City Hall: To lead, follow or get in each other's way?
More confusion about the future of the main library downtown has struck City Hall perhaps to the surprise of those churning up the waters in the hallowed halls of power in response to being faced that a large segment of the city's residents essentially vetoed the Hudson Plan at a joint meeting held by the Metropolitan Library Board and Board of Library Trustees earlier this year.
Perhaps if the city had actually hired an experienced and well-qualified city manager team instead of an experienced economic development team, the city would actually have some clue about what direction to head into regarding the expansion of city facilities. At least a well-experienced city manager team would be willing to comment on the issue rather to "decline" and go back into the office to wait for the storm to die down. Not to mention that it's ironic that a former public information officer for Riverside County who has had to speak on behalf of the county during such episodes as the 1994 debacle at Riverside General Hospital involving the handling of the death of Gloria Ramirez would be unable to respond to simple questions about a proposed project under his own boss's office.
But this latest episode is beginning to resemble other debacles like the long, hot summer of labor union contract negotiations in 2006 which was filled with missteps until allegedly one individual was removed from that process and benched for a while.
Anyway the mess continues and it will continue and the city's officials are all over the place on this issue from admitting it makes them look a bit out of the loop to believing that there might not actually be a need for an expansion of the library downtown after all. If at all possible, they seem more inept on this issue than the city manager's office does. But then that's a commonly asked question: Who's in charge of the city, the city manager or the city council?
It's pretty clear from this latest mess what the answer to that question is.
(excerpt, Press Enterprise)
City Councilman Mike Gardner, whose ward includes the downtown library, said City Hall isn't looking good.
"It does make us look like we don't know what we're doing," he said.
Also unclear is why, two months after the city still was moving forward with the planning for a proposal by City Manager Brad Hudson to build a joint expansion of the downtown library and the Metropolitan Museum, Custen suddenly called for a years-long delay.
Assistant City Manager Tom DeSantis, who oversees the library system and was active in planning the joint expansion, said the library issue now is a policy matter for the City Council. He declined to discuss the confusing state of affairs.
After seeing what the city management team has done to the Community Police Review Commission in the past two years, it's not at all surprising to see what's going on with the library and museum futures. But now that the city manager's office has for whatever bowed out of this process like a petulant child showing off its tremendous leadership and management skills in the process, it's left up to a divided city council to ruminate through the debris left behind.
Recently, City Councilman Mike Gardner and Mayor Ron Loveridge created a "blue ribbon" panel which was filled with a lot of Loveridge's key supporters and the only clarity it added to this muddled situation is to make it clear that Loveridge is probably going to seek reelection once again in 2009. If that ruffled the feathers of a city manager's office, it shouldn't have. It's part discussion, part election ploy. It's not like this has never happened before. It's just happening a little earlier in the schedule than is usual. But let the tantrum begin regardless.
It's not like elected officials really care what community members think when those residents disagree with their agendas. That's why the concerns of over 300 residents about the projects who packed City Hall in the middle of an afternoon were brushed aside so easily. It's likely that with the panel the folks at City Hall also hoped that there would be agreement there as well. But like columnist Dan Bernstein said, it's all probably moot because the whole thing has been scrapped by "petty bureaucrats" who have taken their toys and are going home in response to the "blue ribbon" panel which might have been a step in the right direction but it's so top-heavy with the mayor's peeps (as talented and dedicated people as they are), it gets you thinking more of his political campaign ambitions than it does any meaningful dialogue on either the museum or the library. And it's often easier in the minds of some elected officials to push their agendas by using special panels of carefully vetted individuals over having to deal with city residents who are more representative of a cross-section of this city's population.
Oh yeah, sure as one elected official said, community residents can talk about it, amongst themselves, to each other or in front of the joint boards addressing this issue or the fancy-smancy "blue ribbon" panel that's been so carefully chosen and is filled with Ward One interests (which is not exactly inclusive considering the main library serves all city residents even those who live near branch libraries), but especially as stamped by this latest action by City Hall, all they will be doing is spitting in the wind if it interferes with the city manager's office's directive.
