Canary in the Mine: Riverside and Portland, part two
Hawkeye: "What does B.J. stand for?"
B.J.: "Anything you want."
----M*A*S*H
"Oh, now, now, just a minute. You must understand, my dear: At the stroke of twelve, the spell will be broken, and everything will be as it was before. "
----Fairy Godmother, Cinderella
Dr. Eileen Luna-Firebaugh came to Riverside when it all began in 1999. She works as a professor at the University of Arizona and chairs the American Indian Studies Department there. She tackles a lot of issues, one of them being civilian review mechanisms that provide oversight over law enforcement agencies.
At the time she arrived, Riverside was beginning once again to examine this issue. The Mayor's Use of Force Panel was compiling its list of recommendations on reforming the police department and one of them was the creation of a form of civilian oversight. The city council after receiving the panel's list of recommendations would create an ad hoc committee of sorts to research various forms of civilian review which would include representatives from city government, the Use of Force Panel, the Human Relations Commission, the Riverside Police Officers' Association and the Riverside Coalition for Police Accountability.
There wasn't much opposition to civilian oversight in Riverside in the beginning. There was no reason why there should have been as the city government back then had it pretty much under control. The only form of oversight that had existed which was the Law Enforcement Policy Advisory Committee, which served under the HRC, and for the most part, it was restricted to making policy recommendations and for the most part, those policy recommendations were ignored.
Then when Mary Figueroa chaired it, she asked the city council to issue it subpoena power and it refused.
LEPAC's failure to do anything but rubber stamp the police department proved to be one of the catalysts for the development of stronger oversight in Riverside. Fitting into the pattern that whenever there's civilian oversight of any kind and Riverside screws it up, it's usually replaced by a stronger version the next time around.
And what were views on the idea of a civilian review board in 1999? Some individuals expressed their feelings here.
(excerpts below, Press Enterprise)
"We all need checks and balances in our world.Anyone who would be against that would maybe have something to hide. If (police) are enforcing the law in a correct way and a courteous and professional manner, they should have no objection to a civilian review board."
-----John Garcia, Casa Blanca resident and vice president of the area Community Action Group.
"They need one, and they need one very badly."
----Ralph Smith, coordinator of CORE, the Congress on Racial Equality.
"I've not heard of any movement afoot for something like that. I certainly don't know of anything that's been presented that would lead anybody to jump to that sort of conclusion that we need to have that kind of format here. It's not anything I've spent any time researching. I'd want to understand why that would be necessary."
\
---Former City Councilman Alex Clifford, Ward Five
"It's been around the block a number of different times. We're going to reserve comment."
---Det. Ron Wright, former Riverside Police Officers' Association president
Luna provided a lot of insight into civilian review mechanisms and her advice was very helpful. Years later, she was hired to do an evaluation of the Independent Police Review and Citizen Review Committee in Portland, Oregon. Her report was released and will be discussed by the city council later this month.
Luna-Firebaugh outlines the history of civilian oversight in Portland which goes back to 1993. It had a mechanism in place that appears somewhat similar to what LEPAC (which was created around 1983 after a controversial police dog bite incident) and so in 2000, a committee was created to research the subject at about the same time Riverside was just putting the final touches on its own new review board, the Community Police Review Commission.
By the end of the review by its "work group", division within it led to the release of both majority and minority reports, which was interesting because Riverside's own research committee had been sharply divided on its final votes on what model of civilian oversight to take to the city council. Luna-Firebaugh includes the highlights of the majority report in her own report. The majority included a push for independent investigations and the ability to issue subpoenas for city employees and documents. Public hearings, policy recommendation procedures and adequate staffing were some of the other recommendations.
They were submitted in October 2000, but by 2001, the city government had already assigned its auditor to evaluate the process done by the "work group" as well as evaluate what was already in place.
Very few people trusted the complaint system and it was neither thorough nor timely with many complaints taking up to one or two years to complete. So out of that at some point, the Independent Police Review was born. The same process that was just evaluated by Luna-Firebaugh, years later.
