Election 2007: Down to the very last vote

With election results expected for Ward One today, there could be updates to this posting.

***Mike Gardner defeats Councilman Dom Betro by seven votes but Betro pushes for recount, determined to win a second term to push Riverside towards a "hopeful future".

Unfazed, Gardner said the following to the Press Enterprise.

(excerpt)

Gardner said by phone Thursday night that he hoped his relatively low-cost campaign sets a precedent for future council election.

“There’s no use spending $200,000 for a $40,000 job,” he said.

More information here.

The Press Enterprise for the second time has declared its endorsed candidate, Ward Seven City Councilman Steve Adams the winner of that seat. This time, apparently the results are correct. Adams won his seat by a whopping 17 votes beating a candidate he outspent about 18 to 1.

As for Ward One? It could come down to the final vote.


(excerpt)


The winner in the only undecided race, Ward 1, should be determined today, said City Clerk Colleen Nicol. The latest results show challenger Mike Gardner ahead of Councilman Dom Betro by six votes. Eight ballots remain to be counted in that race and are expected to be verified and counted today, Nicol said.

Four of those are provisional ballots -- cast when there is a question about a voter's eligibility -- and the other four are paper ballots turned in at the polls and later found in election materials, Nicol said.



The final tally could break the record for the closest city council race ever if the margin between the two candidates is less than four votes. A tie is also possible in these circumstances and for Betro to win at this point, it would only be by a single vote. He needs all eight votes left to swing his way, whereas Gardner needs at least two of them.

Expect a recount by either of them after the final results are announced today.

Adams announced that he was relieved he won and honored to serve his ward another four years. Of course, this was after he decided during the middle of his first term to try to seek higher office at the state level, so hopefully he doesn’t still think serving as a councilman is beneath his talents again.

Gardner commented on the close race as well.



Gardner said if he loses his six-vote lead with the remaining eight ballots left to be verified and counted, a recount would be in order.

"I would owe it to my supporters to get a definite answer," he said.
But he said he remains confident he will keep the lead.

"I like leading rather than trailing," he said. "I always believed I'd win."

But regardless of who wins, one thing is certain, he said: "Whoever wins, their first task will be to reunite this ward. The ward is divided pretty evenly."

Betro could not be reached to comment.




It's interesting that once again, it all came down to provisional votes and it's often an interesting story in how this process is carried out which might be fodder for a future posting. And what he said about reuniting the split ward is very critical. Hopefully, that will be the first priority of whoever does win this election.



Columnist Cassie MacDuff, of the Press Enterprise wrote about how frustrated Judi Penman was that her husband, Jim, who is also employed as the San Bernardino city attorney, was the victim of mudslinging by his competition in the most recent election. I guess this is to protest complaints about Penman's own mailers being intent on slinging some mud around.


(excerpt)


Supporters of Penman's challenger, Marianne Milligan, sent out attack mailers, too, Judi Penman said. She had copies delivered to my office Monday morning.


Two of the mailers revived old allegations of sexual harassment against Penman.


Two alleged he has received a drastically discounted membership at Arrowhead Country Club for years and failed to report it to the Fair Political Practices Commission.

Her implication was that the mailers cost her husband votes and made his re-election race closer than it otherwise would have been.

Milligan received 48 percent of the vote.

Both candidates also implied in campaign mailers that they were supported by law enforcement, although the San Bernardino Peace Officers Association didn't endorse either one.



Things might be bleak in San Bernardino when it comes to mudslinging campaigns but at least the voters there have some clue about who most of their elected representatives are at this point. Even with its advanced if soon to be banned technology, Riverside doesn't share that good fortune.



As you know, the fates of two elected positions on the city council were still up in the air for days, with no resolution in sight until today at the earliest. If the winners of the Ward One and Ward Seven seats are announced at that time, it would have taken about 10 days to count and certify all the votes cast in the election. By then, many people may have forgotten that there was an election.




"Lisa", whose mother was Drew Peterson's second wife talked to Fox News about her relationship with him, calling her stepfather abusive and controlling towards herself and her mother. Peterson, a sergeant with the Bolingbrook Police Department is the focus of much legal scrutiny about the fates of two of his four wives, one who died mysteriously and the other who's been missing for over two weeks now.



She said her mother feared him as well and in recent days following both the disappearance of Stacey Peterson and the exhumation and reinvestigation into Kathleen Savio's death, repeated some familiar sounding words that her mother had told her.


(excerpt)


LISA: No. I actually — it's — I'm not — and I will say this honestly. I have not — I feared Drew my whole life, growing up. I really did. I was afraid of him. When my mother finally divorced him, I no longer feared him because he could no longer hurt me. So it's not him that I'm hiding myself from. It's just I — because of this I don't want my family and the life that we live now, in a sense, to have everything be known.

VAN SUSTEREN: Does your mother — has she expressed any fear of him in the last two weeks?

