A look back: The Birth of Civilian Review in Riverside
"Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves."
---Lewis Carroll
I'm still reading through the report written which evaluated the Community Police Review Commission. If you want a copy, it's available at the CPRC office on the sixth floor at City Hall. It's an interesting report in different respects, in terms of that it explains how both the "city" meaning those at City Hall and those who serve on the commission itself view the process and how they viewed community.
While reading through the history provided, I think as one who lived through it myself that the presentation of it in the report was how the city viewed the process. This appeared certainly true with the statement that the model that the city did end up adopting after a lengthy process was the "most appealing" one. That's true, but it really depends entirely on your point of view.
To the community, it was the opposite of that. The "most appealing" model was not the model that was passed but the one that was passed over. However, the communities were not the historians except in their circles and those encharged with overseeing the commission for the most part as it is now weren't even in town during the era that civilian review came to Riverside.
They say history is owned by the one who has the most power to write it. The best way to view a history of a significant event is through different prisms and not just one and that is what makes it truly come alive for a generation. The city government may not care a whit how the community views an event because it defines an event how it sees it and later writes it but the community never really forgets its eyewitness accounts. The CPRC and its evolution is probably one of the better examples of something that happened and was rewritten to fit something that wasn't real to most of us.
Here's another side of an episode in Riverside's history. You won't find it in a city report. You won't find it in a city brochure. You won't find it from the city manager's office because its employees weren't even here. You won't find it at the Bureau of Tourism. You will find it here.
Time: Winter, 2000
Place: Riverside, CA
“Creating a civilian review board would be a symbolic gesture.”
---Mayor Ron Loveridge, 1999
"I really believe that your creation was the reason the attorney general did not take over the police department. If it is dismantled or gutted, the attorney general will not be pleased. You are part of the bargain. You are part of the deal."
---Former Ward Four Councilwoman Maureen Kane in February 2004
After the fatal shooting of Tyisha Shenee Miller on Dec. 28, 1998, there was much discussion about many elements of police accountability and reform in the community, beginning with the first meeting which took place at the Caesar Chavez Center in the Eastside on Dec. 31. Many different views on the issue would come to the table. Only the communities' views would later be forgotten by the city.
Community members first began meeting in January 1998 to discuss researching and developing a form of civilian review in Riverside. About a month later, the mayor created a task force of community leaders representing a cross-section of Riverside, which included those with law enforcement backgrounds, elected officials, lawyers and religious leaders. And so began the Mayor’s Use of Force Panel. Its charge was to come up with a list of recommendations to improve the police department’s operations. It held regular public meetings and entertained visiting experts in different areas of policing from across the country. Included was at least one expert who discussed civilian review mechanisms.
Of course by then, a petition was being circulated to collect signatures to place a model for civilian review based largely on the Berkeley model and doing fairly well. It's very difficult to collect enough signatures because the bar is set fairly high but people were signing. The first sign of how important this issue was to many people in Riverside during this particular era.
And the city began to notice. It was an era before the city council directed its attorney to file SLAPP suits against those who circulated petitions on issues that it had its own opinions on but the city ultimately decided in the case of civilian review to co-opt it which would give it some measure of control over the process. This is similar to what has happened in many other cities across the country. Several cities in fact including one in Kentucky wound up with two civilian review mechanisms in writing with the city making the choice to implement the model which didn't enjoy subpoena power of course.
The Use of Force Panel which was chaired by attorney Jack Clarke, jr drafted its report and took it to the city council in April 1999. Included in the recommendations was one which asked the city council to research and possibly implement a civilian review mechanism in Riverside. The city council accepted the recommendations, the department began to implement them and a new ad hoc committee was created. This was the Police Review Policy Committee which consisted of members representing the Use of Force Panel, the Human Relations Commission, the city council, the Riverside Police Officers’ Association and the Riverside Coalition for Police Accountability. It was chaired by one of the city council members, Maureen Kane.
