City Hall 101: The changing of the guard

Last night, three new city council members and one returning one were sworn in to dutifully serve as elected representatives of the four odd-numbered wards for the next four years. As more than one of them said, the election process was very contentious, the votes split to varying degrees in each ward. Out with the old and in with the new, some have called it. That's how many people voted during both phases of Election 2007.

The city council chambers were packed on a very cold (for Southern California) evening, with people spilling out into the area between the city council chambers and the City Hall. The attendance at weekly city council meetings see perhaps about 1% of the numbers that were in attendance on the night of the swearing in of elected officials. And sure enough, as soon as the city councilmen had taken their oaths of office, many of the people departed almost as quickly as they came. They missed a good meeting.

Not that the swearing in wasn't grand. You had candidates, saying the right things, making the right promises and in several cases outlining what they wanted to do as soon as they got out of the gate. Maybe even beginning that night. Ward One Councilman Mike Gardner actually has two cell phone numbers to call him that he provided to the public. He, William "Rusty" Bailey and Chris MacArthur sat, they listened, they discussed and one of them even pulled an item off of the consent calendar for some form of discussion. Even though I don't necessarily agree with all of them on everything, it was refreshing to see attentive elected officials on the dais. It made those who looked as if they'd rather be anywhere else but at a meeting city council after the special presentations portion of the meeting had ended, stand out even more than they used to do.

Gardner's latest phone number by the way is 941-7284. And he doesn't mind if you call either one. After his opening speech, I wished he were my councilman. By the meeting's end, I was reminded again, why.


The meeting was an interesting contrast in studies to watch the body language and conduct of the newer city council members in comparison to those who've served on the dais longer. One of them, Chris MacArthur even promised to restore trust in the process of City Hall that had been lost and produce a City Hall that is fully accountable to the people of the city. He's got his work cut out for him if he's really serious because several elected officials looked like they had a bad case of indigestion when he made his speech. Time will tell as it usually does with political candidates turned elected officials.

My mother, the same one who's been maligned here simply for birthing me, used to tell me, to show, not tell. What I'm learning at city council meetings is to minimize the telling and let those on the dais do the showing when it comes to city council decorum. So many people who watch the meetings at home have asked me, similar to the woman who spoke on city council decorum last night, how does the city council behave? Because like that woman who spoke, they catch occasional glimpses of empty seats and bored facial expressions. Like this woman, they ask, if I go to the meeting, will my elected official even listen or make eye contact with me when I speak? Will they laugh at me or speak out loud as several city council members did at an elderly disabled woman who spoke on the homeless last week? Will they send a police officer to lead me away from the podium if I speak too long like happened to an elderly woman last year or a city representative to help me?

And too many residents in our city still think that City Hall might as well be in a different universe and millions of miles away for all the relevance it has to their lives, even as it plays a critical role. The elderly woman wasn't even a city resident, but city-owned property had damaged her own and she seemed at a loss of what to do. So she came to the elected body representing that city and the people of that city for redress and was treated very poorly.

Her sin? Having the audacity to live close to where a city-owned pipe ruptured and flooded her house, causing damage. Even more so, when she sought assistance, redress or just a sympathetic or understanding ear from the elected representatives of Riverside. Dress her in a three-piece suit, give her a business address in Orange County and watch the difference in response that she would have received from elected officials for the same thing. But she was just an old lady so a very embarrassed police officer gently tugged her sweater and led her away, both of them providing a lesson in decorum that the mayor pro tem at the time who issued the order could have learned from.

Marjorie Von Pohle, 90, was in the position of having to tell two police officers to carry her out of the building, after the mayor pro tem at a meeting last February ordered the expulsion of her and three other individuals.

I asked those same questions and I received a good response of sorts. I guess it was supposed to make me upset, cry or walk off and never return. Actually, none of the above came to mind. If it was a demonstration of good will on Schiavone's part to prove my concerns wrong, it didn't exactly prove his point as well as it provided a good portrait of what goes on on the dais that people don't see. The laughter at the woman last week while she was still speaking on an issue that greatly concerned her crossed a line of decorum that I hadn't expected to see, certainly not in an elected official that I had respect for. And I noticed not for the first time, that elderly women have often been the subject of this type of behavior from several elected officials on the dais.

By the time I got home from the city council meeting last night, people had already called and emailed me about what happened last night at city council. People asked me about it afterward and they asked me for the address of this blog so they could for themselves why it received the response from one elected official that it did.


When Councilman Frank Schiavone said that he wasn't going to speak about this blog during his comments, I believe him. His intention certainly wasn't to say anything while I was sitting in my seat, while I was standing in line to speak on two discussion items, while I was at the podium giving my name either time, even when I disagreed with some of his selections for city council committees. After all, I know he reads my blog and in fact, he's complimented me on it.

