River City Hall: The meetings

Another pedestrian was killed by a Metrolink train in Ontario on Monday evening. The brief in the Press Enterprise said that the 707 train was delayed and couldn't leave Union Station in Los Angeles, but actually it was only a few minutes late in arriving. A woman there told confused passengers that they might have to wait up to three hours for the train to arrive, but soon after a train arrived on the east side of the bridge and that's the one everyone ended up boarding after initially being told that no, that wasn't the proper train, it was simply a San Bernardino train staying over for the night.

The next day, she had a name, according to this brief posted by the Press Enterprise.



Police said an 80-year-old woman was killed by a Metrolink train in Ontario Monday evening after she tried to run across the train tracks.

Lucita Serrato, 80, of Ontario was hit by the passenger train at the San Antonio Avenue crossing at about 5:10 p.m. Monday, according to a San Bernardino County Coroner’s report.

Witnesses told police the woman was headed south across the tracks when she ducked under a crossing guard rail in an attempt to beat the train, according to the report.

There were no injuries to the more than 300 passengers on the train from Los Angeles to Riverside.

- John Asbury
jasbury@PE.com


Where was she trying to go in such a hurry that she couldn't wait for a five or six car train to pass by? What was waiting on the other side of the tracks? She gambled with her body against the train at the ripe age of 80.


As has been the case too many times, the train won.





One question I'm asked often by people is the following.

Why if using cellphones while driving is dangerous, do you see so many Riverside Police Department officers talking on their phones, while driving the street even through intersections?

After all, a study from the University of Utah stated that using your cell phone while driving, even one that didn't require you to hold it, was as dangerous as driving drunk.

It's probably no joke to Officer Paul Turner. He and the city of Riverside, his employer, are being sued because nearly five years ago, his squad car struck a woman who was walking in a cross-walk, causing her serious injuries which led to the law suit. The city defended his actions by claiming that the woman was crossing against a "don't walk" signal. Of course, that would still mean that Turner had run a red light, even though apparently he wasn't being dispatched to a call and didn't have his sirens and lights on at the time.

The law suit is currently in arbitration but before that, plaintiff Christina Gayler was trying to subpoena Turner's cell phone records to determine whether or not he had been talking on his personal cell phone when he drove into her. The city claimed that was a violation of his privacy and might jeopardize the integrity of any investigations he may have been working on at the time.

But the subpoena request revisited the issue of mixing cell phones with driving, an action which will be illegal by July 2008 in the state of California.

If Turner had been using his cell phone at the time he hit Gayler, he wouldn't have been the only officer using one while driving. And it's true, there are a lot of police officers driving in squad cars using cell phones in Riverside.

Some say that police officers use cell phones for professional purposes to communicate with people who have called for assistance. But is this means of communication safe for them while they are on the road? Is it safe for the motorists and pedestrians around them? Is there a safer way to communicate what is necessary and any technology which will facilitate this process?

According to the FBI, the second highest number of police officers were killed in vehicle accidents on the job in its preliminary release of 2006 statistics. That number equals the ranking for the statistics compiled during the last century when more and more deaths on the job were due to accidents including those involving automobiles and motorcycles. And traffic deaths and injuries in this city involving motorists and pedestrians are indeed very high.

In contrast, the department's traffic division is quite small with barely over a dozen officers most of them on motorcycles in a city that's size and population will grow tremendously in the next few years. And the city's streets will grow much more congested than they are already.

Construction projects including yet another one on Alessandro Blvd will make the situation more difficult, for traffic officers and for vehicle safety.

The traffic division does run a pretty good education program considering its entirety is financed with grant funding. One informative presentation that is especially worth seeing and hearing is Sgt. Skip Showwater's presentation on street racing, a practice which has killed and maimed quite a few of Riverside's younger people. Too many teenagers and even young adults believe they are immortal and that just isn't so.

On vehicle accidents involving its officers, the city of Riverside has paid out settlements in several cases involving onduty car accidents by police officers in recent years as it had in the 1990s.

My own close call as a pedestrian came in a major intersection when I was crossing on a "walk" signal and a male officer was turning right in a second lane on that street. He narrowly missed me, but he saw me. He just looked and mouthed the two words that every pedestrian can read without hearing, which are "oh fuck".

And yes, he was on his cell phone at the time.






Speaking of public safety, that city committee met at City Hall and heard among other things a presentation on the police department's mental health training by Capt. Mike Blakely. The training which began its second session this week has been going well, he said.

