"As the Eastside goes, so does Riverside."

More aftershocks have hit Lake Elsinore and other places in the Inland Empire. Seismologists have reassured the public that these things are normal and don't mean the "big one" as it's called is on its way.

The Press Enterprise also wrote about the below average temperatures in the Inland Empire at the moment. A bit of a contrast to all the recent coverage about the sizzling heat wave that shook(literally and otherwise) these parts.




Public Forum



Where: Caesar Chavez Community Center, Eastside

When: Thursday, Sept. 5 at 5:30 p.m.




"We're not the bad guys in the black hats."



---Chief Russ Leach, Riverside Police Department at a forum in the Eastside



"The university is expanding. The downtown is expanding. The Eastside is standing in the way."


---Community leader Cristina Duran




"Why now? Why us? What are the standards for this? This is what they're asking and I think they have the right to know."


----Riverside County Supervisor Bob Buster


"They need jobs. They need skills. They need an opportunity to work without being harassed."

---NAACP Riverside Chapter President Woodie Rucker-Hughes




"I don't feel safe when I walk through the neighborhood."


---Tanya



"Rod Pacheco should be the one here answering the questions."


---Mary Figueroa, Eastside Think Tank



"It's not fun for mothers to bury 12, 13-year-olds."


---Gloria Willis, activist and former Ward Two city council candidate



ESR XIV St.

Fuck 1200[crossed out]


--graffiti in the middle of the street in Eastside this morning



"As the Eastside goes, so does Riverside"

---says so on the tee-shirt




Over 70 people attended a forum set up to address the recent injunction filed against the Eastside Riva gang and many of them had questions and concerns for Riverside Police Department Chief Russ Leach about a process that even many of the community leaders felt was dropped on them without much notice. Even the Eastside Think Tank said they were pretty much left in the dark.


Attending the forum were Asst. Chief John DeLaRosa, Area Commander Lt. Larry Gonzalez and Riverside Police Officers’ Association President Ken Tutwiler along with County Supervisor Bob Buster who said that he was very concerned about what was going on.



Leach called it "an enforcement tool" to accompany all of the work done in the community.



"It doesn't mean we'll be hunting people down," Leach said, "Riverside isn't going to take rows and rows of police officers, line them up in riot gear and have them march down University."


He added, "we're not going to tolerate 13 year olds being shot to death."


About 114 names are currently listed on the injunction although the language makes it clear that it's open-ended. Leach said that "a few of them are in jail." Residents of the Eastside said that as many as half of those listed are either in prison or in jail, where several of them were served. Several had been in prison for years. Others have been out of the area for years. Why were they included on the list, residents asked.

The police chief said he could not discuss individual cases.

At the meeting, Leach mentioned that after the injunction was finalized by the courts perhaps as soon as Sept. 14, the department's officers would receive training on how it would be enforced. But there wasn't much mention of what that training would be, particularly involving newer officers or officers recently assigned to the Eastside in terms of how they would be able to differentiate between two or more members of Eastside Riva congregating and two or more Latinos who were not gang members especially since the injunction clearly includes a prohibition against social gatherings for Eastside Riva gang members.

Leach said there would be attempts to publicize the injunction in both English and Spanish in different venues. What the forum made clear was that this education should have been started before the injunction first appeared in court records.

Eddie who is with the Eastside Think Tank told the police department representatives how frustrated he was with the lack of response from the city in terms of providing resources for people in the Eastside. He reminded those in the audience of the peace marches through the community five years ago, during the summer when both Black and Latino families lost family members to gang violence including three Black 13-year-olds. Elderly Black men were also shot to death on their porch and children were injured by gunfire in their front yards, the assailants of the elderly man slipping past a cadre of police cars in the area, according to neighbors.

The marches returned in 2005 when there were more shootings including that of a Nigerian tourist who had stopped on University Avenue to purchase gas on his way to a conference addressing youth violence in another city. He most likely had never met or had even heard of the individual whose shooting had led to his own and while he lay in a coma, the next shooting occurred to answer for his own, also committed by those who probably never knew him. Back and forth it went for most of the summer.

The city officials sat up and took notice of the shooting of the tourist, mostly because they feared how it might make this city appear to the rest of the world. After all, this is a city that hangs its awards at City Hall, designating it an All-American City and one of the nation's most livable cities.

Many others were injured both summers. The community leaders got together and with the police department and other city departments worked hard to reclaim Patterson Park. Some of these leaders were insulted by the decision of Leach and District Attorney Rod Pacheco to hold their press conference about the injunction there to "take back the park" as they might call it. Only Patterson Park wasn't theirs to take back. The neighborhood had already reclaimed it and as it turns out, according to both city employees and community leaders, some of those who helped in that effort were themselves gang members. Something that the neighborhood takes great pride in is having one of its parks back through its hard efforts.

Eddie had mentioned when he challenged the police officers in his midst with the following statement.


"How do you expect us to buy into this injunction? Are you going to bring in the resources," he said.



