Rainy Saturdays and sermons
It's an annual ritual for over 20 years that two traveling evangelists come to Riverside to stand at the UCR Bell Tower bashing women and gays in the name of God and Jesus and students congregate there to heckle. Yesterday, it was the day and you can find more about it here.
One would think that these two men would learn from Jesus' example because he spent much of his time chilling and talking with those who were most scorned by his society, but apparently not because if they haven't figured that out in the last 20 years then they probably never will figure it out.
The Andulka Park in Riverside will have its plans completed soon. It's one of those projects which has actually been in the works for years but has been crammed under the growing banner of Riverside Renaissance.
(excerpt)
Residents asked for the amenities when a master plan for the park was developed in the early 1990s, but funding wasn't available to complete the $13 million project until the Riverside Renaissance, a program approved last year to build 30 years of public projects within five years.
Park plans also call for a storm drain at the back of the park. Last year's rains revealed the necessity after saturated dirt caused erosion, said Bob Johnson, the city's principal park planner. The increase in development along the park's bluff likely contributed to the excess water, Johnson said.
"This is a prime piece of land," Nunez said. "Now we can fully utilize it and give the community the park they asked for."
The Roos family, who now lives in Tennessee, donated 30 acres of the 36-acre property in 1979. Charles Roos, a former UC Riverside physics professor, requested the park be named Andulka, or Little Anne in Czechoslovakian, in honor of his wife, Anne Roos.
But the land sat vacant for years until the council approved funding for the park's first phase in 2005.
Johnson said he hopes the project is finished by next summer. Andulka will serve as Canyon Crest's only neighborhood park.
"They have essentially been without a park forever," he said.
The park will bring relief to sports teams that currently compete for field space, said Bob Gordon, president of the Magnolia Center Little League. Andulka Park will allow the league to offer a girls softball program, Gordon said.
"There are so many teams in this city that would like a place to play, but there just isn't enough space," Gordon said.
Also in Riverside, Superior Court Judge Edward D. Webster granted the injunction for all but one of the listed individuals, Gabrial Tovar, on the complaint and for the Eastside Riva gang according to the Press Enterprise.
(excerpt)
"To the extent you are in a car with three of them, it's going to look bad for you," Webster said. "For example, I would not go riding with them to Casa Blanca while showing your colors."
Deputy District Attorney Jack Lucky said the district attorney's office could try again in the next few months to convince Webster that Tovar deserves to be included.
"I respectfully disagree with the court's decision," Lucky said. "We felt very strongly about the 114 people we included. Obviously, he saw it our way on the other 113 and the gang itself."
Tovar said after the hearing that he was happy with the result but worried about possible police harassment. He noted that prosecutors had previously failed to prove he was worthy of a gang enhancement charge during a trial.
"Now I've beaten them at their own game twice, so they are really going to try to get me back in jail," Tovar said.
Tovar said he does not have to worry about the injunction if he stays out of his old neighborhood. But, he said, almost all of his family lives there.
"You can't just throw away people who raised you for 25 years," Tovar said.
Some Eastside residents have been talking about the relationship between the injunction in the Eastside and its future development and redevelopment under both Riverside Renaissance and the UCR Charrette Project after reading legislation passed into law by the state governor's office not long ago.
Speaking of the Charrette project, its latest status report is here and is coming up for discussion this week at the city council meeting.
Several weeks ago, the city manager's office in its great wisdom put the report which had a lot of new information in it that hadn't come out of several community discussions on where else, but the consent calendar.
At least one Eastside leader alerted Councilman Andrew Melendrez to this development as soon as the agenda was posted and he pulled the item and had it rescheduled.
There's an excellent and interesting article in the Press Enterprise about how more defense attorneys in the Inland Empire including Riverside County are taking their cases to trial instead of accepting plea bargains. The increase is especially noticeable in the latter county.
(excerpt)
The conviction rate for Riverside County in 2006 was 94 percent, the highest for large-population counties in the state, according to a state attorney general's report on dispositions of felony adult arrests. The report covers all cases, not just the ones that go to trial.
"They keep saying that on paper they have the highest conviction rate -- who cares about that if they lose a big chunk of their trials?" said Riverside County Deputy Public Defender Addison Steele.
