As the Courts Turn
"Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble."
---William Shakespeare
If you listen really carefully around where the twin courthouses stand in downtown Riverside, you can hear the rumbles of discontent and frustration burbling again like carbonized bubbles on the bottom of a glass of soda rising to the surface. Emboldened in a sense by several recent Press Enterprise articles that have been published about Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco, there's been renewed discussion about what's become of the Riverside County Superior Court system and who's to blame for the mess. More articles on this issue and the District Attorney's office are coming from that publication possibly because more people are being emboldened to talk about it inside the legal community for whatever reason. The same lawyers who were apparently concerned about burning bridges with that office several years ago are suddenly very talkative and they're becoming louder in some circles at laying the responsibility of the mess at Pacheco's doorstep.
As for the judges, they've remained fairly quiet even in the wake of actions taken against Judge Gary Tranbarger by the District Attorney's office after he dismissed two misdemeanor cases due to the clock running out on the speedy trial requirement. None of them commented in the articles in the Press Enterprise which featured the first year of Pacheco's reign as the county's prosecutor even if just to say, no comment. But what of those who backed Pacheco's campaign for district attorney? What are they thinking right now? The jury is divided on that one.
These are indeed odd times on this front in what has become an embarrassing situation in Riverside County which has done little to serve criminal or civil cases in its midst.
If you ever try to explain the state of the Riverside County Superior Court system to someone from outside the area, they never believe what you're saying, what it's all come down to being. No, you can't be serious. No, there has to be regular civil trials being heard in regular courtrooms on a daily basis. You mean, there are trials taking place inside the classrooms of an old elementary school? No that can't be, not unless it's a mock trial case taking place as part of a high school class. It couldn't be the real thing, could it?
Yes, indeed to all of the above and then some, especially since the new Hawthorne Elementary School opened its doors to students and the old campus had opened it doors to judges, attorneys and others from the cast of characters that you'd find at any civil trial. Not quite the Rod Serling Hour, but close.
From the outside, it looks like a train wreck that seems to be getting worse not better, even after the state dispatched the equivalent of a team of 12 full-time judges, mostly from Los Angeles and Orange Counties to address the backlog of at least 1,100 felony cases. These judges mostly served as trial judges but several worked in courtrooms to send some of the county's oldest cases to trial.
If you listened to these judges, they would routinely scold both prosecutors and defense attorneys alike and it quickly became obvious that Riverside County's style of courtroom decorum was completely alien to them. Some of them looked both shocked and also dismayed and on more than one occasion, horrified.
That was the closest adjective that can be found to describe the last expression on the interim scheduling judge's face even before the power went out for the last time in a sequence of blackouts sending hundreds of lawyers, jurors, judges and other human beings down the stairs in one orderly procession. So, the Blackout of 2007 had been upstaged by the ongoing judicial crisis. A group of us stranded outside during the impromptu recess discussed the plight of the court system and blackouts, both literal and symbolic, over soft drinks, hot dogs and Red Vines [tm] outside the shuttered courthouse while the electricians tried to figure out why the lights kept going out.
So what's going on inside this county?
Civil cases being tried in old school buildings after being bumped because their courtrooms are handling a large criminal trial backlog with some defendants waiting years to go to trial on their cases. That's after the neighboring jurisdictions including Orange County threw up their hands and said, no more, meaning that they would not take on any more of Riverside County's civil trials. As has been stated, actually conducting civil trials once they get started again will cut down the civil court's backlog of over 1,000 cases per civil judge, because a civil system that is moving along will encourage more settlements than a gridlocked mess like what exists now. At least one judge in the civil courts has already retired in frustration, unable to cope another day with the broken system where the Seventh Amendment of the Constitution has become seriously cramped.
There also was a disagreement between Pacheco's office and Supervising Judge Richard Fields about whether or not criminal trials could be moved to juvenile and family court facilities. A decision came out of the Orange County Superior Court that backed the judges' position but Pacheco's office soon filed an appeal at a higher court of that decision so that family courts, juvenile courts, even small claims courts would hear criminal trials.
In neighboring San Bernardino County which faces a more formidable judge to person ratio than in this county, there are no such backlogs like those that exist in Riverside. Meanwhile in Riverside County, the process there had to be rescued by Chief Justice of the California State Supreme Court Ronald George. The 12 judges, otherwise known as the "strike team" were only scheduled to remain in Riverside until last November but given that the backlog is still at the same level or higher, six full-time judge equivalents are currently assigned to the county until June. One can wonder if that date will come and go and they'll still be hanging around, placing more bandaids on the system if they can find any more room to stick them because the backlog seems to have only grown since the "strike team" first got here.
