Riverside City Hall: Goodbye, farewell and amen part two

Update: Riverside Police Department Deputy Chief Dave Dominguez to become chief of the Palm Springs Police Department. More information here.




In Riverside, the departing councilmen look back at their stints in office, according to the Press Enterprise.

This comes as the new ones who will replace them will be sworn in this evening at 6:30 p.m. Mike Gardner, Chris MacArthur and William "Rusty" Bailey (who will be sworn in by his father, a retired judge) will take their seats for the next four years.

It might surprise individuals to see which departing politician takes an interesting look at himself.


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Gage is revving up his executive recruiting business again after letting it languish while he served on the council.

His biggest disappointment, Gage said, was the poor relations he had with other council members and Loveridge, which led to four of them and the mayor endorsing Bailey.

He wished things had been different, Gage said, "because we as a council really accomplished a lot."



Gage is referring to his expulsion from what was, the BASS quartet as it evolved from the GASS quartet which expelled former city manager, George Carvalho in 2004. It's anticipated that quartet building might be attempted by several council members once again as old habits are hard to break, but it's also hoped that they will remain independent and not "loyal" to their colleagues more than their constituents including of course, those who didn't vote for them.

He also came to terms with losing his reelection bid better than many people suspected.



City Attorney Gregory Priamos is taking on the local night clubs after six people were shot recently at Tremors in the University area.



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"Clearly, Tremors has been a problem location," said Riverside City Attorney Gregory Priamos. He said his office plans to meet with representatives from the Riverside Police Department and the state Department of Alcohol and Beverage Control to evaluate and eliminate "criminal and nuisance activity" at Tremors, Incahoots and several other bars. One consequence could be suspending or revoking their alcohol licenses, he said.

Tremors was closed as it usually is on Monday nights, and representatives could not be reached by phone for comment.

Police believe the fight at Tremors started over a change in one of the music acts, Frasher said. The struggle began with several people, some suspected of being gang members, being ejected from the club. That's when police believe two men began shooting in the parking lot.

Six people, including a security guard, suffered gunshot wounds that were not life-threatening. One man was shot in the face and another man was shot in the leg. The sixth victim arrived at a San Bernardino hospital a few hours later after being grazed by a bullet. No arrests have been made.

Shot were three San Bernardino men, ages 27, 25 and 20; a 22-year-old Highland man; a 20-year-old from Compton; and one other man from an unknown city, Frasher said.






The Eastside Think Tank and Riverside Police Department showed up at a forum they sponsored to address concerns and questions by over 30 residents about the preliminary gang injunction imposed in the Eastside and surrounding areas.

As has been the case so far, missing from the dialogue was a representative from the Riverside County District Attorney's office, the agency which authored the injunction against the Eastside Riva gang. None of its representatives are allowed or authorized to attend any meeting or forum addressing the Eastside Riva injunction in this neighborhood. So far, the only meeting that took place was when Deputy District Attorney Jack Lucky met with community members in Casa Blanca, an action which served to be more divisive among people than informative because some in the Eastside felt as if they'd been slapped.

The absence of the D.A. or any one of his public servants was deeply felt as questions were once again fielded by those who did attend, including why no one attended the Dec. 10 meeting at Bobby Bonds Park from that office. Some people said that pressure had to be placed on the County Board of Supervisors which holds the purse strings of the D.A.'s office but its members are hands off. Pacheco answers only to the State Attorney General Jerry Brown and as Alex Tortes said, it won't be the first time the State Attorney General's been involved as the former one, Bill Lockyer, could also attest too.

Mary Figueroa who chairs the Think Tank cited "security issues" as the reason no one from that office attended. Earlier this year, a threatening classified advertisement was placed by an employee of the Press Enterprise and it has been cited as being the reason why District Attorney Rod Pacheco nor any of his prosecutors attended any meeting. Those in attendance last night expressed frustration as did Woodie Rucker-Hughes, who heads the Riverside chapter of the NAACP.



"The District Attorney to this day has not met with us," Rucker-Hughes said, "As an elected representative, he has a responsibility to us like we have to the community."


The members of the Think Tank had offered to meet with the district attorney's office earlier but were told that they not only had to submit a list of those members who attended but that this list would be given to the investigators to check these individuals out. The leaders of the think tank sent their refusal to accept those terms through a written response, believing that at this point that office was "taking it a bit too far".

