Friday's child is full of woe
More violent crime has happened in the Arlanza area of Riverside the past year than in any other portion of the city, according to the Press Enterprise. This comes after seven homicides since January 2006 or one-third of Riverside's total for that time period.
It shouldn't be surprising given that when Police Chief Russ Leach gave a report on crime statistics, while many crimes in different areas of the city had declined (reflecting a nationwide trend), several categories of crimes including assaults in the La Sierra/Arlanza area of the city had increased.
(excerpt)
The recent spate of violence follows a history of crime in the area. Since January 2006, the Arlanza/Southern La Sierra area has seen seven homicides, accounting for almost one third of homicides in Riverside during that period.
"Arlanza has emerged as a trouble spot over the past several years," Riverside police spokesman Steven Frasher said. "It's probably one of our greatest areas of concerns."
This statement alone could cause some discussion in the Eastside neighborhood which has been treated by the police department and the Riverside County District Attorney's office as the most serious crime area even though it saw about a 12% decrease in crime and no homicide linked to its largest gang, Eastside Riva since March 2006.
Yet, Eastside Riva is the gang in the city which is currently under a temporary injunction until Jan. 24 when it faces a permanent injunction if the judge that is assigned to the case issues that ruling.
There's disagreement whether or not the injunction is actually being enforced. Police representatives have told community members it's a tool to use during times when gang violence is higher. Latino residents say that Latino men of different ages have already been stopped by police officers and told by them that it's related to the injunction.
The Eastside has seen an upswing of gang-related violence in recent weeks and months since the preliminary injunction has gone into effect, particularly shootings including at night clubs (where gang members who are not Eastside Riva shoot at each other). Graffiti from Los Angeles based gangs like an E.C. Crip gang (which were based in neighborhoods in Los Angeles County where interracial gang violence is increasing) has begun appearing in Eastside areas, crossing out Eastside Riva and stating that huge portions of the Eastside, in one case from "2nd to 1200" are now theirs. Why now, is a question that's been asked a lot in the past month or so.
The Riverside County District Attorney's office has credited itself through its filing of the injunction for the reduction in crime in the Eastside although the crime rate including that involving violent crimes was already declining, in part because it's a national trend in many cities in different states but also because of hard work done by community members, organizations and several city departments including the police department and the park and recreations department. Ironically, considering the past history of police and community relations in this city going back 30 years and continuing today, the situation in the Eastside where community leaders find the police department more of a sounding board than the District Attorney's office has been.
Both agencies play roles in the injunction no matter who is doing the fingerpointing. The District Attorney's office is the party that files it in court but it's the police agency that asks them to do so and provides the work product to use and it's the police department which enforces it. When they first laid out the ground work and up to the point of filing the injunction, the community, which is presumably included in the statement, "The People of the State of California" was left out of the process including community leaders in the Eastside Think Tank that had close relations to the police department and in fact, included employeees of both the police department and District Attorney's office. They were also left out of the press conference about the announcement of the injunction that took place six months ago at Patterson Park. To some, that action alone flew in the face of what they considered a partnership with the police department.
Once the community leadership began asking questions, the police department including Leach did attend community meetings and forums addressing the issues. Missing from these meetings was a representative from the District Attorney's office. Except for one meeting that took place not in the Eastside but Casa Blanca between city residents and Prosecutor Jack Lucky, who had told leaders in the Eastside that he had no problem meeting with them but that the office would not authorize it. Allegedly, he wasn't the only prosecutor willing to meet with Eastside leaders and residents but they would need permission to attend meetings from higher ups.
Security reasons were cited and later here, another reason was given in an article where Eastside Think Tank member Mary Figueroa related her frustrations and those of other members of the organization after making efforts to set up a meeting with Pacheco or another representative from his office.
(excerpt, Press Enterprise)
The Think Tank still suggested a meeting with Pacheco but withdrew the idea when his office wanted a list of people who would be attending the meeting. The district attorney's office planned to run the names through its investigative division to determine whether any posed potential security threats.
"We consider the conditions in order to meet to be offensive and demeaning to each one of the Eastside Think Tank members," said the group's Oct. 18 letter to Pacheco.
