Election 2008: Night, night for DHL?
Will DHL be ending its fly-by-nights at March Air Field? That's the buzz that's been going around since it was announced thousands of miles away from ground zero for sleepless nights, in Germany that DHL might be handing off much of its domestic haul to rival, UPS.
However, so far UPS has denied that it will be handling freight that normally is flown out from March, in the wee hours of the morning, six flights nightly during six days each week. Still, reaction already has shown that the residents of four neighborhoods in Riverside who've been trying to sleep for several years now are hopeful that their nightmare might be ending soon.
(excerpt, Press Enterprise)
Riverside County Supervisor Bob Buster, a member of the March Joint Powers Commission, said there would be a "day of rejoicing" if DHL pulls its operations out of March.
Since the regional distribution hub opened in October 2005, Riverside-area neighborhoods have been plagued by early morning noise from DHL airplanes leaving March.
Buster was the only commissioner to oppose a zoning change that paved the way for DHL. At the time, he cited unanswered questions about the noise impacts.
Orangecrest homeowner Theresa Birkett said she was elated by the announcement. Birkett is among several-hundred area residents opposed to the project because of nighttime noise.
Birkett said she and her neighbors have talked about moving away from their neighborhood, but the permanent departure of DHL could change their minds.
"This would make me totally happy. It would make a lot of people totally happy," she said.
Many of these residents showed up in force at the city council chambers and listened to a song and dance, first by power point and later by speeches about a resolution and the city's position that it would file litigation against DHL if necessary. However, it's unlikely that the city has any grounds to do so. Not that it told any of the people who packed the city council chambers last night. The devil is of course in the details.
After hearing the news that DHL has asked UPS to handle its domestic freight, it spread across the city.
Press Enterprise Columnist Dan Bernstein provides his take on the DHL, GlobalPort and March JPC triangle here.
(excerpt)
The March Joint Powerless Commission just can't seem to mute DHL, the wee-hours growler that just can't seem to make money.
When you have base reuse that treats civilians like base refuse, nerves will fray.
So it was Tuesday that a horde of zombies poured into the Riverside Council Chambers and collectively shrieked, "We haven't slept for years!"
Golly.
The council was only trying to call election-eve attention to a problem that has existed since 2005 when thousands of Riversiders were sold a BOG (bill of goods) about DHL flight paths.
The City Council was so steamed it voted to threaten to sue Yellow Bellow if it tries to expand without muting the noise.
All this may have been orchestrated to boost the fortunes of Councilman Frank Schiavone, who chairs the Joint Powerless Commission and yearns to unseat RivCo Supe Bob Buster on Tuesday. Darned zombies stole the headlines.
It was interesting watching the perfectly staged production at City Hall on Tuesday night, right down to handpicking nine speakers from the crowd to lay the foundation of support for the resolution and the two men who approached it. Well, almost all the speakers. One woman snatched some extra seconds from Mayor Ron Loveridge (who's also got reelection ambitions) and said that it was three years late, receiving the loudest applause of the evening.
This latest news could generate the loudest applause of all and it has nothing to do with opportunistic politicians, incompetent commissions, duplicitous airport management companies, sleepless residents and the DHL, which refused to be what it never has been, but simple economics.
Some statistics:
(excerpt, Press Enterprise)
Contract with UPS: 10 years, $1 billion
Jobs lost: 1,500-1,800
Projected revenue losses for U.S. operations(2008): $1.3 billion ($900 million in 2007)
The fate of the seven March Air Field based DHL night flights: Unknown
As stated earlier, the restaurant at City Hall apparently has opened, but few people visited it Tuesday evening. Two who sat at tables there were Capt. Mark Boyer and Lt. Bob Williams from the Riverside Police Department waiting until the city council wrapped up the DHL issue so they could vote on the consent calendar. Boyer and Williams were there prepared to answer any questions that the city council members might have about a grant for the department's investigation division and it seemed like a good investment.
The council approved it, albeit much later in the evening than would have happened in recent weeks.
Two California State Polytechnic University in Pomona professors explained why voters should reject both Prop. 98 and 99. The two ballot initiatives address the issue of the use of eminent domain in the wake of the Kelo decision, but the consensus of the two professors is that the residents deserve better.
An analysis of the advertisements for both propositions is here.
The recent outbreak of police misconduct incidents in Philadelphia which has led to at about 18 officers being under investigation or in some cases facing criminal charges has led to questions being asked nationwide on whether it's possible to fire police officers any longer.
