Welcome Santa Anas; goodbye Santa Anas

Santa Ana winds are making their customary visit to the Inland Empire. Here's hoping they don't stick around for six months like they did last year. This could severely raise the risk of brush fires in a region which has already seen too much of that. Hopefully, they will pass quickly and the dry conditions they create will leave with them.

In Rialto, a stop on the path by the Santa Anas, the investigation into the fatal onduty shooting of a police officer continues, even as the residents from the neighborhood where the tragic incident happened, talk about its impact on their streets.




In a Press Enterprise article, Jaranard Thomas denied killing Rialto Police Department Officer Segio Carrera, jr.. Investigators said that the probe indicated so far that he was responsible and told the newspaper that Thomas had a $100,000 felony warrant for selling rock cocaine out on him in Mississippi.

Thomas, who is now called Kris Antonio Wiggins, provided his version of events.


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As Bell hustled to get the children off to school, SWAT teams were on the apartment complex grounds. The search warrant they carried indicated that rock cocaine, drug paraphernalia and weapons might be inside Apartment A. Thomas said he was lying on the couch in a light sleep when he heard a loud noise at the front door. He said he wasn't sure whether Bell was in the house, but all three boys were home. It was Devante's 14th birthday.

"I felt the cool breeze coming away from the door," Thomas said. "All of a sudden I hear, like, gunshots or something, 'pow, pow, pow'," Thomas said.

He did what he said anyone would do -- he ran, into his oldest son Devante's bedroom at the end of the hall on the right.

"If I'd have known it was the police, I would have laid there," Thomas said. "I'm not no violent person."

In Devante's bedroom, Thomas began to get Tasered, he said.


During Saturday's interview he rose from his stool and pulled up his orange jumpsuit to show what he said were Taser scars on his belly. Thomas then flailed his arms repeatedly to demonstrate how he was trying to fend off the shocks.

"When I got to the room, I couldn't see," Thomas said. Smoke bombs had been set off at the complex, but Thomas said he didn't know whether one had been set off in his apartment.

Bell said in an interview Friday in the couple's home that their 5-year-old son was crying and shouting for officers not to shoot, but Thomas said he couldn't hear that, or much of anything.

"I'm the one doing the shouting," Thomas said. "I'm like, 'ahhh!' I couldn't hear nobody. I'm the one in the room, on the floor, huddling."

While getting Tasered, Thomas said he heard two gunshots, but denied grabbing anyone's gun. It was inaccurate to characterize the scene as a scuffle, since all he was doing was trying to defend himself, he said.




The Los Angeles Times did this article on Thomas' background including a different name police investigators said he used in Mississippi.




Over 60 people attended an emergency town hall meeting in the wake of the series of incidents that led to Carrera's shooting. It was sponsored by the National Association for Equal Justice in America.


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The crowd, equal parts older adults and very young children, fluctuated between 50 and 60 at the Greater Faith Grace Bible Church on East Randall Avenue. Spectators interacted with five panelists, including Leon Harper, chairman of the association's anti-crime committee; Dennis Christy, chief San Bernardino County deputy district attorney; and Special Agent Robert Clark of the FBI.

Carrera's death came up right away, when Clark captivated the crowd by noting, "his work now belongs to us."

Clark then asked the group for a moment of silence in Carrera's memory. Gov. Schwarzenegger announced Friday that state Capitol flags will be flown at half-staff in Carrera's honor. Flags at Rialto government buildings and schools have been flown at half-staff since Thursday.

The panel discussed and debated gangs and drugs and the responsibility parents have to steer their children clear.

Harper, a onetime school police officer, said of gangs, "Gangs don't come from Mars, they don't come from outer space, they come from our homes." Later, he mentioned schools as another fertile ground for gangs.





In another Press Enterprise article, residents of the neighborhood where the shooting occurred talk about how safe they feel living there despite a rise in crime in the past few months.


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"I've been here a year and I don't know too many people," said Charvette McGee, 27. "Nothing like this happened since I've been here."

Real estate investor Arturo Hernandez, who owns three of the four-unit buildings on the street, agreed. Hernandez doesn't live in the neighborhood but came to Cascade Drive on Friday to check on his rental properties.

"I have about $2 million invested here," Hernandez said, adding that he would not have committed that much money to an area that was declining. "I've owned these properties for three years and there's never been any problems like this."

Monthly rents range from $900 to $1,200, with many designated as Section 8 properties -- the federally subsidized program for low-income housing.

City crime statistics, reported annually to the FBI, show a homicide rate over the past decade that grew from 3 homicides in 1997 to a high of 18 in 2002, and a decline to 12 in 2006.

During the same period, total property crimes -- such as burglaries and auto thefts -- have leveled off, from the 2005 high of 2,315 to last year's total of 1,964.

Thursday's fatal shooting came during the service of a narcotics search warrant. Police made 299 drug-related arrests in Rialto last year, down from the high of 334 in 2005.