Both Riverside and San Bernardino Counties are experiencing judge shortages, with both counties having about half as many judges as they need, because the number of appointments made by Sacramento has not matched the enormous population growth of either county. But San Bernardino County isn't the mess that Riverside's system has become in terms of the gridlock and the resultant backlog. The District Attorney's office blames the judges. The defense attorneys blame Pacheco's office and the judges are just quiet on the matter. But if they are all players in the court system, they are all responsible both for its problems and addressing them, along with the folks up in Sacramento, in terms of providing more judicial positions in a county that needs double of what it's currently got. They need to all sit down and repair the system after parking their egos at the door.
At any rate, the latest news is that the lawyers are being critical! Stay tuned for further updates as they develop!
The blog, Inland Empire Law Blog addresses many of these issues (and others) from the perspective of a civil attorney somewhere in this region.
Tales of a Public Defender Investigator is an interesting blog started by one located some place in California. Is it Riverside County? That blogger's not saying.
Time passes quickly and sure enough, another city council meeting is on tap for today. I know, it just seems like yesterday. But it's really been nearly seven days. Everything just seems real short after that sabbatical the city officials just took for the holidays.
The only discussion item on schedule is the proposed plan for veterinarians to report on rabies vaccinations so that the licensing agency for the city can "better communicate and build relationships" with dog owners in this city. But practical application of this measure is fraught with problems. What the goal should be is to increase vaccination rates of dogs to keep the percentage of those vaccinated at a high level to reduce the risk of rabies transmission through dogs to people. In fact, the belief that this will actually occur under the current proposal is included under the "fiscal impact" portion of the city's report. This proposal if approved might actually either have no effect on increasing these vaccination rates or it might actually decrease the rate, if people stop bringing their dogs to vets, which seems counterproductive but then measures like this that are put on the agenda with possibly good intentions usually are.
Rabies is a "smart" virus, which has evolved over centuries and probably longer to be an effective killer of both animals and humans as it has the highest mortality rate of any disease. The bullet-shaped virus travels usually through an opening in the skin that has contacted with saliva from an infected animal. It begins at the peripheral nerves and travels to the brain where it attacks the area of the brain where strong emotions like "rage" are located. It essentially damages the brain and central nervous system while inciting anger in the infected organism so that it's better able to spread itself to other people or animals. Studies have shown that the brain damage isn't permanent, but its victims die because critical body functions controlled by the brain are compromised during the course of the disease.
This Wisconsin teenager is the only known human being in history known to have survived rabies without receiving any prevention measures upon exposure and infection with the virus. That's right, only one known survivor of this disease which usually kills 100% of its victims in about a week and only about five other people survived the disease who had become ill despite preventive treatment. This teenager spent 11 weeks in the hospital, part of it in an induced coma while doctors gave her antiviral drugs to protect her systems while she fought off the virus. Then her body's nervous system essentially rebuilt itself, while she learned how to do most everything over again.
Jeanna Giese, today has graduated from high school with honors and is studying zoology at a college while medical experts are studying her. Efforts to duplicate what is called the "Milwaukee protocol" treatment program haven't been successful so far as other young victims have died.
Incubation periods for the virus can range from two weeks (usually with wounds to the head or neck) to two years and is complicated by the fact that in many cases particularly infection by exposure to bats, it's not known exactly when contact with the infectious vector took place. Is it painful? Yes, until you go into the final coma before you die.
So it's definitely a serious disease with consequences. But there's issues that this proposal doesn't address.
What the report for the city council's agenda item doesn't tell you is that while feral dogs constitute the top vectors for rabies in foreign countries, in the United States the major vector among domesticated animals are cats. Vaccinations and other factors have kept the rate of infection among dogs down in contrast to what's happening in other countries and the strain that specifically can be spread from one dog to the next no longer exists in this country, according to the Center for Disease Control.
So on the domesticated front, cats have become the more significant source of the rabies virus.
