Just another Monday morning

There's nothing you can do that can't be done.

Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.

Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game

It's easy.

There's nothing you can make that can't be made.

No one you can save that can't be saved.

Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be in time

It's easy.


----The Beatles, for anonymous people everywhere






Riverside's Black History parade was pretty impressive, with all the bands, drill teams and other entries. Good food and good entertainment with thousands of people in attendance at the parade and expo downtown.


The Riverside County Fair Housing Council is seeking funding to hire more counselors to address the hundreds of home owners facing foreclosure who are calling them for assistance.


The foreclosure crisis has also led to 36 Riverside County employees losing their jobs so far because not as many homeowners or developers are filing for permits and filling out other necessary papers as part of the process.







Here is one of the most eloquent criticisms of me and this blog ever written. In fact, it's so perfect that I'll post it in its entirety so that others can marvel at it. This individual's been quite prolific in his comments about my blog and me for quite a while now. His references including in this latest comment go back way before Craigslist's politics section even started.



At any rate, here's his latest comment.



Mary,

Just read your blog holy cow, what a wierd world you live in. The city is all bad things to all people. For some reason people keep coming here. they say that the tv adds 10 pounds but perhaps another definition of sabbatical is spending too much time on the couch eating pork rinds. Let's see how you look this week. And no don't start crabbing about how its a sexist world and men just want you horizontal and all that. Its got nothing to do with that because its just that we are what we eat. kinda like pork rinds or chinese food.




Given this poster's propensity for possibly posting his porn fantasies in the past, perhaps he'd be interested in knowing that there's actually a "pork rind porn" site that was blogged about here.




But if you're into them, meaning pork rinds, here's some rather attractive photographs of pork rinds including the use of them in art including one that honors the critter that essentially brought them into being.


Anyway, Anonymous #1's little buddy posted something here to help him out though I've doubt they're as close in real life. In fact, I think if Anonymous #2 had any idea what his "buddy" had written in the past, he or she'd probably wouldn't have backed him up so automatically. Anonymous #1 wasn't responding to points I made on Craigslist, he's responding to points I made while responding to misogynist comments written by anonymous parties in my blog quite a while ago.

Anonymous #2's response to an individual who had made fun of my physical appearance in the hopes of embarrassing me enough so I'd shut up was simply to predict that I'd make what he or she stated was a "smarmy" and "unctious". Unintentionally humorous I'm sure as was his getting his or herself tied in knots over my usage of one word (which was sabbatical) earlier this week.


I guess this person already knows that I'm not going to shut up and go away and is merely expressing his or her disappointment in that. Crueler and more twisted individuals than you have tried all ready to discourage me and perhaps others to not speak out, to not blog and they justify it by claiming to be doing it on behalf of the city. But if the city needs or even wants people of this ilk to defend it, then that's a pretty sad state of affairs. Fortunately, most of the people who truly care about the city and its future including in difficult economic times aren't driven to post such vitriol which is nice to know.



At any rate, blogging in Riverside and even speaking out at governmental meetings in Riverside means putting up with this kind of crap from anonymous rock dwellers like this one. It kind of serves as a reminder that things aren't quite as good as they seem or as good about it as the people are being sold. If they were, then people could criticize the city's problems without being castigated over their looks and their wardrobe by anonymous shrillers.

Fortunately, there's a lot of positives from blogging that outweight this kind of treatment. And these people and their comments serve as a useful barometer check, as unpleasant as they are to deal with. It's also the fact that there are those who support this blog that infuriates these people all the more so their urge to spew is heightened even more.








Portland's Independent Police Review system was evaluated recently by Eileen Luna-Firebaugh who released a report recently on her findings. As stated in earlier blog postings, Luna-Firebaugh's report unleashed a heated response from the city's auditor, Gary Blackmer, particularly when it came to how he felt "community" should be defined. Apparently, it was not supposed to include members of organizations including Portland CopWatch and the Northwestern Constitutional Rights Center, which sponsored a community forum attended by Luna-Firebaugh. This differs from Riverside's own form of oversight because here, community members aren't really considered stakeholders in the process by those at City Hall. With the Community Police Review Commission, it's not clear that there's even a division between "good" and "bad" community.


After all, the city manager's office with the blessing of the sitting city council has made major changes with the CPRC without even telling the community what they were doing, never mind allowing their input into the process, except for several who were selected to sit on a panel to help replace the former executive manager who "resigned" not surprisingly while the city manager's office was implementing or attempting to implement major changes. A report is about to be released on recommendations to improve the operations of the CPRC but it's hard to get community members interested let alone invested in that process because the city hasn't treated them as stake holders in the process during the last several years. Most of them weren't even aware that a report was being worked on, until people outside of City Hall told them.

Still, Portland will be receiving Luna-Firebaugh's report later this month and the response it receives will be interesting.