Steding said it is not the responsibility of the district attorney's office to meet with community members to tell them how their loved ones' names can be removed from the gang injunction.
"The lawyers for the loved ones need to do that," Steding said. "We're advocates on one side."
Which is interesting because when Pacheco and representatives from the police department were doing their press conference at Patterson Park, they included residents of the Eastside as the "People of the State of California" and said the injunction was at least partly for them. However, now through Steding's words, the Eastside Think Tank and the residents of the Eastside are actually viewed as being on the other side and it's not the side that the District Attorney is advocating for. Because the Eastside Think Tank had concerns about the injunction enough to set up a meeting with the District Attorney's office, they've become on the "other side" of advocacy. It's along the lines of if you aren't for us unequivocally then you are against us. You're pro-gang, pro-drug dealers and so forth. Maybe it's a place the members of the Eastside Think Tank never thought they would be or a category they would ever be placed in but there they are.
It's ironic that the members of the Eastside Think Tank were apparently lumped in together with gang members belonging to Eastside Riva, considering most of them have past and present ties to law enforcement agencies including the Riverside Police Department and the District Attorney's office. Not exactly the first people you'd expect to have been given that list of terms by the District Attorney's office. Terms they declined in writing. But if that's the opinion the District Attorney's office holds about the Eastside Think Tank, then there's not much for the community of the Eastside even its members Pacheco's office purports to be protecting.
The rationale that Steding and others relate is one reason why the injunction is one of those topics with many questions, but relatively few of them out loud. People won't talk about it publicly because they are afraid that they will be labeled pro-gang. However, concerns, questions and even criticisms about a process (even if it's about the treatment of the Eastside Think Tank members) is not the same as taking a stance for or against it. A stance is a stance. Concerns or questions or criticisms about the same process are exactly that. And making it difficult to discuss it in public and without the involved representatives at the meeting, does not make the concerns and questions go away. In addition, the majority of those questions or concerns didn't involve getting off of an injunction list, they involved how and when the terms of the injunction would be enforced, what training the officers would receive and how would the officers be able to identify among Latinos, who was in the injunction or not so they wouldn't be engaging in racial profiling. As well as questions about the legal language itself and what it meant.
It's too bad that the District Attorney's office won't meet or send a representative to meet with some of his constituents, including the people he alleged he was advocating for during the press conference last summer. Only now, the reason that no one from the office can meet with anyone including leadership is because they only advocate for "one side", meaning the "other side" of anyone in the Eastside.
If the District Attorney is saying that violent crimes are down after the filing of the injunction, what's been noticeable are shootings in recent months that are apparently gang-related including one at Tremors night club and another of a teenaged Latino male just before the Christmas holidays.
As far as the other side of town, city and community leaders said that Arlanza was finally getting more attention in terms of providing programs for its residents.
(excerpt)
Arlanza was pinpointed in 2000 as one of the city's areas most in need of services because of youth violence, low incomes and a lack of child care and affordable housing, said Roxie Alcaraz, project manager for the Youth Violence Prevention Center based at UC Riverside.
City leaders and activists say community programs and civic improvements have helped. They cite the opening of the Arlanza Community Center and day care facility at Bryant Park in 2003, and the city's expected addition this year of a fitness center and boxing club at the park. They hope the facilities will help return ownership of the neighborhood to the residents. A sign that reads "Neighborhoods that work 2002" is now marred with graffiti.
Also since 2000, the city and the police department have formed closer relationships with the community, offering counseling and forming the Arlanza neighborhood partnership among other assistance, Alcaraz said. She said benefits of the programs may not be seen for five to 10 years.
Many of the issues which impact Arlanza have also long impacted the Eastside. Often there's a shortage of intervention and prevention programs in Some grants which provide monies to law enforcement agencies for addressing gangs require that a portion of it be allocated for intervention and prevention. The city's applied for a GRIP grant which could award up to $500,000 with part of that going towards the expansion of Project Bridge including into the Arlanza area.
