Election 2008: Planes, trains and elections

The weather here does change a lot. Nearly 100 degrees and blazing on Saturday at the National Night Out kickoff event and today, it looks like June gloom has returned.




The Press Enterprise editorial board urged the heads of law enforcement agencies including Riverside County Sheriff Bob Doyle to stop giving out fake badges to political supporters and volunteers. It's really one of the silliest practices one can think up to win an election and pay back one's political supporters.

The practice has not surprisingly led to abuse by some individuals who have been given them in this county, Los Angeles County and Orange County as well.


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The flash of an honorary or semi-official badge undermines public confidence by cheapening a symbol people universally associate with the police. Public officials' political cronies, who lack the power to make arrests, serve warrants or carry guns, have no good reason to carry such emblems.





Speaking of politics, the political section of the Press Enterprise includes the latest news on next year's county board of supervisors' races in Riverside County.

You read it there first. Current councilman and aspiring county supervisor, Frank Schiavone has predicted that next year's contest will be the most expensive in history. I guess that's supposed to be a good thing?

Schiavone also wrapped up the financial support of the Riverside Sheriffs' Association which previously had financed former candidate, Linda Soubirous, to the tune of $193,000. Soubirous is currently representing Schiavone's council ward on the increasingly politicized Community Police Review Commission and has apparently put aside any further political ambitions for now.

The brief also claimed that the RSA had nearly $600,000 in its political war chest. That's quite a chunk of change there and it's likely that a huge portion of this money will be spent on the county races.

In the meantime, all the changelings in Ward Four are wondering what they did that put them in the situation of having their elected representative preparing to jump ship for what some might say are greener pastures. Ward Seven can relate to that having watched its own councilman, Steve Adams, attempt and fail to win a seat in the state assembly up in Sacramento. It remains to be seen whether or not Adams will be reelected but he won his first round by a somewhat lower percentage of votes than allotted to others in his position.

Is using the city council seats in Riverside proper soon to become a handy stepping stone for higher office? Not that doing this is anything new, but it seems to have regained some momentum in recent years as the posh thing to do.

I guess Ward Four just isn't all that hot outside of an election year.

Schiavone might need every dime that he can get. Why? Because there has to be enough money in the world to help the voters forget three letters of the alphabet which when combined together spell the following.


DHL.


And here's a jousting match that is sure to come during the election trail. DC-9s vs freight trains which are due to appear on a ballot soon, front seats will be on sale soon.

Election 2008 is revving up on deck, before Election 2007 has even been decided.

Let the games begin.

Riverside County's police agencies have purchased armored vehicles and the Press Enterprise wrote about that here. The newest one is called the Bear which is larger than the current vehicle of choice, the Bear Cat and has been purchased by both the Riverside Police Department and the Riverside County Sheriff's Department.

The law enforcement agencies like them particularly for use with their SWAT Teams.


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Rather than having the cops running up to a house and trying to rescue a hostage (the BearCat) offers us the ability to change our tactic," said Sgt. Bruce Blomdahl, head of the Riverside police SWAT operations. "We can pull up closer and use this as armor to get them to safety."

Police representatives say the vehicles make SWATs' work safer. And suspects barricaded inside a home often surrender when they see the large, menacing machine.

"I wouldn't want to go to my window and see this thing sitting in my front yard," Lt. Chuck deDianous, head of Colton's SWAT team, said.



But the vehicles have elicited concern in at least one former law enforcement officer.


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Mike Crichton, a retired Riverside County sheriff's deputy and a member of the Riverside Coalition for Police Accountability, a citizen's watchdog group, said, "If you give us tools that are built around armor and are bomb-proof, we'll start using those types of things without questioning the tactic."

He said he thinks such practices become entrenched, and departments are less likely to scrutinize and evaluate their own procedures.





A five-year old boy was fishing with his grandfather in a pond in a town in Oklahoma on the evening of Aug. 3.

Moments later, Austin Haley was dying from a gunshot to his head. The person who allegedly fired the two bullets was a Noble Police Department officer who had been trying to kill a snake in a nearby yard, according to the Associated Press.

City Manager Bob Wade tried to explain the chain of events that led in tragedy.


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"I was told that they tried several ways to get the snake down, but it was still hissing at them and firmly lodged," Wade said. "What I was told is that the owner of the home either suggested or agreed that they should go ahead and shoot the snake, and then everything happened from there."

Wade refused to identify the officer suspected of firing the shots but said the officer has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.

