Will tonight's city council meeting be one for the record books?

**Update: Ward One Councilman Dom Betro conceded the election.**


The last chance to comment publicly on the utility rate structure changes is today at 3 p.m. according to the Press Enterprise. You can still call or email your city council member to provide input as well.


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Under the city charter -- the city's constitution -- the council can only approve or reject the increase. If it desires revisions, it must send the matter back to the utilities board.

The proposed new rate structure has seasonal tiers designed to help customers avoid extremely high summer bills by spreading costs out over the entire year, said Dave Wright, Riverside Public Utilities general manager.

The proposal also would establish a flat monthly reliability charge that all customers, both business and residential, would have to pay during the next 25 to 30 years. For residential customers it would range at first from $5 to $30, depending on home size and consumption, then double in January 2010.




It's not clear why this discussion is taking place during the afternoon session and not the evening when discussion items typically are scheduled. Tonight's session which consists largely of consent calendar items is expected to be one of the quickest meetings in recent memory. Perhaps to accommodate the social parties involving outgoing council members that will be attended mostly by the Who's whos of proper political society.

But given the posted agenda, tonight's meeting could be so brief unless a city council member spoils it all and actually pulls a consent calendar item that it could be one for the record books for the shortest amount of time it took the city council to complete its business at a weekly meeting.





In the midst of an overwhelmed court system, the judges have selected three more commissioners to preside on the bench, according to the Press Enterprise.


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The two prosecutors include former Deputy District Attorney Lawrence P. Best, who had served an earlier stint as a commissioner from 1997 to 1998.

The other prosecutor is Bradley O. Snell, who has completed more than 50 jury trials.

Tamara L. Wagner was with the Riverside law office of Wallin & Klarich, where she handled felony, misdemeanor, juvenile criminal and family law matters.

"We are thrilled to have these outstanding lawyers join us as judicial officers," Riverside County Presiding Judge Richard T. Fields said in a statement.


This comes in the wake of the abrupt retirement of Judge Dallas Holmes who left the bench in protest of what he called the destruction of the civil court system in Riverside County. The shock of his decision still reverberates through the courts and outside of them into the city's political and social circles. Will Holmes be followed by other judges who quit in protest of the gridlocked court system?


Press Enterprise columnist, Dan Bernstein comments on this latest development, expressing a great deal of concern.


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With that silver hair, Dallas Holmes looks like a judge. But the deep-rooted Riversider disrobed Monday, retiring from the RivCo Superior Court after just 11 years on the bench.

"I realized that our civil courts in Riverside County had virtually been destroyed," he told the Press-Enterprise. "I didn't want to be the last one out to turn off the lights."

Lights? Civil courts still have lights? Wait till the DA hears about this!



Hopefully, Bernstein can find more answers to this situation, which purportedly has left the judges of this county frustrated beyond words but unable to respond to it.



At Los Angeles International Airport, a man who was tased later became unconscious and died according to the Los Angeles Times.


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Cesar Silva, who authorities suspect was under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time, passed out in the back seat of a patrol car after struggling with officers shortly before midnight Friday, said Steve Whitmore, a department spokesman.

Silva was rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Whitmore said Monday.

The Sheriff's Department's internal affairs unit and the district attorney's office are investigating.

The Taser, which delivers a 50,000-volt shock at five-second intervals, was used because Silva was so combative and had injured at least two deputies, Whitmore said.

But it may not have been effective, because deputies had to use force to get Silva under control, Whitmore said.

"Eyewitnesses indicated there was a real struggle. He had a deputy's leg in a hold," said Michael Gennaco, head of the sheriff's Office of Independent Review.

An autopsy is expected to be completed in a few days. Preliminary information from deputies indicated Silva was shot and shocked with the Taser's nitrogen gas-propelled darts, then shocked again by direct contact with the gun, Gennaco said.



Several hundred individuals have died after being tased according to Amnesty International, which has caused some controversy in whether or not tasers are safe to use on people especially multiple times.



The trial begins for a former Chicago Police Department sergeant charged with raping a woman he picked up in his squad car, according to the Chicago Sun Times.


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This case is about the abuse of power," assistant state's attorney Matt Thrun told Judge Joseph Claps today.