In fact in 2005, 54% of all domesticated animals which contracted rabies were cats, while only 16% of such animals were dogs. However, only about 8% of all animals infected with rabies are from domesticated species, but with development encroaching natural habitats for many at-risk species, the line is even blurred in terms of transmission from wild to domestic species. One of the species of animals which had higher rates of infection than dogs was the cow, which can transmit the virus through their saliva to their handler. I've seen rabies in cats and even a cow but never in a dog so far. But it's rare in any animal compared to other diseases. Diseases like distemper and especially feline leukemia are more common in cats and cows are more likely to get brucellious or tuberculosis, both which have impacted the dairy business to varying degrees.
In Riverside, most of the animals infected with rabies have been wild animal species or feral cats in contact with wild species though it's been found in bats including in one case where a young boy in Moreno Valley had to undergo a rabies shot series after contact with a dying rabid bat. The major source of human rabies cases in this country are bats, because in most of the cases, the people were unaware of being exposed to a rabid bat and consequently, not undergoing preventive measures in case of infection than they would in cases involving other animals. It was only when they tested for the specific virus in the hospital that doctors discovered in these cases that the vector was definitely a species of bat.
Of dogs that are exposed to rabies, nearly all these cases come from transmission of a form of rabies found in wild animal species. The so-called canine rabies virus is believed to have been eradicated from the United States but dogs can still contract other forms of the disease through contact with wild animals. Vaccinating dogs and especially taking great caution when adopting or bringing dogs from countries where canine rabies virus is still prevalent are important steps to preventing this particular strain's reintroduction into the United States.
Because of the close proximity of domesticated pets to habitats frequented by wild species which carry the rabies virus, it's important for cats and dogs to be vaccinated regularly. However, with cats, efforts should be made to ensure that the cat isn't infected with immune deficiency conditions like Feline Leukemia Virus while being injected with a vaccination that utilizes live rabies virus.
It's ironic that at the Riverside County of Animal Services site that they apparently don't offer or at least advertise low-cost rabies vaccinations for cats as they do for dogs because cats are at much higher risk of being infected than dogs.
Here are some more statistics on the rates of infection among different animal species in different countries. In the United States, major wild carriers include raccoons, skunks, bats and foxes, all species native to Riverside. Of these carriers, the skunk is the one species which is usually asymptomatic during its entire infectious period.
The concern is with mandatory reporting by veterinarians is that people who can't afford to license their pets will not get their dogs vaccinated in Riverside. Rabies vaccinations aren't costly themselves but added to spaying and neutering costs and licenses fees especially for unaltered animals, many people won't pay for the entire bundle. In an ideal world, everyone should license their dogs, vaccinate their pets against all diseases particularly rabies and spay and neuter their pets. But it doesn't happen and this program which has added costs to its enforcement not mentioned in the report won't really impact that reality in practice. And to many people, it appears as if the dogs are used as a mechanism for code enforcement to cite people for violations unrelated to the fact that their dogs aren't vaccinated for rabies and/or licensed.
Affordable vaccines, education as to why they're necessary, spaying and neutering dogs and cats perhaps through the grants that are available to veterinarians through the state already for feral animals to provide low-cost assistance particularly for larger dogs and responsible ownership. Reduce irresponsible breeding such as puppy mills and don't frequent or support pet stores that sell puppies from mills. Adopt from the pound or animal shelters instead. All serious issues, but this city program isn't going to make a dent in addressing any of them in terms of practical application.
Riverside County of Animal Services
The city council will also be receiving this annual financial audit which was presented to the Finance Committee. Take it with a grain of salt.
The Riverside Unified School District is prepared to purchase land in the Eastside for its school but not build it.
(excerpt)
Fifteen months after delaying a decision, the trustees voted 4-1 on Jan. 14 to earmark $12 million in remaining Measure B money to purchase land for the project. Yet they earmarked no money for actually building the school.
As many as 1,086 elementary students who aren't enrolled at the local Longfellow and Emerson schools are bused from their Eastside neighborhoods to seven other district schools -- the largest volume of students in the district being bused to schools outside their neighborhoods, Deputy Superintendent Mike Fine said.
The sheer volume of school bus riders from the predominantly Latino and black Eastside is a relic of the district's desegregation policy from the mid-1960s. Children from racial minority strongholds such as Riverside's Eastside and Casa Blanca sections were bused at the time into predominantly white neighborhoods to balance out the district schools' ethnic makeup. In 1965, Riverside Unified became the first urban district in the nation to desegregate its schools voluntarily.
If you have opinions on the construction of the new elementary school, here is where a poll is being conducted.