Even the city council is either too intimidated or too directionless itself to issue a direction to its city manager, a problem which isn't actually without precedent if you consider another directive involving another city department which the city manager's office failed to carry out when ordered to do so by the city council. In that case, for several months rather than hold the city manager's office's feet to the fire, several city council members appeared simply to make excuses for the inaction of one of its direct employees. In fact, one now former councilman even gave false and misleading information at a community meeting about this issue which I knew was false because everybody and his mother had contacted me on this particular issue because they were concerned with what the city manager (and by extension, the city council) wasn't doing or how what was really going on was being misrepresented by the parties who weren't really interested in doing anything on an issue.
But it's not about doing anything but running interference when these elected officials should expect that a directive voted by them and issued to a direct employee would be carried out.
Will the same thing happen here?
Unless the city residents object to this latest embarrassing episode and call the city government on the carpet for not following through with the directive to expand and renovate both the library and the museum, the answer is yes.
Bravo to Press Enterprise columnist Dan Bernstein for this column which presents the relatively short but already sorry history on how the city's handling its planned renovation of its main library and museum particularly in the wake of a meeting where supporters of the library and museum did exactly what City Manager Brad Hudson had allegedly dared them to do-filled a city council chambers.
(excerpt)
Suddenly, this wasn't a Seventh Floor toy anymore. Lots of people didn't even like what Santa Hudson, his Library Elf, Tom DeSantis, et al had concocted. They thought the library had been short-changed on space, that the muzeem and library should return to their original state: separated at birth. By then, a new councilman had deposed the old one. And just days ago, the City Council, in effect, whapped its go-to guy on the snout ("Bad city manager!") by creating a citizen panel to help figure out what the next generation Main Library and Metro Museum should look like.
Hudson had lost his grip on the project and skeptics predicted he would try to kill the library expansion.
Which brings us to Monday's astonishing meeting. Poor Library Director Custen has been reduced to carrying tainted water for Hudson and his concealed-weapon crony, DeSantis. She told library trustees that planning for the library expansion could wait five years. (Or three.) She said it would take that long to assess the impact of other library projects in the city.
How odd that this didn't come up a year ago. Either the City Council/Seventh Floor was moving too fast and never should have signed that $2.2 million contract with the LA architect. Never should have unveiled that library-muzeem combo. Or the Custen power point was a high-tech sandbagging job orchestrated by the boys who lost their toys.
Either way, the library and muzeem boosters, that blue-ribbon panel and even the City Council are now on notice that they can't trust city "professionals" to give them credible advice. Too bad, but better to have it out in the open than to be suckered by petty bureaucrats with concealed agendas.
Concealed weapons are scary enough.
Indeed. And I'm still scratching my head as to how DeSantis managed to receive one from the Riverside Police Department even though he didn't actually reside in Riverside which caused his conceal and carry permit to be revoked when it became clear that the Press Enterprise had gotten wind of this. One would think that the address of an applicant in terms of eligibility would be one of the first things and perhaps the easiest to check out before granting an ineligible person a permit. But this one will probably always remain an unsolved mystery given that at this site it appeared that the Riverside Police Department had a very strict policy in place for conceal and carry permits. Then again, most of the time it's not the boss who's asking for one. It shows how different the dynamics can be if an appointed police chief is asked to sign off on a permit as opposed to an elected county law enforcement head whose "boss" is the electorate.
If you're concerned about the futures of the library and museum downtown and want to talk some sense into your elected officials, you know the drill.
Call them at (951) 826-5991 or send them an email at:
mgardner@riversideca.gov
asmelendrez@riversideca.gov
rbailey@riversideca.gov
fschiavone@riversideca.gov
cmacarthur@riversideca.gov
nhart@riversideca.gov
sadams@riversideca.gov
rloveridge@riversideca.gov
Attend the meetings of the Metropolitian Museum Board and Board of Library Trustees and keep abreasted of what's going on with the institutions under their respective jurisdictions and keep their feet to the fire.
The Metropolitan Museum Board meets on the second Tuesday of the month at 4 p.m. in the museum conference room across the street from the main library. For more information, call Toni Kinsman at 826-5273.
The Board of Library Trustees meets the fourth Monday each month at 4:30 p.m. in the library board room on the second floor. For more information, call Heather Firchow at 826-5388.
And stay tuned for further exciting installments in this ongoing saga of city government and management in action. They are sure to come with more and more players climbing up on the stage.