In San Bernardino, Operation Phoenix is receiving praise from state officials even as its implementation is creating major concern in the city's Westside neighborhood. Meetings have been taking place between residents and police department representatives in recent weeks after a series of incidents including one where police officers stormed a community vigil. The police department agreed to create new training programs and the community residents are hoping to implement a more effective form of civilian review.
In Moreno Valley, community leaders met Stop the Violence, Increase the Peace, the Inglewood organization to develop strategies with gang intervention which were used in its neighborhoods.
Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco is petitioning the higher court to open up more courtrooms in the county to try criminal cases, according to the Press Enterprise.
(excerpt)
A three-judge panel in Orange County Superior Court agreed last year with the Riverside County Court rule. It says civil trial courts can be used as a last-chance forum for criminal cases facing such dismissals.
But judges have drawn the line there, saying venues hearing juvenile cases or family-law and probate disputes are off-limits for criminal matters.
Prosecutors asked for a reversal of the Orange County decision and the state Supreme Court earlier this month sought an informal response from the Riverside County public defender's office, which handled the primary case that sparked the disagreement.
The district attorney's office also is moving to get the high court to "depublish" the Orange County ruling issued last October.
Its current status as a published decision means it is binding throughout Riverside County, and not limited to the two misdemeanor-case dismissals on which it was based. It also can be cited throughout the state.
Dana Parsons of the Los Angeles Times wrote this column about the man who will replace outgoing Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona who resigned his position on Monday.
Other columns by Parsons on Carona.
When is the sad day for law enforcement?
Supes big task: Picking a sheriff
Civilian review mechanism are spreading across the United States including in Newark which is trying to decide on whether or not it will create a civilian review board, according to the The Star Ledger
(excerpt)
Poet and activist Amiri Baraka has led a campaign for a review board since the 1960s and had enough signatures for a referendum in the 1970s before a Superior Court Judge removed it from the ballot.
"The problem of police brutality, racial profiling and excessive force are still serious, long-standing problems in the community," said Larry Hamm, chairman of the People's Organization for Progress. "At certain points the issue has been addressed but there's never the political will to bring one into being,"
West Ward Councilman Ronald C. Rice says those day are over. He is holding a hearing Thursday on legislation he plans to introduce next month to create a civilian complaint review board. The council would have to vote to create such a board.
However in Asheville, civilian oversight has suffered a setback after the city council declined to create a citizens' board to review allegations of misconduct.
(excerpt, Asheville Citizen-Times)
Councilman Jan Davis, a member of the city Public Safety Committee, said the department has adequate oversight without creation of the new board.
"We have quite a bit of accountability,” he said. “This is a responsibility we take seriously.”
Police Chief Bill Hogan said the Public Safety Committee recommended against creating the new board. The council vote was on that recommendation.
He said shootings by police already are investigated independently by the State Bureau of Investigation, with the district attorney deciding whether to bring charges.
In addition, his department’s Office of Professional Standards conducts internal investigations of all complaints lodged against officers, Hogan said.
“There are ample checks and balances in place,” he said. “Our goal is to address the concerns of our citizens who have complaints.”
The two council members who dissented with the motion said more discussion of civilian oversight was needed by the governmental body before rejecting the proposal. Citizens Awareness Asheville, a group advocating for the board had its members appear at th city council meeting
In Chicago, the backlog of citzen complaints against police officers is so large that the city's hiring outside investigation firms in an attempt to catch up, according to the Chicago Tribune.
(excerpt)
When [Ilana]Rosenzweig took over the IPRA, formerly known as the Office of Professional Standards, last summer, she inherited a backlog of more than 1,200 cases. That number has grown to 1,500, and the only way to catch up is to farm out some of the investigations to attorneys and private investigators, she said.
The outsourcing will be temporary, and work done by outsiders will be tightly supervised by IPRA staff, she said.
"We are looking into all sorts of options," Rosenzweig said. "The investigators just have way too big of a workload to perform their function."
The majority of the backlog is made up of cases from 2006 and 2007 and tied to vacancies that have gone unfilled on the investigative staff over the last few years, she said.