An interesting article on affordable senior housing and missed opportunities in San Bernardino.
In Bedford, New York, shocking revelations about comments made by officers about a dying Guatemalan man have emerged according to the News-Times. Comments that were caught on audiotape and played on a radio station.
(excerpt)
"You wanna hear something really funny? ... He's alive," a Bedford police officer tells a sergeant on a taped phone call aired Thursday on WCBS-TV.
The two go on to marvel - with the officer chuckling - that Rene Perez had apparently revived himself temporarily after authorities thought him dead on April 28, 2007. The television station said Perez died an hour after the officers' taped exchange.
I'm sure they laughed about that too.
According to WRAL News, two Durham Police Department officers have been charged with sexual misconduct
(excerpt)
Sgt. Keith Cheeks and Officer Demond Gooch had been involved in misconduct unrelated to the sex allegations, Chief Jose Lopez said. He didn't disclose the nature of the misconduct but said the pair would have been fired if they hadn't resigned.
Cheeks had been with the department since 1992, while Gooch joined in 2004. Both men were assigned to the Uniform Patrol Division.
A prostitute told Durham vice officers in early October that she had engaged in sex with police officers. The Special Operations Division launched an undercover criminal investigation into the allegations, but Lopez said they have yet to substantiate the woman’s claims.
An internal affairs investigation into the allegations was opened in November, and about 10 officers were placed on leave pending the outcome. That investigation has been closed, and the cleared officers have returned to duty.
The misconduct by Cheeks and Gooch was uncovered during the course of the investigation, Lopez said.
These latest allegations arise in the midst of ongoing federal and local probes into serious misconduct involving police officers in this police department.
In Massachusetts, a police officer has been charged with sexual assault of a teenaged girl, according to Capitol News 9.
(excerpt)
"He's charged with a single count of indecent assault and battery on a person under the age of 14, which basically involves inappropriate touching," said Berkshire County District Attorney David Capeless.
Sergeant James Foley was arraigned in Northern Berkshire District Court, where a not guilty plea was entered on his behalf.
"He is adamant in his innocence. The State Police felt the need to bring a criminal charge simply because an allegation was made," said Defense Attorney William Rota.
As shocking and serious as these allegations are, Foley was still promoted to sergeant while the investigation was ongoing. That's a decision that's now under scrutiny, as some wonder if that was a good decision.
"I guess not. But did he warrant it? Yes he did, based on his police work," said North Adams Police Commissioner of Public Safety E. John Morocco.
In Columbia, Missouri the discussion continues on whether or not to create a new civilian review board and recently, the discussion got heated.
(excerpt, Columbia Tribune)
Last night’s sometimes testy two-hour meeting was the fourth meeting of the 14-member Civilian Oversight Committee, appointed by Mayor Darwin Hindman in November to determine whether a civilian review board is needed to act as watchdogs over the Columbia Police Department.
Mary Ratliff, president of the Columbia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the creation of such a board is "essential" to lowering the number of use-of-force and racial-profiling complaints levied by members of the black community.
Columbia Police Officers Association President Donald Weaver counted the "influence of local politics" among his chief concerns about a review board. He added that such a body might be a waste of public money, citing statistics showing the department has made an average of 8,559 arrests each year since 2005 with about 27 complaints per year. "While we’re not opposed to the idea, we don’t quite understand the need," Weaver said.
Committee members countered that such a civilian panel could help improve cooperation with police.
"It might help you build up some trust in the community so you can maybe gain some cooperation," said member Diane Booth.
In Bridgeport, Connecticut, Christopher Shays, a United States congressman blasted the Board of Police Commissioners for not supporting the police chief, according to the Connecticut Post.
(excerpt)
"You have a police chief trying to clean up the department. I think there are people on that commission who are on the wrong side of the equation," Shays said during a recent editorial board meeting with the Connecticut Post.
Shays, a Bridgeport resident, faulted the police commission for not quickly firing officers accused of wrongdoing, and for spending months deciding on discipline. One of the cases cited by Shays involved a police officer who pushed his girlfriend out of a car.
That officer was eventually fired, but the process
took months as he remained suspended without pay.
For the most part, police commissioners dismissed Shays's statements, saying the congressman does not know enough about the day-to-day activities to judge the Police Department. They denied any suggestion that commissioners are not working with the chief, or committed to improving the department.
