Injuctions and indices

The heat wave continues in the Inland Empire. Two pools are going to be opened during the holiday weekend by the city of Riverside. These are Sippy Woodhead Pool at the Bobby Bonds Park in the Eastside and Arlington Park Pool. The hours will between 1 to 5 pm all three days.


(excerpt, Belo Blog)


“Most of the lifeguards are college students and they go back to school,” Nuñez said.

But because of the heat, the city rounded up enough lifeguards to staff the pool through the weekend, Nuñez said.

“We are anticipating it will be very hot and we want to try and accommodate as many residents as we can,” he said.



More about the heat wave here. Yesterday, Riverside hit a record high of 109 degrees and short but intense thunderstorms that were more like hurricanes hit Lake Elsinore. Included in this link is a survey asking readers how they are coping with the heat.

The humidity from the monsoon conditions makes what is called a heat index, much higher than the actual temperature. If the actual temperature is 105 degrees but it's humid, the index may be around 110 degrees and that's how it actually feels.







The Eastside neighborhood in Riverside responds to the news about the Riverside County District Attorney’s office filing an injunction against the Eastside Riva gang, according to Press Enterprise.

Residents of the primarily Black and Latino neighborhood have asked why the Eastside was the target of the injunction given the more recent gang violence in areas of the city like the Hillside and La Sierra neighborhoods. Other residents said it’s ironic that D.A. Rod Pacheco and Chief Russ Leach of the Riverside Police Department gave their speech at Patterson Park which had been reclaimed by neighborhood residents with the help of city departments and even some gang members.

Community leaders were also left in the dark by the action, several said at a recent city council meeting.


(excerpt)


Residents say the worst of the gang members are either dead or incarcerated. Community and police efforts have made Patterson Park, which is in the center of the Eastside neighborhood, graffiti-free for several months. Residents say they can now walk through the area without fear. The last known East Side Riva-related homicide was in March 2006, police said.

Reports of violent crime in the neighborhood for the first six months of this year were down 11 percent from the same period in 2006, according to police statistics. Those statistics also cover some streets that lie outside the Eastside neighborhood.

"He's trying to stop the violence that has already been stopped," Francine Barbarin, an 18-year-old Riverside City College student, said of Pacheco. Her father's name is on the DA's list.

The district attorney's office worked with the Riverside Police Department on the injunction for more than a year, said Ingrid Wyatt, spokeswoman for the district attorney's office.

"East Side Riva is the oldest and most violent gang in Riverside. The district attorney's office and the Riverside Police Department intend to rid the Eastside of this gang and make the community a safer place for the honest men, women and children who live there," Wyatt said. "That's the all-encompassing reason why we filed this gang injunction."

Experts said that the community members are right to be asking some questions about the injunction.


(excerpt)


A study of gang-enforcement tactics released this summer questions the need for the injunctions, which are used primarily in California. Criminal-justice policy analyst Judy Green of New York-based Justice Strategies worked on the study, which was produced for the Justice Policy Institute, a think tank that believes society puts too many people in prison.

There is little evidence that injunctions reduce crime, but publicizing a gang problem can help law-enforcement agencies acquire federal funds or increase officers, Green said.

When an injunction is issued for an area where crime is going down, that should be cause for suspicion, she said.

"You've got to scratch your head and wonder what's going on," Green said.




People who took their concerns about it to City Hall questioned its enforcement given that at least half of those listed are in prison or jail facilities. The enforcement of the injunction will be left to the police department’s patrol officers who may or may not be familiar with those individuals on the injunction who are not in jail, the fact that so many of them are in custody and which Latinos in the Eastside belong to this gang and which ones do not. If they see two or three Latinos gathered together in one place, it's doubtful that police officers will know on sight whether or not they are Eastside Riva gang members especially if those officers have just been assigned to that area.

