Maywood and a look back in time

"Midnight,--strange mystic hour,--when the veil between the frail present and the eternal future grows thin."


---Harriet Beecher Stowe




"There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart."


---Charles Dickens




"In a lot of ways, I was torn by the idealism I would see every night in my students' eyes and then I'd go to work and I would see complete despair in the eyes of the people there and just contempt in officers' eyes. Not all of the officers, but a lot of the officers' eyes."


---Al Hutchings, police chief, former professor and convicted thief





If you love trees and love to plant them, Sycamore Highlands in Riverside needs volunteers to plant about 50 of them. Riverside is still fighting to hold onto its title, as City of the Trees, even as it's sort of moved on towards becoming the City of the Arts, which will keep it occupied until it runs off to become something else.


Over 19,000 people will be busy attending the Charles Dicksons festival in downtown Riverside, which is one of the few festivals left inside the city's limits and one of the very few not relegated to Fairmount Park. The food's pretty good but there's just something wrong with mixing fish with something called tartar sauce. Eek! The entertainment's always very good.


On Tuesday, there will be sewer bonds sold and probably sewer rate hikes, along with over $1 million spent to purchase two properties adjacent to the parking lot that Union Pacific trains have established for themselves on Magnolia Avenue. It's called a city council meeting.






The city of Maywood, California has just hired an interim chief. And guess what? It's another officer with a criminal record.

The city council voted 3-2 to hand off the position to Al Hutchings, formerly of the Los Angeles Police Department. Hutchings is the second interim police chief who was convicted of a crime to lead the troubled agency, which is the subject of multiple investigations by outside agencies. Pretty soon, I guess we'll find out how down they are with this latest decision.



(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)




Hutchings replaces another interim chief who was convicted of beating his girlfriend and resigned from the El Monte Police Department before being hired at Maywood. That chief's conviction was overturned on appeal, and he was ultimately convicted of a lesser charge of making a verbal threat.

Hutchings himself was convicted of theft, for allegedly receiving fraudulent overtime pay, but had his record expunged. He was also filed by a local community college where he worked as a professor for unspecified acts of dishonesty.

After being hired by Maywood Police Department, Hutchings quickly got into trouble after being videotaped having some sort of liason with a female business owner while onduty. He agreed to resign from the same police department he now leads. In response, he said that although he had agreed to leave the department, he was the target of blackmail attempts by individuals that weren't cool with exposing the corruption inside Maywood's department.

And Hutchings has said that the department is totally dysfunctional and that he hoped to have the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department take it over. He said that while at Maywood, he had been blowing the whistle on bad behavior in an agency where about one-third of its officers were either fired elsewhere and/or had been convicted of crimes. The department sought these officers out, calling the Maywood Police Department, the agency of "second chances". And in some cases, third and fourth chances as well.

Hutchings' appointment by the city council has enraged people all around.

(excerpt)

Hutchings' return to the force, for a three-month period pending a search for a permanent chief, has outraged other Maywood officers. In a letter to city leaders, the president of the Maywood Police Officer Assn. said Hutchings had "displayed a total lack of integrity and honesty in his career as a police officer."

Some city residents questioned why City Council members would take on an interim chief with baggage.Mayor Felipe Aguirre, prior to Friday's vote, said he supported Hutchings because he believed he was an honest man who would reform the department. "Nobody has the courage to clean this place up," he said. "We need to hire someone who can right this department."

That will be easier said than done given that the city of Maywood has established a track record of hiring individuals convicted of criminal conduct to lead it. And despite his obvious problems, Hutchings is right. No one does have the courage to clean up Maywood's police department. Those who have the courage don't have the power or the means. Those who have the power and the means are part of what made the police department the mess it is today. That's often how it is in other places.

It's a sad state of affairs and probably fodder for late night shows to use to poke fun at the agency for its latest bad decision forced by the city that's trusted by city residents to oversee it. Not because they have a choice to trust it, but because it's the city officials which hold that power. If the city government is making good decisions, it's about trust. If the government is making bad decisions about its law enforcement agency, it's called being at its mercy.

It's not like fired law enforcement officers have never returned to their agencies from exile to lead them. Witness what happened in Riverside County when Stan Sniff was fired by then Sheriff Bob Doyle who didn't follow the adage of keeping his friends close and his enemies or at least his competition closer. Doyle resigned to take a state job and the Board of Supervisors appointed Sniff as the new sheriff in town. If you're interested in following this saga from beginning to end, this blog will tell it to you. But Sniff was never convicted of a crime, unlike the case with Hutchings.

So given its background, when Maywood submits its advertisement for a permanent police chief, it might as well include the following language.

