The storms of September

"Secrecy breeds mistrust, openness breeds trust."


---Mark Schlosberg, the police practices policy director of the ACLU of Northern California to San Jose Mercury News.





The first winter storm is expected to hit Riverside County this week, about four months head of schedule. Other types of squalls have already hit in different venues in the region, right on schedule as various incidents played themselves out in the halls of power, most namely the Riverside County Administration building this past Monday morning.


In Riverside, Mayor Ron Loveridge is left with the task of filling three positions on the currently bleeding Human Relations Commission which has experienced many resignations in recent months and during the past several years. In rates of departures, it's probably second only to the wave of resignations which hit the Community Police Review Commission, a much smaller body.

People are either jumping ship for what they believe are greener pastures, namely the CPRC or leaving for other reasons, including perhaps an increasing gap between what Mayor Ron Loveridge called a smaller focal group and the rest of it.

Loveridge's office, if you recall, currently oversees this commission after its rocky tenure as one of the commissions micromanaged by the city manager's office. Kudos to Loveridge for moving to take it out of the hands of that office, which cut its staffing after the commission submitted a letter asking questions about the string of departures of Black and Latino management employees working with the city. Nothing was answered in writing, however it might not be fair to say that the city manager's office didn't provide some sort of response.

All three spots are at-large positions which means that Loveridge will appoint them after he takes a look at the commission to see which of the applicants for the commission will best balance out its membership.

It's getting harder to encourage people to apply to serve on the city's boards and commissions these days. One applicant and finalist at least in terms of being chosen to be interviewed for the CPRC, withdrew his application because he believed that the process was politicized and after talking to police officers, county prosecutors and other individuals, the commission itself was powerless or as he called it, a "toothless tiger".




In Riverside County, the strike team of judges are in the midst of conducting a backlog of criminal trials but what impact has this had on the law enforcement agencies who investigate these cases and send officers to testify in court?


Here, in the Press Enterprise the local departments, both large and small, report in and it doesn't seem to be pretty.

Hemet, the little town from the 1950s colliding with development, is so overwhelmed that the city wants to reopen its own court building to hear cases involving Hemet. Its current mayor was driven to his keyboard to write a fervent plea to reopen this facility not to the judges and their staff people who run most county courts, but in typical Riverside County fashion, to District Attorney Rod Pacheco.


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"I think it would be justified," Hemet Mayor Marc Searl said Tuesday, citing the city's growth and number of arrests.

Searl has sent a letter to Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco pressing for the reopening of the Hemet criminal court.

In his letter, Searl described the special panel of judges assigned to Riverside County as "exciting news" that should prompt a look into reopening the courtrooms in Hemet for criminal trials.

"Fulfilling the demands placed on the Police Department to meet its obligation of testifying in criminal matters has stretched our limited resources to the brink," Searl said in the Aug. 30 letter.

He said the Hemet Police Department filed nearly 3,000 cases last year.

"Hemet city officers used to be able to be on call and stay in service in the city as they had a five minute response time to court. That response time has increased to 45 minutes to an hour, which means that our officers must now stay in court, taking them off of our streets for extended periods of time," he wrote.



Pacheco's spoke person, Ingrid Wyatt gave him a referral to contact the judges for assistance.


Former Riverside Police Department Commander and current Chief of Hemet Police Department Richard Dana had this to say on the crisis.


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In Hemet, Police Chief Richard Dana said on any day when courts are in session, one or two of the city's 88 sworn officers are in court.

"With the strike force of judges, they don't want the officers to just be on call; they want the officers ready to go," he said.



Dana's former haunt in Riverside is having its own struggles to send its officers to testify in court as the assembly machine moves faster and faster, after having had some performance issues in the past several years due to a variety of factors, amidst a sea of finger pointing.


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The Riverside Police Department has been left scurrying to meet the increased demands.. "We've really seen a difference in last-minute cases," said Scott King, agency court coordinator.

So far, they have not reached the point of leaving an attorney without the needed officers, although subpoenas do keep coming. "Those rare cases of last-minute 'I need these officers today,' those instances, have increased dramatically," King said.

For detectives on complex cases, the juggling can become difficult. If they are designated the case agent, they stay with a trial for its entirety. Sometimes that can be weeks, and it may mean scheduling preliminary-hearing testimony during breaks in the trial and balancing four or five other cases.

"We're getting a lot of cooperation from the officers. They understand; they knew this thing was coming," King said. "Everybody's making accommodations."




Fairmount Park is being renovated and exactly how it could look was discussed at the city council meeting last night, according to the Press Enterprise.

