CPRC 2008: The candidates

The city council will be engaging in several duties involving the Community Police Review Commission today.

Up on deck first, are the interviews it will be conducting with three candidates to fill the Ward Five vacancy left on the CPRC after Jack Brewer termed out after eight years. Two out of the three candidates have law enforcement experience either in the civilian or military areas. The third, is a candidate submitted by Ward Five Councilman Chris MacArthur which gives him an edge in the selection process before the interviews even begin.

The three candidates set to be interviewed at 1 p.m. are the following. Included are excerpts from their applications.




William Warrick, retired from a company which built houses and apartments.


"As a long time resident of Riverside, I am concerned about the direction that the current Police Review Commission [sic] is pushing the Police Department."




James T. Mott, retired police officer


"I feel that it is important for a person to be active in the growth of their community."





Kenneth J. Rotker, retired Air Force


"I believe in my 33 years in leadership and/or managerial positions gives me the maturity, judgment and integrity to successfully serve as a commission member."



Each candidate will be interviewed by the mayor and city council for about 10 minutes. They will walk in the conference room and answer a list of questions to provide information about their background and why they want to serve. Then each elected official will ask them at least one question that's more specific. It may or may not be the same question that is asked of all of them. Sometimes the questions are useful and insightful and other times they are not. Given that there are three new city councilmen on the dais, it will be interesting to see the quality of questions asked this time around, especially considering that one of the councilmen is a former CPRC commissioner.


Based on the above excerpts from their applications, who do you think has the edge? It will be interesting to see how the interviews play out.

After the interviews are done, the city council and mayor may discuss the candidates for a short period before submitting their selections through paper ballot which the mayor or mayor pro tem reads at the end of the voting period. The rules are that if all eight elected officials are present, each candidate needs at least five votes to be appointed. If less than eight officials are present, then they will require at least four votes. Whoever receives the most votes under these guidelines is selected. There may be more than one round of voting depending on the number of applicants to select from and how the votes go down.

If I were to pick one who has the best chance of being appointed, I'd go with Warrick. Unless he blows his interview, it's pretty much his competition to lose.

The interview process is interesting to watch as is the final selection process. During the past seven years of the CPRC's existence, these sessions have been a good place to either see sound decision making practices or political agendas put on display.

Other interviews taking place today including those with candidates applying to serve on the Planning Commission and the Board of Public Utilities. During the Mayor's Nomination and Screening Committee, Councilman Steve Adams, who often is the winner of the Golden Tongue Award for his never mundane sound bytes, roared about it being important to have integrity to serve on the Planning Commission and two of the applicants (otherwise known as those individuals who ran against him for his council seat in 2003 and 2007) didn't have any. There's another name for what Adams did, but it was interesting seeing how little reaction there was at the committee to Adams' outburst. But then what can you expect, considering some of the comments which have become commonplace from the dais these days? It's become part of their operational culture, something that was addressed by a hired consultant in Colton's case.

That said, perhaps it's time to start a fund to hire that great consultant in dais demeanor who is being such a good assistance to what has been called Colton's dysfunctional situation. This individual could be a great boost to addressing Riverside's own situation. As noted in Cassie MacDuff's column, the consultant observed that the Colton City Council was engaging in some behaviors that are being copied or perhaps Colton's copying from some elected officials on Riverside's very own chambers of power.

But in Riverside, there are elected officials who are very well-behaved and then there are some who are a bit boisterous and somewhat immature in their behavior.

Perhaps what's simply needed is an estrogen infusion on the dais to offset a dais that's nearly all men. Something to think about during the next election cycle.



The city has Councilman William "Rusty" Bailey and others to thank for the CPRC finally presenting its annual report for the first time in nearly two years. One would think that after the panel finally released its first written annual report in 18 months last autumn that those at City Hall in a certain office would have been all aglow, excited and would have rushed off to put it on the agenda for a public accounting in a timely matter. Alas, that of course didn't happen. It took some inquiries among those who are their direct bosses to find out the reason for the delay and to get it the attention and time that each and every commission deserves but most don't have to insist upon and can take for granted will be there for them.

It's ironic that the city manager who was fired by four members of the city council didn't experience nearly the same degree of problems handling the CPRC as the city manager who received the high pay raise from the city council last year. Interesting indeed as well.

However, in his corner George Carvalho had the classy and talented Penny Culbreth-Graft, a former Riverside assistant manager, who later would be hired as head administrator of Huntington Beach, which is a big step up in anyone's career trajectory. That makes all the difference.




The Riverside Unified School District will face severe cuts to its staffing and budget, according to the Press Enterprise.

About 319 full-time positions have been eliminated and about $26.6 million in cuts have been made to the budget. A deficit in state funding is one of the major reasons for the lost positions. Under the current governor, public education is taking a huge hit.



(excerpt)



Today, the school board may vote to close Grant Elementary School, the district's smallest grade-school campus, and take more budget-trimming actions such as eliminating its SAT preparatory classes and the Riverside Virtual School, the district's online instructional program.