---William Shakespeare
If you listen really carefully around where the twin courthouses stand in downtown Riverside, you can hear the rumbles of discontent and frustration burbling again like carbonized bubbles on the bottom of a glass of soda rising to the surface. Emboldened in a sense by several recent Press Enterprise articles that have been published about Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco, there's been renewed discussion about what's become of the Riverside County Superior Court system and who's to blame for the mess. More articles on this issue and the District Attorney's office are coming from that publication possibly because more people are being emboldened to talk about it inside the legal community for whatever reason. The same lawyers who were apparently concerned about burning bridges with that office several years ago are suddenly very talkative and they're becoming louder in some circles at laying the responsibility of the mess at Pacheco's doorstep.
As for the judges, they've remained fairly quiet even in the wake of actions taken against Judge Gary Tranbarger by the District Attorney's office after he dismissed two misdemeanor cases due to the clock running out on the speedy trial requirement. None of them commented in the articles in the Press Enterprise which featured the first year of Pacheco's reign as the county's prosecutor even if just to say, no comment. But what of those who backed Pacheco's campaign for district attorney? What are they thinking right now? The jury is divided on that one.
These are indeed odd times on this front in what has become an embarrassing situation in Riverside County which has done little to serve criminal or civil cases in its midst.
If you ever try to explain the state of the Riverside County Superior Court system to someone from outside the area, they never believe what you're saying, what it's all come down to being. No, you can't be serious. No, there has to be regular civil trials being heard in regular courtrooms on a daily basis. You mean, there are trials taking place inside the classrooms of an old elementary school? No that can't be, not unless it's a mock trial case taking place as part of a high school class. It couldn't be the real thing, could it?
Yes, indeed to all of the above and then some, especially since the new Hawthorne Elementary School opened its doors to students and the old campus had opened it doors to judges, attorneys and others from the cast of characters that you'd find at any civil trial. Not quite the Rod Serling Hour, but close.
From the outside, it looks like a train wreck that seems to be getting worse not better, even after the state dispatched the equivalent of a team of 12 full-time judges, mostly from Los Angeles and Orange Counties to address the backlog of at least 1,100 felony cases. These judges mostly served as trial judges but several worked in courtrooms to send some of the county's oldest cases to trial.
If you listened to these judges, they would routinely scold both prosecutors and defense attorneys alike and it quickly became obvious that Riverside County's style of courtroom decorum was completely alien to them. Some of them looked both shocked and also dismayed and on more than one occasion, horrified.
That was the closest adjective that can be found to describe the last expression on the interim scheduling judge's face even before the power went out for the last time in a sequence of blackouts sending hundreds of lawyers, jurors, judges and other human beings down the stairs in one orderly procession. So, the Blackout of 2007 had been upstaged by the ongoing judicial crisis. A group of us stranded outside during the impromptu recess discussed the plight of the court system and blackouts, both literal and symbolic, over soft drinks, hot dogs and Red Vines [tm] outside the shuttered courthouse while the electricians tried to figure out why the lights kept going out.
So what's going on inside this county?
Civil cases being tried in old school buildings after being bumped because their courtrooms are handling a large criminal trial backlog with some defendants waiting years to go to trial on their cases. That's after the neighboring jurisdictions including Orange County threw up their hands and said, no more, meaning that they would not take on any more of Riverside County's civil trials. As has been stated, actually conducting civil trials once they get started again will cut down the civil court's backlog of over 1,000 cases per civil judge, because a civil system that is moving along will encourage more settlements than a gridlocked mess like what exists now. At least one judge in the civil courts has already retired in frustration, unable to cope another day with the broken system where the Seventh Amendment of the Constitution has become seriously cramped.
There also was a disagreement between Pacheco's office and Supervising Judge Richard Fields about whether or not criminal trials could be moved to juvenile and family court facilities. A decision came out of the Orange County Superior Court that backed the judges' position but Pacheco's office soon filed an appeal at a higher court of that decision so that family courts, juvenile courts, even small claims courts would hear criminal trials.
In neighboring San Bernardino County which faces a more formidable judge to person ratio than in this county, there are no such backlogs like those that exist in Riverside. Meanwhile in Riverside County, the process there had to be rescued by Chief Justice of the California State Supreme Court Ronald George. The 12 judges, otherwise known as the "strike team" were only scheduled to remain in Riverside until last November but given that the backlog is still at the same level or higher, six full-time judge equivalents are currently assigned to the county until June. One can wonder if that date will come and go and they'll still be hanging around, placing more bandaids on the system if they can find any more room to stick them because the backlog seems to have only grown since the "strike team" first got here.