Court documents don't reveal much about how the injunction will be enforced. No information on whether a similar injunction will be filed against the Eastside Riva's rival gang, the 1200 Bloc Crips, another fairly old gang that has had a history of violent crimes including homicides but it's clear that some community leaders like NAACP President Woodie Rucker-Hughes(who is a "she" not a "he") have already expressed that concern and how such an action would impact Black Eastside residents.

Some people who live in the Eastside fear this will lead to racial profiling stops to determine whether or not any individuals gathered in one place, which is forbidden for Eastside Riva members under the injunction.


At least one meeting will be held by community residents to address this issue. The police department will attend including Lt. Larry Gonzalez who’s the area commander. However, no one from the District Attorney’s office will be attending due to security concerns, its office said.

The decision by that office kind of gives you an idea of what its representatives think of the entire neighborhood. Even though the vast majority of the Eastside’s residents are not gang members, those who are truly concerned about what’s happening in its midst can’t have a face to face session with Pacheco or anyone else to discuss their concerns because these individuals either think everyone in the Eastside is dangerous, they don't want to talk to people who are questioning the injunction, including those "innocent" people they say they are advocating for or they have little or no faith in the police department to keep them safe at a public meeting.

People in the Eastside deal with threats against them and their lives every day. They don't let it stop them. They attend public meetings on these issues at restaurants then walk out and see that customers' tires have been slashed on their cars. They may even be threatened by gang members because they report crimes committed by them. The police department and District Attorney's office always tell Eastsiders to report crimes to them even when they face death threats, because it's important to do so.

Yet, when the District Attorney's office gets threatened allegedly by a gang member or gang members, it allows that to prevent it and its representatives from meeting in a community where residents live with danger about something that impacts their lives. That sends the message loud and clear that even though we tell you to risk your safety, your lives, your family's safety to report gang crimes to us, we didn't really mean it because if we did, we'd live by the terms we set for others. We'll hide behind our walls, but you can't hide behind yours. And who has the greater ability to protect themselves, the community or the District Attorney's office?

If the District Attorney's office is truly restricted in terms of which neighborhoods it can go into, then isn't that also its way of telling everyone who really appears to be in control?

The Riverside County District Attorney's office and Riverside Police Department hasn't talked to the Eastside, it has talked at it from Patterson Park. They both should be entering into a dialogue with this community members if not in the Eastside, then some place else. After all, even community leaders in the Eastside complain that no one talked to them about what was going on. For the police department, that's called being co-partners in addressing problems that impact both the community and the department. It's part of that thing called the Strategic Plan.

But the residents of the Eastside deserve to be able to engage with the police department and the District Attorney's office on this issue that's in their midst. The police department has agreed to send representatives to the community meetings and that's a good start. What is the District Attorney's office going to do?

Just like all other county residents, Eastsiders pay the salaries of those in the District Attorney's office too.







Speaking of the issue of racial profiling and pretext traffic stops, here is some information that came out recently about one of the formerly mandated reforms of the stipulated judgment that existed for five years between the city of Riverside and the State Attorney General's office.


Traffic Pretext Stop Study


This study which was done annually while the department was under the stipulated judgment will be resumed, with the next report coming out in March 2008. It will cover data collected on traffic stops conducted during 2006 and 2007.

Money was allocated to do a traffic stop study during 2006 after City Manager Brad Hudson's office allocated $25,000 to conduct the study. That money was still in the department's budget for that project in August 2006 according to a CPRA request sent to the department during that time.

The department conducted a study using 2005 data but this study was not officially released to the public in 2006. The department's reasoning for not releasing the study was the data was "indistinguishable" from that used in studies done during earlier years.

Although Dr. Larry Gaines, a former law enforcement officer, had been providing analysis for the department on its statistics, Chief Russ Leach said that he was going to try to find another expert to provide that function for the next public report. He is even considering Dr. Robert Nash Parker at the University of California, Riverside. Parker did a similar study using traffic citations for the Press Enterprise newspaper eight years ago.



Studies done on Riverside Police Department:


Traffic Stop Study, March 2003



Press Enterprise: Racial Profiling Study Doubted