Inland Empire Forecast: Storm Clouds Ahead

If you're going to microwave your popcorn, it's best to follow the instructions on the packet carefully. That's why the Southwest Justice Center was forced to evacuate on Wednesday morning because someone scorched their popcorn in the microwave.



The foreclosure rates in the Inland Empire are among the nation's highest amid a report of even more bad news for the Inland Empire.


San Bernardino County has urged caution during its own budget workshops.

The city of Rialto prepares its own annual budget, anticipating budget cuts. Like Riverside, Rialto will be hitting the reserve funds, but unlike Riverside, that city government will be delaying some of its public projects.


(excerpt)


"We're anticipating at this point no real revenue growth, or very small revenue growth," Assistant City Administrator Kirby Warner told the Rialto City Council during a budget workshop.

The council took no action during the informational session, as it has until June to adopt a city budget for the 2008-09 fiscal year.

"It's easy to manage (the city) when you have money and you're growing," Warner said.

The economic slowdown means belt-tightening for governments nationwide, and Rialto is in the same position.



Meanwhile, former Ward One Councilman Dom Betro chides the current city council which clearly can't function without him, according to the Press Enterprise. Which is a bit strange considering how little things have actually changed since the election, in terms of actions from the dais. What's been added to the mix is news about foreclosures and an upcoming recession which has many people including city residents greatly concerned. He's knocking down his replacement quite a bit very early in his term, but then Betro never struck me as a very patient person.



(excerpt)


We seem to be regressing to an era of "Do nothing and people won't expect much, and eventually they'll give up on getting what they want and need from their government."

So just "Put it on hold," "Do another study," "Blame someone else for our failure to lead," and if you do this long enough, the voters will set the bar very low for what they expect political and public-service leadership to provide.

What is being resurrected is the stagnation and impasse that comes from a lack of leadership, resulting in neglect and fear of the future.

The stagnation is fueled by the classic pitting of groups against one another so that inaction is preferred. This keeps the politicians above the fray, feeling your pain but never putting themselves in the position of being problem-solvers for fear of political risk.

The impasse is caused when a government abdicates its role to improve its public spaces, inappropriately asking volunteer organizations to do the things that it should be doing. Volunteers by and large don't have the resources necessary.

On the one hand, we should be grateful that these groups have been willing to step in over the years. On the other hand, it is hard to let go when leadership finally steps up to the plate.



It's even harder for some of those in leadership positions who say they have stepped up to the plate, pushing actions including the use or threat of eminent domain to take the land where local businesses and turn them over for private development, to realize that whatever great plans they had for the city apparently weren't enough to get them reelected, in order to keep carrying them out. And that's regardless of how much money sits and is later spent from your campaign coffer, even to the tune of $200,000.

Because Election 2007 would have ended a lot sooner in Ward One if that particular ward was totally cool and down with Betro's vision for the downtown area especially and most importantly, in terms of how it was being carried out. The fact is, not only didn't he not get the landslide victory, he lost and a new councilman is sitting on the dais. Just like Councilman Art Gage lost, and was replaced by current councilman, Rusty Bailey.

But then that returns the issue to how divided Riverside is along many different lines, with only the most obvious being along ward lines. And the position that the winning candidates are in because none of them really received mandates from the city's voters, given that all four of the winners were picked in runoff elections and two of them squeaked into office by a handful of votes. Consequently, the winning councilmen have no choice but to be concilatory to try to be a fair and equal representative to all the constituents in the ward.

Betro wouldn't have been that councilman. Like him or not, it was always his way or the highway and his latest opinion piece on the downtown clearly reflects that this style has followed him off the dais. Not to mention his postelection comments essentially writing off people who voted for Gardner. However, he doesn't represent a ward nor live in a city where that's a workable reality. If it was, then what's on the dais now would look a lot more like what was on the dais one year ago.

Ward Seven Councilman Steve Adams isn't that person either. He's pushing the same agenda he did despite winning by only about 16 votes (according to the recount) as if he won by hundreds of votes. But that's not surprising. Only one year before the election, he apparently decided he wasn't interested in being a councilman any more and decided to run for state office but washed out in the Republican primary putting that quest to rest for at least a little while.

It's too early to see where Councilman Chris MacArthur, who represents the fifth ward is going due in part to him winning an openly contested seat but several other councilmen are still working on wooing him anyway to beat the rush.