He even stopped his vehicle at the side of Central Avenue at the end of June to ask me about comments I had written about an exchange made between former Community Police Review Commission member Steve Simpson and City Attorney Gregory Priamos at an earlier CPRC meeting. Using what he had read in my blog about that exchange, he asked me questions about how I felt about Simpson as a commissioner, because he said he was concerned about the situation. I'm sure the last thing on his mind was to tell me that I was committing ethics violations because if he had, he never would have tried to base an opinion on material that he had read in it that was accurate but could be interpreted in different ways. He merely expressed concern about the CPRC and Simpson's mental competency because that's how he read the situation and that's how individuals including several whose names were mentioned had expressed similar concerns to him.

Simpson as you've probably heard resigned from the commission not long after that. He read my blog too and appreciated the Alice in Wonderland references. He's brilliant, gifted in a wide variety of areas including music, stubborn and completely right about what the CPRC needed in his recommendations including its need for an independent counsel. His departure was a loss to that body that had already seen enough of that but what really suffered was the process that led to his decision to resign, details which he shared after his final CPRC meeting before Chair Brian Pearcy cut him off at the five-minute mark. Most commissioners get a plaque when they leave. Simpson got the door but he pushed issues that others didn't touch and this is how the city often responds to people who serve on its volunteer bodies who do. That's why it's hard to get some people to even submit applications to serve on boards and commissions. One of them actually was invited to be interviewed for the CPRC, then withdrew his application saying that it was a waste of his time because if he opened his mouth, he probably would be expelled after only a week. At the time, Simpson's resignation and what led to it had only began to make the informal talk show circuit.

Schiavone decided to say what he did last night the minute that I mentioned the CPRC in context with similarities it had with the ethics complaint process. His eyes slowly began to roll. In the past, he had chastised me in the middle of my comments on a discussion item on the ethics complaint process at an earlier Governmental Affairs Committee meeting when I brought up how the CPRC was placed by the city's voters in the charter in November 2004. He did apologize after that comment.

Schiavone and his colleague Ed Adkison played a pivotal role in that process by pushing a motion to place all the initiatives recommended by the Charter Review Committee on the ballot, a wise choice that others including Mayor Ron Loveridge and former Councilman Art Gage didn't like. But I think it's a decision he may have wrestled with and not been pleased about since because it's not unusual for elected official's personal feelings on issues to conflict with what their constituents have shown that they want. The reminder of the passage of Measure II does seem to pain him still even as he has said he respects the will of the voters including those in his ward. But not nearly as much as the surprise move of Bailey to seek the vice-chair position on the Youth Affairs committee that he really wanted to serve on, seemingly more than Governmental Affairs. That whole exchange was interesting as were those of Councilman Andrew Melendrez' when he said he was interested in Governmental Affairs but would wait until his next term to put in for it.

It was when I commented on Schiavone's behavior and several individuals on the council dais began to look at him because after all, it's not the same old reliable faces any more that he made his speech intended to put me into my place and pull what's often called a reversal to remove the discussion on the ethics of an elected body to those in the audience who asked questions or made comments about it. That's what several city council members always do when the subject of ethics comes up on the agenda.

What I remember most of all while he was speaking, was that I was watching an elected official who in six short years has become what he had campaigned against when he first ran for city council and lost by a narrow margin in 1997. That same person he had been, returned to win the seat in 2001. I remember his speeches on accountability and the responsiveness of government, of what it meant to be a public servant even in the face of criticism. Although my feelings should have been hurt by his outburst last night, I was saddened in a sense by the realization about how much being a political official really changes a person and what they once believed and spoke in public. I actually liked and respected Schiavone but when I think of who he is and what's his strong suits were, I realized that I was remembering was the elected official of several years ago, not the one today or last night. But it definitely would be interesting to see the two of them hold debates with each other. I'm not sure which one would win.

It reminded me of the high personal cost of running and even more so, becoming an elected official and how hard it must be to stay grounded to who you were, before it all began. Our elected politicians, both those who run and those who win come from different walks of life. How do they remain grounded to their beliefs, the words they spoke when first elected? The words they spoke when reelected if that's the case?

I've had politicians in my family but I've never wanted to be one. It's not the public service or meeting different people from all walks of life. It's the elements of the job that make many people forget who they really are and what they're about. All the temptations to stray away from your convictions and your belief systems, all the flattery and preferential treatment that most people wouldn't receive unless they were elected officials. Everybody trying to please you while getting your signature on what they want in return. Bartering, compromising and blurring the lines between the columns of where your compromises lie.