Will low test scores doom Grant Elementary School? The County Office of Education seems to be looking for excuses to shut the campus down. Some say it's money and low enrollment, while others say it's money and the fact that the County Office of Education is eying the land across the street for use to expand its administrative headquarters.
(excerpt)
The district also faces a $23.6 million shortfall in state money in 2008-09.
Closing Grant would save the district at least $510,325 next year, officials said.
Then, at a March 17 public hearing, school board member Lew Vanderzyl sparked a furor among Grant parents and teachers by bringing the issue of test scores into the mix.
He challenged the assumption that a small-school setting is conducive to improved learning because students get more attention from their teachers -- as Grant parents and teachers have argued. Vanderzyl wanted to know how well Grant had performed on the state's Academic Performance Index and whether the school's test scores justified keeping such an expensive operation going.
"Their loyalty to the school, I think, is admirable but we have to look at things in a little colder light," Vanderzyl said during the hearing.
That's one way to deal with low test scores. Throwing out the baby with the bath water. But far from just looking at the question in a "little colder light", punishing students for low-test scores by closing their schools and farming them out into an already jam-packed school system (which isn't exactly conducive to improving test scores) just makes one wonder about the leadership skills of this particular elected body.
San Bernardino can't come up with ways to address its budget crisis.
U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein is asking the Department of Justice why it's closing its public integrity unit in Los Angeles.
(excerpt)
In a letter released to news agencies Wednesday, Feinstein, D-Calif., asked Attorney General Michael Mukasey why the change was made and who made the decision.
"I have serious concerns about the potential impact of this change," Feinstein said.
Actually, it makes perfect sense if you have a presidential administration that believes that public employees and elected officials are above the law and don't need to be held accountable by a federal agency when they break it.
It's getting hotter in Eugene amid the controversy about whether or not the independent police auditor should be investigated for misconduct. In an article in the Eugene Register-Guard, two high-ranking officers in the Eugene Police Officers' Association said yes.
(excerpt)
They claim that hiring an independent investigator would have been a waste of taxpayers’ money. Are they kidding? What a deplorable smokescreen! The police auditor’s office has an annual budget of upwards of $1 million. Talk about a waste of taxpayer dollars.
The editors then scold Poling, Solomon and Clark for sending the message that future complaints, warranted or not, will find some traction on the council. What a joke!
Future complaints should find traction with the council. Isn’t that what this whole system is set up to ensure? It’s supposed to be a neutral, transparent and balanced oversight system.
That’s what the voters approved. The voters didn’t give this mayor and council majority the green light to manipulate executive sessions to ensure lopsided and dirtied results.
The mayor, the council majority and The Register-Guard have stripped the current complaint process of its last strand of credibility. Are we now to assume that our represented membership will be held to the same standard as the police auditor?
Once a complaint is deemed noncriminal against one of our members, they now simply write a rebuttal to the complaint and submit it to the chief, who in turn can exonerate the employee, based solely on their document. No administrative investigation necessary. No need to interview any witnesses or obtain any facts.
Hey, what’s good for the goose is certainly good for the gander, right?
Throughout this entire complaint against Beamud, the mayor and council majority have shown their true colors. They view the police as simply the necessary evil. We get zero support from this infested bunch.
This recent debacle points to either bias or corruption on the part of the council majority. The mayor told The Register-Guard on March 13 that the council’s decision to exonerate Beamud should not be viewed as pro-auditor and anti-police.
So, if her statement was intended to downplay bias, what then does that leave our community with?
Cathy L. Lanier, the police chief of Washington, D.C.'s department and her controversial "safe homes" program were scrutinized in a Washington Post column by Courland Milloy.
(excerpt)
For Lanier, the opinions that count most are those of the most-vulnerable. But there are skeptics among those people as well.
"When I talk about the Safe Homes Initiative with community groups, there are some who stare at me with crossed arms, some who are not sure where I'm coming from," Lanier said. "But there are always two or three nodding in agreement."
During our ride together, Lanier was reminded of the social barriers confronting her when the patrol car stopped for a traffic light. A group of teenagers, no doubt some being raised by grandmothers, was standing at a bus stop.
"How are you doing?" the chief called out.