Washington, D.C.'s own police department was just required to take over a dozen of its fired and reinstated officers back just in the past month, after losing in arbitration and civil court.
(excerpt, Philadelphia Inquirer)
The appeals process over police discipline in Philadelphia and someother U.S. cities tends to favor censured officers, criminologists andcivil-rights lawyers say.The police unions often have more experienced labor lawyers than citylaw departments, they say. Witnesses and evidence dry up as theappeals drag on for years.
And arbitrators who judge the cases oftentry "to split the baby," in the words of one criminologist.
"In a termination case, that means the officer's usually coming back to the department," said criminologist Sam Walker of the University ofNebraska, who studies police accountability. "That is a seriousnational problem."
That includes inside the Riverside Police Department which fired three officers in 2005 who had them contested in the arbitration process. Two of three of them who were fired were reinstated and the city council voted first to appeal and then several weeks later to reinstate those two. The third officer's firing was upheld by the arbitrator and that individual remained fired.
It's hard to take the arbitration process in California seriously after the firing and reinstatement of former (or current?) Det. Al Kennedy. Kennedy if you recall, was fired by Chief Russ Leach for having sex with a woman whose rape case he was investigating. Appalling behavior, even from the standing of the arbitrator who gave Kennedy his job back, minus several years of back pay.
When the behavior alleged by Kennedy was sustained, his supervising captain recommended that Kennedy receive a reprimand, while the deputy chief at the time recommended a suspension. Leach fired him, the decision that was ultimately overturned. Of course, this sends the message that if you engage in sexual misconduct including in a division where that type of behavior and its revelation can have a devastating impact on the integrity of that unit, it doesn't matter because if someone tries to fire you for it, you can get a retirement instead.
Never mind if those that work in the Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Division should know even better perhaps of how inappropriate this conduct is and how it can impact the ability of rape victims to view the Riverside Police Department as an agency they can access for assistance as crime victims. And if you're a woman and it happens to you, then rather than hold the officer accountable, the department or city will paint you as the villainess especially if you file a lawsuit against it. At least until it settles the lawsuit and pays you money without accepting any responsibility.
This woman was painted in a negative way, she did file a law suit in federal court and the city ultimately settled with her for a sum of money. The city government and city manager's office continue to tell the communities how independent the police chief is, how he's the one running the police department. Yet, he did the right thing with Kennedy and where did his support come from?
Not from the city government.
In Riverside, the police chief has three main responsibilities. Those three major responsibilities which are often cited are to hire, promote and discipline including firing. How many of three powers does the police chief have in this city? Does he enjoy any of these powers or a combination of any of them?
What was learned from the March 2007 rally about concerns voiced that the city manager's office was involving itself in promotional decisions at the management level? Not much really, just a lot of concern and a lot of questions. Many more of them being fueled by news that two lieutenants have filed a claim against the city alleging that politics is playing a role in the position that both applied for.
Hopefully, these questions will be answered at trial in the future, through the testimonies of all the parties involved.
Not that a police chief should have absolute power and there needs to be checks and balances, but the problem with the arbitration system that's been often cited is that most of those who make decisions on cases are more familiar with the operations of private corporations not public agencies and tend to apply the same standards from the former to the latter. At any rate, there was one statistic released a while back stating that about 85% of all cases submitted to arbitration had their departments' actions and decisions overturned.
But back to Kennedy's case.
The city made a lot of noise of how important it was to appeal this reinstatement, but according to court documents, the city asked its appeal to be dismissed by the appellate court in August 2006.
Why?
Because the city settled the case with Kennedy on July 21, 2006. It probably paid him off with a retirement which meant that the city settled lawsuits filed by both Kennedy and the woman to put this distasteful chapter behind it. Because sexual misconduct inside a law enforcement agency, even inside the investigative division that's set up to investigate rape and other sexual assault crimes probably doesn't matter much in the end. For all the public knows, it might not matter at all. Especially if there was anyone in the command staff that thought it could be addressed through a written reprimand. It kind of makes you wonder.
Even a three year suspension doesn't cut it. And it's not really fair to those in the Sexual Assault Division and others in the department who act professionally and don't look at women they are supposed to be helping as objects to use for sexual gratification and don't get paid off.