In attendance was an interesting combination of city employees considering the dynamics which have played themselves out at City Hall in the past year. From the police department, there was Deputy Chief Dave Dominguez and Lt. Mike Perea, who works in the personnel and training division currently headed by Blakely.

City Manager Brad Hudson and Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis also attended and peppered Blakeley with questions on the training and Blakely hit them back with answers. DeSantis was still into his silent treatment kick but I can't say I miss his voice and having to check out the veracity of every thing he says.

The current class of officers in the mental health training numbers 33 and the current curriculum takes about 30 hours to complete. Feedback received from the first round of officers including some handpicked to take the course because of the honest assessment they would provide, resulted in an expansion of a dialogue section between officers and people with mental illnesses who had contacts with the police.

The entire patrol division as well as other officers will receive this training within the next 18 months. Joining them will be many civilian employees as well who interact with the public either through profressional contacts or as dispatchers.

Next up is forming crisis intervention teams but who will serve on them has yet to be decided. Also participating in the creation and implementation of this mental health training has been the County of Riverside, the Riverside Fire Department and American Medical Response, an ambulance service.


Socorro Huerta, who is the program coordinator for the city's gang intervention and prevention program known as Project Bridge gave a presentation on PowerPoint about the work that she and others have done to keep the program viable and operating at its maximum potential.

No one said much but Councilman Steve Adams started acting nostalgic about the many years he spent working as a Riverside Police Department officer in this city before the untimely injury which was suffered onduty or in an intramural football game depending on who you talk to, led to his retirement in the 1990s.

Apparently, he spent 15 years "working with gangs" and talked about how much the businesses and residents disliked the clients of Project Bridge and the way to fix that was to have the kids in the program "get off their lazy butts" and clean up "the mess they made". Then he talked about all the work he with a little help of course from City Attorney Gregory Priamos have done addressing this serious problem. It is still an election year after all, and Adams is hanging on to about one-third of his ward's votes with a runoff with former mayor, Terry Frizzel in his future.

Huerta said that only few of the people in the program were "taggers" who she said are a different group from those in her program and are the ones doing most of the graffiti in the city. Adams snorted and the gold chain on his chest shook and he continued on with his election year performance about "them" even as he wasn't sure who "them" really was.

Isn't it interesting how every issue is suddenly important during an odd-numbered year? The number of officers added to the police department is of grave importance even as increasing the number of fire stations and upgrading public utilities facilities. But if anyone asks for these things in even-numbered years, those people are seen as being unreasonable.

All of a sudden, you can't have too many parks in a city which boasts less park space per capita than the state's average.

Anyway, next year after the elections are finally done and decided, life will go back to normal and the development firms will be running the city again.

Oh wait, next year is the mayoral race. Cool!





Hudson said that the police department will be presenting its next audit by consultant Joe Brann as well as its update on its implementation on the Strategic Plan some time in August. I had sent emails to the city council members on this issue last week and Councilman Ed Adkison forwarded his concerns about it to Hudson who said he met with Brann last Friday.

After all, the first audit showed problems in the police department that emerged at its management level not long after its consent decree with the State of California dissolved in March 2006. The city council had enthusiastically averred to continue with a program to oversee the plan but it kind of went by the wayside for six months because the city council forgot the promises it made about 10 minutes after making them.

It's just too bad that you can't put one of those development project signs in front of the police department and said, "Project: Strategic Plan" starring [insert city manager's office and city council] in big print and [insert police department management] in smaller print, [insert rank and file] in even smaller print and finally, [insert the community] in the smallest print of all.

Oh well, who said big was better? But if a sign like this was erected at all the police facilities, maybe the city council would care to hear updates about it as much as they do for development projects. Maybe they would believe that the health and continued growth and reform of the police department matters too.

If only to show that the newer city government has learned from its predecessors the tried and true adage: Pay a little now or pay a lot more later. Some lessons are too costly to repeat.

Not all was bad in the audit as the department did show signs of improving in the last few months covered in its last audit. But it's important to remain engaged so that improvement can continue. The police department's future must be internally driven and the city and community must remain involved. That's the only way it can ultimately succeed.

As always, what is past is prologue.

If you want to read the Strategic Plan, it's here. For those who don't know, it's a blue print for the implementation of goals and objectives from 2004-2009 that was mandated by former State Attorney General Bill Lockyer which is part of the stipulated judgment.