The youngsters looked away without answering.
"They hate talking to me," the chief said, sounding disappointed.
But when she saw another group standing at the next bus stop, she brightened up and got ready to try again.
"I'm going to get them talking to me, sooner or later," she declared.
Just like a big sister.
City Limits did an excellent article on how the New York City Police Department is reexamining how it polices the mentally ill population. In the article, the writers converse with different mental health experts about different models used by law enforcement agencies to interface with mentally ill individuals including the Crisis Intervention Team model.
(excerpt, City Limits)
Will Crisis Interventions Teams work in NYC?
Melissa Reuland: I am struck by Fred’s statement that there has been a committee to say CIT, yes or no, why or why not? I want to ask and broaden the discussion from just CIT. When I say that CIT may not work in New York City – like it has probably not worked in L.A. and probably not worked in Houston, and it remains to be seen how it’s working in Chicago – I don’t suggest that therefore the police do nothing. There are lots of other options and variations, adaptations on essential elements of the police responses that may be very appropriate for very large and, by the way, very small communities.
But some of the very large departments do have very particular problems. CIT has worked beautifully in medium-sized communities all over the country. But if you talk to Houston and you ask them how many of their CIT calls actually get a CIT officer dispatched to them, and we all would agree, they have been doing fabulous training, they’ve trained their dispatchers. They have more than 25 percent of the department trained. They have found that of the calls they know a CIT officer should be dispatched to, only 25 percent of them actually get one there.
That’s because of deployment problems. Because of the size of the city, the sheer geography that they have to deal with, and getting the CIT-trained officer who is or is not on shift, is or is not in the middle of a call, can or cannot make his or her way in the 15 or 20 minutes it’s going to take in traffic to get to that call. There have been some tragic shootings in Houston in the last year or so that have prompted the mayor and the City Council to reinvigorate their discussion about what they are going to do.
My philosophy and the way I approach this is, I think that the community’s response needs to be related to what the problem in the community is. Once that problem has been identified, then you need to sculpt a response that’s based on the problem that you are experiencing. You’re going to have to be creative and you’re going to adapt what other people have done and make it your own.
Riverside's police department is engaging in its own crisis mental health intervention training, providing about 30 hours of training for most of its officers by December 2008.
Perhaps if the city had actually hired an experienced and well-qualified city manager team instead of an experienced economic development team, the city would actually have some clue about what direction to head into regarding the expansion of city facilities. At least a well-experienced city manager team would be willing to comment on the issue rather to "decline" and go back into the office to wait for the storm to die down. Not to mention that it's ironic that a former public information officer for Riverside County who has had to speak on behalf of the county during such episodes as the 1994 debacle at Riverside General Hospital involving the handling of the death of Gloria Ramirez would be unable to respond to simple questions about a proposed project under his own boss's office.
But this latest episode is beginning to resemble other debacles like the long, hot summer of labor union contract negotiations in 2006 which was filled with missteps until allegedly one individual was removed from that process and benched for a while.
Anyway the mess continues and it will continue and the city's officials are all over the place on this issue from admitting it makes them look a bit out of the loop to believing that there might not actually be a need for an expansion of the library downtown after all. If at all possible, they seem more inept on this issue than the city manager's office does. But then that's a commonly asked question: Who's in charge of the city, the city manager or the city council?
It's pretty clear from this latest mess what the answer to that question is.
(excerpt, Press Enterprise)
City Councilman Mike Gardner, whose ward includes the downtown library, said City Hall isn't looking good.
"It does make us look like we don't know what we're doing," he said.
Also unclear is why, two months after the city still was moving forward with the planning for a proposal by City Manager Brad Hudson to build a joint expansion of the downtown library and the Metropolitan Museum, Custen suddenly called for a years-long delay.
Assistant City Manager Tom DeSantis, who oversees the library system and was active in planning the joint expansion, said the library issue now is a policy matter for the City Council. He declined to discuss the confusing state of affairs.
After seeing what the city management team has done to the Community Police Review Commission in the past two years, it's not at all surprising to see what's going on with the library and museum futures. But now that the city manager's office has for whatever bowed out of this process like a petulant child showing off its tremendous leadership and management skills in the process, it's left up to a divided city council to ruminate through the debris left behind.
