The Winds of Change: From city to county?

September's storm kind of petered out in these parts but in its wake, record low temperatures could be coming into the Inland Empire.


The Press Enterprise published this article on the history of what's been called Riverside's oldest gang, the Eastside Riva. They are wrong of course, because the existence of the Ku Klux Klan in Riverside preceded its existence by decades but it's still hard for many individuals to see gangs as not just being Black and Latino.


(excerpt)


While the gang, estimated by Pacheco at more than 500 members, has shaped the neighborhood's recent history, even people close to the group cannot pinpoint all the factors that gave rise to East Side Riva, said longtime resident and retired Riverside police Lt. Alex Tortes.

"A lot of kids that get initiated and get jumped in, they don't even know the history of why they do what they do," said Tortes, who now oversees city recreation programs in Eastside parks. "A lot of these kids don't know why they hate the rival gangs or the kids from another neighborhood."

Gabriel Tovar, 25, did not know how long the gang has been a presence in his neighborhood, but said his 85-year-old grandfather, who died recently, had the words "East Side Riva" tattooed along the curve of his thumb and index finger.

Tovar protested in court his inclusion on a list of 114 active gang members in the district attorney's proposed injunction. Authorities have labeled him incorrectly, he said, because he is related to several Riva members, has drug and weapons convictions and has "Riva" tattooed in flame letters on the back of his head and "Inland Empire" on his forearms.

"My uncles raised me. They were Eastside, and you wear what they wear," Tovar said. He added: "You are where you live."



The article discusses the recent gang injunction and the reaction to it both inside and outside of the Eastside.


(excerpt)


These guys are bullet magnets," said Lucky, who wrote the injunction, of the East Side Riva gang. "They attract violence when they get together in groups in front of private homes."

But the last killing on the Eastside was in March 2006. Crime also has dropped about 11 percent over the first six months of this year compared with the same time last year, according to police statistics.

Some have worried the injunction could spark more violence. A classified ad that police believe to be a veiled death threat against Pacheco appeared in The Press-Enterprise last month. Chandler William Cardwell, a former newspaper employee whose brother-in-law was named as an East Side Riva member in the injunction, is accused of placing the ad.

Barbarin, Tortes and others say the neighborhood has learned in recent years to dispel dangerous rumors, put a lid on brewing violence and, in some cases, to appeal to gang members' loyalty to their communities and families.

Gangs were an ugly phase for some teenagers who have since left that lifestyle to work steady jobs and raise families, they say.

Many community members say the neighborhood needs more programs to rehabilitate gang members and to keep younger children and teenagers away from crime and drugs.

"People want to get rid of the gangs. They don't want to get rid of the kids that are in the gangs," Tortes said. "We don't want to stop these kids from associating and being proud of their neighborhood. We want to get rid of the criminal behavior."



The article includes links to previous coverage including videos of meetings, copies of the preliminary injunction and other articles.

Residents in the Eastside said that Latino families are already putting homes on the market and selling them to move out of the neighborhood. Given the interest of the University of California, Riverside and the city in acquiring properties in the Eastside for various planned projects, they shouldn't lack for interested buyers, in what has become a buyers' market given that the housing market's bubble has burst. And sure enough, there's been talk of the development angle of recent actions taken by the city and county in this neighborhood.




Los Angeles will be footing the bill for a $1.5 million settlement to one of its firefighters, according to the Los Angeles Times.


(excerpt)


Firefighter Tennie Pierce had filed suit stemming from an incident in 2004 in which he was served a spaghetti dinner that secretly included dog food while he was on duty at Fire Station No. 5 in Westchester. Although some colleagues described it as a prank that played on the 6-foot-5 Pierce's nickname, "Big Dog," Pierce alleged racial discrimination.

The case originally was headed for trial Monday. A spokesman for City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo said the settlement reached Friday afternoon pushed the total cost of the case to $2.8 million once $1.3 million in legal expenses accumulated by the city since December are factored in. That is slightly more than the $2.7-million settlement offered by the council last year but rejected by Villaraigosa.

This time, the mayor gave his blessing to the deal with Pierce, a 19-year firefighter who lives in Cerritos. Hours after the council vote, Villaraigosa released a statement saying the decision "reduces the original settlement by nearly half while protecting Angelenos from further liability."



Some say the settlement will bring the unsettling incident to a close. Others say that the city did it to avoid having its fire department put on trial in front of a jury. For one thing, it's not the only settlement to follow statements made by city officials and their attorneys that they are so sure they are going to win these things.

The city of Riverside can perhaps now relate to this form of decision making. In 2004, this city was faced with paying a $200,000 award that Riverside Police Department Officer Roger Sutton had won when his case was sent to arbitration after one of several shutdowns of the civil court system.

The city nixed paying out the award and took the case to jury trial, and by the trial's end, the amount of money it had to pay out was raised to $1.64 million.