So it's left to Ward One Councilman Mike Gardner and Ward Three Councilman Rusty Bailey to figure out how to do that and figure out how to bring the factions together. Neither of them are in enviable positions, particular Gardner. If they follow the wishers of their election supporters, then they will be accused by those who voted for the respective incumbents of ignoring them. If they follow the wishes of those who voted for the incumbent, they will be seen as ignoring other constituents plus of violating their campaign promises and following the paths set by the incumbents.

They each bring separate baggage and issues carrying over from the election as well. Gardner's is the failure to receive a mandate through the vote. Bailey's is battling the impression that he was preselected by a voting bloc on the city council to be a "team player" though someone told me that the fact that he's a West Point Academy graduate, means less risk of a person being a puppet which I suppose is nice to know. So in a sense, that's a test Bailey will face.

I had a conversation last week with the president of one of the city's labor unions and he was explaining to me the numerical totals of the election in terms of the votes he received, those the other candidate received and those who hadn't voted at all in an election to select both their leadership and their representation. I mentioned that the last thing was a problem, not meaning that it was negative. But it's a challenge when leaders are elected in any election process among any population of people, with one winning, the other losing and a chunk of people opting out entirely. The opting out is not unique to labor union elections or city elections, it's seen a lot at the national level as well. Even though we live in what's called a democratic republic, our voting turnouts are still fairly abysmal and people who don't vote provide different reasons why. It will be interesting to see what happens during the primary election next week.

Some city council candidates hoped or planned for a low turnout at the polls, even planning to downplay efforts at reaching those voters to focus on the absentee voters. That didn't work out very well.


But ask yourself this if you're a leader. What are you going to do, to bring the different crowds and cliques together? I've been told in writing by some anonymous fool named only "B" that I didn't know squat about politics and what it means to be a leader. Perhaps, but I do understand what it means when you're in a position with different factions and trying to work on ways so that no one feels they are left out in the cold. It's a very challenging situation and it seems to me that to be a leader, means facing it head on and formulating an effective strategy to do so. But there's not any new elected leader, certainly not anywhere in this posting that's not capable of rising to that challenge or has the ability to do so. But it's still their decision to do so or not.

It's important first of all, to reach out to those who didn't vote for you, and also as important, those who didn't vote at all for whatever reason and there can be many different ones. That's not easy and it takes a lot of time, energy and passion for really understanding your constituency. Going around and talking to people, because you can't always know who didn't vote or who voted for different candidates about what they would like to see, their expectations and most importantly, their criticisms and their concerns. Winning close elections or splitting electorates down the middle in an election wherever it takes place is one of the greatest challenges of all. Which civic leaders in that position are going to step up to take that challenge so none of their constituents feel as if they are being left out in the cold?

At any rate, Betro's allegedly planning a run at the state assembly seat for one of the districts according to just about everyone, so his opinion piece keeps him visible on the political radar during a particularly critical election year. It's an interesting article anyway, so check it out.





Trying to become a judge is Chief District Attorney Michael Rushton who hopes to replace a retiring Judge Thompson Hanks.


Rushton is well known in some circles for having had several trials he prosecuted and received convictions for coming back to local courts from the State Court of Appeals on Wheeler Motions, meaning that those motions to challenge his expulsion of several Black and Latino jurors for bias reasons should have been granted by the presiding judges but were not. In one case, convictions against four defendents were vacated after a Wheeler motion was reheard in the courtroom of Judge Ronald Turner after being sent back for a hearing by a higher court.

Judicial elections aren't really elections. Usually there's only one interested candidate and that person gets the position. That's likely to be the case with Rushton as well.




The Ferguson brothers who worked for the Los Angeles Police Department and Long Beach Police Department and ran a drug ring with other police officers were convicted in court after their trial.



(excerpt)



A federal jury convicted them of charges that include conspiracy to deprive people of their rights under color of law and conspiracy to possess marijuana and cocaine.

William Ferguson was found guilty of 13 charges and acquitted of five counts. His brother was convicted of three counts.

Jurors deadlocked on 18 other counts.

Defense attorneys said they would appeal the verdict.

Prosecutors did not immediately say whether they would retry the brothers on the deadlocked charges.




A New York City Police Department detective has been arrested and charged with kidnapping a 13-year-old girl and forcing her into prostitution.





A police recruit may have witnessed the tragic "friendly fire" shooting of an offduty Black police officer by four Westchester Police Department officers, according to the New York Daily News.