Recently, City Councilman Mike Gardner and Mayor Ron Loveridge created a "blue ribbon" panel which was filled with a lot of Loveridge's key supporters and the only clarity it added to this muddled situation is to make it clear that Loveridge is probably going to seek reelection once again in 2009. If that ruffled the feathers of a city manager's office, it shouldn't have. It's part discussion, part election ploy. It's not like this has never happened before. It's just happening a little earlier in the schedule than is usual. But let the tantrum begin regardless.
It's not like elected officials really care what community members think when those residents disagree with their agendas. That's why the concerns of over 300 residents about the projects who packed City Hall in the middle of an afternoon were brushed aside so easily. It's likely that with the panel the folks at City Hall also hoped that there would be agreement there as well. But like columnist Dan Bernstein said, it's all probably moot because the whole thing has been scrapped by "petty bureaucrats" who have taken their toys and are going home in response to the "blue ribbon" panel which might have been a step in the right direction but it's so top-heavy with the mayor's peeps (as talented and dedicated people as they are), it gets you thinking more of his political campaign ambitions than it does any meaningful dialogue on either the museum or the library. And it's often easier in the minds of some elected officials to push their agendas by using special panels of carefully vetted individuals over having to deal with city residents who are more representative of a cross-section of this city's population.
Oh yeah, sure as one elected official said, community residents can talk about it, amongst themselves, to each other or in front of the joint boards addressing this issue or the fancy-smancy "blue ribbon" panel that's been so carefully chosen and is filled with Ward One interests (which is not exactly inclusive considering the main library serves all city residents even those who live near branch libraries), but especially as stamped by this latest action by City Hall, all they will be doing is spitting in the wind if it interferes with the city manager's office's directive.
Even the city council is either too intimidated or too directionless itself to issue a direction to its city manager, a problem which isn't actually without precedent if you consider another directive involving another city department which the city manager's office failed to carry out when ordered to do so by the city council. In that case, for several months rather than hold the city manager's office's feet to the fire, several city council members appeared simply to make excuses for the inaction of one of its direct employees. In fact, one now former councilman even gave false and misleading information at a community meeting about this issue which I knew was false because everybody and his mother had contacted me on this particular issue because they were concerned with what the city manager (and by extension, the city council) wasn't doing or how what was really going on was being misrepresented by the parties who weren't really interested in doing anything on an issue.
But it's not about doing anything but running interference when these elected officials should expect that a directive voted by them and issued to a direct employee would be carried out.
Will the same thing happen here?
Unless the city residents object to this latest embarrassing episode and call the city government on the carpet for not following through with the directive to expand and renovate both the library and the museum, the answer is yes.
Bravo to Press Enterprise columnist Dan Bernstein for this column which presents the relatively short but already sorry history on how the city's handling its planned renovation of its main library and museum particularly in the wake of a meeting where supporters of the library and museum did exactly what City Manager Brad Hudson had allegedly dared them to do-filled a city council chambers.
(excerpt)
Suddenly, this wasn't a Seventh Floor toy anymore. Lots of people didn't even like what Santa Hudson, his Library Elf, Tom DeSantis, et al had concocted. They thought the library had been short-changed on space, that the muzeem and library should return to their original state: separated at birth. By then, a new councilman had deposed the old one. And just days ago, the City Council, in effect, whapped its go-to guy on the snout ("Bad city manager!") by creating a citizen panel to help figure out what the next generation Main Library and Metro Museum should look like.
Hudson had lost his grip on the project and skeptics predicted he would try to kill the library expansion.
Which brings us to Monday's astonishing meeting. Poor Library Director Custen has been reduced to carrying tainted water for Hudson and his concealed-weapon crony, DeSantis. She told library trustees that planning for the library expansion could wait five years. (Or three.) She said it would take that long to assess the impact of other library projects in the city.
How odd that this didn't come up a year ago. Either the City Council/Seventh Floor was moving too fast and never should have signed that $2.2 million contract with the LA architect. Never should have unveiled that library-muzeem combo. Or the Custen power point was a high-tech sandbagging job orchestrated by the boys who lost their toys.
Either way, the library and muzeem boosters, that blue-ribbon panel and even the City Council are now on notice that they can't trust city "professionals" to give them credible advice. Too bad, but better to have it out in the open than to be suckered by petty bureaucrats with concealed agendas.