Police Chief Wanted

for Maywood Police Department

Criminal conviction from any jurisdiction a plus

Submit resume and criminal record to the city's human resources department

At any rate, Maywood has its own pattern and practice of sorts at work, which means that at the end of its road in the future lies all sorts of agreements and arrangements for it to reform its practices. That day is coming whether the folks in power at Maywood want to see it or not or whether they are ready for it or not. What's interesting is that those who are supposed to know it all about how to properly run a law enforcement agency from top to bottom and how to properly hire someone to do the job, are telling everyone out there who knows neither to sit back and trust their decision making. But their words of reassurance and attempts to soothe people's concerns translate to neither when it comes to actions and their actions send everyone's stress level up along with their blood pressure. Especially when they make decisions like this one and show city residents that their faith in their government and their department is once again, horribly misplaced.

The people who often do the soothing to city residents are the same who watched for years while the police departments in their charge crumbled up and fell apart. They ignored the residents' complaints about what the police officers on their streets were doing. And police officers who witness misconduct in their ranks too often don't tell on each other because of both the blue wall of silence and because they don't want to call for backup and not have anyone show up to assist them or save them, whatever the circumstances. So even as Maywood's residents screamed, the police officers were silent, at least outside their own inner circles and the city officials were even quieter, probably sweeping the dirt surrounding Maywood deeper beneath its rug.

But now that the scandal in Maywood has everyone's attention including the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, the State Attorney General's office, the FBI and other assorted investigative agencies, the collective reaction from those in power is shock that such a thing could have happened in their midst. Even from those in Maywood's city government who themselves are under investigated for related corruption. Which shouldn't surprise and in fact makes sense if you have city officials running around doing crooked things, it shouldn't be surprising that they'd be too busy to ensure that the police department wasn't running around doing similar things.

Indeed, Maywood's officers were setting all kinds of Olympic records on their time and on their turf. Very busy indeed, yet the city continued to trip over the mess and say that nothing inappropriate was taking place.

After all, Maywood saw it all. Police officers assaulting residents, which led to law suits paid out by the city and police officers harassing and coercing women and even girls into sex. Not to mention lying and stealing. One officer even impregnated a 14-year-old Explorer. Even the city government jumped into the action with a kickback scheme with a local tow truck company. And no one did anything to stop it.

Resident after resident in Maywood testified at a hearing which was held when people finally cared what was going on if only to protect their own butts. Many showed photographs including one of a young boy who was assaulted by police officers. One officer present at the meeting stood and snickered in the corner and the mayor who sat listening, just said he had no idea this was all going on in his city. Oh yes, he did. They all did. They always do but mostly, they do nothing.

It's left to those in decision making positions to determine what the future will be, which is unfortunate because the problem they are addressing never would have been without their complicity. The officers at Maywood who misbehaved had many accomplices. Those accomplices are now the ones who say in front of the cameras that Maywood's police department will be straightened out, the wrinkles in its fabrics ironed out in a sense. Rather than simply going out and buying a new clothes which is what it really needs.




"I’ll go out and ask, “Do you want to form a partnership, or do you just want patrol here? I have a limited budget and the budget drives our department. I have limited resources. So, what are we going to do? Let’s pick the battles that we need to fight, and those battles will be [for] the people and the communities that will step up, hand in hand with the police department."



---Former Riverside Police Department Police Chief Jerry Carroll, who one elected official described as a "healer" after his appointment.



It's hard to look at Maywood and not see a little bit of Riverside. Not that Riverside was Maywood as it is, but it had serious problems for years and like Maywood, they were pretty much ignored. And like with Maywood, there finally came the day of reckoning that had been put off for so long. It just wasn't the thing to do, to complain or even talk about it. It's still not in many cities to take a serious look at how law enforcement is being done in your midst. It certainly wasn't in Riverside or the pathway that led us to this point would have been a much different one.

The emperor had no clothes but everyone still said he was dressed in the finest threads. And in Riverside as with Maywood, they repeated this mantra for years, even while the department's house fell down around its dysfunctional core. After all, talking about what was happening right in front of them doesn't get people elected to office, promoted, awarded funding for projects or get them on ad hoc panels. Even years and many mistakes later, it still doesn't.


David Thatcher of the Urban Institute wrote this paper about the history of Riverside and its police department focusing on the 1990s when as at least one observer called it, the police department went into some sort of free fall into trouble it eventually couldn't pay enough money to go away. And pay a lot of money in settlements and verdicts for law suits filed against the department, the city did. It did so because it didn't want to face trial juries and it did so that it could sweep its problems underneath a rug just like Maywood did. Still, the litigation and its outcomes attracted unwanted attention from outside parties who would eventually come into investigate. During this era, Thatcher was working on his report about how far the department had come and it would soon be clear enough to the rest of the world how far it still had to go.

