Budget 2008: Community policing in the Inland Empire

San Bernardino is trying to fix its budget in the face of a deficit but is having problems doing so. Where to cut, the powers-that-be at City Hall have asked themselves. It's an oft-asked question in probably every city government in the Inland Empire right now, but San Bernardino's elected officials are left to make some painful decisions like all the others.



(excerpt, Press Enterprise)



Proposals to make up for plummeting tax revenues and cut costs range from selling some portions of city refuse services, to closing City Hall one day a week, to axing the Police Department's contract helicopter service.

Mayor Pat Morris' crime-fighting Operation Phoenix also faces scrutiny.

Chief of Staff Jim Morris said City Manager Fred Wilson has predicted a $15 million gap next fiscal year. Morris said he expects a shortfall of at least $12 million.

One way to save money, City Councilwoman Wendy McCammack said, would be cutting a helicopter contract that Morris persuaded the council to approve in June 2006. The contract is worth $628,000, according to city figures.

McCammack said the contract is "a duplication of services." As a condition of the federal grants underwriting the sheriff's aviation program, the county offers its helicopter teams to city governments gratis. Backers say the contract flights include more service.

Councilman Neil Derry said he's willing to consider selling parts of the city trash service to raise money.




These steps may sound shocking but there's nothing there that the city government in Riverside hadn't promised or threatened to do in previous years. Riverside has privatized a portion of its trash collection by entering into contracts with different companies, most recently Burrtec Waste Industries as well as privatizing services in other city departments including Park and Recreation. Burrtec actually offered San Bernardino's City Hall $9 million to do trash collection but the city nayed the offer citing past problems regarding the trash collection service's ability to honor contracts with the city.

Riverside's police department also told the city council members who served on the finance committee several years back that it might have to eliminate or severely cut back its aviation division. Some people believed that the department heads were using the helicopters as a bargaining chip to avoid or minimize cuts to public safety but if that was indeed the case, it worked and that division maintained a lot of its budget though in the past few years, its budget was trimmed.

Will it work for San Bernardino? As far as chess pieces go, you could do worse than a department's aviation division. Helicopters are popular among elected officials and not long after the police department in Riverside threatened to make cuts in its division, the city council members began to protest led by then Councilman Art Gage, who spoke about how much he loved the helicopters flying over the city keeping it safe.

Yet, they were still bargaining chips dropped on the table during a budget process held at a finance committee meeting that Gage had chaired, during a process which at times more closely resembled a high-stakes poker game than a budget workshop. The helicopters were held out with an offer which was to take it or leave it.

The city took it.

The situation in San Bernardino will probably play out not much differently and needless to stay, the helicopters will stay in San Berardino. Valued yet not valued enough to be taken off the table.

Also facing cuts in San Bernardino during a time when the city was hoping to expand its scope is Operation Phoenix, the city's strategy to address gang violence in parts of the city. Envisioned by Mayor Patrick Morris, the program includes creating new police positions in the department as well as invest in gang intervention and prevention programs. Is it all for naught if the city cuts Operation Phoenix? Is this going to be a case of save a penny, spend a pound?

In Riverside, Project Bridge, the city's own gang intervention program, faced similar problems including during the fiscal year when the department told the finance committee that it would have to cut its aviation division. The city council quickly backed off from making cuts in the police department and moved onto the next subject. But Project Bridge was bounced between the police department and Park and Recreation until it finally was placed under the umbrella of the latter city department. The budget of this program had been at barely life-support level for several years especially when the grant money started drying up, as the focus on agencies providing such funding was on homeland security rather than gang prevention and community policing.

Just earlier this year, the city applied for a $500,000 matching funds Cal GRIP grant and was notified that it wasn't receiving any funding. The city was planning to use any grant funding to expand Project Bridge's scope.

But what of community policing, which was the darling just a few years back?


Is community policing in danger in Riverside as well due to budget cuts? This year, the police department removed its lieutenant who was in charge of "community services" on its Organization Chart and consolidated his position with that involving the lieutenant assigned to oversee a large portion of the department's special operations division including the Police and Corrections Team and the K-9 unit. Two lieutenants were then placed in the field operations division to provide what was called, administrative support. It's not clear what these changes has to do with the future of community policing in Riverside including its evolution from being program-based to philosophy-based. Hopefully, it will become more clear after the dust settles from this year's budget process.



So what will the answer be to the question of whether or not Riverside's City Hall really supports community policing? The answer to that question could come within the next several months as Riverside's government and its department heads get ready to release their annual budgets where cuts are anticipated before the ink is even ready to be used let alone has dried. Time and the city's budget process in the next several months will indeed tell.

Both here and over there, in San Bernardino, where a phoenix can't apparently rise out of the ashes without having its wings clipped.




Speaking of cutting budgets, the Riverside Unified School District's plans to possibly close the doors of Grant Elementary School are being discussed here.





Speaking of cuts, that's not what's happening with the incessant backlogs in both the civil and criminal trials in Riverside County's court system. The Press Enterprise Editorial Board once again takes the parties in the system to task.



(excerpt)



District Attorney Rod Pacheco says criminal cases take precedence over every other matter, but a panel of Orange County judges last year ruled that Riverside County judges could keep criminal trials out of the probate and other courts. Pacheco appealed that ruling, which now faces review by the 4th District Court of Appeal.

But expanding the dominance of criminal trials at the expense of all other types of cases is the wrong strategy for Riverside County. Other California counties face heavy caseloads and similar crime rates, yet manage to dispense civil and criminal justice without creating a huge backlog of pending cases. Surely Pacheco and Riverside County could do the same.

Last month, Riverside County courts instituted procedures that handle new cases more efficiently -- a plan crafted after months of work by judges, attorneys and others. That approach offers true progress, instead of an expedient that delays justice for all noncriminal matters while avoiding real solutions.



Is Riverside County's court system the only one in the country that faces a shortage of judges? It's not even the only county in the Inland Empire that does. However, it would be interesting to see if in other counties in this country, civil judges are trying criminal trials and civil trials are taking place in closed elementary schools.







The federal trial date for former Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona has been postponed.




The New York City Police Department was already having surrounding law enforcement agencies use its officers as a recruitment pool. Now Seattle Police Department is doing the same.


(excerpt, New York Daily News)



Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has blamed the department's starting salary for hurting recruitment. The pay scale was imposed by an arbitration panel in 2005 after the city and police union couldn't reach a deal. Kelly also must cut the police force by 1,000 cops because of looming budget shortfalls - resulting in the smallest department in 16 years.

"There's a long history of other departments hoping to recruit the Finest - and the Finest are at the NYPD," Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne said. Browne said the NYPD's "low starting salary remains a problem, no question about it."




An officer in St. Louis has been charged for pulling a gun on a parking attendant while off-duty. However, he was only charged with a misdemeanor because it's against the law to charge a law enforcement officer with a felony in Missouri.






Oak Brook Police Department Officer Steven Peterson is being disciplined for wearing his uniform and driving his squad car to a grand jury appearance.


Peterson's father is Drew Peterson, the former Bolingbrook Police Department sergeant who's the focus of a probe into his wife, Stacy's disappearance and the homicide of his third wife, Kathleen Savio.