wilson in its report on his shooting. The word choices were much softer, Holmes said.

And he didn't see any need for the city to set up an appeal process for officers involving findings given by the CPRC because it was just advisory and thus not necessary, he said.

Brock plunged forward with his argument, saying that Leach had these concerns about the impact of the CPRC's report on Wilson.



"These findings will create problems for him and Wilson," Brock said.



Holmes disagreed.


"Police chiefs don't like review boards," Holmes said, "I never met one who liked it."



Then Holmes asked Brock what was he supposed to do, create a process with "three wise clergy persons".



"Would you just have me create this," Holmes said.

Holmes asked Brock for another court case that might change his mind as he issued his final ruling which was to deny the writ without feeling completely comfortable about doing so.

So as of now, the CPRC finding apparently stands.

A while back, the criminal case against former manager in the city's development department was finally closed in that Gregory Bernard Griffin plead guilty to a single felony count of conflict of interest and was sentenced to four days in county jail, 180 hours of community service, five years formal probation and a $10,000 fine according to this article in the Press Enterprise.



Apparently while assigned to oversee the Magnolia Police Station project, he asked its landscape expert to do his personal landscaping while paying for the job out of the funds allocated to the station's construction. The landscape expert reported his conduct to the authorities and Griffin apparently took off for a while but was caught and is now serving his sentence.



The original charges included attempted felony grand theft and attempted embezzlement.



Griffin came over to Riverside from the county's economic development agency in July 2005, not long after his former boss there, Brad Hudson, became his new boss here. Unfortunately, it didn't take him very long to get into trouble in his new job.



Hopefully, after this attempted embezzlement and grand theft was uncovered, an audit was done of the Magnolia Police Station's construction budget immediately, as well as audits on other projects handled by Griffin to ensure that no more funds were misappropriated or misused that should have been spent on these projects.






On Aug. 7, it's the National Night Out which is an annual event sponsored by police agencies and communities in cities and towns across the country to build relationships between them.

Riverside will be holding a variety of events on different days. Sgt. Keenan Lambert from the Riverside Police Department's community policing division talked about them to the Press Enterprise.


(excerpt)


"It's a message for people to get out and understand what resources they have in their city," Lambert said. "They can learn how to use the police department as a resource, and in turn the police can use the community as a resource... And it's to say thank you for taking part in being responsible for your community."

He said the efforts also serve to build trust between the police and neighborhoods.

Riverside Police spokesman Steve Frasher said the events allow police to reach neighborhoods where there is little police presence and areas where there is a lot of police activity.

"It shows an officer as a normal person that laughs and jumps," he said. "It gives them a chance to see our personnel as real people rather than just the guys behind the black cars."


The survey at the Press Enterprise which asks people to report their concerns and thoughts about city government continues to elicit responses here.





The Seattle Times wrote an interesting article on how different cities "police police".

It explores civilian oversight and its origins in several different cities, including Seattle, Portland and San Francisco.

The article showed that for many cities, the process follows a similar pattern.


(excerpt)



The setting: a midsize city near Canada with Scandinavian roots and a reputation for clean government.

The allegation: The police chief is ignoring recommendations by a civilian watchdog agency about how to discipline wayward officers.

Critics say they have lost faith in the ability of the Police Department to police itself.

The city creates a task force that looks into the chief's handling of discipline.

While the scenario might appear to be straight from recent headlines in Seattle, the turmoil occurred last year in a city halfway across the country — Minneapolis.






Seattle's form of civilian oversight is still a work in progress. It has convened a panel which will conduct research on the issue and report back to the city council.


The Governmental Affairs Committee met today in Riverside to discuss the annual report on the ethics process. It's hard these days to get two words without chair, Frank Schiavone interrupting you and then misstating what you said. He demanded a list of everyone who's ever had a concern about the ethics process but under the current climate at City Hall, so if you have concerns and want to get on that list, give him a call.


I do not hand over lists of individuals who express concerns to me about City Hall's operations to any individual including elected officials who demand one especially under the current climate which is more restrictive towards public participation and more into ordering police officers to expel individuals including elderly women from the city council meetings.