Just another Sunday morning in Riverside

The voting for Elections 2007 has come to a close, but whether or not the elections are certified without controversy remains to be seen in the days and weeks ahead.

A while back, I got this interesting note from an anonymous individual, at least to most of those who read it.




“Enough of your constant campaigning for your favorite candidates for City Council. We've all grown accustomed to your diatribes about the Police Department (despite your lack of knowlege, experience or even academic credentials which would render any of your comments valid).

But give me a freaking break. You don't know squat about politics or what it takes to be a leader. You're just a complainer.”


---Anonymous, Inland Empire Craigslist mid-October 2007




One rule of leadership is not to hide behind the anonymous monikers or empty space for your name. A true leader is not afraid to let anyone and even everyone know who he or she is whether he or she delivers praise or criticism. He or she stands before the people he or she represents in his or her true form with all its attributes and vulnerabilities. Surely, this individual would agree, given that he or she has essentially declared himself or herself in expert in politics and leadership with the resume being in the mail of course.

I've already explained earlier what happens when you leave all the input to those with the "credentials" academic and otherwise when it comes to the police department. Here in Riverside, we provided ample opportunities as city residents for those with those "credentials" to fix its problems and what happened? We closed out the 20th century with a consent decree which would cost the city over $22 million.

But no good leader limits the number of those who can provide input to the process he or she directs, to those that have the proper "credentials" which in translation usually means those that are in agreement with him or her on the issues. Our civic leaders for example have all learned that good input on city business can come from just about any corner.

And the last line was very interesting in that from within its author, no doubt beats a wary and weary soul, but if you want to be a leader in any political arena, "complainers" are part of your constituents as much as those who flatter you endlessly even when they don't mean it.

Don't scold people for "diatribes" through the use of a diatribe yourself. A leader with this kind of attitude isn't going to stay in power long, unless they rule through fear and force, not through democracy and good will. If this person were an elected leader or politician and a complainer came in his or her office, would he or she dialogue with this individual or slam the door on that peron saying they had more important things to do than deal with "divisive" people. The latter response might not be a good one even on a strategic level given the extent of the division in so many different populations out there that went to the polls this year to elect leaders to represent them.

That includes the council members-elect Mike Gardner, William "Rusty" Bailey, Chris MacArthur and Steve Adams. It's no accident of fate that three of the four individuals are new to the dais and the only incumbent reelected only won by 13 votes. But it seems that Adams has been busy consolidating support in very interesting places and the past month, showed the possible fruition of those efforts as well. Why? Because city elections are like stones being dropped into a pond, the ripples which emerge and move in different directions impact other political and social interactions and processes as well.

At any rate, the day to hold your elected representatives' feet to the fire is the day they raise their hand and swear an oath to carry out the duties to their elected position and country, hopefully in all sincerity and not with their fingers crossed behind their backs. So if you voted anyone into any office this year, it's your responsibility to hold them accountable from the beginning at the same time you work with them for a brighter future, you know the one they promised in all those campaign speeches they made while trying to get your vote. It's the leader's responsibility to be responsive to you and your concerns, questions and ideas whether you voted for him or her or not.

Still, in notes like these, great insights can be gleaned about leadership, politics and other things.


What are the other standards for leadership? What of them have we seen in our own city government? What do we expect to see now and in the future? All questions to ponder in the weeks and months ahead in reflection of this past year of elections near and far.




Here are some quotations in commemoration of the elections one and all from 2007, to elicit some thinking and perhaps, critical analysis.





"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worse when they despise him....But of a good leader who talks little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, ‘We did it ourselves.’”

--- Lao Tzu


“A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune.”
-

---Anonymous




"A good leader can't get too far ahead of his followers.”


--- Franklin D. Roosevelt



"I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep.”



--- Talleyrand




"Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together.”

---Jesse Jackson



“May your life speak more loudly than your lips.”


----William Ellery Channing




"My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group. There is much less competition.”

---Indira Gandhi



"The first step to leadership is servanthood.”


--- John Maxwell



"The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves."

--- Ray Kroc



"One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. Which road do I take? she asked. Where do you want to go? was his response. I don't know, Alice answered. Then, said the cat, it doesn't matter.”

---Lewis Carroll








The controversy over the Los Angeles Police Department's proposed mapping program of "Muslim enclaves" which has since been rescinded after protests by Muslim leaders, is still being discussed by experts of both counter-terrorism and hate crimes, according to the Los Angeles Times.


(excerpt)


"Certainly they have clipped off an opportunity to get closer to their potential targets," said Ken Piernick, a retired senior counter-terrorism official with the FBI. "In this area, every little thing you do has the potential to be of assistance."

Brian Levin, a former New York Police Department officer who directs the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, agreed.


"In the abstract," Levin said, "the data could have had some value."


But they and other experts cautioned that the ultimate value of the information in identifying Islamic extremists would have hinged on how the data were collected and on the collaboration among Arabs and Muslims in developing the project. And that, the experts said, was where the department's project unraveled.