"Their offers to settle are so bad that you can almost count on it -- if you go to trial and even if you lose, you can still have a better outcome," he said.
The "better outcome" does not necessarily mean walking free. But juries might acquit a defendant on enough charges for the results to be better than what prosecutors offered in a plea bargain.
Indio attorney Christopher DeSalva defended Alejandro Gomez in a 2005 attempted murder case. DeSalva said prosecutors made no offers but he made two, for eight years and for 10. Rejected both times, he went to trial.
"My client was acquitted of every single felony. He was found guilty of a misdemeanor battery. The maximum penalty is six months. My guy was in jail (awaiting trial) for 13 months and five days," DeSalva said. Gomez was released after trial.
Attorneys say such results have brought an upswing in trials in Riverside County.
The article also discusses the huge backlog in trials which led to first a strike team of 12 judges being dispatched to Riverside to hear cases and then an extension of their service time until next June.
What's also in the article is a possible answer to the question as to why the Riverside County District Attorney's office has launched its offensive against one judge, Gary Tranbarger who despite the huge backlog and shortage of judicial officers, is not hearing trials.
(excerpt)
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Gary B. Tranbarger compiled statistics starting with his term as supervising judge for the criminal division at the Riverside County Hall of Justice. The numbers showed a 50.1 percent "all-guilty" conviction rate for 375 felonies assigned out of the downtown courthouse for 2006.
Mixed verdicts -- where jurors acquitted on some charges and convicted on others -- were reached in 34.9 percent of trials. Each mixed outcome case would need analysis to see which side might claim a "win," Tranbarger noted in the study.
The study said "all-not-guilty" verdicts were at 8.3percent, with the remainder either hung juries or dismissed.
The numbers on 159 felony trials through June 8 of this year included 42.1 percent all-guilty verdicts, 34 percent mixed verdicts, 11.9 percent all-not-guilty, 10.2 percent hung verdicts and less than 1 percent dismissed.
Tranbarger confirmed he had conducted the study obtained by The Press-Enterprise, but declined to comment on any interpretation.
A study by the court for 182 felony cases from 1997 showed 68.7 percent all-guilty verdicts, 22 percent mixed verdicts, 7.1 percent all-not-guilty, 2.2 percent hung juries and no court dismissals.
"Juries are expressing their opinion in favor of the defense in a noticeably larger number of cases," said Willey, the assistant public defender. "At least it feels that way."
"It's one man's interpretation," Pacheco said of Tranbarger's numbers.
Tranbarger's work is a look at each case's outcome, charge-by-charge. A spot check of trials from October 2006 matched Tranbarger's results. Willey said the findings "are consistent with our office's observations."
Pacheco's office automatically "papers" or challenges any time Tranbarger is assigned to a criminal case. One of the reasons, Pacheco said, is Tranbarger's study.
"What's a judge doing, tracking stuff like that?" Pacheco said. "That exhibits his bias ... he's crafting these numbers to make us look less effective."
Tranbarger said in an e-mail the database was created "to help the court better manage the ever-growing criminal backlog. Jury verdicts are just one of the many facts about the case that are kept by the database." Tranbarger has denied previous allegations of bias against prosecutors.
Here's a letter by a student at Harrison Elementary School expressing her feelings on the act of vandalism that was done there and her understanding of the principle of restorative justice.
I was devastated to read in the newspaper that my classroom at Harrison Elementary School had been horribly vandalized ("Burglars vandalize school," Sept. 30).
Knowing of this destruction was hard on my teacher, Terry Dunn.
The people who have done this to three of my school's classrooms are disgraceful. Thanks to them, many of our students have lost some of their favorite school supplies, which were either destroyed or stolen.
I don't know who did this, but I do know I would never enjoy the vandals' company. Thanks to our wonderful custodians, who worked day and night on the classrooms, everything is mostly back to normal.
These vandals should be punished harshly. I would give them two years of community service and order them to write a 5,000-word essay.
Also, if I had my way, they would be forced to apologize to everyone hurt by this vandalism.