It's insulting to many of them was the message that was received when this revelation was put on the table. They felt as if they were being viewed for the first time by Pacheco and his office as being criminals themselves. And they were.

But while even police department representatives like the last two area commanders of the Eastside at least don't dodge meetings and questions, the District Attorney's office does and that's the bottom line as the majority of the people in the involved neighborhood have said since the District Attorney's Office, which is funded by its tax dollars too, began boycotting meetings no matter what terms the community leaders and elected representatives from both city and county have offered up. Unlike police representatives like Gonzalez who continuously participate in the dialogue even taking difficult questions, the District Attorney's office which expects people to trust it, won't come to the table. Some say, that's because Black and Brown individuals and communities are involved, not White ones.

Some of them have shown up at the meetings themselves, remembering that they have constituents in the Eastside too.


Councilman Andrew Melendrez, whose ward includes the Eastside called the forum, "a very important meeting".


"The gang injunction can be confusing sometime," Melendrez said, adding that it needed clarification.


Eastside Think Tank member and former Riverside police watch commander, Alex Tortes and the current watch commander, Lt. Larry Gonzalez tried to provide that clarification.

Tortes said that the effort to implement an injunction began when he was a lieutenant in the Eastside and there were many violent shootings occurring. He spoke with representatives from the police department including the police chief and District Attorney's office to discuss what was intended to be "another tool to use to put a stop to gang violence". Multiple gangs including Eastside Riva were the targets of planned injunctions and that it had taken the department several years to put together a case for the current injunction.



"It didn't just happen overnight," Tortes said, "It's been in the work for several years."



If you read the over 1,200 page of documents filed on the injunction, you can definitely see extensive work done by the police department during the past year or so.

Questions about any future gang injunctions could only be answered by the District Attorney's office, Tortes reminded the frustrated audience. Gonzalez said that the Eastside Riva was targeted through the injunction because it was the largest gang in the city but there are those who feel this has led to an imbalance of power among the gangs, with those like 1200 Bloc, a Crips gang, emboldened to taunt Latinos including those who aren't in gangs. He said his officers would only enforce the "spirit of the law" but if there were a lot of shootings in several months, then enforcement of it would be more to the letter.


"We will take everybody in for everything abiding for this injunction," Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez said that the injunction had not been enforced and no charges had been filed against anyone in relation to it, although the granting of the preliminary injunction by Riverside County Superior Court Judge Edward D. Webster enabled them to do so. Notices of the injunctions were still being served, he said.

Several people in the audience including Steve Avila said that people were being stopped a lot already. He said that two individuals on two different occasions had been stopped and handcuffed, told by the officer that it was in relation to the injunction, "just because you dress a certain way".

"It's already happening. They were cut loose," Avila said, meaning not arrested and charged with criminal offenses.

The police department responded.

"I expect officers to be proactive. To be aggressive. To stop people sometimes," Gonzalez said.

Most of the people in the Eastside have figured that out already, have seen it or have experienced it. It leaves many of them feeling as if they are caught in the middle of a battle where they're seen more as collateral than city residents. After all, some say the Eastside will be gentrified into oblivion anyway to pave the University of California, Riverside's march downtown as part of both Riverside Renaissance and University Charrette. People are concerned there's no oversight mechanism in place over the enforcement of the injunction that is independent of the agencies involved.

Gonzalez responded by saying there was oversight and that the department wasn't a stranger to it.

Rucker-Hughes said that if complaints needed to be filed, the Community Police Review Commission was an option for Eastside residents but so was the NAACP’s Legal Redress Committee.

“If there’s alleged police abuse, use it,” Rucker-Hughes said.

This process would be open up to anyone regardless of ethnicity or race.

“Regardless of race, if someone is taking the letter of the law too far, then speak up, “ Rucker-Hughes said.

Some residents said they felt unsafe due to both gang violence and the actions of the police department which would enforce the injunction. Others said afterward they feel unsafe just following Rucker-Hughes advice. They say filing a complaint is a guarantee that police car spotlights will be shown on their houses at night and their relatives, walking or driving, will be pulled over, questioned and searched by police officers. There were several repeated complaints against one single officer who is currently being investigated for striking a young man multiple times with his baton in October.

“I want to feel safe. I want to feel safe with the police department,” a woman calling herself Gloria said. Her family had their story to tell Gonzalez who spoke with them a long time afterward.