Outside investigators "will be held to the same confidentiality restrictions of IPRA staff members to ensure the integrity of each case and to protect the rights of police officers. And they would only work on backlogged cases," city spokesman Bennie Currie said in a statement.
"We won't be packing up a case and sending it to them," Rosenzweig said. "They'll be working alongside us."
Speaking of the Chicago Police Department, one of its former officers who was a ringleader of officers involved in a narcotics ring was sentenced recently.
(excerpt)
"You and your merry band essentially raped and plundered entire neighborhoods," U.S. District Judge Ronald told the former police officer, Broderick Jones, in imposing the sentence.
Jones, 36, pleaded guilty to getting information from gang members about where drugs were stashed and leading fellow officers in staging mock raids during which they confiscated the narcotics.
Instead of arresting the dealers and turning in the drugs, Jones and his fellow officers turned the narcotics over to other dealers.
Also arrested for doing the same thing was was a Huntington Park Police Department officer according to the Los Angeles Times.
In Bolingbrook, Drew Peterson has been busy with contemplating whether or not to hire a publicist and through his attorney claiming that his missing wife, Stacy was having an affair.
But a grand jury which is investigating the 2004 death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, is more interested in a will that existed which left everything to Peterson if Savio died.
The Dallas Police Department has fired two police officers involved in an incident with county western music perormer Steve Holy, according to the Dallas Morning News.
(excerpt)
Officers Randy Anderson and Paul Loughridge each face a charge of deadly conduct in connection with the incident.
"Their behavior that night is disturbing and not consistent with how we expect our Dallas police officers to perform," Chief Kunkle said.
Officer Loughridge declined to comment about what happened that night except to say, "After listening to the 911 tapes, the level of credibility given these two gentlemen is astounding, and in fact, it's actually scary."
Officer Anderson had no comment except that he said he agreed with Officer Loughridge.
An attorney representing Mr. Holy said the firings were "a no-brainer on Chief Kunkle's part."
"It's clear that everyone who has looked at the facts of the case have found these two officers aren't credible," Toby Shook said. "They're the ones that got fired. They're the ones that fled the scene that night; the victims called 911 right away."
It shouldn't be surprising given that when Police Chief Russ Leach gave a report on crime statistics, while many crimes in different areas of the city had declined (reflecting a nationwide trend), several categories of crimes including assaults in the La Sierra/Arlanza area of the city had increased.
(excerpt)
The recent spate of violence follows a history of crime in the area. Since January 2006, the Arlanza/Southern La Sierra area has seen seven homicides, accounting for almost one third of homicides in Riverside during that period.
"Arlanza has emerged as a trouble spot over the past several years," Riverside police spokesman Steven Frasher said. "It's probably one of our greatest areas of concerns."
This statement alone could cause some discussion in the Eastside neighborhood which has been treated by the police department and the Riverside County District Attorney's office as the most serious crime area even though it saw about a 12% decrease in crime and no homicide linked to its largest gang, Eastside Riva since March 2006.
Yet, Eastside Riva is the gang in the city which is currently under a temporary injunction until Jan. 24 when it faces a permanent injunction if the judge that is assigned to the case issues that ruling.
There's disagreement whether or not the injunction is actually being enforced. Police representatives have told community members it's a tool to use during times when gang violence is higher. Latino residents say that Latino men of different ages have already been stopped by police officers and told by them that it's related to the injunction.
The Eastside has seen an upswing of gang-related violence in recent weeks and months since the preliminary injunction has gone into effect, particularly shootings including at night clubs (where gang members who are not Eastside Riva shoot at each other). Graffiti from Los Angeles based gangs like an E.C. Crip gang (which were based in neighborhoods in Los Angeles County where interracial gang violence is increasing) has begun appearing in Eastside areas, crossing out Eastside Riva and stating that huge portions of the Eastside, in one case from "2nd to 1200" are now theirs. Why now, is a question that's been asked a lot in the past month or so.