JESSICA GOEHRING
Fifth-grader
What's interesting is that when I was in school, detentions were either worked off through labor or through writing 500 word essays. Shoveling leaves or snow for an hour or washing hundreds of dishes in the cafeteria can quickly reduce the number of detentions that a person receives and writing several dozen essays is very good at honing a person's writing skills.
Former Colton Councilman Ramon Hernandez has a trial date set in connection with criminal charges he is facing of misusing public funds.
If you remember, former Colton Police Chief Kenneth Rulon alleged in his wrongful termination law suit that his attempts to report Hernandez's alleged activities to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office led to his ouster.
In Los Angeles, several Los Angels Police Department officers and Los Angeles County Sheriff Deputies are the focus of a probe after a U.S. Marine sergeant alleged that military intelligence that he obtained illegally was then given to them, according to the Los Angeles Times article.
(excerpt)
Authorities said the probes by the FBI, LAPD internal affairs and Naval Criminal Investigative Service come after Gunnery Sgt. Gary Maziarz testified during a court-martial at Camp Pendleton in July that he gave classified military intelligence to several people, including the two L.A. law enforcement officials.
Maziarz was on trial for allegedly taking the classified military files from Camp Pendleton and the U.S. Northern Command, which tracks domestic terrorism activity.
After testifying, he pleaded guilty to mishandling more than 100 classified documents and passing them to at least four individuals.
In his testimony, he said that L.A. County Sheriff's Det. Larry Richards, a department counterterrorism specialist and Marine reserve colonel, "recruited" him to collect classified documents at Camp Pendleton and pass them to him and others, according to military sources.
The testimony was first reported earlier this week in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Maziarz testified that he regularly handed documents to Richards and LAPD Officer David Litaker -- sometimes over lunch at the base, the sources said.
The months-long investigation has stunned many in the intelligence community, both because of the scope of the security breach and the questions about a possible motive.
The Spokesman Review has this article about the decision of Police Officer James Jay Olsen to take the Fifth during his testimony in a trial of the man he shot in the head.
(excerpt)
Olsen, with the attorney representing him in his upcoming trial for first-degree assault and reckless endangerment in the same incident, was allowed to take the Fifth outside the presence of a Spokane County Superior Court jury Thursday – drawing the line at any questions involving the off-duty officer's pursuit of Pete down a steep embankment and into the sleeping Peaceful Valley neighborhood.
Spokane County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Douglas R. Hughes asked Olsen a number of questions that he refused to answer: Did he shoot Pete in the head? Did he continue to fire on Pete while the injured man knocked on a door seeking help? Did he try to hide evidence when on-duty police responded to a 911 call reporting gunshots? Did he give false statements to any law officers?
Olsen's attorney, Rob Cossey, also wouldn't let Olsen answer Hughes' question about what Olsen did after he jumped a fence and pursued Pete down the hill off Riverside Avenue.
"We have a Catch-22 here. Where he went over the fence is crucial to my case," Cossey told Spokane Superior Court Judge James Leveque, the presiding judge in Pete's trial, which began Thursday morning.
The Philadelphia Daily News published an editorial about the confusing circumstances surrounding the fatal shooting of Ronald Timbers, 15.
(excerpt)
ONLY A FEW people know what really happened Monday inside Ronald Timbers' home in Crescentville.
And one of them is dead.
Did Timbers, 15, pose such a threat to police and his mother that police had to shoot him in the chest and kill him? Did they try to talk him down and de-escalate the situation? Was he shot at the top of the stairs while holding a clothes iron, or when he charged down the steps toward the police, the iron held over his head like a weapon?
There are always so many questions in fatal shootings by police, especially when the victim is emotionally distressed, mentally ill, or high on drugs or alcohol. The questions go unanswered for too long, lost in slow-moving investigations in
a less-than-transparent process.
We don't know if Timbers had emotional problems. But given his age, history of disciplinary problems at school, and fights with his mother at home (which police had been called to in the past), is it unreasonable to believe he could've been immobilized by something other than a bullet?
More turmoil in San Antonio as the city reacts to the police chief's decision to review that city's police department in the wake of problems impacting it, according to KENS 5 Eyewitness News. Community members urged the city to take Chief William McManus up on his offer.
Of course, not all people are happy about that.