Gonzalez said that there was a process in place for individuals to appeal their inclusion on the gang injunction but there's disagreement on that as well.

Community activist Christina Duran disagreed, telling the audience that she had asked prosecutor Jack Lucky who authored the injunction whether that was the case.

“I asked Mr. Lucky specifically,” Duran said, “Once on a list, always.”

Gabrial Tovar who so far has been the only one of 114 people listed on the preliminary injunction to be removed by Webster on Oct. 12, said that the District Attorney’s office had just served him with papers that showed his name still included on the list. He also had another document that stated that he had been removed from the preliminary injunction, according to the court clerk’s office. He asked why he was being served again.

“The only person who can answer that question is Rod Pacheco,” Tortes said.

If the past and present is any indication, that won't happen anytime soon. The Eastside residents that the District Attorney's office is so concerned about protecting with the injunction aren't worth its time to meet with to answer questions about what's being done in their midst. That is what is most disappointing to many community leaders and members.


Representatives of the Think Tank said more meetings would be scheduled in the Eastside to discuss where the community would move in the wake of the injunction. But whether or not the community’s concerns and questions will move with them is a question that couldn’t be easily answered.

The Think Tank was established in 2002 after the city including the Eastside was rocked by a series of gang-related shootings including two fatal ones involving Black teenagers, Markess Lancaster and Anthony Sweat.

Press Enterprise columnist, Dan Bernstein wrote about the foreclosure auctions that take place on the front steps of the old county courthouse in Riverside. The Inland Empire, after all is the region with the highest foreclosure rates in the country.

Riverside which is the "City of the Trees", "City of the Arts" and the "City of Red Bull" now may add to its list of officially sanctioned and unofficially assigned titles, the "City of Foreclosed Homes".



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Eighteen months ago, it wasn't uncommon for five to 10 bidders to routinely slug it out on homes selling for much more. These days, it's murky.

Schultheiss: "Nobody knows what anything is worth right now. We have to guess what the property is going to be worth by the time we sell it in nine or 10 months."

No guesswork about this: Bids or not, Gary Oberdalhoff will be auctioning homes by the hundreds for years to come. He has an unlimited engagement.



Chandler William Caldwell, the former Press Enterprise employee who plead guilty to placing a classified advertisement in that publication to allegedly issue a threat against Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco was sentenced to 16 months in state prison.



(excerpt, Press Enterprise)




After the sentencing, Carnero said the prison time is unfair.

"It was a compulsive act by Mr. Cardwell," Carnero said. "He was angry because he thought residents were being treated unfairly."

The report described Cardwell as wanting to be a "martyr of sort for the 'East Side.' "

The probation officer writing the report recommended Cardwell be sentenced to probation.

"Ironically, the restrictions he so adamantly opposed in the civil injunction may now be an integral part of his life for the next few years," the report stated.

Deputy Attorney General Mike Murphy requested prison time for Cardwell, stating the motive was to have the district attorney's office back off from the East Side Riva and that it could have incited violence.

"The consequences of this case are extremely severe," Murphy told the court.

Judge Tom Cahraman agreed and said the case was worse than other threat cases because Cardwell attempted to dissuade a public official and betrayed the trust of his employer.

Cahraman also denied a request for Cardwell to remain at a local jail through the holidays.

"No sir. He'll be transported to state prison as soon as the sheriff's office is able to do so," Cahraman said.






A pastor told a FOX News reporter that Stacey Peterson had told him that her husband, Drew, had killed his third wife according to the Associated Press. The Fox interview was aired publicly.


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Former Westbrook Christian Church pastor Neil Schori told Fox News Channel's Greta Van Susteren in an interview broadcast Monday that Stacy Peterson told him in August that her husband, Drew Peterson, admitted killing his previous wife, Kathleen Savio.

Schori said he asked Stacy Peterson, Drew Peterson's fourth wife, to clarify what she had said and she responded, "'He killed Kathleen.'" Schori said the conversation occurred when he and Stacy Peterson met at a coffee shop.

Savio's body was found in her bathtub in 2004 and her death initially was ruled an accidental drowning. After Stacy Peterson disappeared in October, prosecutors opened another investigation into the Savio case, and said it appears her death was a homicide staged to look like an accident. Drew Peterson has not been named a suspect in her death.

Stacy Peterson offered enough detail to be credible, said Schori, who declined to discuss the details in the interview.

"But it was very clear that this was not just speculation," he said. "She was not jumping to conclusions."

