Just another City Hall evacuation day

Riverside City Hall had one of its regular unscheduled fire alarm drills caused by all the construction, this time allegedly on the second floor. So everyone in the 'Hall had to leave and walk off enmasse to a communal gathering at White Park before heading back to City Hall, navigating the labyrinth caused by the ripped up pedestrian mall to crowd the elevators going back up again. This exercise to be repeated in its entirety again, as more dust from more construction creates problems with the smoke alarm service.

The evacuation of City Hall left many city residents who had come downtown to do their business confused and with no idea what was happening.


Soon after, the city council announced that the Redevelopment Agency had purchased the Discount Liquor Store on University Avenue in the Eastside, an action supported by nearby residents. Other Riversiders were urging the Riverside Unified School District not to close Grant Elementary School which is located downtown.

Some district officials say it's not economical to keep the school open while other individuals say that the Board of Education's administrative offices has its eyes on the property for expansion. As for the space that will exist after the demolition of the liquor store? Expect it to cater to another business or two that appeals not to Eastside residents including those who live close to the liquor store, but to the students at UCR down the street. Because after all that's what gentrification's all about and as I heard about three city employees and/or elected officials say yesterday, University is the "gateway" neighborhood connecting UCR with downtown. There wasn't any mention of the Eastside in that scenario nor was there any room for it.

Today, a liquor store which was the epicenter of neighborhood crime was on the list of "undesirables". Soon enough, it will be the neighbors who complained about it themselves because that's how gentrification works. After all, when UCR unveils its long-range development plan to meet up some day with the downtown, there will only be pockets of what used to be called the Eastside left. You hear a lot of the same sentiment and often the same language used by employees and elected officials at City Hall, in that the University corridor is a "gateway" to the downtown. It's only reference to the Eastside that's ever used by any of these folks is when talking about the crime.

When there's crime on University and there is, it's always paired up with the Eastside neighborhood even though the street stretches through at least three neighborhoods recognized by City Hall. When it comes to talking about the positive elements of University, then it's a conduit, a gateway between the two jewels of Riverside, the main university and downtown, with nary a mention of the Eastside.

The city's always had a strange relationship with this predominantly Black and Latino community that goes a ways back probably to the time it was first settled by the city's founding Black families and Mexican laborers who worked in the citrus groves back when the city still had some. Today, there are pockets of those same groves which began to dwindle down even before the city began its love affair with titles.

City of the Oranges.

City of the Trees (but apparently not citrus trees)

City of the Arts (because the trees themselves are nearly all gone as is the annual festival which celebrated them)


And the latest on one of the mayor's pamphlets:


City of the Awards (not to be mistaken for the City of Modest Politicians and nary a tree in sight)


It's hard not to see the parallels between the disappearing citrus groves and the Eastside because if the powers-that-be in this city and those at UCR have their way, the Eastside itself will be a pocket neighborhood here and there just as the groves are in smaller and smaller pockets in the city on their way to extinction.

Still, it's interesting to hear politicians discuss the Eastside.

While teaching political science at UCR, Mayor Ron Loveridge used to teach a course to students on how they would handle the Eastside. Yet several times in recent years, the Highlander newspaper from UCR has interviewed students there who have made derogatory and even racist comments about the neighborhood to their west. But then they also have made comments which express an extraordinary amount of entitlement towards the University neighborhood with many saying that the neighbors who object to their partying loudly until the wee hours of the morning shouldn't, because after all it's a college student's right and rite to party. This *right* leads to at least 400 "loud music" calls to the police every year. Yet although the university student population is a proven drain on police services, there's been no crack down on rental properties in their neighborhoods nor has there been much said about addressing one of the largest populations in the city of underage drinkers. Perhaps on a neighborhood level, but not on a city-wide level.

Still it was interesting listening to Brad Hudson, the city manager, wax on about how closing a liquor store would free up police resources to better serve the city without discussing or even mentioning that the problem that's draining the police department is inadequate staffing of officers in a city that's growing faster than its public safety departments. Perhaps Hudson's waiting for the budget hearings later this year to have that discussion.

Will the university students lay a similar claim to the Eastside? There were discussions to put the medical school smack in the middle of the Eastside, along with rumors that fraternity (and sorority) rows would be relocated smack in the middle of the Eastside. When the city decided to turn a cluster of rental properties into its own home owner association in the Linden Square area, there was talk by a consultant hired all the way from Tennessee to landlords on how to rent to appropriate people which caused a stir in the Eastside when it became clear what population that was and it became clear that this plan by the city wasn't to improve living conditions for Eastside residents living in the rental complexes and homes, but to pave the pathway for university student housing.