(excerpt)
"We shouldn't make policy decisions based on the few voices who hate the police, or those who make money by bullying others," said Teddy Stewart, president of the San Antonio Police Officers Association.
Stewart was the only one to speak for police.
"Come in. Look at everything you want to look at. We know we're the best police department in the United States today. We have been for many, many years," Stewart said.
The problem with Stewart's line of thinking that given the problems with his agency that have emerged publicly, it's very possible that the decision to launch an investigation of the department could be taken out of it, the city's and the police chief's hands if an outside agency decides to do so.
It's natural to call your department the best. It's called being loyal to your own but if the San Antonio Police Department is indeed this nation's best, then I'd hate to see its worst. What it appears is an agency that needs to be investigated because of ongoing problems. It's probable that McManus understands that his department might attract outside investigations so he wants to do his first. The city and the police union should support him and work with him on that effort and the bottom line is that they will if they really believe that their agency is the nation's best. In Los Angeles, the Police Protective League headed by Bob Baker took a step forward when it expressed its concerns about the lack of proper training and supervision of metropolitan officers which contributed to the infamous May Day incident at MacArthur Park.
Your chief's investigation today. A federal investigation tomorrow. You decide.
Back in Riverside, more political signs are being stolen from across the city. This is just silly for those who are doing it and this goes for all parties. If you are engaging in this activity for whatever reason, then you are suppressing the rights of Riverside residents to be able to freely express their political opinions on their own property. People on all sides of the issues and supporting all candidates have said how much they value property rights especially people's homes, but if that's so and you are condoning or engaging in sign stealing, destruction or vandalism then you are just showing everyone how little you actually value the property rights of people in this city.
This issue also feeds into the larger issues of what is politics and what it means to be a leader, points eloquently raised here by an unidentified person. The link no longer appears on the front page of Inland Empire Craigslist but the link is still active indicating that the comment may have been removed by its author rather than flagged. What do politics means to you and who gets to decide what they mean to all of us? What is a leader, and who decides? And why is there this assumption that everyone wants to be a leader?
Is a "complainer" someone who is critical now, with a different standard applied to those who are critical of anything or anybody pre-Riverside Renaissance? And how is language like this used to discourage or block criticism?
One would think that these two men would learn from Jesus' example because he spent much of his time chilling and talking with those who were most scorned by his society, but apparently not because if they haven't figured that out in the last 20 years then they probably never will figure it out.
The Andulka Park in Riverside will have its plans completed soon. It's one of those projects which has actually been in the works for years but has been crammed under the growing banner of Riverside Renaissance.
(excerpt)
Residents asked for the amenities when a master plan for the park was developed in the early 1990s, but funding wasn't available to complete the $13 million project until the Riverside Renaissance, a program approved last year to build 30 years of public projects within five years.
Park plans also call for a storm drain at the back of the park. Last year's rains revealed the necessity after saturated dirt caused erosion, said Bob Johnson, the city's principal park planner. The increase in development along the park's bluff likely contributed to the excess water, Johnson said.
"This is a prime piece of land," Nunez said. "Now we can fully utilize it and give the community the park they asked for."
The Roos family, who now lives in Tennessee, donated 30 acres of the 36-acre property in 1979. Charles Roos, a former UC Riverside physics professor, requested the park be named Andulka, or Little Anne in Czechoslovakian, in honor of his wife, Anne Roos.
But the land sat vacant for years until the council approved funding for the park's first phase in 2005.
Johnson said he hopes the project is finished by next summer. Andulka will serve as Canyon Crest's only neighborhood park.
"They have essentially been without a park forever," he said.
The park will bring relief to sports teams that currently compete for field space, said Bob Gordon, president of the Magnolia Center Little League. Andulka Park will allow the league to offer a girls softball program, Gordon said.
"There are so many teams in this city that would like a place to play, but there just isn't enough space," Gordon said.
Also in Riverside, Superior Court Judge Edward D. Webster granted the injunction for all but one of the listed individuals, Gabrial Tovar, on the complaint and for the Eastside Riva gang according to the Press Enterprise.
(excerpt)
"To the extent you are in a car with three of them, it's going to look bad for you," Webster said. "For example, I would not go riding with them to Casa Blanca while showing your colors."