Herman waived his right to a jury trial, opting for a bench trial in which Claps will decide his guilt or innocence.
In his opening statement, Thrun said Herman was driving in the Gresham District when he saw the alleged victim walking down the street. He asked her if she was "prostituting," demanded to see identification, and ordered her into his car when she said she did not have any. Herman then drove the woman to her apartment, where he forced her to undress and raped her, Thrun said.

In addition to having sex with her, he violated the woman with his police baton, Thrun said. When it was over, "he told the victim if she told anyone he would kill her. He knew where she lived," Thrun said.

Defense lawyer Peter Hickey said the two had consensual sex and had met for sex on one prior occasion. The physical evidence does not support the woman's allegations, Hickey said.

"This is about money. This is about a woman who was out walking the streets ... This is about a woman who would do anything to get crack cocaine," Hickey said. The alleged victim has a federal lawsuit pending over the alleged attack. Hickey noted Herman served 20 years on the police force and did 12 years in the Army reserves, including a stint in Desert Storm.




According to the Associated Press, former Bolingbrook Police Department Sgt. Drew Peterson has denied that he used the department's computer databases to look up people his missing wife, Stacey, was associated with.


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Attorney Joel Brodsky said the practice was widespread at the Bolingbrook Police Department and wrote a letter to State's Attorney James Glasgow that said charging Peterson with doing so would constitute "vindictive prosecution" because others have not been charged.

"Our investigation reveals that it was common practice of members of the Bolingbrook Police Department and employees, where people would run family members, cousins and such to see if there were any active warrants or see if there was anything on a daughter's new boyfriend," Brodsky said.


This has got to be one of the most pathetic statements made since that thankfully, former San Francisco Police Department deputy chief defended the racist, sexist and homophobic videos made by one of his officers as "training" videos meant to "boost morale".

Also, the worst since that memo written by a former Riverside Police Department lieutenant blaming former Det. Al Kennedy's atrocious conduct with a rape victim on problems in the department's Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Division in a memo attached to Kennedy's court case involving his reinstatement through arbitration.

Both the use of a deplorably unregulated practice by officers in the Bolingbrook Police Department as well as the practice itself. In some agencies (although the Riverside Police Department isn't one of them) doing this is grounds for automatic firing of the employee.

Unfortunately, database abuse by law enforcement officers in this country is not a minor problem. Here is a list of the top 10 cases of database abuse.


An employee with Bolingbrook Police Department denied it was common practice by its officers to do personal searches on the databases.


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The department could lose the state certification that allows it to run names if it does so in the way Brodsky described, Teppel said.

"Guys have been fired over this," Teppel said. "The last one (in March 2006) was a dispatcher who was terminated for handing that information over to a repo man."







More on this situation was in the Chicago Sun-Times where attorneys and police officers traded allegations about the alleged misuse of the police database system.

Peterson's attorney had made these allegations.


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"We've discovered it was common practice for all members of the Bolingbrook police to run friends and families (through police databases), to run warrant searches," Brodsky said. "They even used fake names."

Brodsky said the names they searched for were "risque" and included "Anita Man."

"If they are going to say he entered an unauthorized search or unauthorized use, then they are going to have to prosecute most of the Bolingbrook police department," Brodsky said.



Lt. Ken Teppel of the police department called it false that if they went after officers that violated the policies regarding the use of the department's databases, they would have to go after every officer working the night shift.



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"That is absolutely false," Teppel said. "We have policies and procedures prohibiting that."

The state periodically audits Law Enforcement Agencies Data System computer usage, Teppel said, and does not tolerate misuse. In fact, a dispatcher was fired in March 2006 for providing sensitive LEADS information to automobile repossessors.

If the audits turned up misuse of computers, the state could pull its service and threaten the department's existence, Teppel said.

"If you don't have access to the LEADS system," he said, "you can't be a police department."

On top of that, Teppel said Brodsky is way off base as to what police Chief Ray McGury presented to Glasgow.

"That would be part of the criminal investigation by the state police," Teppel said of the supposed allegations that Peterson misused department computers. "The state would turn that over to us."







In San Francisco, the backlog faced by the Office of Citizen Complaints is being reduced according to the San Francisco Examiner.




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According to the third-quarter report of the Office of Citizen Complaint, which goes before the Board of Supervisors today, the agency has closed 55 more than cases than it opened as of September this year, allowing investigators to chisel away at a backlog that has drawn criticism from the police officers union and the San Francisco Police Commission alike.



That's good news in San Francisco.