Having endured six years of suspicion and controversial prosecutions around the U.S., America's Arab and Muslim communities are understandably sensitive to any new police initiative that might smack of racial or religious profiling, experts said.

"Data collection doesn't occur in a vacuum, and here it has come after a period of intense intimidation of Arabs and Muslim communities nationally," Levin said. "Intent is everything and perception is everything. And in this particular case, those factors clashed and obliterated any chance of a positive outcome."



The focus is where it should have been all along which is building ties between communities and working with them, rather than imposing a policing program on them and their members without community knowledge or input.





The LAPD's handling of the May Day Incident at MacArthur Park was praised by its federally assigned monitor, Michael Cherkasky in a recent report.



(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)



Michael Cherkasky said the Los Angeles Police Department also had made strides in improving its "early-warning" technology, known as TEAMS II, which identifies officers who routinely use force, are the subject of personnel complaints or pose other risk-management concerns.

Cherkasky was appointed by a federal judge in 2001 to oversee a consent decree requiring more than 100 reforms after the Rampart station corruption scandal.

Cherkasky's upbeat assessment in a quarterly report ending Sept. 30 was in marked contrast to his post-May Day comments, in which he put the department on notice that he would be watching its handling of the incident and questioned whether elements of the LAPD were "reverting to the past."





In New York City, over 23 of its police officers who saw a doctor for work-related conditions were notified to be tested for the Hepatitis C and HIV viruses after the doctor was caught using dirty needles, according to the New York Daily News.



(excerpt)



The cops were all patients of Dr. Harvey Finkelstein of Plainview, who has been under state review since two of his patients contracted hepatitis C.
"While the risk of transmission of hepatitis and HIV from such exposures is very low, we strongly advise members of the service who may have received treatment from this practitioner during the period, to be tested for hepatitis B, C and HIV," said NYPD Chief Surgeon Eli Kleinman.

The cops were among Finkelstein's 628 patients notified this week.



Why it took over three years to notify those involved of possible exposure to the two viruses was not explained




In Chicago, families of the wives of Bolingbrook Police Department Sgt. Drew Peterson said it was his need to control people which drove him according to the Chicago Tribune.



(excerpt)


The portrait of Drew Peterson that has emerged from scores of interviews is of a charming man who stops at nothing to win the hearts of the women he desires. In an interview published in the Tribune on Friday, his second wife, Vicki Connolly, spoke of the extremes she experienced with Peterson: wonderful at times, and "really bad" at others, including threats on her life.


As each marriage wore on, Peterson became increasingly controlling and suspicious—even though he was the one who was already onto his next affair, according to relatives and his second wife. And as Peterson got older, the age gap between he and his wives grew.

His first wife was just three years younger than Peterson. When he was a senior at Willowbrook High School in Villa Park, Peterson began dating a freshman, Carol Hamilton. Three years later, the two married and moved to Falls Church, Va., where he was stationed in the Army.

Now remarried, she declined to be interviewed, but her husband, David Brown, said Peterson never threatened her physically during their four-year marriage. He was, however, "very controlling."

"If she wanted to go out on her own, he wouldn't like that," said Brown, who has known Drew since they were kids.

But in an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Peterson's first wife, Carol Brown, describes him as doting.


(excerpt)


Brown said Drew Peterson never threatened her or abused her during their six-year marriage between 1974 and 1980. She acknowledged, however, that he was a study in contrasts, a charming teenager and doting young husband who also could be controlling and, eventually, unfaithful.

Police have described Drew Peterson, 53, as a suspect in the disappearance of Stacy Peterson and are reinvestigating the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, whose body was discovered in a bathtub in 2004.

Asked if she thought Drew Peterson was involved in either case, Brown said, "I can't answer that."

Brown has declined numerous requests for interviews, allowing her current husband of 26 years, David Brown, to speak for her.

Meanwhile, she has watched media reports on the Peterson case in disbelief, never considering that the lanky teenager she met her freshman year of high school could be capable of murder.



But whether or not Peterson is capable of murder is the question being asked regarding the fates of his third and fourth wives.

In the meanwhile, a pathologist hired by Kathleen Savio's family did an autopsy and concluded that her death was a homicide according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Dr. Michael Baden, who did the autopsy, said that he would have recorded that as her cause of death on her death certificate.


(excerpt)


"There were indications then of multiple blunt force traumas, of being beaten up," Baden said. "One of the things we were able to look at today, those bruises were still there. And we could see from the naked eye they were fresh.".


Although the body was fairly decomposed, bruises were seen on her hands, chest and abdomen but not her arms.





An evening spent with the Los Angeles Police Department gang unit by the Los Angeles Times. The homicide rate has dropped greatly in this city which has been largely attributed to the partnership created by the police department, city resources, community organizations and gang intervention and prevention programs.