LISA: When we had heard that possibly my stepbrother's mother passed away, it was — she was extremely scared. Knowing that he is still walking out and possibly responsible for hurting these women, she's very cautious and very careful. And then with me being able to give her, you know, little bits of information and stuff, OK, I'm a little bit better now.

VAN SUSTEREN: And when you say your stepbrothers, you're talking about Kathy Savio in 2004, or are you talking about Stacy Peterson?

LISA: The two older boys.

VAN SUSTEREN: What about since Stacy vanished has your mother said anything, about fear?

LISA: Yes, well, that's why I said she does — I mean, it just- the whole idea of him being out there, being loose (ph). I mean, I told her she doesn't have to be afraid of him anymore, but obviously, he had hurt her, you know, so badly all those years ago that she still thinks about that. He used to tell my mother that he could kill her and make it look like an accident.

VAN SUSTEREN: She told you that?

LISA: Uh-huh.

VAN SUSTEREN: Did he say it on more than one occasion? Did he say how he could do that?

LISA: No, he didn't go into detail with that, but that was one of the things that she had told me.

VAN SUSTEREN: When did she tell you that? How recently?

LISA: Within the last couple of weeks, with all of this going on.






The shooting of an unarmed mentally ill teenager in New York City continues to be debated and discussed as the investigations into it continue, according to the New York Times.


Different versions emerged of the shooting which resulted after five officers fired 20 bullets with 10 of them hitting Khiel Coppin, 18, killing him.
.


(excerpt)


Yesterday, the police gave their version of events, going to considerable lengths to defend the five officers who fired the shots — displaying elaborate charts, playing portions of a 911 call from Mr. Coppin’s mother in which he could be heard screaming, “I got a gun,” and showing blowup photographs of Mr. Coppin’s handwritten notes, pulled from his pockets after he died.

“As we know the facts now, this shooting appears to be within department guidelines, as officers fired at someone they reasonably believed to be about to use deadly force against them,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said, describing the shooting as a “terrible tragedy.”

Paul Wooten, a lawyer for Mr. Coppin’s family, responded brusquely to Mr. Kelly’s statements. He said the commissioner played only a small portion of the 911 tape “that helps the Police Department,” and he demanded a thorough investigation.

The police later released a transcript of a second call in which an operator phoned Mr. Coppin’s mother, Denise Owens, to get a better physical description of her son, whom Ms. Owens said was not armed.

Standing with Mr. Coppin’s mother, father and siblings outside the morgue where they had just identified his body, Mr. Wooten also disputed the contention by some officials that Mr. Coppin provoked the shooting as a means toward his own death, a phenomenon known in law enforcement circles as “suicide by cop.”

“There’s no credible evidence at this time to suggest that this was a suicide attempt,” he said.



A police official who was unnamed had this to say.


(excerpt)


“It is hard to justify shooting someone with a comb,” said one police official. “And you find yourself in a position of defending the actions.

Unfortunately, policing takes on the demeanor that you have to be right 100 percent of the time — and that is an impossible standard for anyone to meet.

“There will be a lot of controversy over this,” the official added. “It was a tragic accident, a tragic mistake. And, unfortunately, you cannot take back the bullets.” Mr. Kelly said the events on Monday simply outpaced the department’s ability to respond.


Coppin's history was one defined in large part, by mental illness. Not long before his death, his mother had grown concerned that he had stopped taking his anti-psychotic medication. The New York Times described the events on the final day and night of his life.


(excerpt)


On Monday, Ms. Owens called the mobile crisis team at Interfaith Medical Center, about a mile from her house. She told them that her son was “talking about suicide,” and that she was afraid that “Khiel would eventually do something bad,” the police said.

The police said the call came in at noon, but a spokeswoman for the hospital said the call came in between 4 and 5 p.m. and that the team responded within the hour. By then, Mr. Coppin had left.

An Interfaith psychologist later told detectives that had the Interfaith team found Mr. Coppin at home, they would have admitted him for psychiatric evaluation.

Ms. Owens told detectives she had asked her son to leave the apartment, but that he refused. She said she twice pretended to call 911, to scare him into leaving.
Then at 7:05, she called 911.

“Hi,” Ms. Owens says on the tape. “I need someone to come to 590 Gates Avenue, please.”

“I’ve got a gun and I’m gonna shoot you,” a male voice says in the background.
“What happened there?” the operator asks.

“This kid is a problem,” Ms. Owens says.

“I’ve got a gun,” the male voice repeats, adding an expletive.

“Who is that?” the 911 operator asks.

“That’s supposed to be my son,” Ms. Owens replies.

Within minutes, officers arrived.

From in front of C-Town, Alan Dorsette watched the officers order a figure in the darkness to come down, get down, stop moving, freeze. He watched the police back away as if the figure in the dark was doing none of these things. He watched them take up positions and shoot.

After the shooting was over, Alan said, Khiel Coppin’s mother walked out onto the sidewalk in front of the building where her son lay dying.