The Riverside County District Attorney's office has credited itself through its filing of the injunction for the reduction in crime in the Eastside although the crime rate including that involving violent crimes was already declining, in part because it's a national trend in many cities in different states but also because of hard work done by community members, organizations and several city departments including the police department and the park and recreations department. Ironically, considering the past history of police and community relations in this city going back 30 years and continuing today, the situation in the Eastside where community leaders find the police department more of a sounding board than the District Attorney's office has been.
Both agencies play roles in the injunction no matter who is doing the fingerpointing. The District Attorney's office is the party that files it in court but it's the police agency that asks them to do so and provides the work product to use and it's the police department which enforces it. When they first laid out the ground work and up to the point of filing the injunction, the community, which is presumably included in the statement, "The People of the State of California" was left out of the process including community leaders in the Eastside Think Tank that had close relations to the police department and in fact, included employeees of both the police department and District Attorney's office. They were also left out of the press conference about the announcement of the injunction that took place six months ago at Patterson Park. To some, that action alone flew in the face of what they considered a partnership with the police department.
Once the community leadership began asking questions, the police department including Leach did attend community meetings and forums addressing the issues. Missing from these meetings was a representative from the District Attorney's office. Except for one meeting that took place not in the Eastside but Casa Blanca between city residents and Prosecutor Jack Lucky, who had told leaders in the Eastside that he had no problem meeting with them but that the office would not authorize it. Allegedly, he wasn't the only prosecutor willing to meet with Eastside leaders and residents but they would need permission to attend meetings from higher ups.
Security reasons were cited and later here, another reason was given in an article where Eastside Think Tank member Mary Figueroa related her frustrations and those of other members of the organization after making efforts to set up a meeting with Pacheco or another representative from his office.
(excerpt, Press Enterprise)
The Think Tank still suggested a meeting with Pacheco but withdrew the idea when his office wanted a list of people who would be attending the meeting. The district attorney's office planned to run the names through its investigative division to determine whether any posed potential security threats.
"We consider the conditions in order to meet to be offensive and demeaning to each one of the Eastside Think Tank members," said the group's Oct. 18 letter to Pacheco.
Steding said it is not the responsibility of the district attorney's office to meet with community members to tell them how their loved ones' names can be removed from the gang injunction.
"The lawyers for the loved ones need to do that," Steding said. "We're advocates on one side."
Which is interesting because when Pacheco and representatives from the police department were doing their press conference at Patterson Park, they included residents of the Eastside as the "People of the State of California" and said the injunction was at least partly for them. However, now through Steding's words, the Eastside Think Tank and the residents of the Eastside are actually viewed as being on the other side and it's not the side that the District Attorney is advocating for. Because the Eastside Think Tank had concerns about the injunction enough to set up a meeting with the District Attorney's office, they've become on the "other side" of advocacy. It's along the lines of if you aren't for us unequivocally then you are against us. You're pro-gang, pro-drug dealers and so forth. Maybe it's a place the members of the Eastside Think Tank never thought they would be or a category they would ever be placed in but there they are.
It's ironic that the members of the Eastside Think Tank were apparently lumped in together with gang members belonging to Eastside Riva, considering most of them have past and present ties to law enforcement agencies including the Riverside Police Department and the District Attorney's office. Not exactly the first people you'd expect to have been given that list of terms by the District Attorney's office. Terms they declined in writing. But if that's the opinion the District Attorney's office holds about the Eastside Think Tank, then there's not much for the community of the Eastside even its members Pacheco's office purports to be protecting.
The rationale that Steding and others relate is one reason why the injunction is one of those topics with many questions, but relatively few of them out loud. People won't talk about it publicly because they are afraid that they will be labeled pro-gang. However, concerns, questions and even criticisms about a process (even if it's about the treatment of the Eastside Think Tank members) is not the same as taking a stance for or against it. A stance is a stance. Concerns or questions or criticisms about the same process are exactly that. And making it difficult to discuss it in public and without the involved representatives at the meeting, does not make the concerns and questions go away. In addition, the majority of those questions or concerns didn't involve getting off of an injunction list, they involved how and when the terms of the injunction would be enforced, what training the officers would receive and how would the officers be able to identify among Latinos, who was in the injunction or not so they wouldn't be engaging in racial profiling. As well as questions about the legal language itself and what it meant.
