I (heart) the CPRC: The report card, part one

(Part of a continuing series)



Several months ago, I wrote a posting titled, “I (heart) the CPRC” which detailed among other things, the ongoing relationships between the Community Police Review Commission and the city of Riverside.

What’s been interesting is that this article in particular has been linked to Inland Empire Craigslist quite a bit. Of course, it never remains posted for very long nor do any postings linked to this site because an unknown individual or individuals keep ensuring their removal because for whatever reason, he, she or they don't want anyone to read them. The individual or individuals have actually bragged about it on that site. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

Anyway, it's probably time for a sequel to that posting, especially with all the changes that have been taking place at City Hall in regards to the Community Police Review Commission in recent weeks.



There's a lot of talk about report cards and assigning quantitative or better yet, letter grades to the performances of various players in regard to their interactions with the CPRC. It's interesting how people seem to feel more comfortable with and even gravitate to the assignment of such grades or scores as if that's what is necessary for them to understand or relate to any evaluation of the performance of a person or an entity.



However, often it's hard to assign a quantitative process to one that's inherently addressing qualitative analysis. Even in terms of assigning quantitative scores, it's difficult to do so by separating an entity such as the CPRC from all the people and the city employees, city officials and community members including leaders who interface with it.



The CPRC probably should be assigned a grade as well, but it can't be graded until these other entities around it are graded first. So it will be receiving its score last.


This edition of the report card will address the grades assigned to the city government, past and present.





City Hall





The City Council: D+



Some people might blame it on the fact that the majority of the current city council members were endorsed by the Riverside Police Officers Association when they first ran for their seats. This majority, formerly known as the GASS quartet was united in its opposition to the CPRC as a mechanism for civilian oversight of the police department. In a conversation I had with Dr. Samuel Walker, from the University of Nebraska, Omaha in 2004, he discussed how the labor unions of law enforcement agencies were playing larger roles in the political process of elections in cities and counties where there were civilian mechanisms installed.





Walker attributed that in part to the failure of the labor unions to thwart the process of civilian mechanisms in state courts. Many attempted, and in most cases whether it was addressing the legality of subpoena powers to the legality of civilian review, period, they didn't succeed. As a result, many of them began turning to politics in general and local governmental elections in particular in the early years of this century.



In Riverside, the campaign to put city council members who opposed civilian review began in 1999 before the birth of the CPRC, with the election of Ed Adkison, who had volunteered as a reserve deputy in San Bernardino County and not only opposed the idea of civilian review, he had voted against the implementation of the stipulated judgment as well.



Years later, Adkison admitted he might have erred in his opposition to the stipulated judgment imposed by former State Attorney General Bill Locker. He still remained firm against civilian review, picking up where his predecessor, Alex Clifford(who also opposed civilian review) left off and voting against it in the crucial second vote that it needed to be adopted as an ordinance.



In 2001, along came Councilman Frank Schiavone, a former Riverside Police Department reserve officer who surprise, also opposed civilian review. He received the firm endorsement of the RPOA in the Ward Four elections over previously endorsed Maureen Kane who attracted the union's ire with her votes in favor of the stipulated judgment and civilian review. If the union had known first, that civilian review was inevitable at that point and second, the efforts Kane and other council members made to ensure the implementation of the weakest model possible, perhaps it would have been more forgiving.



The turning point for the RPOA's strategy in the city council elections took place in 2003, when it dumped much larger campaign contributions in the coffers of candidates, Paul Fick, Art Gage and Steve Adams. Gage and Adams, both strong opponents of the CPRC and civilian review rode to victory, producing a majority of elected officials who opposed the CPRC on the dais. However, Fick lost narrowly in a runoff election in Ward One to Councilman Dom Betro who pledged to support the CPRC.



Betro initially stuck to his pledge with his decision along with Councilwoman Nancy Hart and Councilman Ameal Moore's to endorse Measure II, which would place the CPRC in the city's charter if voters passed it at the polls, which they did when 60% of them voted in support of the measure in November 2004.



Before that, the majority didn't wait for very long to act against the CPRC. The only problem was, the GASS(comprised of Gage, Adams, Schiavone and Adkison) quartet as they were called were divided in terms of how exactly to go about doing this. Gage and Adams supported blatant actions such as defunding the commission of up to 95% of its annual budget. Adkison and Schiavone both said they opposed the commission but as long as it existed, it should be properly funded.