"This is so bizarre it has to be fully investigated. ... We're pretty sure circumstantially that it is the bullet from the police officer's gun, but it might be a bullet from someone else," Wade said.




But Jack Tracy believes that the bullet which killed his grandson came from an officer's gun.


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"I'm not saying the cop shot him on purpose," Tracy said. "It was an accident. But let me tell you - if I had a kid and put him in this car and didn't put him in a car seat and he got killed on the way to town, they'd charge me with murder ... and what this cop did is a lot worse than that."






Joel McNally, a columnist for the Capital Times stated that Milwaukee's next police chief must come from the outside.


This is in response to the conviction in U.S. District Court of three of its officers for a beating that they were acquitted for by an all-White jury in state court.


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That's what the criminal justice system is supposed to do. And it usually doesn't take nearly three years to do it.

The system has very little trouble convicting defendants at blazing speed when they look like the victim, Jude, in this case.

It wasn't like there weren't plenty of witnesses to the crime either. Not only that, but the witnesses were professionally trained to observe and to testify to the details of crimes.

The witnesses, other off-duty Milwaukee police officers, had even taken an oath to intervene when they saw a crime being committed and to arrest the participants.

But many of those witnesses were either too busy beating and kicking Jude themselves or far too drunk to make accurate observations.



Nine officers were fired while four others received discipline for the horrific beating of a Black man that elicited a widespread response from Milwaukee's communities that crossed color lines.

But still, a lot remains to be done about cleaning up the Milwaukee Police Department which like many law enforcement agencies in this position is currently searching for a new police chief.

Look outside, urged McNally and in the most egregious cases involving police agencies that are so dysfunctional that their problems inevitably spill out in ways that horrify people nationwide.

The Los Angeles Police Department has been there, twice in recent years looking outside for former Philadelphia Police Department Chief Willie Williams and Former New York City Police Department Commissioner William Bratton.

Riverside, California has been there too. Hiring both former San Diego Police Department Chief Ken Fortier in 1993 and former El Paso Police Department chief, Russ Leach in 2000 to run its police department after contentious tenures by inhouse management. Often, it seems that many agencies alternate with chiefs who come inside and outside of the agencies they lead.

Milwaukee still has a long road ahead.

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Despite the conviction of three officers and guilty pleas from four others, the federal trial did not clear all the skeletons out of the closet of the Milwaukee Police Department.

Despite being subpoenaed to testify, the head of the division that conducts internal affairs investigations was out of the country during the federal trial. The internal investigation failed to report a single rule violation of intoxication by officers at the party, many of whom had been drinking all day.

The Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission is interviewing candidates for a new chief to succeed Hegerty, who chose not to seek reappointment. Most of the remaining candidates are from outside the department.

While it is theoretically possible an internal candidate might still be able to lead the reform necessary to restore professional credibility to the department, there is growing community support for a new chief from the outside who would not be encumbered by ties to the current departmental culture.

The choice of a new chief could determine whether the verdict in the second Jude trial represents a turning point in Milwaukee police history.




Yes indeed. It remains to be seen what will happen next in Milwaukee, a where a story is unfolding of a department that could and has been undergoing something similar to what's happened to many others of its kind in this country.

If a department's internal affairs division can't or won't tell the difference between a drunk employee and a sober one, then it's most likely that the person that this department desperately needs to reform it just isn't going to be found among its ranks.

So, Milwaukee, you better start shopping.






Springfield's police department in Illinois was recently featured in the Springfield Journal-Register which published this article about how 10 officers had received over 110 of the sustained complaints against officers in the department.


Deputy Police Chief Robert Williams who heads the department's Internal Affairs Division appeared to have mixed feelings about the news.


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"Yes, unfortunately, you are interpreting that correctly," Deputy Police Chief Robert Williams, head of the department's internal affairs division, said Friday.
"I really can't give any logical explanation other than what you're inducting from the statistics. Those officers have been extremely busy."



Yes, I suppose "busy" might be one way to look at it. At least one person who studies police practices had some words to say about it.


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Sam Walker, an academic from the University of Nebraska who has studied police matters, including internal affairs, said it's not unusual for certain officers to be responsible for a large proportion of complains.

"It's a fairly typical pattern," he said. "The question is: What are you doing about those officers? Are they getting any counseling or training?"



That's one important question to ask a department which in the article claimed to have an early warning system of sorts to oversee its more problematic officers.


There were 559 complaints filed, most of which were lodged internally by other officers. Of the complaints filed, about two-thirds of them were sustained. Those filed by officers were sustained at a rate of 83%, which was four times higher than the sustained rate of those filed by the public.