It's interesting watching the progression of businesses up University from the University Village, which apparently is not a strip mall but actually "UCR West Campus" as is stenciled on the back of its buildings aligning the freeway. Jobs that the builders and the city had promised would be available for Eastside residents including young people were retracted and denied. Eastside residents are routinely profiled at the Village and in fact when one former restaurant held a poetry night, Eastside residents were denied admission. Discounts including at the movie theater are given to university students but not Eastside residents and families.

This is interesting because when the Village was being designed and built, the city argued that it was there to serve both populations, the university population and the Eastside working class population. Oh if only that were true. But the transformation of University Avenue on that end has been interesting.

Mexican restaurants are being replaced by sushi bars and other Asian restaurants. While the Eastside has a large Latino population, UCR's student population is over 40% Asian and Asian-American. Gone will be most of the liquor stores and the motels which have been strongly associated with the Eastside and not either downtown or the university when in actuality, they were marketed towards not only university students (and their parents who stayed in the motels while visiting) but also the long-since-closed auto raceway which was located where the dying Fredrick Town Center in Moreno Valley stands today.

Denny's restaurant which has served as a convenient scapegoat for the crime in the Village and surrounding areas (when it has more to do with the nightclubs in the area and the Village's proximity to them) is apparently facing pressure to cut down its hours of operation.


The Eastside is a neighborhood whose neighbors have won awards for work they've done there given to them by a beaming city council all the wiser.


It's a neighborhood where people who have demeaned it through words have also won awards for good service given to them by a beaming city council none the wiser.


It's a neighborhood with one overcrowded elementary school, no high school (because North High School isn't located in the Eastside) and a lot of busing of students to other schools in the city.


The liquor store won't be greatly missed. There are too many of them in poorer neighborhoods. But the step taken further into gentrification isn't as easily missed.

More on this to come because gentrification is after all, a slow process.




Other actions taken by local governments in Riverside County that held meetings on Tuesday night are here including those of the Riverside City Council at another blink-and-it's-over weekly meeting. Good for Sire's Restaurant no doubt, but good for city residents?

Making an appearance at the afternoon session was a returning Asst. Chief John De La Rosa, who has recovered from an illness that put him on the sidelines for about two months.




Banning wood burning fireplace use to alleviate smog is one brewing controversy according to one local columnist. Less controversy on whether California really has seasons or not.




The Los Angeles Police Department plans to equip all of its squad cars with digital video cameras.




(excerpt, KTLA-TV)



In-car cameras were recommended by the Christopher Commission, which investigated the LAPD following the 1991 beating of Rodney King. The panel found that in addition to investigative benefits, the cameras could save money on court costs, litigation and officer misconduct claims.

The cameras will also satisfy a requirement within the federal Consent Decree that was agreed to by the city in the wake of a scandal involving misconduct by anti-gang officers in the Rampart Division.

"We know how much and how important it is to have transparency in our police department. It is important for our officers. It is important for the public," police Commissioner Andrea Ordin told the Public Safety Committee.

"The use of in-car video is going to be an excellent tool and one which is extraordinary persuasive to the (consent decree) monitor and to the judge," she said.





Actually, purchasing the cameras suddenly received a lot of attention in Los Angeles after it became clear that the department was struggling mightily with implementing several key reforms in the consent decree including the development and implementation of an early-warning system. In 2006, a federal judge refused to dissolve the consent decree because this and other key reforms had not been implemented let alone in place and working for the two years that was required before they could each be considered satisfactorily completed. The earliest the LAPD can be released from the consent decree is June 2009 and it's not clear whether that will happen or whether the decree will be bifurcated as was the case in the city of Pittsburgh several years ago.

Meanwhile in Riverside, the city council had voted to allocate $500,000 from the city's general fund to outfit its entire fleet of patrol cars with cameras in early 2006 but as of now, the cars remain unequipped, minus the 13 cars which were equipped with cameras during the period of the city's stipulated judgment with the state attorney general's office.

The latest completion time period thrown out by City Hall for the camera installation was around April this year. Will the city meet this deadline? Will the RPD beat the LAPD? Will the city manager's office stop dancing around this issue? All this remains to be seen.






But the LAPD has other serious problems. More of its officers die at their own hands than at the hands of others, according to the Los Angeles Times.

In the past 10 years, 19 officers in the LAPD killed themselves compared to seven who were killed by other people on the job. Strangely, these deaths have drawn very little attention much less than they should. But the stigma of suicide remains a strong one obviously.



The other memorial wall.



Resources for police suicide are here and here.