Deputy District Attorney Jack Lucky said the district attorney's office could try again in the next few months to convince Webster that Tovar deserves to be included.
"I respectfully disagree with the court's decision," Lucky said. "We felt very strongly about the 114 people we included. Obviously, he saw it our way on the other 113 and the gang itself."
Tovar said after the hearing that he was happy with the result but worried about possible police harassment. He noted that prosecutors had previously failed to prove he was worthy of a gang enhancement charge during a trial.
"Now I've beaten them at their own game twice, so they are really going to try to get me back in jail," Tovar said.
Tovar said he does not have to worry about the injunction if he stays out of his old neighborhood. But, he said, almost all of his family lives there.
"You can't just throw away people who raised you for 25 years," Tovar said.
Some Eastside residents have been talking about the relationship between the injunction in the Eastside and its future development and redevelopment under both Riverside Renaissance and the UCR Charrette Project after reading legislation passed into law by the state governor's office not long ago.
Speaking of the Charrette project, its latest status report is here and is coming up for discussion this week at the city council meeting.
Several weeks ago, the city manager's office in its great wisdom put the report which had a lot of new information in it that hadn't come out of several community discussions on where else, but the consent calendar.
At least one Eastside leader alerted Councilman Andrew Melendrez to this development as soon as the agenda was posted and he pulled the item and had it rescheduled.
There's an excellent and interesting article in the Press Enterprise about how more defense attorneys in the Inland Empire including Riverside County are taking their cases to trial instead of accepting plea bargains. The increase is especially noticeable in the latter county.
(excerpt)
The conviction rate for Riverside County in 2006 was 94 percent, the highest for large-population counties in the state, according to a state attorney general's report on dispositions of felony adult arrests. The report covers all cases, not just the ones that go to trial.
"They keep saying that on paper they have the highest conviction rate -- who cares about that if they lose a big chunk of their trials?" said Riverside County Deputy Public Defender Addison Steele.
"Their offers to settle are so bad that you can almost count on it -- if you go to trial and even if you lose, you can still have a better outcome," he said.
The "better outcome" does not necessarily mean walking free. But juries might acquit a defendant on enough charges for the results to be better than what prosecutors offered in a plea bargain.
Indio attorney Christopher DeSalva defended Alejandro Gomez in a 2005 attempted murder case. DeSalva said prosecutors made no offers but he made two, for eight years and for 10. Rejected both times, he went to trial.
"My client was acquitted of every single felony. He was found guilty of a misdemeanor battery. The maximum penalty is six months. My guy was in jail (awaiting trial) for 13 months and five days," DeSalva said. Gomez was released after trial.
Attorneys say such results have brought an upswing in trials in Riverside County.
The article also discusses the huge backlog in trials which led to first a strike team of 12 judges being dispatched to Riverside to hear cases and then an extension of their service time until next June.
What's also in the article is a possible answer to the question as to why the Riverside County District Attorney's office has launched its offensive against one judge, Gary Tranbarger who despite the huge backlog and shortage of judicial officers, is not hearing trials.
(excerpt)
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Gary B. Tranbarger compiled statistics starting with his term as supervising judge for the criminal division at the Riverside County Hall of Justice. The numbers showed a 50.1 percent "all-guilty" conviction rate for 375 felonies assigned out of the downtown courthouse for 2006.
Mixed verdicts -- where jurors acquitted on some charges and convicted on others -- were reached in 34.9 percent of trials. Each mixed outcome case would need analysis to see which side might claim a "win," Tranbarger noted in the study.
The study said "all-not-guilty" verdicts were at 8.3percent, with the remainder either hung juries or dismissed.
The numbers on 159 felony trials through June 8 of this year included 42.1 percent all-guilty verdicts, 34 percent mixed verdicts, 11.9 percent all-not-guilty, 10.2 percent hung verdicts and less than 1 percent dismissed.
Tranbarger confirmed he had conducted the study obtained by The Press-Enterprise, but declined to comment on any interpretation.
A study by the court for 182 felony cases from 1997 showed 68.7 percent all-guilty verdicts, 22 percent mixed verdicts, 7.1 percent all-not-guilty, 2.2 percent hung juries and no court dismissals.