Many in the community felt that the CPRC was living on borrowed time, beginning the day that the GASS quartet began its reign from the dais.

In reality, the only reason why the CPRC survived the GASS quartet was because the four members realized that if they did vote to get rid of it, then Mayor Ron Loveridge would do what he had never done and that would be to exercise his veto power. Because Fick didn't get elected, the GASS quartet lacked the crucial fifth vote needed to override a threatened veto by Loveridge.



And Loveridge did threaten to use his veto power at least twice during the budget reconciliation hearings held in June 2004 when Gage tried to strip the CPRC of most of its budget and failed to get anything other than one tepid second from Adams.



FRED(as Adkison and Schiavone used to be called) supposedly never forgave Gage for acting out so blatantly against the CPRC in the summer of 2004 and blamed its installation in the city's charter on Gage, something that Adkison admitted in a Press Enterprise article last spring, though officially at least, he was coming from the perspective that he blamed Gage for threatening to harm the CPRC.



Anyway, Schiavone said recently, FRED's dead and that's pretty much something everybody's known since Schiavone switched his BFF and started hanging out with Betro last year. This new quirky relationship that is the talk of those who follow the soap suds at City Hall would have tremendous implications for the CPRC especially in 2007 and not in the best of ways. That, and the deflation of GASS in favor of its replacement, BASS continue to have implications on many issues, not the least of which is the CPRC.

If GASS made active efforts to sabotage the CPRC or eliminate it, BASS has nearly killed it through at the very least, neglect, and at most, another campaign to keep it in a weakened state. The difference between the two majority blocs is that GASS appeared to want to eliminate civilian review in Riverside while BASS appears okay with having it around as long as it didn't exercise any real power.

If you notice, all of the elected officials save a couple have earned below satisfactory grades, because despite the fact that Measure II passed in all of their wards, they still act on interests that are outside of those expressed by their ward residents. This goes both for those who actively oppose the CPRC as well as those who kind of say they support it because their constituents do then clearly act against it or have nothing to say when it nearly gets run aground by City Hall.

It's also no accident that this occurred beginning a short time after the passage of Measure II. The city council no longer could overtly eliminate the CPRC off of the city's fabric yet after the celebration over its inclusion in the charter died down, the most difficult era in the history of the CPRC was about to begin. It's almost impossible to view the two factors as entirely exclusive entities as well as the timing of the challenges faced by the CPRC taking place relatively quickly after the dissolution of the stipulated judgment with the state in 2006 and the CPRC's sustained finding of excessive force on the Summer Marie Lane shooting before that in late 2005.


Here are the elected players and their grades.



Mayor Ron Loveridge: C





Loveridge deserves some accolades for comprising the Mayor's Use of Force Panel in 1999 which included among its final recommendations the creation of a civilian review mechanism. Although not a huge fan of civilian review(having once called it a "symbolic gesture"), Loveridge did push for it, albeit in a weaker form than most community residents wanted.



But Loveridge did support Measure II and has pushed for more candidates to be interviewed during the past Mayor's Nomination and Screening Commission while the other members of that committee appeared to be too busy trading votes.



If Loveridge hadn't threatened to veto several votes in 2004, there might not be a CPRC today so his contributions on that level were absolutely critical to its surviving until it was voted into the city's charter. The two threatened vetos are those that the public knows about and don't take into account any behind the scene intrigue among members of the GASS quartet.


Still, many mayors have spoken out in favor of civilian review including in cities where it's been challenged or marginalized and Loveridge's silence is such that you can hear a pin drop.



Dom Betro(Ward One): D



Some people believe that you should push for accountability in elected officials equally, but others believe that you should push hardest in the ones whose ideals you support. Betro is probably the biggest disappointment on the dais when it comes to the issue of civilian oversight, hands down.



He campaigned in large part on this issue. He endorsed Measure II. Initially, he appeared to support not just the idea of civilian review but its actuality as a functioning commission. There's little evidence to back that contention based on his actions or rather lack of actions during the past two years. Despite the city management's attempts to "hollow out" the CPRC as Press Enterprise columnist, Dan Bernstein put it, Betro has endorsed a huge pay raise for City Manager Brad Hudson.