The Citizen Review Committee came about in 2003.
The CPRC is impacted by many of the same issues and same problems as has been both the Independent Police Review and its predecessor even though there are many differences between the bodies. It's also being evaluated by a consultant hired by the city, who is preparing a report about it to present to the city. It's interesting is that two processes though different in construction are coming at a critical juncture in their histories at about the same time.
At about the time the audit was being done in Portland in 2001, the CPRC was beginning to receive complaints and review cases. Its first investigation if it could be called that of an officer-involved death would begin six months or so after the fatal shooting of Laotian-American Vanpaseuth Phaisouphanh in the summer of 2001.
The CPRC when it first began operating also held training sessions during its first months, including these panels of carefully selected individuals to explain what civilian review meant to them and they offered a variety of perspectives on the issue and the reality.
What is "community"?
She contacted all the prior complainants who utilized the system, as well as leaders of community organizations, community activists, lawyers and other individuals, as well as examined documents from City Hall including past surveys by city residents on the city's agencies including the IPR/CRC. Which was fine to the city's auditor, Gary Blackmer, except for the fact that she also contacted both Portland CopWatch and the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center for input. That's when he threw his tantrum in his written response because apparently he believed that he should pick and choose who "community" included and who the "stakeholders" (a word that gets tossed about a lot) were.
The definition by Portland of both is even more generous than the definition provided by Riverside's City Hall which when it comes to the issue of civilian oversight tends to treat "community" as a four-lettered word. And that's on a good day, especially considering how many changes made in the past two years regarding the CPRC's operations were actually communicated to the public including through Riverside's monthly newsletter. On the contrary, City Hall has been most secretive of the changes surrounding the city's civilian oversight mechanism, including the circumstances surrounding the "resignation" of former executive manager, Pedro Payne.
The surveys to past complainants produced some interesting results in that at least 100 people after receiving them, called sometimes long distance and sent emails to Luna-Firebaugh about their experiences. These accounts often tinged with anger provided a portrait of how those who filed complaints viewed the process which handled and reviewed them. Luna-Firebaugh found that there was a high level of dissatisfaction in the process as it were.
The CPRC initiated an internalized survey system about a year ago but does not release statistical data on its results, including what its response rate has been since the survey was instituted. Which lends credence that customer satisfaction with the complaint process is not supposed to be known to the public, whether it involves an evaluation of the processes used by either the CPRC or the police department. In the communities in Riverside, there's frustration with the process and what it's become especially under the current city management. The response of the city and even commissioners on the CPRC is to either pretend that these issues do not exist or to pat people on the head, chiding them to be patient because as soon as the commission gets "caught up" or gets around to fixing things or gets more staffing or gets anything but more gumption, then it will start working again. And then they scratch their heads and wonder why community members are divorcing themselves from the process.
This sentiment is not as strong in Portland at least from the organizations, who have already began writing analyses of Luna-Firebaugh's report. They've remained engaged in the process in terms of keeping
More to come, including the latest shocker from Maywood, California, the city with the "second chance" police department.
Wanted
Police Chief for Maywood Police Department
Must be a convicted criminal from any jurisdiction
Contact Maywood's city council for more information
Will the Citrus State Park be closing due to the state's deficit? That's the question that's being asked and hopefully answered by the Riverside city government.
(excerpt)
The Riverside City Council is set to vote Tuesday on a resolution declaring its support for the state's continued operation of the park.
"All options are on the table," Mayor Ron Loveridge said by phone Friday. "The city cannot allow the citrus park to close."
The city has met with Assembly members and parks officials to resolve the issue, he said.
Between 40,000 and 50,000 people visit the park each year, Loveridge said.
The city council plans to discuss this resolution during the evening session of its next city council meeting. What exactly will happen next after the elected officials rush to be the first one to press their game-show buzzers to propose the motion first, remains to be seen.
The Riverside Unified School District is working on purchasing land to build a new middle school even as it's shelved plans for the elementary school that was to be in the Eastside.
