River City: Sweetness and light?

Walking through downtown Riverside is always an interesting experience. This morning while walking across the parking lot of a credit union one block away from the police department's administrative headquarters, this white car pulled up and this young man asked me if I needed a ride. I said no, and continued walking. As I was crossing the street, I heard him yell from behind me.


"I've got money," he said from his car.




I turned to look at him and I said, "I do too. $5.50." then walked away. If he does have money, I think he needs to spend it on his car rather than on prostitutes which is what he was obviously interested in. But either this young man is lost or the red light district is coming to the downtown area, on the heels of Riverside Renaissance.

If you are a woman who walks at least several blocks in Riverside, the reality is that at least one motorist or if you are really fortunate, some man on foot is going to pull his car over or come up to you and ask you if you need a ride, are interested in a date or he'll just gesture you over. Most of the time it's annoying, as is this attitude that this behavior just waved off as simply "boys being boys". Men can't help what they are, is the admonition often said including by police officers.

Some years back, an officer had told me that men were deviant creatures and this was a free country where people could express themselves as they chose. And what was the man who was being reported doing to express himself? Tailing women in a car, stopping, asking for directions while masturbating.

I felt sorry for the officer at the time because he obviously hadn't received the same training that a detective from the University of California, Riverside has received when he told me that the campus' police department always took these reports seriously because very often, what people call exhibitionists or "weenie wagglers" go on to commit more serious crimes against women. It was too bad at the time, that a police officer hired by the city was denied that same information and forced to rely on the "boys will be boys" argument because he didn't know what else to say. The men who commit these crimes always appear to have their privacy respected in a way the women who sell themselves don't.

Maybe getting more women in law enforcement will help change the "boys will be boys" belief system, but in many police department including Riverside's, that is a difficult, uphill task. Police departments themselves have struggled with sexual harassment and sexism within their ranks as the millions of dollars paid out in settlements to female officers has clearly shown.



Being women, we share our stories and our methods of addressing these situations or not with each other. It's an unfortunate rite of passage that began for me, when I was propositioned while walking down the street to school by a grown man at the ripe old age of nine. A reminder that any woman and even young girls are commodities to at least some men who see us walking down the street.

Some women see men tailing women who are walking down the street like one woman said she had seen while driving near Cal Baptist University the other day. She pulled up her car and told the guy that she was watching what he was doing and he left the young woman alone and took off probably to find an easier target.

A woman I know had a much scarier experience with two men following her on University Avenue and when she told an officer about it on her cell phone when she called him while trying to figure out what to do, she later found out that her experience was the butt of humor among officers and other people based largely on the amount of money the men had offered her(which was $500) if she would go with them. She found out that they were joking that she should be complimented that a man or men wanted to pay $500 for her.

To male officers, it's a joke to share among themselves and other men because it's not something they will ever experience. To women, it's not, it's a reminder that they are less than human and that their definition as humans is left for men to decide.

Even though in encounters between prostitutes and their customers, there are legally speaking, two individuals breaking the law, it's the women who often are the ones arrested and go to court. But the men? When all the prostitutes are arrested or run out of town, their customers simply harass any woman walking down the street because they've learned that what they are doing might be a crime but boys will be boys.


Chief Russ Leach made the rounds of several community meetings in the Eastside saying that the curbs would be painted red and that men who were arrested would have their names and photographs posted in the newspaper. That made some women feel better because living in the neighborhood, they were tired of being harassed by men and having their daughters be harassed by men engaging in solicitation.

But that never happened. Every once in a while, also during an election year, there is a highly publicized "sting" involving the men. There was even a photograph of a man getting arrested but interestingly enough, the only part of the man visible in this photograph was the part of him that got him into trouble albeit with clothes on.

Women still walk in that and other neighborhoods and are approached by strange men on foot and in vehicles and they are harassed from one end of the city to another. Women are even followed by men who haggle at them from business drives and street intersections. It's part of life, of living in a society which devalues them and encounters with these men are reminders to them of this fact.