Leach said he agreed that more needed to be done in this area, citing the rise and fall of Project Bridge, the city's only gang intervention program. That program has been trying to rise out of the ashes of several attempts to defund it by the city and a shortage of the grant money that used to fund its operations. Some say, however, that this program spent years being tossed back and forth in an endless game of hot potato between the police department and the parks and recreations department.



"We support and encourage program," Leach said, "Does the city spend enough money? No it doesn't."



The Eastside is a neighborhood where realtors had complained that it took days for the city to pick up abandoned furniture left on lots they were trying to sell, when in other areas where they also sold homes, the city's response would be much faster for the same service. Unlike other areas of the city, you will probably never see a street cleaner. Many of the schools are overcrowded, with students being bussed out of the Eastside to schools across town.

City leaders come out for candlelit vigils when someone under the age of 15 is shot down and then you never see them again.

Mayor Ron Loveridge who occasionally still teaches political science courses at UCR will tell his students to write about this neighborhood just north of Chicago Avenue and tell him what they see.

Which is ironic, considering the Eastside doesn't even exist in UCR's long-range development plans, except in pockets surrounded by development projects which cater more to a population of university students which hasn't arrived yet rather than to the Eastside's families some of which have lived there since the late 1800s. The city that was founded by abolitionists nearly elected a Ku Klux Klan mayor in the 1920s and held a premiere for the film, Birth of a Nation which glorified that racist organization.

Those who say that Eastside Riva is the oldest gang in Riverside don't know this city's history.

After all, racism created the Eastside. It was the only location where African-Americans who migrated to the city could own property. Latinos had few legal options in a city which was as racially segregated down to its public facilities as many Southern towns were until the late 1960s. The Eastside was also close to the orange groves which employed many Latinos as workers. Many stayed in the Eastside and also Casa Blanca even after the groves began to disappear.

The Klan's influence diminished after the 1920s before reemerging in the South during the 1950s onward. But racism and restrictions on where Black and Latino families could live or go to school continued for a while longer.

Many feel that gentrification which is defined by them as the displacement of one racial population, most often Black and/or Latino, by another, which is almost always White, as the form of racism which might some day render the Eastside into the city's history books.

Eastside Think Tank member, Rita Norton complained about a 200 page dossier which was publicly circulated that included profiles of those listed in the injunction. Others said, residents on the list who weren't still living in the neighborhood were told never to return. Minors, who Leach said couldn't be included in the injunction, were told to register as gang members through letters sent to them in the mail.



"How do you expect us to trust you guys if you are telling us something different than what you see," one individual said.



Norton said, her organization was not consulted. Department representatives first denied that these profiles had been circulated but others in the audience protested.



Leach responded by saying he would look into the role that his agency might be playing, but didn't think it had done anything.

The discussion went around in circles but always came back to a couple subjects including the following.


"We want to put our money into prevention," Leach said.

"When," people responded from the audience.


Nortan said that one person on the list was served at his job site and was subsequently fired as a result.


"There are already repercussions from this," she said.




NAACP Riverside Chapter President Woodie Rucker-Hughes spoke on the problems that Black and Brown people had relating to one another. She had some critical words for the injunction as well.


"I have a problem with an injunction for life," Rucker-Hughes said, "Where's the redemption?"



In related news, Chandler William Cardwell, 32 was arraigned in Riverside County Superior Court and plead not guilty to felony charges in relation to an advertisement he allegedly had published in the daily newspaper that threatened Pacheco, according to the Press Enterprise.

The Los Angeles Times also attended the arraignment and wrote about it here


Cardwell was also employed by the Press Enterprise in its classified advertising department and here, the publication explains the complexities and complications of covering a story which involves a publication's own employees.


(excerpt)


At most newspapers a "wall" traditionally separates the work of news reporters from that of the opinion pages and business departments to ensure objectivity and independence. In the Cardwell case, Press-Enterprise reporters found it meant that some questions to company officials about the employee and incident would go unanswered.

That wall also keeps reporters from accessing information gathered by the advertising, classified ads, circulation and other business departments.

On the business side, management balanced competing priorities of protecting an employee's privacy, complying with search warrants, and reassuring readers and advertisers that sensitive information is not misused.

"Very few other businesses hold themselves to the standard of transparency that we do," said Ronald R. Redfern, CEO and publisher of The Press-Enterprise Co. "We want to be as transparent as we can, but there are certain things that we can't share."




In Riverside, the Group held a successful meeting with over 30 people in attendance to greet new Community Police Review Commission Executive Manager Kevin Rogan. Rogan hails from Pomona Police Department where he worked as a captain until just recently.



A female Riverside resident writes here about her experiences trying to get the city to open several public pools during the recent heat wave.




In the Press Enterprise, there’s a story about Esme Castaneda, an undocumented immigrant living in Riverside who was the victim of domestic violence by her husband. She learned of a little known process that enables undocumented immigrants who are victims of violent crimes to obtain legal status in order to encourage them to report crimes to police.


(excerpt)


Until 1994, domestic-violence victims who were undocumented immigrants had no legal protection from deportation if they reported their abuse, said Karan Kler, executive director of Coachella Valley Immigration Service and Assistance, a nonprofit legal group based in Palm Springs.