Concealed weapons are scary enough.
Indeed. And I'm still scratching my head as to how DeSantis managed to receive one from the Riverside Police Department even though he didn't actually reside in Riverside which caused his conceal and carry permit to be revoked when it became clear that the Press Enterprise had gotten wind of this. One would think that the address of an applicant in terms of eligibility would be one of the first things and perhaps the easiest to check out before granting an ineligible person a permit. But this one will probably always remain an unsolved mystery given that at this site it appeared that the Riverside Police Department had a very strict policy in place for conceal and carry permits. Then again, most of the time it's not the boss who's asking for one. It shows how different the dynamics can be if an appointed police chief is asked to sign off on a permit as opposed to an elected county law enforcement head whose "boss" is the electorate.
If you're concerned about the futures of the library and museum downtown and want to talk some sense into your elected officials, you know the drill.
Call them at (951) 826-5991 or send them an email at:
mgardner@riversideca.gov
asmelendrez@riversideca.gov
rbailey@riversideca.gov
fschiavone@riversideca.gov
cmacarthur@riversideca.gov
nhart@riversideca.gov
sadams@riversideca.gov
rloveridge@riversideca.gov
Attend the meetings of the Metropolitian Museum Board and Board of Library Trustees and keep abreasted of what's going on with the institutions under their respective jurisdictions and keep their feet to the fire.
The Metropolitan Museum Board meets on the second Tuesday of the month at 4 p.m. in the museum conference room across the street from the main library. For more information, call Toni Kinsman at 826-5273.
The Board of Library Trustees meets the fourth Monday each month at 4:30 p.m. in the library board room on the second floor. For more information, call Heather Firchow at 826-5388.
And stay tuned for further exciting installments in this ongoing saga of city government and management in action. They are sure to come with more and more players climbing up on the stage.
Will low test scores doom Grant Elementary School? The County Office of Education seems to be looking for excuses to shut the campus down. Some say it's money and low enrollment, while others say it's money and the fact that the County Office of Education is eying the land across the street for use to expand its administrative headquarters.
(excerpt)
The district also faces a $23.6 million shortfall in state money in 2008-09.
Closing Grant would save the district at least $510,325 next year, officials said.
Then, at a March 17 public hearing, school board member Lew Vanderzyl sparked a furor among Grant parents and teachers by bringing the issue of test scores into the mix.
He challenged the assumption that a small-school setting is conducive to improved learning because students get more attention from their teachers -- as Grant parents and teachers have argued. Vanderzyl wanted to know how well Grant had performed on the state's Academic Performance Index and whether the school's test scores justified keeping such an expensive operation going.
"Their loyalty to the school, I think, is admirable but we have to look at things in a little colder light," Vanderzyl said during the hearing.
That's one way to deal with low test scores. Throwing out the baby with the bath water. But far from just looking at the question in a "little colder light", punishing students for low-test scores by closing their schools and farming them out into an already jam-packed school system (which isn't exactly conducive to improving test scores) just makes one wonder about the leadership skills of this particular elected body.
San Bernardino can't come up with ways to address its budget crisis.
U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein is asking the Department of Justice why it's closing its public integrity unit in Los Angeles.
(excerpt)
In a letter released to news agencies Wednesday, Feinstein, D-Calif., asked Attorney General Michael Mukasey why the change was made and who made the decision.
"I have serious concerns about the potential impact of this change," Feinstein said.
Actually, it makes perfect sense if you have a presidential administration that believes that public employees and elected officials are above the law and don't need to be held accountable by a federal agency when they break it.
It's getting hotter in Eugene amid the controversy about whether or not the independent police auditor should be investigated for misconduct. In an article in the Eugene Register-Guard, two high-ranking officers in the Eugene Police Officers' Association said yes.
(excerpt)
They claim that hiring an independent investigator would have been a waste of taxpayers’ money. Are they kidding? What a deplorable smokescreen! The police auditor’s office has an annual budget of upwards of $1 million. Talk about a waste of taxpayer dollars.
The editors then scold Poling, Solomon and Clark for sending the message that future complaints, warranted or not, will find some traction on the council. What a joke!