(excerpt)
Supervisor Bob Buster, who represents Riverside County's 1st District, will meet with district officials Feb. 11 to discuss the effect of future school traffic on nearby unincorporated communities.
"In general, we've been concerned about inadequacies of county roads out there to handle traffic, particularly school traffic," Buster said.
The district hopes to start construction this summer, targeting August 2009 for the opening of the Miller campus. City planners, however are concerned about a proposed entrance off Alderglen Street.
It would be built between two lots zoned for future houses. To enter or exit the campus, school buses and cars would pass between these two houses.
City planners say this might cause traffic problems along Alderglen, a residential street. However, the city has no jurisdiction to control how the school is built.
The water talks have begun in earnest, but so has the discussions by environmental activists who are concerned about the ongoing percolate situation. They were out in Riverside protesting about contamination of the water in Rialto and Colton.
Colton's got quite a few issues going on right now.
Cassie MacDuff, of the Press Enterprise tries to explain politics, Colton style. It should be titled, All My Politicians.
(excerpt)
On Monday, former Councilman Ramon Hernandez -- who long said he would be proven innocent at trial -- pleaded guilty moments before the trial was to begin to 24 felonies related to using his city credit card and city cell phone for hotels and phone-sex services.
On Thursday, District Attorney Mike Ramos announced 19 perjury charges against Joon Il Kim, 30, of Los Angeles, who circulated petitions to put an initiative on the Colton ballot to keep metal-shredding facilities from locating near homes, schools, parks and churches.
A review of the signatures determined many were forged.
After the years-long battle against a car-shredding plant in south Colton, voters were cheated of the opportunity to enact an ordinance restricting such plants because the forged signatures disqualified the ballot measure.
Councilman Vince Yzaguirre praised the DA's office for its efforts to clean up politics and restore public trust.
Yzaguirre's sister was among the Colton voters victimized.
She discovered her signature had been forged on the petition the same way 381 other Colton voters did, after receiving a letter from the DA asking whether the signature was hers.
Councilman David Toro, who unseated Hernandez in 2006, said the voter fraud case is another black eye for the city to overcome. "We just can't seem to shed the cloud," he said.
Not included was the storyline featuring former Colton Police Chief Kenneth Rulon who sued the city after he was fired by the city manager, Daryl Parrish. Rulon claimed he was terminated because he was instrumental in exposing the criminal conduct of a former city councilman.
Another promotion in the Riverside County Sheriff's Department here. I guess Sheriff Stanley Sniff, brought to you by committee, is still rearranging his command structure.
In San Bernardino County, prosecutors and defense attorneys are preparing for the preliminary hearing of a man charged in the murder of Rialto SWAT officer, Sergio Carerra, jr. and are trying to issue subpoenas.
Former Bolinbrook Police Department Sgt. Drew Peterson announced he intends to divorce his wife, Stacey who has not been seen since Oct. 28 last year. He's also claiming someone sent him photographs of his wife eating in a restaurant in Thailand.
In Atlanta, Georgia, a gun battle broke out between two law enforcement officers from different agencies.
(excerpt)
Officer Jay Daily, a five-year veteran of the Duluth Police Department, exchanged multiple gunshots with Fulton County officer Paul Phillips on Friday afternoon, police said.
Daily was in custody Saturday, charged with aggravated assault, Cpl. Illana Spellman of the Gwinnett County police said.
"It's been confirmed that the Duluth police officer was the aggressor in this case," Spellman said.
Phillips, 37, required surgery at Gwinnett Medical Center. A hospital spokesman said Saturday he could not release information about the two officers. He referred questions to Spellman, who did not immediately have an update on their injuries.
"It's been baffling to us why this situation even occurred," said Duluth Police Chief Randy Belcher. "It's an embarrassment to this agency."
B.J.: "Anything you want."
----M*A*S*H
"Oh, now, now, just a minute. You must understand, my dear: At the stroke of twelve, the spell will be broken, and everything will be as it was before. "
----Fairy Godmother, Cinderella
Dr. Eileen Luna-Firebaugh came to Riverside when it all began in 1999. She works as a professor at the University of Arizona and chairs the American Indian Studies Department there. She tackles a lot of issues, one of them being civilian review mechanisms that provide oversight over law enforcement agencies.