People are celebrating in the streets at the news that the freeway overpass near Blaine and Iowa has finally been completed after two years. A Press Enterprise article broke the news about the reopening of Third Street to traffic.


(excerpt)


Dale Kinnear, principal at John W. North High School in Riverside, remembers well the desperation he felt two years ago when he found out Caltrans was about to close the bridge over Third/Blaine streets near his campus for renovation.

"I thought it was going to be a nightmare," Kinnear said Tuesday.

Instead, the bridge closure, which ends today, has proven a nice break from the jaywalking, traffic and speeding concerns that have been chronic problems during Kinnear's 15 years at North High.

"It's been wonderful," he said. "There's hardly any traffic, so it's been really exceptionally safe."







Phil Pitchford, an old face at the newspaper also has a traffic blog here.




A woman filed a law suit alleging that she was raped by an off-duty Inglewood Police Department officer according to the Los Angeles Times. Her allegations are currently being investigated and there's no word on whether her case is related to the ongoing scandal involving Inglewood Police Department officers who fraternized with employees of massage parlors.


(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)


The 26-page lawsuit graphically describes what the woman calls a terrifying assault on Dec. 15. It says that she was followed by an Inglewood officer to her Econo Lodge motel room, raped and then forced to give the officer oral sex. Although the woman's identity is revealed in the lawsuit, The Times generally does not identify alleged victims of sex crimes without their permission. The lawsuit also gives the last names of two police officers -- the alleged perpetrator and his partner -- but The Times could not confirm their full names.

Recounting allegations that the newspaper first reported late last year, the lawsuit alleges that the woman was stopped by the two officers as she walked to a fast-food restaurant about 10:30 p.m. on a Sunday to get a late dinner. She was in town with her boyfriend, according to the lawsuit, to visit relatives for the holidays.

As she walked along Century Boulevard, a thoroughfare known for the presence of streetwalkers, the officers stopped her and accused her of being a prostitute, according to the lawsuit.

She denied the accusation and was followed back to her motel, where a night manager confirmed that she was a registered guest.

Nevertheless, the suit contends, one officer insisted that the woman take him to her motel room, where he again accused her of being a prostitute and then, with one hand on his handgun, forced her to have sex.

After the alleged attack, the lawsuit says, the officer left with his partner, who had been waiting downstairs in their patrol car.



Another example of a different sort of how a woman walking down a street is seen as a commodity and treated accordingly, only this time among those who had sworn to serve and protect her.





One man's solution to addressing parking problems in downtown areas of cities is here. The author stated that cities need to come up with what works for them rather than simply copying what other places are doing to address this challenging issue.

An interesting letter in the Press Enterprise about the city council's decision to rescind the electric rate increases is here.





"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"


---The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum



I have been following the latest discussion at Craigslist and how the postings about this blog there have been removed by individuals who are unhappy with them. Individuals who support some of the incumbents who are currently in office seem puzzled and very dismayed that people are failing to be "constructive"(which means to support their agenda) and are instead "divisive"(which means you don't) and are criticizing what is happening in this city.

Their justification for bringing down postings about this site is because opinion is reflected in this blog and they are right. They then state that posting "opinion" on Craigslist is counter to that site's mission. However, simply by expressing their own opinions on the topic which is what they are doing, they are essentially placing their own postings in the same category of "opinion" and consequently, by their own argument their own posts should be subjected to the same criteria for removal that they are applying on their opponents.

This is all silly. Politics by nature is about opinion and politics is the name of the topic that all of the posts fall under. At least 99% of what is posted by anyone on the "politics" category regardless of who or what they support in this year's election includes opinion. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, given that the topic is politics.

But there's another reality at work here too and that involves their strategy to handle dissent, which again, is labeled as being "divisive. Their strategy is to remove it so that others who might come along to Craigslist can't read it.

If that's how the supporters of several candidates or agendas want to deal with differing opinions, then that's one way to deal with it by erasing it from existence. But their actions which they proudly defend do reflect on those candidates and agendas that they do support especially if they allege that they are doing these actions in the names of others who aren't even there to say they support that action or not.