Joel Brodsky, Peterson's attorney, did not immediately return an after-hours phone message seeking comment from The Associated Press. But he said on the Fox program that "I'd love to get to cross-examine (Schori) because there are a lot of problems with his story."

A lot happening in Chicago, what with the huge settlement of law suits filed in connection with the incustody torture of Black men, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.


Trading barbs in connection with Chicago's latest police scandals, were its mayor, Richard Daley and the Rev. Al Sharpton.


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But if the Rev. Al Sharpton has his way, the political fallout for Daley is only beginning.

As the City Council’s Finance Committee was approving the Burge settlement, Sharpton was threatening to go on a world tour with police brutality victims to sabotage Chicago’s chances of hosting the 2016 Summer Olympic Games unless the mayor agrees to 10 demands by Dec. 29.

They include: removing Daley as the final authority to suspend and fire wayward police officers; releasing the names of 662 officers most frequently accused of excessive force; allowing brutality complaints to be filed anonymously and without a statute of limitations; realigning police beats and appointing a community representative to sit in on police roundtables immediately after police shootings.

Sharpton also demanded that the U.S. Justice Department consider placing the Chicago Police Department in receivership and urged aldermen to reject Daley’s choice of a career FBI agent as police superintendent because Daley had the “arrogance” to chose Jody Weis without input from the African-American community most victimized by both crime and police brutality.

“When you are in a city where you can have screwdrivers stuck up your rectum — and where 25 percent of the shootings by police are off-duty cops — you have to do what is necessary to make City Hall understand that our lives are just as important as anyone else in Chicago,” Sharpton said.

Informed of Sharpton’s demands, Daley said facetiously, “Is that all?” He advised the New York civil rights activist to “get in line” with his Olympic-related threats.

Although New York has similar police brutality issues and Sharpton is from there, Daley said, “When New York competed [for the 2012 Olympics], there was no issue about that. It’s very interesting, isn’t it?”

Most of Sharpton's recommendations shouldn't be surprising as they had been made before by community activists and attorneys in Chicago. In fact, some like the issue of releasing the names of officers most often accused of excessive force have been ongoing for months. As for federal receivership, this department has been begging to be placed on that form of watch for at least several decades now.



When Sharpton was done with the mayor, he challenged the hiring of the new police chief of the Chicago Police Department.


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At a news conference outside the mayor’s office, Sharpton threatened to turn Daley’s Olympic dream into a nightmare unless his demands are met. He called it the height of “arrogance” that Daley had chosen Weis without input from the African-American community, which is most victimized by both crime and police brutality.

“I would actually take some of the victims [of police brutality] to some of the international spots to talk to some of the Olympics Committee people. I would hope that would not become necessary. But, when you are in a city where you can have screwdrivers stuck up your rectum — and where 25 percent of the shootings by police are off-duty cops —you have to do what is necessary to make City Hall understand that our lives are just as important as anyone else in Chicago,” Sharpton said.

Some comments at Craigslist have reminded me once again that many individuals dislike this blog as if I needed that reminder because I've seen much worse. Someone or some individuals have even apparently flagged any posting there that links to this blog. That may or may not have happened yesterday as well. Those posting there deny it and they might be correct. However, given that one of them has posted in the past there stating that not only had he or she done it, but he or she wanted to make it abundantly clear that he or she was proud to do so, it wouldn't be all that surprising. To give some credit where it's due, one individual in the past responded that although he or she didn't like my blog either, they didn't think the postings at Craigslist should be removed.

The joy and pride that was expressed by that anonymous individual at engaging in removing those posts kind of runs parallel to the support of restrictions on public participation that have occurred at city council meetings. Even as city residents, some leaders and even the Press Enterprise's Editorial Board have advised against passing restrictions, the city council with several notable exceptions still approved more of them just recently.

However, it's easy to focus on the negative and not remember that there are also individuals who read this blog, who don't hate it and have given me positive feedback. Having readers nominate this blog for political blogging awards in four categories was a huge honor as was having this blog cited by a top state governmental watchdog. Being linked by the New York Times Blog Talk on the Sean Bell shooting and a Washington Post columnist who wrote on a racial profiling study were also interesting surprises. Reading blogs elsewhere that cited articles here that stated, that while this wasn't exactly what they were searching for, it's a good article and they got something out of it.

There's a lot to be thankful for as yet another year is coming to a close.