"If we're really going to do that, they need to know that as quickly as possible," board president Chuck Beaty said.

The cuts come in response to an anticipated decrease in state funding.

Monday's announcement came after the school board voted on Friday to trim its teaching and other certificated work force by 10 percent, its managerial staff by 11 percent and the number of classified positions by 6 percent.

The board also voted Friday to reject a tentative deal giving teachers a 6 percent raise in salary through June 2009.

"Our feeling is we're going to hold them accountable to the tentative agreement," said Mark Lawrence, head of the Riverside City Teachers Association, the local teachers union. "We may have to go back to the table but we could end up in an impasse very quickly."




The announced budget cuts strike a blow to recommendations to increase arts and music classes, among the areas where cuts were made.





A Riverside County Superior Court judge ruled that District Attorney Rod Pacheco did not act improperly when he sought the death penalty after a defendant in a murder case about four years after the fact.


The state's highest prosecutor joined in with Pacheco.



(excerpt, Press Enterprise)



The state attorney general's office joined Riverside County prosecutors in opposing Grech's motion.

"We just don't have any showing that ... there is a connection or improper influence" to Pacheco's decision, Supervising Deputy Attorney General James D. Dutton argued before Wesley. "The evidence shows there wasn't."





The latest chapter in the Hooters saga is in this column by Dan Bernstein.



(excerpt, Press Enterprise)


It may seem perplexing to now introduce "Hooters" into our discussion of Decision '08, but democracy as envisioned by our president is a yearning that appeals to all appetites.

The roots of this democratic movement reach back to 2007, when a retired Riverside police officer, Audrey Wilson, advised me of a new restaurant that served as a venue for periodic family reunions. This is a restaurant chain whose mission, apparently, is to heighten public awareness of a certain endangered species of owl. Likenesses of these owls -- known, evidently, as hooters -- gaze out at customers in a swollen, bug-eyed, seemingly panicked state of endangerment.

These bug-eyed hooters, I add for the benefit of environmental novices, gaze out at customers from drastically shrunken T-shirts worn by young women who, apparently, will do anything to save this owl -- even haul mounds of chicken wings to tables populated by environmentally sensitive gentlemen whose pupils dilate to a size comparable to those of endangered owls when the dedicated young women approach.

It was during a family reunion that the retired police officer's gaze strayed from the bug-eyed owl to the large print on the hopelessly shrunken T-shirts. "All the T-shirts worn by the employees and those for sale are ablaze with 'HOOTERS Moreno Valley,' " she informed.




After over 1,000 ballots were collected, the winning name was "Hooters Riverside" so coming to you soon may be an official resolution passed by the city council designating Riverside with a new title, "City of Hooters", to add to its growing collection.





In Canton, Ohio, former officer Bobby Cutts, jr. asked for his life to be spared after being convicted of the murder of his pregnant girlfriend.







The trial has started in New York City involving three police officers charged with the killing of Sean Bell, with both sides vastly different portrayals of the November 2006 shooting, according to the New York Times.



Sean Bell's fiancee, Nichole Paultre-Bell took the witness stand.


(excerpt)


After the opening statements, Mr. Bell’s fiancée, Nicole Paultre Bell (she took his last name after his death), took the stand. She recounted how she had met Mr. Bell in high school. Their wedding date was close to anniversary of the date he met her parents, on Nov. 23, 2000. On the night of his death, Ms. Paultre Bell recalled, she was sleeping at her mother’s house when she was awakened by her mother.

“Can you tell us where you saw him and what was his apparent physical condition?” asked an assistant district attorney, Peter T. Reese.

Ms. Paultre Bell, crying, replied, “He was in the morgue.”





Paultre-Bell testified about the day before her wedding, which was the last time she saw Bell alive.



(excerpt, New York Daily News)



"He dropped me at my sister's so we could attend my bridal shower that evening," the 23-year-old mom said. The bachelor party, she said, had been a "last-minute thing."




The full day recap is here.



In the New York Post, Columnist Andrea Peyser provides her take on the trial. Peyser raises the argument that might hold more water if the trial was being heard by a jury of 12 individuals and not a single judge.

She also compares the Bell case to the earlier trial of the officers who shot and killed Amadou Diallo nearly 10 years ago.



(excerpt)



The Bell case also differs from Diallo because none of the officers, including a white man, Michael Oliver, is charged with murder.

Oliver released 31 of the 50 shots fired, and Isnora 11 shots. Both are charged with manslaughter and reckless endangerment. Cooper, who got off four shots, faces two lesser charges of reckless endangerment. Two other officers involved in the shooting were cleared.

This disappointed Sharpton, who stated, "It was short of what we want."

Still, no reasonable person would conclude that the officers set out on the night of Nov. 25, 2006, intending to slay anyone, least of all a man just leaving his bachelor party.

But this trial will test the ability of one judge, Arthur Cooperman - who is deciding the case without a jury - to withstand intense pressure.

I don't expect the cops to walk. Not this time.

Let's hope justice prevails in Queens.