At the time she arrived, Riverside was beginning once again to examine this issue. The Mayor's Use of Force Panel was compiling its list of recommendations on reforming the police department and one of them was the creation of a form of civilian oversight. The city council after receiving the panel's list of recommendations would create an ad hoc committee of sorts to research various forms of civilian review which would include representatives from city government, the Use of Force Panel, the Human Relations Commission, the Riverside Police Officers' Association and the Riverside Coalition for Police Accountability.
There wasn't much opposition to civilian oversight in Riverside in the beginning. There was no reason why there should have been as the city government back then had it pretty much under control. The only form of oversight that had existed which was the Law Enforcement Policy Advisory Committee, which served under the HRC, and for the most part, it was restricted to making policy recommendations and for the most part, those policy recommendations were ignored.
Then when Mary Figueroa chaired it, she asked the city council to issue it subpoena power and it refused.
LEPAC's failure to do anything but rubber stamp the police department proved to be one of the catalysts for the development of stronger oversight in Riverside. Fitting into the pattern that whenever there's civilian oversight of any kind and Riverside screws it up, it's usually replaced by a stronger version the next time around.
And what were views on the idea of a civilian review board in 1999? Some individuals expressed their feelings here.
(excerpts below, Press Enterprise)
"We all need checks and balances in our world.Anyone who would be against that would maybe have something to hide. If (police) are enforcing the law in a correct way and a courteous and professional manner, they should have no objection to a civilian review board."
-----John Garcia, Casa Blanca resident and vice president of the area Community Action Group.
"They need one, and they need one very badly."
----Ralph Smith, coordinator of CORE, the Congress on Racial Equality.
"I've not heard of any movement afoot for something like that. I certainly don't know of anything that's been presented that would lead anybody to jump to that sort of conclusion that we need to have that kind of format here. It's not anything I've spent any time researching. I'd want to understand why that would be necessary."
\
---Former City Councilman Alex Clifford, Ward Five
"It's been around the block a number of different times. We're going to reserve comment."
---Det. Ron Wright, former Riverside Police Officers' Association president
Luna provided a lot of insight into civilian review mechanisms and her advice was very helpful. Years later, she was hired to do an evaluation of the Independent Police Review and Citizen Review Committee in Portland, Oregon. Her report was released and will be discussed by the city council later this month.
Luna-Firebaugh outlines the history of civilian oversight in Portland which goes back to 1993. It had a mechanism in place that appears somewhat similar to what LEPAC (which was created around 1983 after a controversial police dog bite incident) and so in 2000, a committee was created to research the subject at about the same time Riverside was just putting the final touches on its own new review board, the Community Police Review Commission.
By the end of the review by its "work group", division within it led to the release of both majority and minority reports, which was interesting because Riverside's own research committee had been sharply divided on its final votes on what model of civilian oversight to take to the city council. Luna-Firebaugh includes the highlights of the majority report in her own report. The majority included a push for independent investigations and the ability to issue subpoenas for city employees and documents. Public hearings, policy recommendation procedures and adequate staffing were some of the other recommendations.
They were submitted in October 2000, but by 2001, the city government had already assigned its auditor to evaluate the process done by the "work group" as well as evaluate what was already in place.
Very few people trusted the complaint system and it was neither thorough nor timely with many complaints taking up to one or two years to complete. So out of that at some point, the Independent Police Review was born. The same process that was just evaluated by Luna-Firebaugh, years later.
The Citizen Review Committee came about in 2003.
The CPRC is impacted by many of the same issues and same problems as has been both the Independent Police Review and its predecessor even though there are many differences between the bodies. It's also being evaluated by a consultant hired by the city, who is preparing a report about it to present to the city. It's interesting is that two processes though different in construction are coming at a critical juncture in their histories at about the same time.