It was the era where former State Attorney General Bill Lockyer would address an audience in San Diego and say the following was going on.


“I decided there were systemic problems with the Riverside Police Department,” Lockyer said. “There were a lot of instances in which African-Americans were beaten, Hispanics beaten and tossed in the lake, and Gays and Lesbians harassed and beaten.

All while the department's revolving door of leadership was watching when it wasn't spinning. All while the city employees entrusted with overseeing the department's leadership were watching. All while the city leadership was watching. Of course, the communities were watching as well and protests and rallies would take place during this time period. But except on rare occasions, no one listened. They responded but they didn't listen.

There was a move much later on under the stipulated agreement to have cameras placed in the roll call room which was implemented and video cameras installed in the cars was pretty much not. This mandate was initially implemented under the terms of the decree but since then, has been stalled at only 13 cameras since even though the allocated funding for the cameras was allocated practically on the eve of the end of the decree. But while installing the cameras is important, in part because City Manager Brad Hudson, Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis and the city council have all promised repeatedly to do so and have yet to deliver on those promises, it can't substitute for the attention that needs to be paid by these entities by what Lockyer called, the three partners of public safety.

But Lockyer hadn't even been investigating Riverside when Thatcher was doing his study, though the author and some of his subjects did mention a partnership that did resemble Locker's later reference.


Thatcher interviewed high-ranking city employees and the police department's management team about how they saw the police department under then chief, Ken Fortier. Fortier had been brought in from San Diego's police department as the latest outsider to "fix" Riverside's police department after its previous chief had been sent packing. Sonny Richardson would be the first of three chiefs to do so just in the 1990s. He wouldn't be the last.

Many names in Thatcher's article that are provided are familiar names of the past and many of them have sinced moved on including more than one police chief that he had interviewed. At the report's end, the department had just hired its latest chief who wouldn't last much longer than his predecessors did. The revolving door at the department moved so much that for a while, there was no police chief's name painted on the front door of the department's administrative headquarters.

Thatcher hit a lot of his points well when he examined the police department's management and its relationships with both the city government and the community. The battle over the development of community policing as a philosophy rather than isolating it into programs was one of his main themes. This wasn't surprising given that Fortier's prior agency had been instrumental in developing community policing and Riverside's department had began addressing it. Even before Fortier, the department had made overtures into community policing through a research project Richardson had assigned to then Lt Michael Smith. That's a struggle which continues today in many agencies with Riverside being no exception especially since federal grant money for community policing is drying up. Riverside has continued onward with it through the department's Strategic Plan which was a continuation of the reforms in its stipulated judgment that focused specifically on community policing.

The clashes between the city and the police chief, the police chief and the police union were all epic and major themes in Thatcher's work. And most of these parties with the city's residents, especially those in Casa Blanca which receives a lot of attention from Thatcher in his report. The apathy of some city officials and employees contrasting with what was called micromanagement of the police department by others. Familiar themes indeed on very familiar territory. What Thatcher didn't address in his report was the role played by civilian review, in large part because at the time it didn't really exist. Its time would finally come years later whether those in positions of power in the city and department were ready for it or not.


Thatcher erred in his article with his somewhat optimistic view of the police department at its end, almost as if he felt obligated to end his detailing of the saga with a happy ending, much like that of a fairy tale.

But the story involving the Riverside Police Department wasn't a fairy tale. It was yet another fable on a stack of them taking place all over the country. The people that could have changed its fate did nothing about the direction where it had been heading. Any happy ending would have to wait, until the moral was realized.

The city and department continued on their pathways until as one century ended and another began, their hands were forced to reform the police department by then State Attorney General Bill Lockyer. They could cooperate or be forced into a consent decree kicking and screaming and the city council voted 6-1 to accept the former as long as Mayor Ron Loveridge's wish was granted. That wish, was to call the mandated reform anything but what it truly was, a consent decree. Image after all is everything. Riverside just couldn't be known as the City of the Consent Decree. At least not by name.

But Riverside made history by a matter of a week or two by beating out Wallkill in New York to become the first city to be forced to reform its police agency by a state attorney general. Not that you would find this factoid included in any travel brochure at City Hall or the tourist bureau.


Thatcher didn't anticipate all this and he didn't predict it. He appeared to think the troubles of the agency were behind it when they were just getting started and would erupt just around the bend. How the city government, the department and the communities would all collide wasn't known to him.