(excerpt)



The Daily News learned of her testimony to investigators as Ridley's family attended a standing-room-only promotion ceremony Tuesday in Mount Vernon.

"Chris is a hero," his cousin, Danielle Scholar said, reading a statement from the family. "We are proud. This gives validation that Chris acted properly."

Ridley's family has said they believe he would still be alive if he were white, despite the racial makeup of the cops who shot him. Two were Hispanic, one was black and the fourth was white.


The incident happened in White Plains, New York and apparently major portions of it were captured by a video camera. The officer, Christopher Ridley, 23, was trying to intervene in an assault taking place and then struggled with a homeless man over his handgun. That's when the police officers showed up. What happened next is under investigation.



(excerpt, New York Daily News)



White Plains detectives are poring over the footage that shows the last moments of Mount Vernon Officer Christopher Ridley, 23, who was killed Friday after struggling over his pistol with a 39-year-old homeless man, police said.

In all, the four county cops fired nine shots at Ridley, striking him five times, a police source confirmed. One of the bullets struck Ridley in the back of his head, the family's pastor said.

"It's not everything, but it's a portion," White Plains police spokesman Daniel Jackson said of the "significant video" of the shooting at a social services office.


Witnesses said they never heard Ridley identify himself as a police officer when the four other officers arrived on the scene and saw him with a gun in his hand.



Ridley's shooting is not an isolated event. Black police officers were shot by members of their own departments in Providence, Rhode Island, Oakland and Los Angeles among other places. But whether or not race played a role in Ridley's fatal shooting is a question that his family and others have asked.


(excerpt)


The black Mount Vernon cop shot to death by Westchester County police officers had run into a government building and called for backup before he was killed Friday, his pastor said Sunday.

"He went in and asked for assistance," said the Rev. Franklyn Richardson of Mount Vernon's Grace Baptist Church.

"The police who came ended up killing him."

Richardson also said the slain off-duty cop, Officer Christopher Ridley, 23, was given no medical attention for as long as 20 minutes after the shooting.

"This is an outrageous execution of a young African-American man who'd chosen to do the right thing," Richardson said after a jammed memorial service at his church.

"This same situation would not have occurred if he was not African-American."







In Philadelphia, a racist poster found in a narcotics officer's locker is has led to an investigation, according to the Philadelphia Daily News.


The poster depicts a police officer dressed half in a police uniform and half as a Ku Klux Klan member, with the words, "blue by day, white by night" and "White power". The drawing was seen by another police officer who reported it to supervisors and miracle upon miracle, that officer didn't get fired.


(excerpt)


The officer, Scott Schweizer, who has arrested countless drug suspects in predominantly African-American neighborhoods, was removed from his undercover police duties and given a desk job earlier this month, authorities said.

The disturbing find triggered an internal probe that widened yesterday as investigators began to explore whether the scope of the case is limited to Schweizer or somehow broader.

"It's certainly of great concern that someone would even think it's appropriate or think it's OK to even put something like that in a locker," Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said yesterday. "We don't condone that kind of behavior."

Schweizer could face administrative action ranging from a written reprimand to dismissal. Schweizer did not return a phone call from the Daily News and did not respond to a note left by a reporter at his Northeast Philly home yesterday afternoon.

Roosevelt Poplar, a vice president of the Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 5, in Philadelphia, said he was aware of the investigation but did not know its scope.

"We have no idea what the investigation entails at this time," Poplar said. "We have to give every member the benefit of the doubt before we make any statements or come to any conclusion."



It looks something like the picture below.













One People's Project blogged out how it was not surprising given the history of the Philadelphia Police Department but adds that police officers in that department should be upset about it as well.



(excerpt)



To that end, you can pretty much say that the police in our current stomping grounds, the same police force that once gave us the racist cop turned mayor Frank Rizzo, they are not at all happy with one of their own taking that same picture and slogan and adding the words "White Power" to it - then putting it in his locker at work.

Officer Scott Schweizer is riding a desk now, as police try to figure out what to do, especially given the fact that while he has his right to believe as he does, it will still have an impact on those cases he was involved in. If you Google his name you can find drug raids that he has led in the past, which is going to be of interest to the lawyers of those people of color that have been arrested by this guy.

See, you can have whatever beliefs you have, but if those beliefs mean that you are going to engage in unfair or unethical practices, like arresting people who don't deserve to be arrested, then don't act surprised when you are held up to scrutiny. We will be following this pretty closely.



But the officer does have his supporters here. Yes indeed.