The committee hosted guests from John Parker, who worked with the San Diego County review board to Theresa Guerrero-Daley who at the time, was the Independent Police Auditor of San Jose. Representatives from Long Beach and Barbara Attard (who later replaced Guerrero-Daley as San Jose's police auditor) from Berkeley also appeared to discuss their models of oversight.
After receiving input from its guests, the discussion began on which of four models A, B, C1 and C2 to recommend to the city council. B was quickly dropped. A was the strongest model, based in part on Berkeley’s. C2 was most similar to that used in Long Beach. Votes were taken and Model A passed by one vote and since it was agreed upon that only the winning model would be presented to the city council, Model A was going to be that model.
However, of the three city council members on the PPRC, two including Kane had voted against Model A, preferring a weaker model, C2. Both of these city council members had been supported in the past to varying degrees by the Riverside Police Officers' Association for their elections. In fact, while serving on this committee, Laura Pearson, the Ward Seven councilwoman, had received a campaign donation from the association for the 1999 election. Kane would lose its financial support after her vote to approve any version of civilian review and the RPOA would move on to endorsing her two-time election rival, Frank Schiavone.
Kane would years later in February 2004 share her experiences in the role of civilian review at a CPRC workshop along with other members of the PRPC committee. But that was years later.
In January 2000, a packed council chambers greeted the city council as many community members anticipated the presentation and discussion of Model A to the city council. However, then Councilwoman Joy Defanbaugh said she wanted to introduce an alternate model which was identical to C2. It’s not clear where she received the information about this model because she had not attended the meetings nor was it included in the report to the city council but she was suddenly an expert on Model C2.
On Feb. 22, a workshop was held to discuss the different models of civilian oversight reviewed by the PPRC during its process. Several guest speakers returned to present before the entire city council.
1/25/2000 PRPC report to the city council which presented Model A
1/25/2000 Minute order on above agenda item for Models A, C1 and C2 models
2/22/2000 workshop report
Model A was quickly dispatched of at that point and the city council discussed C2. People spoke on the issue. Community members spoke on behalf of Model A. The RPOA representatives said they didn’t want any model at all and the elected officials during a two week process would discuss and ultimately vote on combining several models, with only Alex Clifford (then Ed Adkison) from the fifth ward and Terry Thompson from the sixth ward dissenting.
The ordinance to create the CPRC was introduced on April 11, 2000. It didn't appear on the agenda
4/11/2000 introduction of ordinance
Perhaps for City Hall, this model was “most appealing” but to the community, there was a great deal of uproar over this chain of events. At the office, I and others there received dozens of phone calls from people attending the meeting upset with the outcome including members of the Use of Force Panel. The phone calls continued for days, from people upset with what had transpired at the city council meeting which determined the direction that civilian review would take.
It was a lesson that often those who appear before before a governmental body believing that it will make all the difference are in reality, not nearly as powerful or as important as those individuals who are standing backstage. Whatever happened to torpedo Model A didn't take place in plain sight.
It would set the tone for what was to follow including where we're at today even if the city doesn't officially recognize community accounts of the birth of civilian overseight.
Kane's views on the CPRC which she expressed at the workshop held in 2004 included the following. They are very interesting because they reflect a shift in her thinking over time and off the dais. They were interesting because it was her actions on this issue and that of voting to approve the stipulated judgement by the State Attorney General's office in 2001 that might have played a large role in getting her off the dais.
(excerpt, minutes from Feb. 25, 2004 workshop with CPRC)
The Commission hadn't grown as much as she’d hoped
• Had hoped Commission would have a major impact as a place where citizens could go with concerns; saw Commission as an opportunity for community policing
• RPD is not using the Commission as much as she’d hoped
• Doesn’t hear anything about the Commission
• Doesn’t think Commission is being used for the purpose it was created
• RPD isn’t RPOA
• Frustrated by lack of outreach; Commission has to make the effort to speak to the community
• Commission not created to be a watchdog of Internal Affairs
• Feels the establishment of the Commission is the reason the State Attorney General didn’t take over the RPD
• The Commission was not created to be an adversarial body
This Kane was quite a different than the one who sat on the city council and that chaired the PRPC. Her words at the workshop held by the CPRC in 2004 were truly surprising but also contemplative. This workshop was in sharp contrast with the three others held with then City Manager George Carvalho, Chief Russ Leach and the Riverside Police Officers' Association, in that it reflected more on the history of the process of civilian review then contrasted its hopes with its reality. Kane and the other members of the PRPC who attended their workshop remained hopefully, but the reality before them fell short of the vision inside their heads.