Both Riverside and San Bernardino Counties are experiencing judge shortages, with both counties having about half as many judges as they need, because the number of appointments made by Sacramento has not matched the enormous population growth of either county. But San Bernardino County isn't the mess that Riverside's system has become in terms of the gridlock and the resultant backlog. The District Attorney's office blames the judges. The defense attorneys blame Pacheco's office and the judges are just quiet on the matter. But if they are all players in the court system, they are all responsible both for its problems and addressing them, along with the folks up in Sacramento, in terms of providing more judicial positions in a county that needs double of what it's currently got. They need to all sit down and repair the system after parking their egos at the door.
At any rate, the latest news is that the lawyers are being critical! Stay tuned for further updates as they develop!
The blog, Inland Empire Law Blog addresses many of these issues (and others) from the perspective of a civil attorney somewhere in this region.
Tales of a Public Defender Investigator is an interesting blog started by one located some place in California. Is it Riverside County? That blogger's not saying.
Time passes quickly and sure enough, another city council meeting is on tap for today. I know, it just seems like yesterday. But it's really been nearly seven days. Everything just seems real short after that sabbatical the city officials just took for the holidays.
The only discussion item on schedule is the proposed plan for veterinarians to report on rabies vaccinations so that the licensing agency for the city can "better communicate and build relationships" with dog owners in this city. But practical application of this measure is fraught with problems. What the goal should be is to increase vaccination rates of dogs to keep the percentage of those vaccinated at a high level to reduce the risk of rabies transmission through dogs to people. In fact, the belief that this will actually occur under the current proposal is included under the "fiscal impact" portion of the city's report. This proposal if approved might actually either have no effect on increasing these vaccination rates or it might actually decrease the rate, if people stop bringing their dogs to vets, which seems counterproductive but then measures like this that are put on the agenda with possibly good intentions usually are.
Rabies is a "smart" virus, which has evolved over centuries and probably longer to be an effective killer of both animals and humans as it has the highest mortality rate of any disease. The bullet-shaped virus travels usually through an opening in the skin that has contacted with saliva from an infected animal. It begins at the peripheral nerves and travels to the brain where it attacks the area of the brain where strong emotions like "rage" are located. It essentially damages the brain and central nervous system while inciting anger in the infected organism so that it's better able to spread itself to other people or animals. Studies have shown that the brain damage isn't permanent, but its victims die because critical body functions controlled by the brain are compromised during the course of the disease.
This Wisconsin teenager is the only known human being in history known to have survived rabies without receiving any prevention measures upon exposure and infection with the virus. That's right, only one known survivor of this disease which usually kills 100% of its victims in about a week and only about five other people survived the disease who had become ill despite preventive treatment. This teenager spent 11 weeks in the hospital, part of it in an induced coma while doctors gave her antiviral drugs to protect her systems while she fought off the virus. Then her body's nervous system essentially rebuilt itself, while she learned how to do most everything over again.
Jeanna Giese, today has graduated from high school with honors and is studying zoology at a college while medical experts are studying her. Efforts to duplicate what is called the "Milwaukee protocol" treatment program haven't been successful so far as other young victims have died.
Incubation periods for the virus can range from two weeks (usually with wounds to the head or neck) to two years and is complicated by the fact that in many cases particularly infection by exposure to bats, it's not known exactly when contact with the infectious vector took place. Is it painful? Yes, until you go into the final coma before you die.
So it's definitely a serious disease with consequences. But there's issues that this proposal doesn't address.
What the report for the city council's agenda item doesn't tell you is that while feral dogs constitute the top vectors for rabies in foreign countries, in the United States the major vector among domesticated animals are cats. Vaccinations and other factors have kept the rate of infection among dogs down in contrast to what's happening in other countries and the strain that specifically can be spread from one dog to the next no longer exists in this country, according to the Center for Disease Control.
So on the domesticated front, cats have become the more significant source of the rabies virus.