It's too bad that the District Attorney's office won't meet or send a representative to meet with some of his constituents, including the people he alleged he was advocating for during the press conference last summer. Only now, the reason that no one from the office can meet with anyone including leadership is because they only advocate for "one side", meaning the "other side" of anyone in the Eastside.
If the District Attorney is saying that violent crimes are down after the filing of the injunction, what's been noticeable are shootings in recent months that are apparently gang-related including one at Tremors night club and another of a teenaged Latino male just before the Christmas holidays.
As far as the other side of town, city and community leaders said that Arlanza was finally getting more attention in terms of providing programs for its residents.
(excerpt)
Arlanza was pinpointed in 2000 as one of the city's areas most in need of services because of youth violence, low incomes and a lack of child care and affordable housing, said Roxie Alcaraz, project manager for the Youth Violence Prevention Center based at UC Riverside.
City leaders and activists say community programs and civic improvements have helped. They cite the opening of the Arlanza Community Center and day care facility at Bryant Park in 2003, and the city's expected addition this year of a fitness center and boxing club at the park. They hope the facilities will help return ownership of the neighborhood to the residents. A sign that reads "Neighborhoods that work 2002" is now marred with graffiti.
Also since 2000, the city and the police department have formed closer relationships with the community, offering counseling and forming the Arlanza neighborhood partnership among other assistance, Alcaraz said. She said benefits of the programs may not be seen for five to 10 years.
Many of the issues which impact Arlanza have also long impacted the Eastside. Often there's a shortage of intervention and prevention programs in Some grants which provide monies to law enforcement agencies for addressing gangs require that a portion of it be allocated for intervention and prevention. The city's applied for a GRIP grant which could award up to $500,000 with part of that going towards the expansion of Project Bridge including into the Arlanza area.
In San Bernardino, Operation Phoenix is receiving praise from state officials even as its implementation is creating major concern in the city's Westside neighborhood. Meetings have been taking place between residents and police department representatives in recent weeks after a series of incidents including one where police officers stormed a community vigil. The police department agreed to create new training programs and the community residents are hoping to implement a more effective form of civilian review.
In Moreno Valley, community leaders met Stop the Violence, Increase the Peace, the Inglewood organization to develop strategies with gang intervention which were used in its neighborhoods.
Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco is petitioning the higher court to open up more courtrooms in the county to try criminal cases, according to the Press Enterprise.
(excerpt)
A three-judge panel in Orange County Superior Court agreed last year with the Riverside County Court rule. It says civil trial courts can be used as a last-chance forum for criminal cases facing such dismissals.
But judges have drawn the line there, saying venues hearing juvenile cases or family-law and probate disputes are off-limits for criminal matters.
Prosecutors asked for a reversal of the Orange County decision and the state Supreme Court earlier this month sought an informal response from the Riverside County public defender's office, which handled the primary case that sparked the disagreement.
The district attorney's office also is moving to get the high court to "depublish" the Orange County ruling issued last October.
Its current status as a published decision means it is binding throughout Riverside County, and not limited to the two misdemeanor-case dismissals on which it was based. It also can be cited throughout the state.
Dana Parsons of the Los Angeles Times wrote this column about the man who will replace outgoing Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona who resigned his position on Monday.
Other columns by Parsons on Carona.
When is the sad day for law enforcement?
Supes big task: Picking a sheriff
Civilian review mechanism are spreading across the United States including in Newark which is trying to decide on whether or not it will create a civilian review board, according to the The Star Ledger
(excerpt)
Poet and activist Amiri Baraka has led a campaign for a review board since the 1960s and had enough signatures for a referendum in the 1970s before a Superior Court Judge removed it from the ballot.
"The problem of police brutality, racial profiling and excessive force are still serious, long-standing problems in the community," said Larry Hamm, chairman of the People's Organization for Progress. "At certain points the issue has been addressed but there's never the political will to bring one into being,"
West Ward Councilman Ronald C. Rice says those day are over. He is holding a hearing Thursday on legislation he plans to introduce next month to create a civilian complaint review board. The council would have to vote to create such a board.