And this was 2004, four years ago. The time before their visions would really fall short.
Another RPD law suit has been filed in U.S. District Court. This one coming from inside the department.
The Press Enterprise is probing any relationships of the financial kind between development firms and city council members. Of course being Temecula, the reporters had to submit their questions to the elected officials in written form.
The issue of whether campaign donations should be limited during an election cycle has been raised again, as it often has in other venues.
(excerpt)
[Bob]Buster said he wants Riverside County to impose limits on how much individual donors can give to one candidate for county office. He proposed doing so in 2004 but could not get support from other supervisors, he said in a telephone interview.
"The public wonders, and rightfully so, what is going on," Buster said. "There is a perception of undue influence, even if there is nothing illegal about it. ...
"He (Stephenson) is playing by the current rules, and we are playing by the rules, but the rules need some strengthening," he said.
Some of the wild burros of Riverside County are getting reflective collars to prevent collisions between them and motor vehicles.
Indio, the premiere city in Riverside County which actually still holds a famous festival named after a fruit is hosting monster trucks.
A feat that the much larger and far more important City of Riverside is still grappling with and has yet to master. Maybe some day Riverside will have a festival of oranges of its very own, but what might help in the interim is for Riverside to send a task force out to speak with people including city leaders to Indio to receive feedback on how they do it so successfully.
Maywood Police Department has its own Wikipedia page though it's a bit behind the times. One of the saddest things about the Maywood drama is that there's actually a city, Cudahy, which contracts its public safety services with the Maywood Police Department, spreading the damage and the pain.
---Lewis Carroll
I'm still reading through the report written which evaluated the Community Police Review Commission. If you want a copy, it's available at the CPRC office on the sixth floor at City Hall. It's an interesting report in different respects, in terms of that it explains how both the "city" meaning those at City Hall and those who serve on the commission itself view the process and how they viewed community.
While reading through the history provided, I think as one who lived through it myself that the presentation of it in the report was how the city viewed the process. This appeared certainly true with the statement that the model that the city did end up adopting after a lengthy process was the "most appealing" one. That's true, but it really depends entirely on your point of view.
To the community, it was the opposite of that. The "most appealing" model was not the model that was passed but the one that was passed over. However, the communities were not the historians except in their circles and those encharged with overseeing the commission for the most part as it is now weren't even in town during the era that civilian review came to Riverside.
They say history is owned by the one who has the most power to write it. The best way to view a history of a significant event is through different prisms and not just one and that is what makes it truly come alive for a generation. The city government may not care a whit how the community views an event because it defines an event how it sees it and later writes it but the community never really forgets its eyewitness accounts. The CPRC and its evolution is probably one of the better examples of something that happened and was rewritten to fit something that wasn't real to most of us.
Here's another side of an episode in Riverside's history. You won't find it in a city report. You won't find it in a city brochure. You won't find it from the city manager's office because its employees weren't even here. You won't find it at the Bureau of Tourism. You will find it here.
Time: Winter, 2000
Place: Riverside, CA
“Creating a civilian review board would be a symbolic gesture.”
---Mayor Ron Loveridge, 1999
"I really believe that your creation was the reason the attorney general did not take over the police department. If it is dismantled or gutted, the attorney general will not be pleased. You are part of the bargain. You are part of the deal."
---Former Ward Four Councilwoman Maureen Kane in February 2004
After the fatal shooting of Tyisha Shenee Miller on Dec. 28, 1998, there was much discussion about many elements of police accountability and reform in the community, beginning with the first meeting which took place at the Caesar Chavez Center in the Eastside on Dec. 31. Many different views on the issue would come to the table. Only the communities' views would later be forgotten by the city.