Riverside's also paid out settlements on similar racial discrimination, harassment and retaliation law suits involving Black employees who worked in a variety of city departments from Public Works, to Public Utilities and Waste Management.

It might pay out even more money at a later date given that it faces a federal investigation into one of its departments this autumn and a pending law suit alleging a hostile working environment including the use of racist slurs and jokes in another. If the city has to pay out for either department, unfortunately, it won't be the first time for either of them, which means that while racism does cost, it might take more than one payout for it to sink in that it both costs and has no place in the city's workforce.




Someone at Inland Empire Craigslist invoked the memory of former City Manager George Carvalho, which was really nice because often I wonder if people even remember that we once had the best city manager in the state of California working in our very own city. This individual raised salient points. I remember that chain of events as if it were yesterday.

During Carvalho's tenure, he did not whip out a proposal for a five-year express train of development and redevelopment called Riverside Renaissance which has elicited both positive and negative responses in Riverside but Carvalho was more careful about spending the city's money. As far as I know, he never imposed eminent domain on a property to help private developers let alone threatened it to a large portion of the business district in one area of the city. Part of why eminent domain is used is because governmental officials and their employees in charge of development have poor communication skills and lack the ability to be able to relate with property owners. It's a useful tool to avoid dealing with people and working out an equitable deal, especially when you are in a hurry. And for whatever reason or reasons, this city administration is in a hurry.



What he did do as this person correctly said was he did encourage public participation at meetings and community input into what the city was doing or planning to do. Maybe not city-wide because there are many community members who were active in their neighborhoods who never met Carvalho but he cast a much wider net than his predecessor. And he didn't pack a gun to go to meetings in "dangerous" neighborhoods like the one who followed him.

He did all this even while facing increasing micromanagement by council members who like to quote chapter and verse, the section of the city's charter on what's called, administrative interference only when it's convenient to them.



He was hardly perfect and some of the criticism about him was valid but nothing he did warrented his firing. It's possible that part of what went into the decision to fire him was the knowledge that former Economic Development Agency head, Brad Hudson may have been job hunting. After all, one council member happily said after the hiring of Hudson that they'd heard a year ago that he might leave the county but didn't think they had a chance of getting him to work for Riverside. Count back a year from the vote that was taken to hire Hudson and what date does that bring you to?

And yes he was fired, by the GASS quartet in the summer of 2004, with three city council members, Dom Betro, Nancy Hart and Ameal Moore voting against him. However, not too long afterwards, all seven city council members on the dais at this future point and time celebrated the hiring of Hudson who was about as close to being the polar opposite of Carvalho as anyone could possibly imagine. Allegedly, one of Hudson's first ideas was to submit recommendations to change the rules of public participation at city council meetings to revive that issue and on a fateful day in July 2005, Betro proposed a motion which included barring the removal of items from the consent calendar by members of the public, which was seconded by Councilman Steve Adams and passed 6-1. The motion was opposed by some individuals as being too restrictive and supported by several others who said how sick and tired they were of the ranting and raving at city council meetings.

The recommendation to restrict pulling items from the consent calendar was actually six months old but hadn't gathered enough steam until the summer to be enacted. But what's significant about this chronology of events is that there is written record that shows that there was enough interest among at least the three elected officials, Betro, Frank Schiavone and Ed Adkison, to approve this action months before the actual city council meeting where it was done.

There had been some talk at subcommittee meetings about addressing the pulling of items from the consent calendar but not seriously and most often, changes at the city council meeting were made after recommendations were approved and sent to the city council by the Governmental Affairs Committee. The last discussion of changing the policy of conduct at city council meetings by a subcommittee before that fateful vote was on Jan. 13, 2005 and the recommendations included in a report signed by Interim City Manager Tom Evans and City Attorney Gregory Priamos were on the table. This report was produced in response to a memo dated Nov. 2, 2004 signed by Betro, Adkison and Evans, which addressed other items in the policy including issues pertaining to subcommittee meetings as well as where on the agenda should the pulling and discussing of consent calendar items be placed.

However, the minutes from the Jan. 13, 2005 Governmental Affairs Committee meeting show that recommendation #2 from a motion passed unanimously by that committee was to "eliminate the public's ability to pull items from the consent calendar". That recommendation was put into action by almost the entire city council six months later, which was quite a while for an item from this standing committee to be approved by the city council.

That decision felt like the erasure of the last reminder that there had even been a Carvalho or someone of his caliber working in Riverside. Carvalho was not afraid of the public and he never expressed that he didn't have enough time or interest in listening to them. The city council's decision including by those who opposed Carvalho's firing to hire a city manager whose record is sparse on any area of governmental business outside of economic development was perplexing. Hudson's lack of apparent experience and that of his assistants became most apparent during last year's cycle of labor negotiations with the city's bargaining units which led to near strikes, civil law suits and rallies at City Hall. Though clearly intelligent and resourceful, Hudson and his assistant city manager, Tom DeSantis who was hired despite an absence of a Master's Degree, looked inept during most of this sorry episode.