At about the time the audit was being done in Portland in 2001, the CPRC was beginning to receive complaints and review cases. Its first investigation if it could be called that of an officer-involved death would begin six months or so after the fatal shooting of Laotian-American Vanpaseuth Phaisouphanh in the summer of 2001.
The CPRC when it first began operating also held training sessions during its first months, including these panels of carefully selected individuals to explain what civilian review meant to them and they offered a variety of perspectives on the issue and the reality.
What is "community"?
What's interesting about Luna-Firebaugh's report is how only one word in its entirety is actually define and that's "community". While there seems to be no difficulty in terms of defining who the police are, who the city administrators are and who the elected officials are, there seems to be disagreement in what defines community, especially how broad or narrow the scope should be.
Luna-Firebaugh went to Webster's Dictionary for help and that dictionary defined it as a "unified body of individuals; the people with common interests living in a particular area". That helped a bit, but she went further in how she defined it.
(excerpt)
The "community" is defined, for this study, as those stakeholders who have direct and indirect information regarding the worksings of the Portland IPR/CRC, and their relationships with the PPB.
She contacted all the prior complainants who utilized the system, as well as leaders of community organizations, community activists, lawyers and other individuals, as well as examined documents from City Hall including past surveys by city residents on the city's agencies including the IPR/CRC. Which was fine to the city's auditor, Gary Blackmer, except for the fact that she also contacted both Portland CopWatch and the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center for input. That's when he threw his tantrum in his written response because apparently he believed that he should pick and choose who "community" included and who the "stakeholders" (a word that gets tossed about a lot) were.
The definition by Portland of both is even more generous than the definition provided by Riverside's City Hall which when it comes to the issue of civilian oversight tends to treat "community" as a four-lettered word. And that's on a good day, especially considering how many changes made in the past two years regarding the CPRC's operations were actually communicated to the public including through Riverside's monthly newsletter. On the contrary, City Hall has been most secretive of the changes surrounding the city's civilian oversight mechanism, including the circumstances surrounding the "resignation" of former executive manager, Pedro Payne.
The surveys to past complainants produced some interesting results in that at least 100 people after receiving them, called sometimes long distance and sent emails to Luna-Firebaugh about their experiences. These accounts often tinged with anger provided a portrait of how those who filed complaints viewed the process which handled and reviewed them. Luna-Firebaugh found that there was a high level of dissatisfaction in the process as it were.
The CPRC initiated an internalized survey system about a year ago but does not release statistical data on its results, including what its response rate has been since the survey was instituted. Which lends credence that customer satisfaction with the complaint process is not supposed to be known to the public, whether it involves an evaluation of the processes used by either the CPRC or the police department. In the communities in Riverside, there's frustration with the process and what it's become especially under the current city management. The response of the city and even commissioners on the CPRC is to either pretend that these issues do not exist or to pat people on the head, chiding them to be patient because as soon as the commission gets "caught up" or gets around to fixing things or gets more staffing or gets anything but more gumption, then it will start working again. And then they scratch their heads and wonder why community members are divorcing themselves from the process.
This sentiment is not as strong in Portland at least from the organizations, who have already began writing analyses of Luna-Firebaugh's report. They've remained engaged in the process in terms of keeping
More to come, including the latest shocker from Maywood, California, the city with the "second chance" police department.
Wanted
Police Chief for Maywood Police Department
Must be a convicted criminal from any jurisdiction
Contact Maywood's city council for more information
Will the Citrus State Park be closing due to the state's deficit? That's the question that's being asked and hopefully answered by the Riverside city government.
(excerpt)
The Riverside City Council is set to vote Tuesday on a resolution declaring its support for the state's continued operation of the park.
"All options are on the table," Mayor Ron Loveridge said by phone Friday. "The city cannot allow the citrus park to close."
The city has met with Assembly members and parks officials to resolve the issue, he said.
Between 40,000 and 50,000 people visit the park each year, Loveridge said.
The city council plans to discuss this resolution during the evening session of its next city council meeting. What exactly will happen next after the elected officials rush to be the first one to press their game-show buzzers to propose the motion first, remains to be seen.