Despite the recent events surrounding the CPRC in the past year including the abrupt resignation of an executive director and five commissioners, Betro has remained silent publicly on the issue. There's many questions still surrounding the sudden resignation of Commissioner Steve Simpson that came weeks after Betro and Schiavone allegedly had discussions in June about his mental competency. It's not clear what these concerns were based on given how little time either elected official had spent with Simpson, though Schiavone had mentioned outside and for the most part, unnamed individuals who had expressed these concerns to him.



The only interest Betro seems to have in the CPRC lately is to ensure that one of his major campaigners, Chani Beeman, gets appointed to it, an exercise of power that is commonplace in many local governments today. No one looks twice at the barter and reward system that takes place among elected officials and their supporters and many accept it as part of what governments do.

No city council member had ever worked so hard to get that job done as Betro did. His excuse for his silence appears to be that he believes that as a minority view point on a city council, he can't say anything about it. Tell that to many other elected officials across the country in the same position who are absolutely fearless when it comes to stumping for civilian review mechanisms in their cities and counties. As an excuse, this one doesn't make the grade. The truth is, civilian review is simply an issue that's pretty far down on his list of concerns and if its interests conflict with something that is of higher priority to him and his camp, the CPRC loses.





Now endorsed by the RPOA for his reelection bid, it's not likely you'll see him speaking out in favor of civilian review in general and the CPRC in particular any time soon. What's to be expected is more excuses as to why he won't. It would be nice instead to see Betro return to his roots and lobby for the CPRC to regain its footing again, but at this point, it's just not expected.





Andrew Melendrez(Ward Two): B+





Melendrez was elected in a grass-roots campaign in 2005, pretty much the same one that put Betro on the dais. However, Melendrez has not deviated away from his roots nearly as much during his tenure on the city council and has established a reputation as one of the most independent thinking and voting city council members. One of Melendrez's strengths is how flexible he's proven to be when it comes to scheduling or rescheduling the agendas of his meetings around concerns expressed by the community. His colleagues on the dais should sit back, watch and learn.

Although sometimes he votes alongside with BASS, he's not afraid to vote against them when he believes that to do so is the right decision.

The committee he chairs, which is the Public Safety Committee holds quarterly reports on the health of the CPRC which has led to some interesting and necessary dialogue on the CPRC between elected officials and community members in a public forum. What would be better is if the meetings were at times when more people could participate in these discussions. He keeps the discussions of the CPRC on track despite having one of the members of both GASS and BASS, Adams, on the committee. Adams, clearly no fan of the CPRC tosses out accusations against it. His immediate hiring of former CPRC commissioner, Frank Arreola after the latter had submitted his resignation letter caused some consternation among both commissioners and community members.



Art Gage(Ward Three): D+





Gage clearly dislikes the CPRC intently, even once referring to it as a "piece of junk" or "piece of trash" at a city council meeting. When asked to apologize for that statement, he refused to do so and kind of dug himself deeper in that h0le. He led several attempts to defund it in 2004, an action that members of BASS believe catalyzed its placement in the city's charter.


But Gage is pretty much upfront about his opposition to the CPRC, while some of his colleagues are less than that.

With Gage, what you see is what you get. This is much different considering that some of those on the dais who cheerfully proclaim they support the CPRC now that it's in place can't be as oblivious as they appear to what's going on around it. In addition, Gage's refusal to participate in the recent events surrounding some apparent back scratching that took place in the selection process, came because he said that he refused to select candidates who had received political donations from police unions because of the perception that would send out to the city's residents. If that's true, then it bodes well about his opinions on the selection processes for the city's boards and commissions which are becoming increasingly politicized for some of them, if not directly for the CPRC.

Whereas Betro's comments about "compromising" during the appointment process at one meeting would be far more telling than anyone would ever have predicted.



When it comes to the CPRC, Gage is exactly what he said he was, at least after he was elected to office. When he first ran, he tried to make it appear as if he was in the middle of the road but given his strong opposition to it, it's likely that those sentiments didn't formulate over night. Still, he's not trying to be something he's not. He strongly dislikes civilian review and acts on it. That is why he and his cohort Adams are graded beginning at a baseline that's somewhat lower than the other elected officials. You don't expect much from either though Gage is capable of throwing out a curve ball every once in a blue moon.

That's why he earns the "plus" even though he's clearly no friend of civilian review in the city of Riverside. But then again, he doesn't try to say that he is through advertising that is becoming less and less convincing to the public.