That year, Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act, which protects victims of severe domestic violence who are married to a permanent U.S. resident or citizen.
In 2000, Congress passed another law -- the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act -- to help people such as Castañeda, who are not married to U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

Most undocumented women are unaware of either law, Kler said. Even many domestic-violence organizations, social workers and lawyers are not familiar with the 2000 law, he said.

That law created a "U visa" for victims of domestic violence and other crimes, including rape, sexual assault, incest, torture, kidnapping and involuntary servitude. Kler said as many as half of his organization's U-visa clients have been domestic-violence victims.

Yet, seven years later, federal officials still have not written the regulations for the U visa so the visa does not yet technically exist, said Sharon Rummery, a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
"A new regulation is expected soon," said Rummery, who declined to predict a specific date. "It's very complicated to write regulations."







A lot is going on in San Bernardino involving the San Bernardino Police Officers Association's relationships with elected officials.

Here, news broke that City Attorney Jim Penman has broken off his relationship with the labor union in a loud way, according to the San Bernardino Sun.


(excerpt)


Penman, who will face a challenger for the first time in more than a decade in November, lashed out at association President Rich Lawhead, accusing his former ally of attempting to extort political and legal favors in exchange for union support.

"Lawhead now believes that if he endorses a candidate for city attorney, that person must follow his/her direction on legal matters involving the Police Department," Penman wrote in a lengthy memo.

Lawhead denied Penman's accusations.

Among his charges, Penman said Lawhead routinely called his cellular phone to complain about Penman's lack of support for the union in their lawsuits against the city and Police Chief Michael Billdt. Penman further said Lawhead told him to not make disparaging comments about the union's case in the press and explicitly said the union would not endorse him unless he demonstrated "loyalty" to the union.

"(Lawhead) owes the people of San Bernardino an apology for attempting to pressure one of
their elected officials into pursuing an unethical and, in my opinion, a dishonest course of action in exchange for his endorsement," Penman wrote.


Not surprisingly, Lawhead had some pretty strong words in response.


(excerpt)


"Mr. Penman's suggestions are outright lies," Lawhead said. "When he attacks my integrity, I object to that, and I won't be afraid to speak out."

Lawhead said that on at least one occasion he told Penman he was displeased when the city attorney criticized union employees in the press over a lawsuit they had filed against the city and Billdt.

But that was all, Lawhead said.

"I've never asked for anything of Mr. Penman except to (publicly) support the employees of the organization that supports him," Lawhead said.

Lawhead added that he was miffed when Penman, citing his role as city attorney, declined public comment on a lawsuit against his political opponents last month, yet earlier publicly criticized the union for filing lawsuits against Billdt and the city.

"I'm not asking for favoritism, I'm asking for fairness," Lawhead said. "He won't talk when he gets his butt kicked in the lawsuit over (city attorney candidate) Marianne Milligan because he says he's an officer of the court, but in our case he's calling a guy who (campaigned) for him disgruntled."



Then Lawhead and the union sent shock waves through the political circles of the city through their endorsement of Save Our State member, Joe Turner to fill the city clerk spot.


(excerpt)


Lawhead said the union is with Turner.

"This is a guy who readily supports our ideals," Lawhead said of Turner, who sparked outrage among Latino leaders when he pushed a failed city ordinance that would have cracked down on illegal immigrants in 2005. "He is against illegal immigration - illegal being key - and that fits with what we stand for."
Lawhead said the union's political action committee has conducted interviews over recent weeks through Wednesday and made recommendations to the union's 15-member board.

Turner's interview was Wednesday, and the board decided soon after to endorse him.



I guess that means that if you are undocumented in San Bernardino and you are a victim of crime as many undocumented immigrants often are, you best not report it to that police department. Putting up roadblocks for people to report crimes has never lowered a city's crime rate. The last thing San Bernardino's police department should be doing is doing anything to discourage individuals who live there from reporting crimes.

Contrast that with the article above where an undocumented immigrant reported domestic violence to the Riverside Police Department who provided her with the same police services they would hopefully provide for other women in her situation. Also, the Riverside Police Officers' Association opposed tactics used by Ward Five candidate Chris MacArthur in the first round of Election 2007 earlier this year, in part because of his rhetoric and focus on undocumented immigrants which a representative of the union said was a federal issue, not a local one.









From CNN, comes this article about a Chandler Police Department sergeant who has been charged with animal cruelty for leaving his assigned canine locked in a police car for 12 hours in intense heat.

Tom Lovejoy was charged for the death of Bandit, a Belgian Malinois.


(excerpt)


The sheriff's investigation showed Bandit was in Lovejoy's patrol car from about 9 a.m. to shortly after 10 p.m. August 11. During that time, the investigation found, the officer ran errands, napped and ate out with his wife. Lovejoy later found the dog dead in the car.

"I am certain Sgt. Lovejoy has suffered greatly from leaving his police dog in a sweltering car," Sheriff Joe Arpaio said in a statement. "I do not relish the idea of compounding his sadness. However, Lovejoy must be treated like anyone else in similar circumstances."