Community members first began meeting in January 1998 to discuss researching and developing a form of civilian review in Riverside. About a month later, the mayor created a task force of community leaders representing a cross-section of Riverside, which included those with law enforcement backgrounds, elected officials, lawyers and religious leaders. And so began the Mayor’s Use of Force Panel. Its charge was to come up with a list of recommendations to improve the police department’s operations. It held regular public meetings and entertained visiting experts in different areas of policing from across the country. Included was at least one expert who discussed civilian review mechanisms.
Of course by then, a petition was being circulated to collect signatures to place a model for civilian review based largely on the Berkeley model and doing fairly well. It's very difficult to collect enough signatures because the bar is set fairly high but people were signing. The first sign of how important this issue was to many people in Riverside during this particular era.
And the city began to notice. It was an era before the city council directed its attorney to file SLAPP suits against those who circulated petitions on issues that it had its own opinions on but the city ultimately decided in the case of civilian review to co-opt it which would give it some measure of control over the process. This is similar to what has happened in many other cities across the country. Several cities in fact including one in Kentucky wound up with two civilian review mechanisms in writing with the city making the choice to implement the model which didn't enjoy subpoena power of course.
The Use of Force Panel which was chaired by attorney Jack Clarke, jr drafted its report and took it to the city council in April 1999. Included in the recommendations was one which asked the city council to research and possibly implement a civilian review mechanism in Riverside. The city council accepted the recommendations, the department began to implement them and a new ad hoc committee was created. This was the Police Review Policy Committee which consisted of members representing the Use of Force Panel, the Human Relations Commission, the city council, the Riverside Police Officers’ Association and the Riverside Coalition for Police Accountability. It was chaired by one of the city council members, Maureen Kane.
The committee hosted guests from John Parker, who worked with the San Diego County review board to Theresa Guerrero-Daley who at the time, was the Independent Police Auditor of San Jose. Representatives from Long Beach and Barbara Attard (who later replaced Guerrero-Daley as San Jose's police auditor) from Berkeley also appeared to discuss their models of oversight.
After receiving input from its guests, the discussion began on which of four models A, B, C1 and C2 to recommend to the city council. B was quickly dropped. A was the strongest model, based in part on Berkeley’s. C2 was most similar to that used in Long Beach. Votes were taken and Model A passed by one vote and since it was agreed upon that only the winning model would be presented to the city council, Model A was going to be that model.
However, of the three city council members on the PPRC, two including Kane had voted against Model A, preferring a weaker model, C2. Both of these city council members had been supported in the past to varying degrees by the Riverside Police Officers' Association for their elections. In fact, while serving on this committee, Laura Pearson, the Ward Seven councilwoman, had received a campaign donation from the association for the 1999 election. Kane would lose its financial support after her vote to approve any version of civilian review and the RPOA would move on to endorsing her two-time election rival, Frank Schiavone.
Kane would years later in February 2004 share her experiences in the role of civilian review at a CPRC workshop along with other members of the PRPC committee. But that was years later.
In January 2000, a packed council chambers greeted the city council as many community members anticipated the presentation and discussion of Model A to the city council. However, then Councilwoman Joy Defanbaugh said she wanted to introduce an alternate model which was identical to C2. It’s not clear where she received the information about this model because she had not attended the meetings nor was it included in the report to the city council but she was suddenly an expert on Model C2.
On Feb. 22, a workshop was held to discuss the different models of civilian oversight reviewed by the PPRC during its process. Several guest speakers returned to present before the entire city council.
1/25/2000 PRPC report to the city council which presented Model A
1/25/2000 Minute order on above agenda item for Models A, C1 and C2 models
2/22/2000 workshop report
Model A was quickly dispatched of at that point and the city council discussed C2. People spoke on the issue. Community members spoke on behalf of Model A. The RPOA representatives said they didn’t want any model at all and the elected officials during a two week process would discuss and ultimately vote on combining several models, with only Alex Clifford (then Ed Adkison) from the fifth ward and Terry Thompson from the sixth ward dissenting.