In fact in 2005, 54% of all domesticated animals which contracted rabies were cats, while only 16% of such animals were dogs. However, only about 8% of all animals infected with rabies are from domesticated species, but with development encroaching natural habitats for many at-risk species, the line is even blurred in terms of transmission from wild to domestic species. One of the species of animals which had higher rates of infection than dogs was the cow, which can transmit the virus through their saliva to their handler. I've seen rabies in cats and even a cow but never in a dog so far. But it's rare in any animal compared to other diseases. Diseases like distemper and especially feline leukemia are more common in cats and cows are more likely to get brucellious or tuberculosis, both which have impacted the dairy business to varying degrees.
In Riverside, most of the animals infected with rabies have been wild animal species or feral cats in contact with wild species though it's been found in bats including in one case where a young boy in Moreno Valley had to undergo a rabies shot series after contact with a dying rabid bat. The major source of human rabies cases in this country are bats, because in most of the cases, the people were unaware of being exposed to a rabid bat and consequently, not undergoing preventive measures in case of infection than they would in cases involving other animals. It was only when they tested for the specific virus in the hospital that doctors discovered in these cases that the vector was definitely a species of bat.
Of dogs that are exposed to rabies, nearly all these cases come from transmission of a form of rabies found in wild animal species. The so-called canine rabies virus is believed to have been eradicated from the United States but dogs can still contract other forms of the disease through contact with wild animals. Vaccinating dogs and especially taking great caution when adopting or bringing dogs from countries where canine rabies virus is still prevalent are important steps to preventing this particular strain's reintroduction into the United States.
Because of the close proximity of domesticated pets to habitats frequented by wild species which carry the rabies virus, it's important for cats and dogs to be vaccinated regularly. However, with cats, efforts should be made to ensure that the cat isn't infected with immune deficiency conditions like Feline Leukemia Virus while being injected with a vaccination that utilizes live rabies virus.
It's ironic that at the Riverside County of Animal Services site that they apparently don't offer or at least advertise low-cost rabies vaccinations for cats as they do for dogs because cats are at much higher risk of being infected than dogs.
Here are some more statistics on the rates of infection among different animal species in different countries. In the United States, major wild carriers include raccoons, skunks, bats and foxes, all species native to Riverside. Of these carriers, the skunk is the one species which is usually asymptomatic during its entire infectious period.
The concern is with mandatory reporting by veterinarians is that people who can't afford to license their pets will not get their dogs vaccinated in Riverside. Rabies vaccinations aren't costly themselves but added to spaying and neutering costs and licenses fees especially for unaltered animals, many people won't pay for the entire bundle. In an ideal world, everyone should license their dogs, vaccinate their pets against all diseases particularly rabies and spay and neuter their pets. But it doesn't happen and this program which has added costs to its enforcement not mentioned in the report won't really impact that reality in practice. And to many people, it appears as if the dogs are used as a mechanism for code enforcement to cite people for violations unrelated to the fact that their dogs aren't vaccinated for rabies and/or licensed.
Affordable vaccines, education as to why they're necessary, spaying and neutering dogs and cats perhaps through the grants that are available to veterinarians through the state already for feral animals to provide low-cost assistance particularly for larger dogs and responsible ownership. Reduce irresponsible breeding such as puppy mills and don't frequent or support pet stores that sell puppies from mills. Adopt from the pound or animal shelters instead. All serious issues, but this city program isn't going to make a dent in addressing any of them in terms of practical application.
Riverside County of Animal Services
The city council will also be receiving this annual financial audit which was presented to the Finance Committee. Take it with a grain of salt.
The Riverside Unified School District is prepared to purchase land in the Eastside for its school but not build it.
(excerpt)
Fifteen months after delaying a decision, the trustees voted 4-1 on Jan. 14 to earmark $12 million in remaining Measure B money to purchase land for the project. Yet they earmarked no money for actually building the school.
As many as 1,086 elementary students who aren't enrolled at the local Longfellow and Emerson schools are bused from their Eastside neighborhoods to seven other district schools -- the largest volume of students in the district being bused to schools outside their neighborhoods, Deputy Superintendent Mike Fine said.
The sheer volume of school bus riders from the predominantly Latino and black Eastside is a relic of the district's desegregation policy from the mid-1960s. Children from racial minority strongholds such as Riverside's Eastside and Casa Blanca sections were bused at the time into predominantly white neighborhoods to balance out the district schools' ethnic makeup. In 1965, Riverside Unified became the first urban district in the nation to desegregate its schools voluntarily.
If you have opinions on the construction of the new elementary school, here is where a poll is being conducted.
An interesting article on affordable senior housing and missed opportunities in San Bernardino.