"Juries are expressing their opinion in favor of the defense in a noticeably larger number of cases," said Willey, the assistant public defender. "At least it feels that way."
"It's one man's interpretation," Pacheco said of Tranbarger's numbers.
Tranbarger's work is a look at each case's outcome, charge-by-charge. A spot check of trials from October 2006 matched Tranbarger's results. Willey said the findings "are consistent with our office's observations."
Pacheco's office automatically "papers" or challenges any time Tranbarger is assigned to a criminal case. One of the reasons, Pacheco said, is Tranbarger's study.
"What's a judge doing, tracking stuff like that?" Pacheco said. "That exhibits his bias ... he's crafting these numbers to make us look less effective."
Tranbarger said in an e-mail the database was created "to help the court better manage the ever-growing criminal backlog. Jury verdicts are just one of the many facts about the case that are kept by the database." Tranbarger has denied previous allegations of bias against prosecutors.
Here's a letter by a student at Harrison Elementary School expressing her feelings on the act of vandalism that was done there and her understanding of the principle of restorative justice.
I was devastated to read in the newspaper that my classroom at Harrison Elementary School had been horribly vandalized ("Burglars vandalize school," Sept. 30).
Knowing of this destruction was hard on my teacher, Terry Dunn.
The people who have done this to three of my school's classrooms are disgraceful. Thanks to them, many of our students have lost some of their favorite school supplies, which were either destroyed or stolen.
I don't know who did this, but I do know I would never enjoy the vandals' company. Thanks to our wonderful custodians, who worked day and night on the classrooms, everything is mostly back to normal.
These vandals should be punished harshly. I would give them two years of community service and order them to write a 5,000-word essay.
Also, if I had my way, they would be forced to apologize to everyone hurt by this vandalism.
JESSICA GOEHRING
Fifth-grader
What's interesting is that when I was in school, detentions were either worked off through labor or through writing 500 word essays. Shoveling leaves or snow for an hour or washing hundreds of dishes in the cafeteria can quickly reduce the number of detentions that a person receives and writing several dozen essays is very good at honing a person's writing skills.
Former Colton Councilman Ramon Hernandez has a trial date set in connection with criminal charges he is facing of misusing public funds.
If you remember, former Colton Police Chief Kenneth Rulon alleged in his wrongful termination law suit that his attempts to report Hernandez's alleged activities to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office led to his ouster.
In Los Angeles, several Los Angels Police Department officers and Los Angeles County Sheriff Deputies are the focus of a probe after a U.S. Marine sergeant alleged that military intelligence that he obtained illegally was then given to them, according to the Los Angeles Times article.
(excerpt)
Authorities said the probes by the FBI, LAPD internal affairs and Naval Criminal Investigative Service come after Gunnery Sgt. Gary Maziarz testified during a court-martial at Camp Pendleton in July that he gave classified military intelligence to several people, including the two L.A. law enforcement officials.
Maziarz was on trial for allegedly taking the classified military files from Camp Pendleton and the U.S. Northern Command, which tracks domestic terrorism activity.
After testifying, he pleaded guilty to mishandling more than 100 classified documents and passing them to at least four individuals.
In his testimony, he said that L.A. County Sheriff's Det. Larry Richards, a department counterterrorism specialist and Marine reserve colonel, "recruited" him to collect classified documents at Camp Pendleton and pass them to him and others, according to military sources.
The testimony was first reported earlier this week in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Maziarz testified that he regularly handed documents to Richards and LAPD Officer David Litaker -- sometimes over lunch at the base, the sources said.
The months-long investigation has stunned many in the intelligence community, both because of the scope of the security breach and the questions about a possible motive.
The Spokesman Review has this article about the decision of Police Officer James Jay Olsen to take the Fifth during his testimony in a trial of the man he shot in the head.
(excerpt)
Olsen, with the attorney representing him in his upcoming trial for first-degree assault and reckless endangerment in the same incident, was allowed to take the Fifth outside the presence of a Spokane County Superior Court jury Thursday – drawing the line at any questions involving the off-duty officer's pursuit of Pete down a steep embankment and into the sleeping Peaceful Valley neighborhood.