The ordinance to create the CPRC was introduced on April 11, 2000. It didn't appear on the agenda
4/11/2000 introduction of ordinance
Perhaps for City Hall, this model was “most appealing” but to the community, there was a great deal of uproar over this chain of events. At the office, I and others there received dozens of phone calls from people attending the meeting upset with the outcome including members of the Use of Force Panel. The phone calls continued for days, from people upset with what had transpired at the city council meeting which determined the direction that civilian review would take.
It was a lesson that often those who appear before before a governmental body believing that it will make all the difference are in reality, not nearly as powerful or as important as those individuals who are standing backstage. Whatever happened to torpedo Model A didn't take place in plain sight.
It would set the tone for what was to follow including where we're at today even if the city doesn't officially recognize community accounts of the birth of civilian overseight.
Kane's views on the CPRC which she expressed at the workshop held in 2004 included the following. They are very interesting because they reflect a shift in her thinking over time and off the dais. They were interesting because it was her actions on this issue and that of voting to approve the stipulated judgement by the State Attorney General's office in 2001 that might have played a large role in getting her off the dais.
(excerpt, minutes from Feb. 25, 2004 workshop with CPRC)
The Commission hadn't grown as much as she’d hoped
• Had hoped Commission would have a major impact as a place where citizens could go with concerns; saw Commission as an opportunity for community policing
• RPD is not using the Commission as much as she’d hoped
• Doesn’t hear anything about the Commission
• Doesn’t think Commission is being used for the purpose it was created
• RPD isn’t RPOA
• Frustrated by lack of outreach; Commission has to make the effort to speak to the community
• Commission not created to be a watchdog of Internal Affairs
• Feels the establishment of the Commission is the reason the State Attorney General didn’t take over the RPD
• The Commission was not created to be an adversarial body
This Kane was quite a different than the one who sat on the city council and that chaired the PRPC. Her words at the workshop held by the CPRC in 2004 were truly surprising but also contemplative. This workshop was in sharp contrast with the three others held with then City Manager George Carvalho, Chief Russ Leach and the Riverside Police Officers' Association, in that it reflected more on the history of the process of civilian review then contrasted its hopes with its reality. Kane and the other members of the PRPC who attended their workshop remained hopefully, but the reality before them fell short of the vision inside their heads.
And this was 2004, four years ago. The time before their visions would really fall short.
Another RPD law suit has been filed in U.S. District Court. This one coming from inside the department.
The Press Enterprise is probing any relationships of the financial kind between development firms and city council members. Of course being Temecula, the reporters had to submit their questions to the elected officials in written form.
The issue of whether campaign donations should be limited during an election cycle has been raised again, as it often has in other venues.
(excerpt)
[Bob]Buster said he wants Riverside County to impose limits on how much individual donors can give to one candidate for county office. He proposed doing so in 2004 but could not get support from other supervisors, he said in a telephone interview.
"The public wonders, and rightfully so, what is going on," Buster said. "There is a perception of undue influence, even if there is nothing illegal about it. ...
"He (Stephenson) is playing by the current rules, and we are playing by the rules, but the rules need some strengthening," he said.
Some of the wild burros of Riverside County are getting reflective collars to prevent collisions between them and motor vehicles.
Indio, the premiere city in Riverside County which actually still holds a famous festival named after a fruit is hosting monster trucks.
A feat that the much larger and far more important City of Riverside is still grappling with and has yet to master. Maybe some day Riverside will have a festival of oranges of its very own, but what might help in the interim is for Riverside to send a task force out to speak with people including city leaders to Indio to receive feedback on how they do it so successfully.
Maywood Police Department has its own Wikipedia page though it's a bit behind the times. One of the saddest things about the Maywood drama is that there's actually a city, Cudahy, which contracts its public safety services with the Maywood Police Department, spreading the damage and the pain.
Labels: corruption 101, CPRC, public forums in all places, What is past is prologue
posted by Five Before Midnight | 11:07 PM
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