What did Thatcher get wrong? Because his story ended in mid-1998, which was the quiet before the storm which would erupt on Dec. 28, 1998 with gunfire, but in reality had been brewing for years. The newest police chief, another outsider, would call it "hitting rock bottom" with no place else to go but up.

Looking back, there's been a framework left in place after years spent trying to reform the department that in a sense is truly remarkable. However, what's also there are many of the same dynamics which existed in the city as well, including some of those outlined in Thatcher's report on the state of affairs during the 1990s. It's amazing if a bit disconcerting because most if not all of the faces are different, but the roles that they are playing are similar to their predecessors even if the stage has changed. The roles they play in some situations already have been the same, as seen by several acts last year. Clashes between the city and the department with the city council watching that seem familiar footing for those involved in them even though they've just met. If the scripts haven't been changed but simply borrowed, it's not going to be any other way.

Some forces after all don't change, some dynamics still play out despite themselves because they aren't just part and parcel of Riverside or Maywood after all. Which is why it's important to pay attention to what's going on even when people tell you not to look behind that curtain or those who are in positions of leadership or power try to soothe you by saying, don't pay attention and wait until we take care of it. Lessons taught by the consent decree and the stages that led up to it.

After all, Maywood's still waiting. The rest of the world is paying attention.

What is past is prologue.





If you're interested in catching up with what's been going on with Maywood Police Department, this site's a must read and is complete with links to earlier articles. But maybe it will wind up like Adelanto, where police officers once beat up people they arrested then forced them to lick their own blood off the floor, which was taken over by a county law enforcement agency some years ago.

Adelanto's history was mentioned in this article which was published in 2005 when Rialto's police department was nearly disbanded. Michael Gennaco, whose office oversees the investigations of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department talked about Adelanto at a training session held in Riverside in 2006 without mentioning the name of the agency. I asked him during the break if it was Adelanto and he seemed very surprised that I knew that, saying I probably was the only one in the room who did. But who could forget an episode like Adelanto?


(excerpt, Press Enterprise)


In February 2002, the High Desert city of Adelanto became the most recent town to disband its police department and contract with the Sheriff's Department.

That decision came after years of controversy and even the imprisonment of a police chief convicted of embezzlement.

"The council had a choice: Clean up what they had or disband it and start new. They chose to disband it," said Adelanto City Manager D. James Hart. "You can clean up a department that has problems, but the public never believes you've really cleaned it up."





Adelanto is now under the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and Rialto is still its own police department.

But what will happen to Maywood in the wake of revelations of its corruption?


In May 2007 Professor Hutchings appeared on KCET talking about how he had exposed corruption at Maywood Police Department. Yes, that Hutchings.



(excerpt)



Val Zavala>> It's a small town with a big problem, Maywood, and allegations are surfacing that some of its police officers are, to put it bluntly, corrupt and preying on undocumented residents. The most recent problem, a Los Angeles Times investigation found that one third of Maywood's police officers had had troubled histories. Hena Cuevas has our story.

Hena Cuevas>> Professor Al Hutchings knows what it takes to be a police officer, but he says that what he witnessed inside the Maywood Police Department shocked him.

Professor Al Hutchings>> I mean, when you are confronted with egregious allegations of misconduct, bring it forward.

Hena Cuevas>> Now his whistle-blowing has triggered a criminal investigation into this tiny department of forty officers, an investigation that's even reached the federal level.

Professor Al Hutchings>> My regret is that I hadn't come there years earlier because maybe it would have helped more people.

Hena Cuevas>> Maywood, located just ten miles south of Los Angeles, is only one square mile, but its forty thousand residents make it one of the most densely populated cities in the county and virtually all of them, ninety-seven percent, are Hispanic. Moreover, an estimated half are undocumented residents. At the height of last year's immigration debate, Maywood declared itself a safe haven for illegal immigrants. It was a controversial move.

>> "Look at what you did to my town. I was raised here. It's pathetic!"



Family Corruption in the Big Easy blogged about Hutchings' hiring here.


(excerpt)



I thought when convicted felon, Stan "Pampy" Barre, III tried to pretend he was a police officer in order to escape a burglary conviction was the worst psychopathic act I have heard, but this one take the cake.



One sad thing in all this is that there's more than one Maywood Police Department that's rife with corruption.


By the way, law enforcement agencies which contract their services out to other cities are listed here.


Undercover investigators in a Chino meat packing plant videotaped incidents of animal abuse but according to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office, the plant was already the subject of a probe.



Ontario's done what few other cities has done, with its homeless population, which is create a village.