Future complaints should find traction with the council. Isn’t that what this whole system is set up to ensure? It’s supposed to be a neutral, transparent and balanced oversight system.
That’s what the voters approved. The voters didn’t give this mayor and council majority the green light to manipulate executive sessions to ensure lopsided and dirtied results.
The mayor, the council majority and The Register-Guard have stripped the current complaint process of its last strand of credibility. Are we now to assume that our represented membership will be held to the same standard as the police auditor?
Once a complaint is deemed noncriminal against one of our members, they now simply write a rebuttal to the complaint and submit it to the chief, who in turn can exonerate the employee, based solely on their document. No administrative investigation necessary. No need to interview any witnesses or obtain any facts.
Hey, what’s good for the goose is certainly good for the gander, right?
Throughout this entire complaint against Beamud, the mayor and council majority have shown their true colors. They view the police as simply the necessary evil. We get zero support from this infested bunch.
This recent debacle points to either bias or corruption on the part of the council majority. The mayor told The Register-Guard on March 13 that the council’s decision to exonerate Beamud should not be viewed as pro-auditor and anti-police.
So, if her statement was intended to downplay bias, what then does that leave our community with?
Cathy L. Lanier, the police chief of Washington, D.C.'s department and her controversial "safe homes" program were scrutinized in a Washington Post column by Courland Milloy.
(excerpt)
For Lanier, the opinions that count most are those of the most-vulnerable. But there are skeptics among those people as well.
"When I talk about the Safe Homes Initiative with community groups, there are some who stare at me with crossed arms, some who are not sure where I'm coming from," Lanier said. "But there are always two or three nodding in agreement."
During our ride together, Lanier was reminded of the social barriers confronting her when the patrol car stopped for a traffic light. A group of teenagers, no doubt some being raised by grandmothers, was standing at a bus stop.
"How are you doing?" the chief called out.
The youngsters looked away without answering.
"They hate talking to me," the chief said, sounding disappointed.
But when she saw another group standing at the next bus stop, she brightened up and got ready to try again.
"I'm going to get them talking to me, sooner or later," she declared.
Just like a big sister.
City Limits did an excellent article on how the New York City Police Department is reexamining how it polices the mentally ill population. In the article, the writers converse with different mental health experts about different models used by law enforcement agencies to interface with mentally ill individuals including the Crisis Intervention Team model.
(excerpt, City Limits)
Will Crisis Interventions Teams work in NYC?
Melissa Reuland: I am struck by Fred’s statement that there has been a committee to say CIT, yes or no, why or why not? I want to ask and broaden the discussion from just CIT. When I say that CIT may not work in New York City – like it has probably not worked in L.A. and probably not worked in Houston, and it remains to be seen how it’s working in Chicago – I don’t suggest that therefore the police do nothing. There are lots of other options and variations, adaptations on essential elements of the police responses that may be very appropriate for very large and, by the way, very small communities.
But some of the very large departments do have very particular problems. CIT has worked beautifully in medium-sized communities all over the country. But if you talk to Houston and you ask them how many of their CIT calls actually get a CIT officer dispatched to them, and we all would agree, they have been doing fabulous training, they’ve trained their dispatchers. They have more than 25 percent of the department trained. They have found that of the calls they know a CIT officer should be dispatched to, only 25 percent of them actually get one there.
That’s because of deployment problems. Because of the size of the city, the sheer geography that they have to deal with, and getting the CIT-trained officer who is or is not on shift, is or is not in the middle of a call, can or cannot make his or her way in the 15 or 20 minutes it’s going to take in traffic to get to that call. There have been some tragic shootings in Houston in the last year or so that have prompted the mayor and the City Council to reinvigorate their discussion about what they are going to do.
My philosophy and the way I approach this is, I think that the community’s response needs to be related to what the problem in the community is. Once that problem has been identified, then you need to sculpt a response that’s based on the problem that you are experiencing. You’re going to have to be creative and you’re going to adapt what other people have done and make it your own.
Riverside's police department is engaging in its own crisis mental health intervention training, providing about 30 hours of training for most of its officers by December 2008.
Labels: City Hall blues, labor pains, Making the grade, public forums in all places
posted by Five Before Midnight | 1:06 PM
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