Speaking of the Riverside Police Department, it's hired five women from the academy and one of them graduated second in her class. That's exciting and it's a great example of recruiting, but before anyone can start jumping up and down, you have to factor in the department's deplorable retention rate for women. Why it's been that way in the police department is a mystery given how insulated police culture is in most agencies, although the problems aren't unique to law enforcement in general. It's not clear if the Riverside Police Department has specific problems with how it deals with its female officers or other female employees and volunteers.
It's "old guard" to reject women, to say they are "too slow", they don't "meet standards" (unless that's true) and it's sexist to say as a gender, they are these things or that you don't want to work with female officers or they can never be as good as their male counterparts. The Riverside Police Department has some outstanding female officers. And I hear some explanations from the department's management and others that you can't count female officers who drop off early on in the process as part of the department's retention rate for women.
Bull shit.
Of course you can and you should if you are truly interested in finding out if there are any problems at any level of the police department involving the retention of women. Even the female (and male) officers who drop out early on have cost the city and thus its residents considerable dollars. Perhaps it might help to treat each individual as an investment, not an entity to weed out (which has been made clear through some references in public meetings to the department's pre-academy program).
You look at every single level that officers go through (and in this department, there's quite a few of them, including phases put in to increase retention rates in other phases of an officer's development into a Riverside Police Department officer. Other law enforcement departments do these things and some of them do implement steps to address these issues.
You do these things as soon as female officers are as much a priority as male officers in a police department. And as soon as this happens, the thing that need to be done to determine what their working environment is and how to improve it will be done as a matter of course. To be the "best of the best" (an oft-heard slogan), you have to treat your female officers as well as your male officers as if they are the best of the best.
The department has shown the country what it can do when it puts its mind to launching innovative training (such as the crisis mental health training which was presented to the Community Police Review Commission yesterday) to address community issues in policing so it would be useful to see some of this energy being directed towards addressing the department's poor retention rate of its female officers.
What's with the Community Police Review Commission these days? For two meetings straight, they've had no chair or vice-chair to run the meeting. Next in line, John Brandriff is a good acting chair, but between the officers not being able to make meetings and meetings barely making quorum lately there are some problems that need to be addressed for a commission that has been limping along for two years now.
And by the way, how many meetings has Commissioner Peter Hubbard missed lately? I'm beginning to forget what he even looks like.
The battle over civilian review in Galveston Texas has begun after the Galveston Municipal Police Association has launched its bid to investigate a council member.
(excerpt, Galveston Daily News)
The association will publicize whatever it finds, Bertolino said.
“If Tarris Woods is going to be a rogue council member and anti-police, it wouldn’t take a whole lot to do a recall election,” Bertolino said.
Woods won his District 1 seat in the May 10 election with 99 votes to challenger Deborah Conrad’s 78 votes.
Under city code, 10 percent of District 1 voters would have to sign a petition requesting a recall before such a measure could be put on the ballot.
But Woods is immune from recall for 90 days after taking office.
However, so far UPS has denied that it will be handling freight that normally is flown out from March, in the wee hours of the morning, six flights nightly during six days each week. Still, reaction already has shown that the residents of four neighborhoods in Riverside who've been trying to sleep for several years now are hopeful that their nightmare might be ending soon.
(excerpt, Press Enterprise)
Riverside County Supervisor Bob Buster, a member of the March Joint Powers Commission, said there would be a "day of rejoicing" if DHL pulls its operations out of March.
Since the regional distribution hub opened in October 2005, Riverside-area neighborhoods have been plagued by early morning noise from DHL airplanes leaving March.
Buster was the only commissioner to oppose a zoning change that paved the way for DHL. At the time, he cited unanswered questions about the noise impacts.
Orangecrest homeowner Theresa Birkett said she was elated by the announcement. Birkett is among several-hundred area residents opposed to the project because of nighttime noise.
Birkett said she and her neighbors have talked about moving away from their neighborhood, but the permanent departure of DHL could change their minds.
"This would make me totally happy. It would make a lot of people totally happy," she said.
Many of these residents showed up in force at the city council chambers and listened to a song and dance, first by power point and later by speeches about a resolution and the city's position that it would file litigation against DHL if necessary. However, it's unlikely that the city has any grounds to do so. Not that it told any of the people who packed the city council chambers last night. The devil is of course in the details.
After hearing the news that DHL has asked UPS to handle its domestic freight, it spread across the city.
Press Enterprise Columnist Dan Bernstein provides his take on the DHL, GlobalPort and March JPC triangle here.