Her report on the IPR and also the Citizen Review Committee is fairly extensive. In one of her sections, she evaluates the Portland Police Bureau's internal affairs division, its infrastructure and how it operates. What she was examing was different criteria including whether or not the investigations were thorough meaning all parties including civilian witnesses were interviewed and whether attention was paid both to legal and procedural issues. Also, whether or not there was a bias or slant in the way the investigations were conducted of complaints.

But Luna-Firebaugh found problems in her review that were also discovered in previous audits done by the city including one conducted in 2001. These included failure to interview civilian witnesses of alleged incidents which were the focus of the complaints filed. The investigations conducted by the internal affairs division were not done in a timely fashion and officers who admitted to misconduct were not held responsible by the department for their actions nor where they held accountable for violations of policy and protocol.


It wasn't all bad news. Of 25 complaints evaluated in one sample, about 10 of them were professionally done with six more almost making the grade according to her analysis. But at least nine of them received less than satisfactory grades mostly because of a lack of interviewing all the witnesses to the alleged incident.


Another issue Luna-Firebaugh examined was how timely the investigations conducted were, especially in terms of meeting the 70 day "guideline". It turned out that many of them didn't get completed within that time period.


in 2006, at least 54% of the complaints took over 70 days to investigate. Of these, over 25% took between 150-300 days and about 16.7% took over 300 days to close out the investigations. The longest investigation clocked in at 557 days.

The numbers were better in 2007 with only 33% of all investigations taking more than 70 days and the longest investigation being completed in 213 days.


Riverside's police department has struggled with timely investigations of complaints as well. If you want to know more about how much time they took on average during the several years to complete, just check out the statistics in the CPRC's monthly reports here and its annual reports here.

The sustained rate for complaints filed to the PPB's internal affairs division was very low at least in part because the bureau ignored violations by some of its officers opting instead to exonerate them.

Reading Luna-Firebaugh's report has been fascinating and very informative. What's more important than any recommendations that she has come up with to improve the process, is the responses to them by the city's residents, the police department and City Hall. The best recommendations don't mean much if they sit on the shelf gathering dust.




The California's Newspaper Publishers Association has released its legislative agenda for the upcoming year. Here are some highlights that are coming on the horizon.



Peace Officer Accountability


Last year CNPA and the American Civil Liberties Association sponsored legislation to overturn a California Supreme Court decision that has eliminated the public’s ability to obtain information about serious police misconduct and actions taken by police agencies to address it. SB 1019 by Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) was narrowly approved by the Senate over the intense opposition of the powerful law enforcement unions, but stalled in the Assembly Public Safety Committee.


Because 2008 is the second year of the biennial legislative session, SB 1019 remains a viable vehicle on this issue and could be set for a new hearing by the committee in late Spring or early Summer. While the outlook for SB 1019 does not look positive under the current Assembly leadership and committee membership, many changes could occur this session that might loosen the secrecy lobby’s death grip on this important bill.




Protecting Brown Act agenda posting



Whenever the state budget has a shortfall, the legislature seeks to reduce its obligations to reimburse local agencies for “state-mandated local programs,” such as the Brown Act provision that requires local agencies to post descriptive agendas for regular and special meetings of local bodies. Staff will remain vigilant to identify attempts by budget writers to suspend this fundamentally important requirement to inform the public.



The former agenda item has once again attracted a lot of interested and people interested in traveling up to the Capitol to speak out when the bill comes up again in committee and provide the other side of the story.



The annual report for Washington, D.C.'s Office of Police Complaints was just released. Could it mean an end of the feud between the office and the police department, even as the conflict between the police department and the police union grows? More on this situation as it develops.





Korean-Americans in La Habra are angered by the fatal officer-involved shooting of Michael Cho last New Year's Eve, according to the Los Angeles Times.


(excerpt)


The killing of the UCLA graduate and artist has set off criticism of police not heard in Southern California's Korean American community since the 1992 Los Angeles riots, when shop owners complained that officers never showed up to stop looters, and they picked up guns to defend their stores.

This time, community leaders say La Habra police were too quick on the trigger when responding to a vandalism call.

"We haven't seen this expression of shock, disbelief and sadness in the community before," said Richard Choi Bertsch, of the Orange County Korean American Coalition. "All of the first-generation parents are saying, 'This could've been my kid.' " Charles Kim, a La Habra resident and past national president of the Korean American Coalition, said that "the community's mind is pretty much set that the police overreacted."






Former Bolingbrook Police Department sergeant, Drew Peterson has more problems. Two relatives of his late third wife, Kathleen Savio are filing for reopening her estate, according to the Chicago Tribune.


What might come next is a wrongful death law suit against Peterson.




Will it rain any more this season? That's what weather forecasters want to know.