The meeting was sparsely attended as the city council unfolded recommendations from the task force which it later approved, albeit just in terms of receiving the report. The recommendations actually go to the Park and Recreation Commission before coming back possibly in an amended form to the city council.


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At Tuesday night's meeting, residents spoke both for and against the makeover. Most were glad the park would be restored to its glory days and shared childhood memories of time they spent at the park.

Resident Marjorie von Pohle, 89, said she had seen Fairmount become a filthy, horrible place and is glad to see care going into the park again.

"Let's keep it up," she said. "Let's keep Fairmount the best we can and be proud of it."

Resident and task force member Jane Block felt the same.

"Finally, I am going to have a real nice Fairmount Park to go to," she said.

Resident Phyllis Purcell, 71, said she wishes there were more family-oriented activities planned for the park, such as bringing back the carousel or the horseback riding she remembers.

"This should be a family-orientated park and not some type of showcase," she said.

Resident Karen Wright spoke against the added development.

"You voted against protecting the 17.5 acres of the park," she told the City Council later in the meeting.




Not too long ago, Tesquesquite Park was going to be divided with a chunk of it sold off to developers and Fairmount Park was going to host a portion of the commercial district. You've got to love election years.

The city council graciously thanked several individuals who have looked after Fairmount Park all these years but excluded Marjorie Von Pohle and her husband who cleaned up litter and the lake for many years before it received attention from the city. She's compiled a history on the park which is very interesting.

But she's also become a bit of a trouble maker at city council meetings in the meantime, what with her constant reminding the city council about the historic vote which featured the public debut of the BASS quartet on July 12, 2005.




Inside Riverside has been updated with an account of the appointment of new sheriff, Stanley Sniff.



Sniff will be as closely watched by those outside the department as was his predecessor outgoing sheriff, Bob Doyle. The one thing that both of them should have had in common is that they work for the residents of Riverside County as do all of their employees.


The Press Enterprise's editorial board stumped for a special election for the sheriff's position as soon as possible.

The board did not spare any words in its castigation of the board of supervisors which appointed a sheriff, a process the board believed should be left to the county's voters. It is right about that.

Still, it's interesting how the editorial board treats the sheriff's election as if it's similar to those involving other positions such as city council members, mayors and county supervisors.

But does anyone seriously believe that the sheriff is even an elected position? Usually there is only one candidate in the race who can raise any money and much more often than not, that person has been handpicked by his successor and announces his candidacy usually six months before the election with all his endorsements already lined up and standing alongside him.

Part of that is due to the qualifications for the position being more specialized as well as the campaign contributors often being more limited in scope.

Sheriffs are not elected. They are annointed.

Still, the board did raise some excellent points in its editorial, but erred in others perhaps because the stay of most of its members in River City and County has been such a short one.


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But Monday's meeting made vividly clear the wisdom of seeking a special election. The proceedings witnessed a host of accusations tossed about without any proof amid a swirl of ulterior motives.

Doyle's ethics and management came under direct attack, for example. Yet oddly, those criticisms did not show up in last year's election, when 73 percent of voters chose Doyle over two challengers. If mismanagement ran rampant at the Sheriff's Department, election season would be the logical time to raise the issue.

And the supervisors chose a candidate whom Doyle dismissed last year under circumstances that remain murky. Sniff says he was fired because he planned to run for sheriff, while Doyle said the firing was justified, but a confidential personnel matter.

The weeks preceding Sniff's appointment featured complaints that a sheriff's official misused the county's e-mail system to back one contender for the job. And documents emerged last week purporting to show union leaders, some county supervisors and the district attorney scheming to support another candidate.

The messy appointment politics brought no credit to county government. A special election would mitigate that dismal episode and help build public confidence in a department that came off poorly on Monday. Most fundamentally, an election would ensure that the sheriff answers to the voters, not other political interests.



None of what's been plaguing the Sheriff's Department is new, except for the recently round of allegations being said by both sides against the other practically since the day of Doyle's first coro-election. Though the problems actually stem back to the decision in 2002 to again create "at will" positions at management levels in the Sheriff's Department.




A 70-year-old woman in Orem, Utah was arrested for failing to give her name to a police officer and later charged by the city attorney with resisting arrest and for failing to keep up the landscaping on her property, according to CNN.

She's already received an apology from the city's mayor and city council and hired a famous Los Angeles-based attorney, but she's still in court on charges.


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During a struggle, Perry fell and injured her nose. She spent more than an hour in a holding cell before police released her.

"I ask the citizens of Orem: How many of you would like to have your great-grandmother taken from her home with bruises and blood and placed in handcuffs for failing to water her lawn?" attorney Gloria Allred said.

"Let's bring sanity back to law enforcement," she said.