However in Asheville, civilian oversight has suffered a setback after the city council declined to create a citizens' board to review allegations of misconduct.
(excerpt, Asheville Citizen-Times)
Councilman Jan Davis, a member of the city Public Safety Committee, said the department has adequate oversight without creation of the new board.
"We have quite a bit of accountability,” he said. “This is a responsibility we take seriously.”
Police Chief Bill Hogan said the Public Safety Committee recommended against creating the new board. The council vote was on that recommendation.
He said shootings by police already are investigated independently by the State Bureau of Investigation, with the district attorney deciding whether to bring charges.
In addition, his department’s Office of Professional Standards conducts internal investigations of all complaints lodged against officers, Hogan said.
“There are ample checks and balances in place,” he said. “Our goal is to address the concerns of our citizens who have complaints.”
The two council members who dissented with the motion said more discussion of civilian oversight was needed by the governmental body before rejecting the proposal. Citizens Awareness Asheville, a group advocating for the board had its members appear at th city council meeting
In Chicago, the backlog of citzen complaints against police officers is so large that the city's hiring outside investigation firms in an attempt to catch up, according to the Chicago Tribune.
(excerpt)
When [Ilana]Rosenzweig took over the IPRA, formerly known as the Office of Professional Standards, last summer, she inherited a backlog of more than 1,200 cases. That number has grown to 1,500, and the only way to catch up is to farm out some of the investigations to attorneys and private investigators, she said.
The outsourcing will be temporary, and work done by outsiders will be tightly supervised by IPRA staff, she said.
"We are looking into all sorts of options," Rosenzweig said. "The investigators just have way too big of a workload to perform their function."
The majority of the backlog is made up of cases from 2006 and 2007 and tied to vacancies that have gone unfilled on the investigative staff over the last few years, she said.
Outside investigators "will be held to the same confidentiality restrictions of IPRA staff members to ensure the integrity of each case and to protect the rights of police officers. And they would only work on backlogged cases," city spokesman Bennie Currie said in a statement.
"We won't be packing up a case and sending it to them," Rosenzweig said. "They'll be working alongside us."
Speaking of the Chicago Police Department, one of its former officers who was a ringleader of officers involved in a narcotics ring was sentenced recently.
(excerpt)
"You and your merry band essentially raped and plundered entire neighborhoods," U.S. District Judge Ronald told the former police officer, Broderick Jones, in imposing the sentence.
Jones, 36, pleaded guilty to getting information from gang members about where drugs were stashed and leading fellow officers in staging mock raids during which they confiscated the narcotics.
Instead of arresting the dealers and turning in the drugs, Jones and his fellow officers turned the narcotics over to other dealers.
Also arrested for doing the same thing was was a Huntington Park Police Department officer according to the Los Angeles Times.
In Bolingbrook, Drew Peterson has been busy with contemplating whether or not to hire a publicist and through his attorney claiming that his missing wife, Stacy was having an affair.
But a grand jury which is investigating the 2004 death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, is more interested in a will that existed which left everything to Peterson if Savio died.
The Dallas Police Department has fired two police officers involved in an incident with county western music perormer Steve Holy, according to the Dallas Morning News.
(excerpt)
Officers Randy Anderson and Paul Loughridge each face a charge of deadly conduct in connection with the incident.
"Their behavior that night is disturbing and not consistent with how we expect our Dallas police officers to perform," Chief Kunkle said.
Officer Loughridge declined to comment about what happened that night except to say, "After listening to the 911 tapes, the level of credibility given these two gentlemen is astounding, and in fact, it's actually scary."
Officer Anderson had no comment except that he said he agreed with Officer Loughridge.
An attorney representing Mr. Holy said the firings were "a no-brainer on Chief Kunkle's part."
"It's clear that everyone who has looked at the facts of the case have found these two officers aren't credible," Toby Shook said. "They're the ones that got fired. They're the ones that fled the scene that night; the victims called 911 right away."
Labels: battering while blue, business as usual, civilian review spreads, corruption 101
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