After seeing what's going on with Craigslist in this respect, it's not difficult to remember and reflect on the day several elected officials on the dais ordered the removal of elderly women from the chambers, while other elected officials watched and said nothing to oppose this action. Ironically as some might call it, the police officers seemed more inclined to ask the questions about what they were being ordered to do including Deputy Chief Dave Dominguez.


There's some interesting discussion including the issue of whether or not there will be a skate park and if so, where it will be with good contributions on all sides of that issue. More of that is needed, along with continued notifications of issues and public meetings so people can be informed on what's going on that impacts them.

Still, there seems to be this message that if you don't jump on the bandwagon, you don't know the truth and if you don't know this truth, you will be removed. Again, not surprising in a city where those on the dais have passed more restrictions on public comment than any city council in recent years had ever done. Criticism in their offices, flattery for them in public appears to be the motto of several councilmen including those up for office this year.

Apparently, you aren't telling the truth about Riverside unless you jump on the sweetness and light bandwagon and wave the pom poms over Riverside Renaissance and other civic adventures. And if you don't jump on that bandwagon, then your posts are subject to removal. But I wonder if the only source of information for some of these people are the political officials or candidates that they are aligning themselves with during this election cycle.

Not that parts of Riverside Renaissance aren't great, but many of these projects have actually been in the works for years and others who became the current city council contributed to bringing them to fruition as well. The current city council takes credit for making decisions on the dais that other council members had done as well, earlier in the stages of many of these projects. The difference is that the city was under no illusion that it was flush with money at the time. Whether it is indeed so wealthy now to afford all the bills that it is piling up remains to be seen as budgets are balanced in the years ahead. With feast comes famine, and Riverside's coffers have to be prepared to deal with the inevitability of both.


However, it's a bit jarring when you talk to people involved with some of these projects and you ask where the money is coming from and they can't tell you. Why is that? What do you mean you don't know where the money on your own project is coming from? With that reality, it's not at all surprising to read in the newspaper that a high-ranking city employee was trying to fleece money out of the construction fund for the Magnolia Police Station out of its budget for his own personal use. What were the steps taken by the city to ensure that this would not happen again?

It's difficult to miss all the conflicts between the city's employment unions and the city manager's office including the standoff last March between the Riverside Police Officers' Association and the Riverside Police Administrators' Association over the attempt by that office to change three management positions in the police department to being "at will" not just at those ranks, but period. An action that wasn't even legal to do was only pulled off the meeting agenda for a second look after some lobbying was done out of concern for this planned action.

What will be coming next from the ranks of city employees? The only guarantee is that more serious issues will arise from some place. And that's not counting all the investigations both from the inside outwards and from the outside inwards that are ongoing involving several city departments.

It's a bit difficult to put that under the sweetness and light banner but some have tried. It's commendable to be loyal to your guy, but reality is, this city also has its share of serious problems and for many of the good things that are said to be happening, timing is everything.

Are the positive things happening at the moment happening because the elected officials are responsive to the voices of the city's residents or because the city is currently in the middle of an election cycle? For an answer to that, look at what went down in 2006 and compare it to what's gone down or is going on in 2007.

If, however, you realize that certain things that are positive are becoming realities this year while an election is taking place and weren't happening last year when of course, no local elections were taking place then you are a liar. Even while decisions made by the city council last year have suddenly been reversed this year including the latest involving the revocation of the multi-tiered electric rate increase structure.

Coming in November, are four runoff elections where the stakes are fairly high. What is being played out now reflects those stakes. Still, voters in the odd-numbered wards should research the issues of this city which impact them and the positions held by the candidates on these issues before making a decision on whom they wish to vote for at the polls. For better or for worse, the winners of these contests will represent those living in these wards for the next four years.

Barring any decisions to jump ship mid-term and run for higher office, of course. After all, there's a mayoral race next year and although the mayor has few powers in a council-management political system, the stakes are still high for this position as well.

Hopefully, the discussons will continue.