Many a politician has fallen prey to them and every politician at some point has to confront them and decide who they want to be and how they want to respond. The new ones who were sworn in tonight will face these challenges too. How they really respond will ultimately define who they are.

Maybe at some point in the process, these politicians don't remember who they are or were until they're packing up their offices after being sent home by the voters and reexamine their tenures. And two years, in three more city council ward races, there will be a wealth of candidates to choose from just as it should be in a democracy-inspired system. Hopefully, the decision to elect a ward representative will actually remain entrusted to the residents in those wards, rather than become a city-wide exercise simply because several elected officials were upset when their fellow councilman lost his race. After all, when it came to concerns about "anomalies" and "problems" of the election process in this city, those sentiments never seemed to be focused anywhere else in the city except in the Ward One race when there were three other wards where these same issues might have arisen as well.

Being the subject of the attempt of someone out of a spark anger to humiliate you in public, is not really that much in comparison to being faced with the way you are and the way you used to be, while putting on an eloquent demonstration of exactly where the ethics process is in Riverside three years after voters passed Measure DD. And as far as conduct I've experienced by people who hate this blog, Schiavone's response was still more on the fairly civil and civilized side. Being a blogger in Riverside isn't and hasn't been easy but it's certainly been interesting andn enlightening. Never a dull moment in River City.


Still, when it comes to lectures from the dais on the issue of ethics, I'll take them under advisement with a grain of salt and a side of onion rings, thank you.




More analysis on the ethics code to come including addressing the statement made by one councilman about how out of three complaints, only two filed them. What are the true figures? Why is this even relevent to the discussion of an ethics complaint process?

The first is easy. Based on available information so far, there were four ethics complaints filed by three different people involving three different councilmen including one who received two complaints. Of the four known complaints, only one was forwarded to the Mayor's Nomination and Screening Committee by the city attorney's office. The other three were rejected, one within a week, another after about a month with the third one in between.



Some individual from Councilman Steve Adams' ward spoke about the "dirty dozen". Where can we sign up? I had no idea we were due for yet another remake about an old classic film. But he seemed to think the elected officials kept a cast list some place and that they knew the lot of them by name. Is it accessible under the California Public Records Act? Maybe it's just the list of people who've received warning letters from Priamos' office.





Riverside Police Department Deputy Chief Dave Dominguez is going to be the next chief of Palm Springs Police Department. Although people say they will really miss his presence here, hopefully he'll get the credit for his job performance that Riverside too often didn't give him and be the outstanding chief that he's capable of being.




The family members of six young individuals shot to death by an off-duty law enforcement officer in Wisconsin are pushing for more rigorous screening practices for prospective hires, according to the Boston Globe.



(excerpt)


About 20 family members and friends on Sunday sat at a table behind pictures of those who were gunned down early Oct. 7 by 20-year-old Tyler Peterson after he showed up at their house party and tried to make up with an ex-girlfriend but was told to leave.

The parents of 20-year-old victim Aaron Smith said in a statement read on their behalf that Peterson was too "young, immature and obviously psychologically challenged" to be a law enforcement officer.

Peterson, who also was a part-time Crandon police officer, never underwent psychological testing to work in law enforcement. Anyone 18 or older can become a police officer in Wisconsin, and the state doesn't require mental evaluations. He also had an assault-type weapon as a SWAT team member.

The victims' families advocated changing the law to require written and oral psychological testing before anyone can be hired as police officer.

They also said that prospective officers should be at least 21 and possibly 23 before going on the job, and that no officer should be hired until completing full training and schooling.

They also want continued evaluation of officers, suggesting that they undergo mental-health screening once every six months.




Also in Wisconsin, a police officer is being tried for assaulting, beating and kicking parishioners at a church according to a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel


(excerpt)


Officers was all over this church," Rev. Willie Lewis said.

It was the first day of trial for Officer Shawn M. Humitz on two counts of misdemeanor battery while on duty for allegedly punching and kicking churchgoers.

Humitz's attorney, Michael John Steinle, said Humitz used legitimate force, including a "focused strike" on one man and extending a foot at another to keep them from interfering with an arrest during a tumultuous scene at the N. 27th St. church.

At least 24 police officers chased a man into the Family Worship Center Pentecostal Church of Holiness on Dec. 10, 2006. Lewis said two officers handcuffed the suspect in the church's pulpit and stood him up when two more officers ran into the church.

One leaped onto the man and knocked him to the floor, where the officers began punching him, Lewis testified. He recalled churchgoer Jimmy Turnage loudly protesting the beating as excessive.