Frank Schiavone(Ward Four) D



Schiavone is another opponent of civilian review who woke up one morning and saw that the CPRC was no longer in easy reach of the city council to play with, but in the city's charter. In fact, if you want to irritate him, remind him again about the passage of Measure II or just say a few words which leads him to believe that's what you're about to do and he'll jump in as if that was exactly what you were going to do.


But Schiavone deserves a few kudos for one reason. That is the decision of him and former BBF, Adkison to push for the passage of all of the Charter Review Committee's proposed amendments and the inclusion of all of them on the November 2004 ballot. This included initiatives that Schiavone disagreed with. It was a bold, possibly impulsive act and it turned out to be as instrumental for the placement of the CPRC in the city's charter as anything else. Still, it was the right thing to do, and it didn't come from the CPRC's allies, but its opponents. Something worth remembering.



Still, the antics which appear to surround several appointments to the CPRC and allegations raised recently that he might have pressured former CPRC commissioner, Steve Simpson out of his position in July may if true, serve as a reminder that to some of the city council members, the CPRC has been reduced as merely a mechanism to manipulate politically through back-scratching exchanges between them.



Ed Adkison(Ward Five): D



Adkison is another opponant of the CPRC, in line with Schiavone's views more than Gage's. He is the only individual on the city council to have actually voted in opposition to the ordinance that created the CPRC in February 2000, not long after he was sworn into service as a city councilman. It's not exactly been a lovefest between him and the commission ever since.



Although he deserves the same points as Schiavone receives for their historic decision to not pick and choose which recommendations to put on the November 2004 ballot but to approve all of them and to let the voters decide. In fact, he proposed the motion to do so. He also gave a tongue lashing to Gage in the press recently for his attempts to defund the CPRC three years after the fact. Although if he expects people to believe that GASS ousted Gage from its membership because of Gage's oppposition ot the CPRC, then there's some beachfront property that's up for sale in Idaho.



As far as voting for CPRC appointments, his have most often been in line with Schiavone's even though the two of them apparently broke up a while ago.



Nancy Hart(Ward Six) B-



Hart's grade stands mostly in light not as much as what she's done for the CPRC but the fact that at least she's done little that negatively impacts its operations, nor has she engaged in the politicking which has surrounded it especially as of late. She earns a bonus point for calling the men on the dais on their rude behavior in a Press Enterprise article published not too long ago.

In 2004, she endorsed Measure II, to put the CPRC in the city's charter.


A member of the Public Safety Committee meeting, she participates in discussions and once raised the ire of Adams when probing into possible reasons why there was a dearth of complaints in several neighborhoods last year.



Steve Adams(Ward Seven) D-

Adams is fairly one-dimensional in his opposition to the CPRC and the depth of it is often played to hilarious effect at the Public Safety Committee meetings whenever he claims to have done so much for the commission. One of his appointments to the CPRC remained on it for about a year before abruptly departing and becoming not only his legislative aide but heavily involved in his reelection campaign. His second appointment, John Brandriff, was pulled off the Human Relations Commission(a spring board for the CPRC which is increasing in popularity), some say because Adams didn't spend enough time in his ward to get to know anyone else to recommend for the position.

He weakly seconded Gage's motion to defund the CPRC in 2004.

Next up, will be the grades assigned to the city employees including the city manager's office, the city attorney's office and the police department. Still to be decided is what exactly to grade them on, because depending on what side of the issue you are on, they are either doing very well or not as well in terms of their performance levels.

The man arrested for allegedly placing an advertisement in the classifieds threatening Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco speaks out from jail, claiming he's innocent, according to the Press Enterprise.

Chandler William Cardwell faces several felony counts in relation to the incident.


(excerpt)


I didn't do it, man. I didn't do it," Cardwell said into a jail telephone behind a glass partition. "I'm not a gang member. For them to say that is wrong. They're just doing that because they want to massacre me and hang me for this. Those are some serious accusations. I have no gang affiliations. I don't know anyone at that level."




In the Press Enterprise, there's a charming story about Art's Bar and Grill, which is located near the 91 freeway on University Avenue.

Lots of folks hit the establishment after city council meetings which also coincides nicely with "Taco Tuesday" to sit back, eat some fairly decent cuisine and relax. Political candidates often make the rounds of the different tables there to meet and greet while others hold strategy sessions over chips and salsa and drinks.






It's illegal to twirl signs on city streets in Riverside. Some say the activity distracts drivers, although how does one distract a driver who's already chatting away on his or her cellphone?