The Riverside Unified School District is working on purchasing land to build a new middle school even as it's shelved plans for the elementary school that was to be in the Eastside.
(excerpt)
Supervisor Bob Buster, who represents Riverside County's 1st District, will meet with district officials Feb. 11 to discuss the effect of future school traffic on nearby unincorporated communities.
"In general, we've been concerned about inadequacies of county roads out there to handle traffic, particularly school traffic," Buster said.
The district hopes to start construction this summer, targeting August 2009 for the opening of the Miller campus. City planners, however are concerned about a proposed entrance off Alderglen Street.
It would be built between two lots zoned for future houses. To enter or exit the campus, school buses and cars would pass between these two houses.
City planners say this might cause traffic problems along Alderglen, a residential street. However, the city has no jurisdiction to control how the school is built.
The water talks have begun in earnest, but so has the discussions by environmental activists who are concerned about the ongoing percolate situation. They were out in Riverside protesting about contamination of the water in Rialto and Colton.
Colton's got quite a few issues going on right now.
Cassie MacDuff, of the Press Enterprise tries to explain politics, Colton style. It should be titled, All My Politicians.
(excerpt)
On Monday, former Councilman Ramon Hernandez -- who long said he would be proven innocent at trial -- pleaded guilty moments before the trial was to begin to 24 felonies related to using his city credit card and city cell phone for hotels and phone-sex services.
On Thursday, District Attorney Mike Ramos announced 19 perjury charges against Joon Il Kim, 30, of Los Angeles, who circulated petitions to put an initiative on the Colton ballot to keep metal-shredding facilities from locating near homes, schools, parks and churches.
A review of the signatures determined many were forged.
After the years-long battle against a car-shredding plant in south Colton, voters were cheated of the opportunity to enact an ordinance restricting such plants because the forged signatures disqualified the ballot measure.
Councilman Vince Yzaguirre praised the DA's office for its efforts to clean up politics and restore public trust.
Yzaguirre's sister was among the Colton voters victimized.
She discovered her signature had been forged on the petition the same way 381 other Colton voters did, after receiving a letter from the DA asking whether the signature was hers.
Councilman David Toro, who unseated Hernandez in 2006, said the voter fraud case is another black eye for the city to overcome. "We just can't seem to shed the cloud," he said.
Not included was the storyline featuring former Colton Police Chief Kenneth Rulon who sued the city after he was fired by the city manager, Daryl Parrish. Rulon claimed he was terminated because he was instrumental in exposing the criminal conduct of a former city councilman.
Another promotion in the Riverside County Sheriff's Department here. I guess Sheriff Stanley Sniff, brought to you by committee, is still rearranging his command structure.
In San Bernardino County, prosecutors and defense attorneys are preparing for the preliminary hearing of a man charged in the murder of Rialto SWAT officer, Sergio Carerra, jr. and are trying to issue subpoenas.
Former Bolinbrook Police Department Sgt. Drew Peterson announced he intends to divorce his wife, Stacey who has not been seen since Oct. 28 last year. He's also claiming someone sent him photographs of his wife eating in a restaurant in Thailand.
In Atlanta, Georgia, a gun battle broke out between two law enforcement officers from different agencies.
(excerpt)
Officer Jay Daily, a five-year veteran of the Duluth Police Department, exchanged multiple gunshots with Fulton County officer Paul Phillips on Friday afternoon, police said.
Daily was in custody Saturday, charged with aggravated assault, Cpl. Illana Spellman of the Gwinnett County police said.
"It's been confirmed that the Duluth police officer was the aggressor in this case," Spellman said.
Phillips, 37, required surgery at Gwinnett Medical Center. A hospital spokesman said Saturday he could not release information about the two officers. He referred questions to Spellman, who did not immediately have an update on their injuries.
"It's been baffling to us why this situation even occurred," said Duluth Police Chief Randy Belcher. "It's an embarrassment to this agency."
Labels: corruption 101, CPRC vs the city, public forums in all places
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