In Austin, an audit of public safety provided a list of recommendations including that the department improve its communication and that the city strengthen its form of civilian oversight.



(excerpt, KVUE-TV)




Among the key recommendations, the auditor's office concluded that the Austin Police Department should, among other things, improve coordination, cooperation and communications within its own organization, with other police groups and with external stakeholders.

The audit also found that the city's police oversight functions would be strengthened by providing the Police Monitor's Office with better access to APD data and by providing the Citizen Review Panel with adequate training and preparation prior to reviewing cases.

"There's not anything in it that we're not happy with -- it's about the recommendation itself," said David Carter, first assistant, APD chief of staff. "You say, 'Hey the way they've recommended it, the structure of the department or the way to respond to certain areas makes perfect sense, and then there's some areas that they say may have a little bit of a problem maybe we should tweak it.' Well, maybe these are some things the officers and police association and ourselves and agreed and have maybe gone in a slightly different direction in terms of the reorganization. It doesn't mean were not happy with that recommendation, it just means we've chosen a different route to get to the objective."








The San Jose Mercury News Editorial Board urged more transparency in police investigations and discipline in the wake of the tragedy involving two cyclists who were struck and killed by a deputy in Santa Clara County.




(excerpt)




SB 1019, sponsored by Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, would undo some of the court's damage by re-establishing the laws and the policies of individual police departments that Copley overturned.

For the county sheriff's office, that means internal investigations would remain confidential. But peace officers who appeal disciplinary actions to the county personnel board would have public hearings. If they choose the alternative of binding arbitration, the arbitrator would determine whether the public would have access.

SB 1019 was passed by the Senate last year but is facing heavy opposition by law enforcement, including the California State Sheriff's Association, which Smith leads as president. The bicyclists' deaths should cause her to rethink the group's position.

Council is suspected of having fallen asleep at the wheel. But the facts aren't known, and the initial handling of the investigation raised questions of objectivity. The sheriff violated a protocol that requires prompt notification of the district attorney's office when an officer's action may have caused death. Council reportedly was advised not to talk to witnesses and was driven from the scene to a sheriff's substation.

Accountability to the public demands impartial investigations, fair and thorough disciplinary proceedings, and public disclosure of what officers have done and how they were dealt with. Passing SB 1019 would be a small, first step toward rebuilding confidence in a state where secrecy around police conduct is pervasive. Local law enforcement officials, mindful of the need for public trust, should support it.





Corruption 101. Otherwise known as the sad history of Adelanto.



(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)




Tom Thornburg was appointed mayor in 1994 despite having served a year in prison on federal drug smuggling charges.

Former Police Chief Philip Genaway was sentenced to four years in prison in 1997 for stealing $10,000 from the department's canine unit. Two other officers were jailed for beating a handcuffed suspect and forcing another to lick his blood from the floor. Another officer was convicted of child molestation.

In 1996, the mayor and two council members were recalled after promoting a gold-mining operation in town that would have used deadly cyanide in the leaching process. Cuban-born Zoila Meyer, a City Council member, resigned last year because she wasn't an American citizen. She pleaded no contest to voter fraud.

When Tristan Pelayes became mayor in 2000, he said several council members pulled him into a room and told him that although he was the mayor, they ran the town.

"I was highly offended by that," said Pelayes, a lawyer and former San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy. "I thought at first it was a normal city, but then I realized I got a corrupt council and a corrupt Police Department. Once I began learning more about the town, I was amazed. The first thing I did was disband the Police Department."

It was an ugly fight, and Pelayes said he was targeted with death threats and recall petitions. One police officer, he said, tailed him around town.

Scarpa opposed getting rid of the police.

"I think our old police force did an adequate job," she said. "We didn't have any problems. Well, we had some problems, but not many."




One of Sean Bell's friends testified that someone had threatened Bell with a gun not long before he was shot at by New York City Police Department officers including four who are currently on trial.






Former Bolingbrook Police Department Sgt. Drew Peterson is speaking out on well, just about anything but his two wives, one who's missing and one who's death has been reclassified a homicide.



(excerpt, Chicago Sun-Times)



Peterson retained Florida-based publicist Glenn Selig, but he insisted Selig wasn't pulling the strings as far as recent changes in his behavior or grooming. Peterson was sporting longer hair and a beard before getting shorn a couple weeks ago.

"It's just me being me," he said. "It just didn't work, with all the gray."

He's toned down his comments in recent interviews, Peterson said, in part because he realized many people didn't understand his sense of humor.

"All of a sudden you're thrown into the middle of a circus. Humor was my defense mechanism," he said. "I was scared to death. I'm still scared. But it's my world now."