In Bedford, New York, shocking revelations about comments made by officers about a dying Guatemalan man have emerged according to the News-Times. Comments that were caught on audiotape and played on a radio station.
(excerpt)
"You wanna hear something really funny? ... He's alive," a Bedford police officer tells a sergeant on a taped phone call aired Thursday on WCBS-TV.
The two go on to marvel - with the officer chuckling - that Rene Perez had apparently revived himself temporarily after authorities thought him dead on April 28, 2007. The television station said Perez died an hour after the officers' taped exchange.
I'm sure they laughed about that too.
According to WRAL News, two Durham Police Department officers have been charged with sexual misconduct
(excerpt)
Sgt. Keith Cheeks and Officer Demond Gooch had been involved in misconduct unrelated to the sex allegations, Chief Jose Lopez said. He didn't disclose the nature of the misconduct but said the pair would have been fired if they hadn't resigned.
Cheeks had been with the department since 1992, while Gooch joined in 2004. Both men were assigned to the Uniform Patrol Division.
A prostitute told Durham vice officers in early October that she had engaged in sex with police officers. The Special Operations Division launched an undercover criminal investigation into the allegations, but Lopez said they have yet to substantiate the woman’s claims.
An internal affairs investigation into the allegations was opened in November, and about 10 officers were placed on leave pending the outcome. That investigation has been closed, and the cleared officers have returned to duty.
The misconduct by Cheeks and Gooch was uncovered during the course of the investigation, Lopez said.
These latest allegations arise in the midst of ongoing federal and local probes into serious misconduct involving police officers in this police department.
In Massachusetts, a police officer has been charged with sexual assault of a teenaged girl, according to Capitol News 9.
(excerpt)
"He's charged with a single count of indecent assault and battery on a person under the age of 14, which basically involves inappropriate touching," said Berkshire County District Attorney David Capeless.
Sergeant James Foley was arraigned in Northern Berkshire District Court, where a not guilty plea was entered on his behalf.
"He is adamant in his innocence. The State Police felt the need to bring a criminal charge simply because an allegation was made," said Defense Attorney William Rota.
As shocking and serious as these allegations are, Foley was still promoted to sergeant while the investigation was ongoing. That's a decision that's now under scrutiny, as some wonder if that was a good decision.
"I guess not. But did he warrant it? Yes he did, based on his police work," said North Adams Police Commissioner of Public Safety E. John Morocco.
In Columbia, Missouri the discussion continues on whether or not to create a new civilian review board and recently, the discussion got heated.
(excerpt, Columbia Tribune)
Last night’s sometimes testy two-hour meeting was the fourth meeting of the 14-member Civilian Oversight Committee, appointed by Mayor Darwin Hindman in November to determine whether a civilian review board is needed to act as watchdogs over the Columbia Police Department.
Mary Ratliff, president of the Columbia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the creation of such a board is "essential" to lowering the number of use-of-force and racial-profiling complaints levied by members of the black community.
Columbia Police Officers Association President Donald Weaver counted the "influence of local politics" among his chief concerns about a review board. He added that such a body might be a waste of public money, citing statistics showing the department has made an average of 8,559 arrests each year since 2005 with about 27 complaints per year. "While we’re not opposed to the idea, we don’t quite understand the need," Weaver said.
Committee members countered that such a civilian panel could help improve cooperation with police.
"It might help you build up some trust in the community so you can maybe gain some cooperation," said member Diane Booth.
In Bridgeport, Connecticut, Christopher Shays, a United States congressman blasted the Board of Police Commissioners for not supporting the police chief, according to the Connecticut Post.
(excerpt)
"You have a police chief trying to clean up the department. I think there are people on that commission who are on the wrong side of the equation," Shays said during a recent editorial board meeting with the Connecticut Post.
Shays, a Bridgeport resident, faulted the police commission for not quickly firing officers accused of wrongdoing, and for spending months deciding on discipline. One of the cases cited by Shays involved a police officer who pushed his girlfriend out of a car.
That officer was eventually fired, but the process
took months as he remained suspended without pay.
For the most part, police commissioners dismissed Shays's statements, saying the congressman does not know enough about the day-to-day activities to judge the Police Department. They denied any suggestion that commissioners are not working with the chief, or committed to improving the department.
Labels: business as usual, City Hall 101, corruption 101, judicial watch, public forums in all places
posted by Five Before Midnight | 8:18 PM
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