Spokane County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Douglas R. Hughes asked Olsen a number of questions that he refused to answer: Did he shoot Pete in the head? Did he continue to fire on Pete while the injured man knocked on a door seeking help? Did he try to hide evidence when on-duty police responded to a 911 call reporting gunshots? Did he give false statements to any law officers?
Olsen's attorney, Rob Cossey, also wouldn't let Olsen answer Hughes' question about what Olsen did after he jumped a fence and pursued Pete down the hill off Riverside Avenue.
"We have a Catch-22 here. Where he went over the fence is crucial to my case," Cossey told Spokane Superior Court Judge James Leveque, the presiding judge in Pete's trial, which began Thursday morning.
The Philadelphia Daily News published an editorial about the confusing circumstances surrounding the fatal shooting of Ronald Timbers, 15.
(excerpt)
ONLY A FEW people know what really happened Monday inside Ronald Timbers' home in Crescentville.
And one of them is dead.
Did Timbers, 15, pose such a threat to police and his mother that police had to shoot him in the chest and kill him? Did they try to talk him down and de-escalate the situation? Was he shot at the top of the stairs while holding a clothes iron, or when he charged down the steps toward the police, the iron held over his head like a weapon?
There are always so many questions in fatal shootings by police, especially when the victim is emotionally distressed, mentally ill, or high on drugs or alcohol. The questions go unanswered for too long, lost in slow-moving investigations in
a less-than-transparent process.
We don't know if Timbers had emotional problems. But given his age, history of disciplinary problems at school, and fights with his mother at home (which police had been called to in the past), is it unreasonable to believe he could've been immobilized by something other than a bullet?
More turmoil in San Antonio as the city reacts to the police chief's decision to review that city's police department in the wake of problems impacting it, according to KENS 5 Eyewitness News. Community members urged the city to take Chief William McManus up on his offer.
Of course, not all people are happy about that.
(excerpt)
"We shouldn't make policy decisions based on the few voices who hate the police, or those who make money by bullying others," said Teddy Stewart, president of the San Antonio Police Officers Association.
Stewart was the only one to speak for police.
"Come in. Look at everything you want to look at. We know we're the best police department in the United States today. We have been for many, many years," Stewart said.
The problem with Stewart's line of thinking that given the problems with his agency that have emerged publicly, it's very possible that the decision to launch an investigation of the department could be taken out of it, the city's and the police chief's hands if an outside agency decides to do so.
It's natural to call your department the best. It's called being loyal to your own but if the San Antonio Police Department is indeed this nation's best, then I'd hate to see its worst. What it appears is an agency that needs to be investigated because of ongoing problems. It's probable that McManus understands that his department might attract outside investigations so he wants to do his first. The city and the police union should support him and work with him on that effort and the bottom line is that they will if they really believe that their agency is the nation's best. In Los Angeles, the Police Protective League headed by Bob Baker took a step forward when it expressed its concerns about the lack of proper training and supervision of metropolitan officers which contributed to the infamous May Day incident at MacArthur Park.
Your chief's investigation today. A federal investigation tomorrow. You decide.
Back in Riverside, more political signs are being stolen from across the city. This is just silly for those who are doing it and this goes for all parties. If you are engaging in this activity for whatever reason, then you are suppressing the rights of Riverside residents to be able to freely express their political opinions on their own property. People on all sides of the issues and supporting all candidates have said how much they value property rights especially people's homes, but if that's so and you are condoning or engaging in sign stealing, destruction or vandalism then you are just showing everyone how little you actually value the property rights of people in this city.
This issue also feeds into the larger issues of what is politics and what it means to be a leader, points eloquently raised here by an unidentified person. The link no longer appears on the front page of Inland Empire Craigslist but the link is still active indicating that the comment may have been removed by its author rather than flagged. What do politics means to you and who gets to decide what they mean to all of us? What is a leader, and who decides? And why is there this assumption that everyone wants to be a leader?
Is a "complainer" someone who is critical now, with a different standard applied to those who are critical of anything or anybody pre-Riverside Renaissance? And how is language like this used to discourage or block criticism?
Labels: corruption 101, officer-involved shootings, public forums in all places
posted by Five Before Midnight | 3:37 PM
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