I'm sure if Kathryn Johnston, 92, from Atlanta were alive today, she would agree. Frances Thompson, 80, also of Atlanta is alive and probably would agree.




Still in Utah, this time Sandy comes this account of how officials are sifting through allegations of officer misconduct there and what to do about it all, according to the Deseret Morning News.


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Midway through what seemed like an endless litany of police officers' misdeeds, Ken Wallentine shook his head.

"It troubles me to see a criminal violation committed by an officer is not criminally charged," the Utah Attorney General's chief of law enforcement said Tuesday.

Wallentine spoke out during disciplinary hearings at the Utah Peace Officer Standards and Training Council's meeting here. More than a dozen police officers were disciplined for violations of the law or department policy.

Some officers will not be charged. Instead, they will have their certifications yanked or suspended — effectively ending their law enforcement careers.

A Lehi police officer accused of breaking into a locker and stealing marijuana had his peace officer certification revoked. He was not charged criminally.

A former Utah Highway Patrol trooper accused of working only four hours of his regular shift also was not charged. POST says the other four hours of his shift were spent at home sleeping.

"Over a period of five years working half a shift. That's over $100,000," Wallentine told the council. "That's money that's been stolen from the citizens of Utah. I understand there are times we just want to take care of business and get done, but I'm troubled there are no criminal charges."








According to CNN, two University of Florida Police Department officers were placed on unpaid leave after tasing a student at an event where former presidential candidate John Kerry was speaking.


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During Monday's forum, Meyer came to the microphone to question why the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee from Massachusetts did not contest his loss to President Bush in the pivotal state of Ohio over allegations that African-American voters were disenfranchised, why he did not support Bush's impeachment and whether he belonged to the Yale University secret society Skull and Bones, as Bush did.

Meyer had about a minute and a half at the microphone before police stepped in to haul him away. As he tried to escape their grip, Kerry protested, "That's all right, let me answer his question."

But as Meyer repeatedly questioned why he was being arrested, officers dragged him to the back of the auditorium and then used a Taser on him when he continued to struggle.

While Kerry pleaded for calm, officers warned the student he would be shocked if he did not stop resisting.

Meyer responded, "What did I do? Get off me ... get the f--- off me, man, I didn't do anything. Don't Tase me, bro, I didn't do anything."


The CNN article includes links to the video tape of the incident and also the university's official response to the incident.




The power struggle in San Jose continues between the mighty auditor Barbara Attard and Mayor Chuck Reed, this time over the right to independently investigate officer-involved deaths, according to the San Jose Mercury News.


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Groups such as the ACLU and Asian Law Alliance contend there must be more accountability of police conduct in the wake of five people who have died after being Tasered and a police report that showed San Jose cops have used force against blacks at a higher rate than against criminal suspects from other ethnic groups.

Attard said she was disappointed the mayor interprets her power in such a limited way. She said her office has used - and should continue to use - a city council-granted authority to independently review police shooting death investigations.

"There is a misunderstanding of our authority," Attard said. "If we lose this authority it's a big step backward for the city of San Jose and the efficacy of this office."




The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has given a three year contract to five attorneys to continue to oversee the internal investigations conducted by the Sheriff's Department.

Not surprisingly, the union's not happy.


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The board approved the contract despite objections from the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, the union that represents the department's roughly 7,000 sworn rank-and-file deputies.

Steve Remige, the union's president, said the $1.2 million the county spends on the independent monitor could be better used hiring deputies to patrol the county's streets. He said the department could monitor itself effectively without an outside unit.

"We've never been convinced that another level of oversight adds any value whatsoever to the perception of accountability," Remige said.

He said deputies are already monitored internally and by Merrick Bobb, an attorney hired by the Board of Supervisors to produce semiannual reports about the performance of the Sheriff's Department.



Michael Gennaco, who heads the Office of Independent Review, appeared unfazed at the criticism.


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"We ensure that if there's an allegation of misconduct that there's an investigation, and sometimes we have to force the department to make a decision on accountability," said Michael Gennaco, chief attorney for the oversight panel. He said that opposition from the deputies union was evidence that he and his attorneys were making sure that the department holds deputies accountable for misconduct.

"If we were lap dogs and not doing anything and wasting $1.2 million of the county's money, I'm not sure they'd be complaining about it," Gennaco said.





Gennaco has a Riverside connection.

In 1999, while working as a federal prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney's office, he oversaw a patterns and practices investigation into the Riverside Police Department that ran in tandem with one conducted by the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division.

He was hired by Los Angeles County after departing his federal job when President George W. Bush was elected in 2000.

In 2006, he conducted a training session for the Community Police Review Commission at City Hall which was also attended by representatives of the police department's internal affairs division.