More reaction by the community in Rialto including video interviews is being posted at SB Now a blog on the county.


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“Shoot, everybody out here knows black males are already targeted out here,” said A.J. Barnett, a woman who lives in another part of the city but says she visits West Cascade daily. “But now we got people saying a black man shot this Hispanic officer, and you can bet this is going to be a racial thing, at least out here.”

Libbee agreed.

“The people out here, mostly, don't need to be treated the way they are” by police, he said.
Most residents on this street describe the area as poor but proper, with violence and overt gang activity rare.

Graffiti is not as pervasive in the alleys and lots around the street as it is in some other parts of the city.

Some residents did say that drug deals make their rounds, but that all in all it's a safe place for kids, some of whom scampered around the street Friday, just a sun-down and sun-up removed from the Carrera's shooting death.

No memorial was on the street for the slain officer, and residents admitted that there would be one if one of their own had been lain to rest there.

With Thursday's tragedy, detente seems unlikely.

“Look, I feel condolences for the man's family,” said a resident who would give only his first name, Anthony, for fear of retribution from police. “But you've got to understand that when police come out here, it's always just to bust down your door or treat you with disrespect when you just walking down the street,” said Anthony, 33, while his 5-year-old daughter stood next to him.

One day after an echoing gunshot killed a Rialto officer on-duty for the first time since 1986, the young officer's colleagues and family deal with heartwrenching loss and the residents of West Cascade Drive are bracing for what comes next.

“There ain't know relationship with the police that patrol here to begin with,” said Mel Schaefer, a resident. “Now, it's going to get bad because one of theirs got killed here.”




Neighbors fear a major crackdown in the wake of an officer's killing according to the San Bernardino Sun.


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Charvette McGee, 27, still wondered why cops had slammed through her apartment front door that fateful day. McGee's home was one of the four raided Thursday morning.

She said she had no drugs or weapons that day, or, any day, for that matter. The police left empty-handed.

"It was weird," said McGee, whose home is across the street from Wiggins'. "I said to one of the officers, `Why are you in my house?"'

The officer replied that an informant had pegged McGee as a drug dealer, she explained.

"I said, `You're sure you're talking about me?"' McGee said.

McGee said she is a meat cutter at a local market, not a drug peddler. She lives with her three children, ages 8, 4 and 11 months, her brother 22, who plays football at San Bernardino Valley College, and her 17-year-old sister.

At first, she was upset that the police had broken down her door. But when an officer mentioned that a Rialto cop had just died in another raid, "I just let them do their job. I felt badly."

As she reflected for a moment, her head swayed to the left and right slowly. Her lips pursed.

"I just don't understand where their information came from," she said.

Others were more angry than confused.

Joseph Pruett, a neighbor, wore his security guard uniform as the early-afternoon sun blistered the area.

"I got nothing against cops," he said.

But the officers at the scene acted unprofessionally, Pruett said. His daughter had been snapping photographs from her bedroom window with his new digital camera, but one officer confiscated it.

"They said it was evidence," Pruett said. "They said I might be able to get it back."





Information on a Carrera memorial fund here.




In Riverside, this survey by the Press Enterprise on eminent domain and the city council is still awaiting responses.


In Pittsburgh, an inhouse domestic violence policy is set to be unveiled for that city's police department in the wake of embarrassing revelations of how it handles cases involving its own officers, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.



(excerpt)


Police Chief Nate Harper said the bureau and the city's Office of Municipal Investigations are now conducting separate, thorough investigations of all allegations of family abuse by officers. An internal Domestic Violence Review Board meets quarterly to discuss all such accusations.

The new measures "will ensure that no incidents regarding domestic violence allegations involving officers will slip through the cracks," he said.

No one subject to an active protection-from-abuse order can now be hired or promoted, he said. Expired PFAs aren't a bar to joining the force or moving up, but they are considered, with more weight given to those rooted in violent acts than those stemming from "just a shouting match."

Similar rules are in Council President Doug Shields' proposed ordinance, which also would require enhanced background checks of police applicants, and consideration of reassignment or termination of officers subject to PFAs.

Barbara K. Shore, of the National Council of Jewish Women, called Mr. Shields' proposal "a giant step in the right direction."

Some of the eight speakers at the hearing who favored the proposal -- only the police union president spoke in opposition -- suggested ways to strengthen it.

Jeanne Clark, of the National Organization for Women, wanted outside review of allegations, calling Chief Harper's changes "the fox guarding the chicken coop."



About 35 of Pittsburgh's officers had domestic violence related protective orders against them including at least two before being hired by the department. Several officers had been promoted despite having domestic violence allegations which caused an outcry among women's groups in the area as well as NOW.

If Pittsburgh adopts its inhouse policy on domestic violence, then it will be one of the 55% of law enforcement agencies in this country which have done so.


The top resource online for law enforcement related domestic violence is here. This site is so filled with important information that it's impossible to summarize here. One resource is the Police Power and Control Wheel.