“She comes out, she looks,” Alan said. “She wasn’t crying. She didn’t say nothing.”




Also, in New York City, two police officers were arrested for an incident involving a 14-year-old boy during Halloween, according to the New York Times.


(excerpt)


The officers, Richard Danese and Thomas Elliassen, saw the boy, Rayshawn Moreno, tossing the eggs about 8 p.m. on Wednesday, the police said. But instead of writing the boy a summons, they drove him two miles away, made him take off his shirt and shoes and then drove off, the police said.

Rayshawn walked to a shopping area, where he called his aunt, and she picked him up, the police said. He did not show any signs of having been beaten, they said.


The two officers were charged with false imprisonment and endangering a minor and put on administrative leave pending the outcome of a criminal investigation. The usually outspoken Patrolmen's Benevolence Association declined to comment on this case.




Amid much criticism and outcry, the Los Angeles Police Department abruptly halts its mapping of Muslim enclaves, according to the Associated Press.



(excerpt)



Deputy Chief Michael P. Downing announced last week that the LAPD's counterterrorism bureau planed to identify Muslim enclaves to determine which might be likely to become isolated and susceptible to "violent, ideologically based extremism."

"There was a clear message from the Muslim community that they were not comfortable with it. So we listened," Mary Grady, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department, told The Associated Press.

Grady said the program hadn't been dropped, but rather had been indefinitely postponed. She couldn't immediately say when it might be resumed.

Grady said the remaining part of the initiative, which includes outreach efforts to strengthen ties with Muslim communities, would continue, and police planned to meet with Muslim leaders Thursday.

Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, praised the decision.

"This is the first step to a healthy dialogue between Muslim organizations and the LAPD," said Al-Marayati.



The Los Angeles Times also wrote this article about the LAPD's decision to revoke this mapping program which Muslim leaders said was akin to religious profiling.


(excerpt)


The decision met with praise from some activists, who said they would welcome greater involvement by the LAPD in their communities as long as mapping was off the table.

"Muslim Americans were very disturbed and concerned about the ramifications of the plan and having their privacy invaded," said Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. "Downing's statement that he's pulling the plan says the LAPD is very open to positive community engagement, input and participation. It's the first step to very healthy dialogue between Muslim Americans and the city of Los Angeles."

The LAPD has not provided details about how it planned to build the Muslim database. But in a document reviewed by The Times last week, the department's counter-terrorism bureau proposed using U.S. census data and other demographic information to pinpoint Muslim communities and then reach out to them through social service agencies.




Here's a contender for a low point in the Inland Empire Craigslist. No wonder who's the target of this kind of cowardly comment(and on Craigslist, it seems to be women on different sides of the political fence who get a lot of them) by an even more cowardly and of course, nameless individual, it's just tacky, it's stupid and yes, it's cyberbullying. Obviously this person is aware of it or else they would sign his or her name to it and yes, there was a reason this particular person is the object of this behavior at this particular time.

The person may or may not be "right" in the head. What this person who naturally is anonymous has done is akin to cyber bullying or cyber stalking. I urge people to not flag the comment but allow Ms Pepper the opportunity to make a hard copy of it in case she needs it.

It's intended to humiliate her. It's intended to intimidate her. It's intended to frighten her especially since this cyber stalker makes it clear he or she is keeping an eye on Pepper. It's intended to demean her by trying to do so in a public forum. Most importantly, it's intended to stop her. But I don't think it's successful because I think the overall readership here is probably disgusted by this type of behavior against anyone.

Women are too often the targets of this behavior because society sends messages to people that women are to be seen and not heard, horizontal and not vertical, a wide variety of stereotypes and that we are to be harassed and threatened if they step outside those lines that are supposed to define us. Cyber stalkers appear to believe that they are not only entitled but dutybound to behave the way they do and unfortunately, there are men and even some women out there who believe it's perfectly acceptable to "put women in their places".

It's beyond tacky and cruel and prejudiced to make fun of someone who may or may not have a medical condition and it shows bigotry by this anonymous individual against a large class of people in this country. It's very creepy and if I were the recipient of postings like that, I would fear for my safety too. I know what it feels like first hand and it's not funny and it's not a joke but often it's viewed that way.

The cyber bullying here against different people especially as is often the case against women is revolting no matter what political affiliation the person is. No election is important enough to harass individuals in the matter that's been done there.




Will Riverside County sue the railroad companies over traffic delays at crossings?

Stay tuned to that situation as it develops.



Coming soon:

"A duty few men are fit for, but you were born for."

----Capt. Dudly Smith, L.A. Confidential (1997)

"Yeah, little touches, ya know, little touches, little details. Ya wanna make the character full, real."



The final election results for the Riverside Police Officers' Association's president position are in. And why the appropriate word for it is, hot!

Also, why the name of a certain ship, of days bygone, comes to mind during moments like these.