Hudson is also an individual who has little history of working with community members and even less interest in doing so, at least without carrying a concealed weapon in certain neighborhoods. All this appeared perplexing but after seeing what the city officials have reaped since his hiring, it's becoming less so. And since he's been in his position, it's not that Riverside the city has evolved into being better at being a city, it's evolved into being better at mirroring the structure and operations philosophy of the county it resides in.

And even those who opposed Carvalho's firing three long years ago praise Hudson in public in ways they never really did for Carvalho. This reflects how quickly the wind changes and how the tides change in the political arena in ways that are difficult to follow and confound many of us. The disdain shown for everything pre-Riverside Renaissance would also have to be extended against Carvalho because he was part of that time period, as was the GASS quartet. But only the GASS quartet members rearranged into new voting blocs of course, remains as part of the new, brighter Riverside.

I dare say if even some of these opponents looked back and had to make the decision again knowing that they would get Hudson as a replacement, they may have even changed their votes in that closed session. Well, except for Moore who views the Riverside Renaissance program as reckless spending in a changing and very unpredictable economy.

People have quibbled about my appearing to favor City Councilman Art Gage over Betro in grades assigned to them in connection with the CPRC's report card in an earlier posting. If I was so favorable to Gage, I would have given him a grade much higher than a D+, perhaps an A? Perhaps a B+ as was given to his colleague, Andrew Melendrez?

I do not favor one councilman or councilwoman over another in this analysis except through an examination of their actions or lack thereof. With the possible exception of Melendrez, I do not think I would endorse any of them on the dais for reelection based on their job performances not based on what opposition they are facing or could face because of the turn the city has taken in recent years from restrictions placed on public participation at meetings, the dilution of the ethics code and complaint process, the turbulent relations with the city's labor force, to concerns about what the public is not being told about Riverside Renaissance, to some of the actions taken by elected officials in relation to the CPRC as well as other issues. Not to mention the grand jury investigations allegedly initiated involving this city in recent months and years and the prospect of both federal and state investigations into what's going on in the city's labor force.

Endorsement is a very strong word to use signifying strong, unadulterated support of a candidate, incumbent or otherwise, and what I see are elected officials who make principled decisions one minute and head-scratchers the next, not necessarily in line either way with where I stand on an issue but more to do with the process utilized by the city government when these decisions are made. It's as if they can't make up their minds as to whom they are beholden to.

However, I opt to leave the official endorsement process to others who are more interested in it and will continue praising or criticizing elected officials currently on the dais as I see fit on their actions and inactions. When you endorse an elected official, it makes it much harder for you to even acknowledge that this individual could be wrong on an issue let alone criticize their actions and I'd rather leave that dilemma to individuals who are more interested in the endorsement process as well.

Though if it's true that Betro made comments that he felt disdainful to the CPRC in the past, then he is to be thanked for shedding some more important light on what's happened to it in the past 18 months. Because to be disdainful of something is another way of saying that you don't care about it and that's certainly become apparent since Hudson's come to town.





Can taser discharges cause spinal fractures?

That is a question asked in this article in South Bend Tribune after a law enforcement officer tased as part of his training suffered muscle spasms to the extent that it caused compression fractures in his spine.


(excerpt)


"Normally after Taser exposure, pain stops after the discharge is over," said Dr. James E. Winslow, of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. "In this case, the pain continued for a long time, leading the patient to reduce his work hours significantly."


The spinal pain continued and the officer was taken to the hospital where upon examination, two spinal fractures were discovered.


Annals of Emergency Medicine Abstract on this incident.





The Fire Department of New York City released a report about the impact that toxins at the scene of Ground Zero during and after 9-11 allegedly had on the employees of its agencies, according to the New York Daily News.


(excerpt)


Among the findings in the report, "World Trade Center Health Impacts on FDNY Rescue Workers":


Twenty-six new cases of the inflammatory lung disease sarcoidosis in the first five years after 9/11, most of them with asthma. Five or fewer rescuers got sarcoidosis annually before 9/11. Almost none had symptoms.

22% of FDNY rescue workers said they were "feeling as if [their] future will be cut short."

As many as four years after the attacks, 53% said their mood had changed, with about one-third struggling with concentration and feelings of irritation, anger and anxiety.

The extent of sleep problems among responders barely diminished over the first four years after the attacks. Some 61% had them in the first year; 58% did in the next three.

Two-thirds of responders said their exercise routine changed in the first year after 9/11, but 18% said they had started working out more two to four years later.

"Why this report is so important today is that it scientifically shows the connection between 9/11 and illnesses," Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan) said yesterday at the Gouverneur Hospital, a medical center on the lower East Side that will house one of the two new outposts of the Bellevue WTC treatment clinic. "It's very, very important for making the case in Congress."


The above link includes a link to the FDNY report.



The new president of the Riverside Bar Association is Dan Hantman, one of the nicest attorneys in Riverside.