" 'The man is handcuffed, take him out,' " Lewis recalled Turnage saying. "They paid him no mind. They kept beating him."

After the officers were asked for their names and badge numbers, Turnage was punched to the ground, Lewis said.




Chicago's police department is experiencing great turmoil amidst scandal after emerging scandal even as a new chief is hired to head it. Here is one more example, as a police sergeant has plead guilty to an onduty rape according to the Chicago Tribune.


(excerpt)



A Chicago police sergeant was convicted Monday of raping a woman while on duty after a judge found his testimony that the sex was consensual was "nothing short of perjury."

Cook County Circuit Judge Joseph Claps also said he did not believe the testimony of Calumet Area Detectives Constance Besteda and Ernest Bell, who investigated the woman's allegations against Sgt. John Herman.

Besteda testified that the 42-year-old accuser offered to recant her story for a $5,000 bribe but said she did not pursue bribery charges against the woman.


Saying that he found it "unbelievable" that Besteda would not arrest the woman, Claps said he is forwarding the testimony to the Chicago police superintendent for a review of the investigation and the officers involved.

"Their testimony is not believable or even remotely reasonable," Claps said.




Just like Chicago, Atlanta's police department has been shaken by multiple scandals to the point where federal prosecutors said that it was rife with corruption.

Not surprisingly, complaints continue to be raised about allegations of corruption and how they are handled inhouse, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.


A sterling case of how deeply entrenched the problems are with the agency's complaint system despite its much touted 2.5% sustain rate is that involving multiple offender, Officer Nathan Lucas who has had 32 complaints filed against him.

Below is the laundry list involving Lucas.


(excerpt)



• Losing drug evidence.

• Jailing a store security guard who asked Lucas to move his illegally parked car.

• Threatening to strip-search a law student.

• Crashing three police cars.

Despite the problems, Lucas was a part of the narcotics team on Nov. 21, 2006, that stormed the home of Kathryn Johnston, an elderly woman living alone on Neal Street in northwest Atlanta.

Lucas, whose role in the Johnston killing remains unclear, is on administrative leave.

The Atlanta Police Department has overhauled its narcotics unit since then, but has made few changes in its internal affairs operations.

Police investigations into complaints against Lucas often have been cursory and inconclusive, resulting in little or no punishment.

Eight complaints brought by Lucas' supervisors were upheld, while 22 complaints brought by the public went nowhere.

Two civilians persevered, and eventually internal affairs conceded their complaints were valid. In both cases, Lucas received only mild reprimands,


It doesn't end there for Lucas, who along with six other team members accumulated about 87 personnel complaints. He was one of seven narcotics detectives involved in the fatal officer-involved shooting of a 92-year-old Black woman named Kathryn Johnston, who died after detectives fired at her 40 times, hitting her six times then handcuffing her to bleed to death on her own floor while they planted drug evidence in her basement to cover their tracks.

Some news articles on this tragic incident call it a "botched" raid but what it was, was a criminal act. Lying on a warrant isn't a mistake but a willful act of deception and duplicity. A large number of Atlanta's narcotics officers made a habit of it.







Getting a lot of attention in many circles is a situation out in Eureka, California where commander officers of that city's police department have been indicted for other officers' shootings according to the Eureka Times-Standard.

The fatal onduty shooting was in 2006 when Cheri Moore, a mentally ill woman was shot and killed by police officers, a shooting that along with several others in the city of about 30,000 people created a lot of controversy and scrutiny of the Eureka Police Department including a call for a civilian review board.



(excerpt)


The expected grand jury indictments of former Eureka Police Chief David Douglas and Lt. Tony Zanotti would be unprecedented ground for Humboldt County, and possibly the nation.


Former Eureka Chief David Douglas and Lt. Tony Zanotti are facing indictments for their roles in a fatal shooting of an emotionally disturbed woman. (Photo courtesy of The Eureka Times-Standard)



"This is the first time I've heard of an indictment of police officers in the command aspect of a situation who weren't actually involved in the shootings themselves,” said Golden Gate University School of Law Professor and Dean Emeritus Peter Keane, who has served as a legal analyst for CNN, the BBC and MSNBC and is former vice-president of the State Bar of California.

”Generally,” Keane continued, “when you do see prosecution of police for unusual use of force or manslaughter, it's the officers that are actually involved in the shooting.”

A source familiar with the grand jury proceedings told the Times-Standard Tuesday the jury will hand up indictments of involuntary manslaughter to Douglas and Zanotti, who are scheduled to be arraigned Monday. The source requested anonymity, due to the secrecy of the proceedings.

Messages seeking comment from Humboldt County District Attorney Paul Gallegos had not been returned as of Wednesday evening.