(excerpt)
The March Joint Powerless Commission just can't seem to mute DHL, the wee-hours growler that just can't seem to make money.
When you have base reuse that treats civilians like base refuse, nerves will fray.
So it was Tuesday that a horde of zombies poured into the Riverside Council Chambers and collectively shrieked, "We haven't slept for years!"
Golly.
The council was only trying to call election-eve attention to a problem that has existed since 2005 when thousands of Riversiders were sold a BOG (bill of goods) about DHL flight paths.
The City Council was so steamed it voted to threaten to sue Yellow Bellow if it tries to expand without muting the noise.
All this may have been orchestrated to boost the fortunes of Councilman Frank Schiavone, who chairs the Joint Powerless Commission and yearns to unseat RivCo Supe Bob Buster on Tuesday. Darned zombies stole the headlines.
It was interesting watching the perfectly staged production at City Hall on Tuesday night, right down to handpicking nine speakers from the crowd to lay the foundation of support for the resolution and the two men who approached it. Well, almost all the speakers. One woman snatched some extra seconds from Mayor Ron Loveridge (who's also got reelection ambitions) and said that it was three years late, receiving the loudest applause of the evening.
This latest news could generate the loudest applause of all and it has nothing to do with opportunistic politicians, incompetent commissions, duplicitous airport management companies, sleepless residents and the DHL, which refused to be what it never has been, but simple economics.
Some statistics:
(excerpt, Press Enterprise)
Contract with UPS: 10 years, $1 billion
Jobs lost: 1,500-1,800
Projected revenue losses for U.S. operations(2008): $1.3 billion ($900 million in 2007)
The fate of the seven March Air Field based DHL night flights: Unknown
As stated earlier, the restaurant at City Hall apparently has opened, but few people visited it Tuesday evening. Two who sat at tables there were Capt. Mark Boyer and Lt. Bob Williams from the Riverside Police Department waiting until the city council wrapped up the DHL issue so they could vote on the consent calendar. Boyer and Williams were there prepared to answer any questions that the city council members might have about a grant for the department's investigation division and it seemed like a good investment.
The council approved it, albeit much later in the evening than would have happened in recent weeks.
Two California State Polytechnic University in Pomona professors explained why voters should reject both Prop. 98 and 99. The two ballot initiatives address the issue of the use of eminent domain in the wake of the Kelo decision, but the consensus of the two professors is that the residents deserve better.
An analysis of the advertisements for both propositions is here.
The recent outbreak of police misconduct incidents in Philadelphia which has led to at about 18 officers being under investigation or in some cases facing criminal charges has led to questions being asked nationwide on whether it's possible to fire police officers any longer.
Washington, D.C.'s own police department was just required to take over a dozen of its fired and reinstated officers back just in the past month, after losing in arbitration and civil court.
(excerpt, Philadelphia Inquirer)
The appeals process over police discipline in Philadelphia and someother U.S. cities tends to favor censured officers, criminologists andcivil-rights lawyers say.The police unions often have more experienced labor lawyers than citylaw departments, they say. Witnesses and evidence dry up as theappeals drag on for years.
And arbitrators who judge the cases oftentry "to split the baby," in the words of one criminologist.
"In a termination case, that means the officer's usually coming back to the department," said criminologist Sam Walker of the University ofNebraska, who studies police accountability. "That is a seriousnational problem."
That includes inside the Riverside Police Department which fired three officers in 2005 who had them contested in the arbitration process. Two of three of them who were fired were reinstated and the city council voted first to appeal and then several weeks later to reinstate those two. The third officer's firing was upheld by the arbitrator and that individual remained fired.
It's hard to take the arbitration process in California seriously after the firing and reinstatement of former (or current?) Det. Al Kennedy. Kennedy if you recall, was fired by Chief Russ Leach for having sex with a woman whose rape case he was investigating. Appalling behavior, even from the standing of the arbitrator who gave Kennedy his job back, minus several years of back pay.
When the behavior alleged by Kennedy was sustained, his supervising captain recommended that Kennedy receive a reprimand, while the deputy chief at the time recommended a suspension. Leach fired him, the decision that was ultimately overturned. Of course, this sends the message that if you engage in sexual misconduct including in a division where that type of behavior and its revelation can have a devastating impact on the integrity of that unit, it doesn't matter because if someone tries to fire you for it, you can get a retirement instead.
Never mind if those that work in the Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Division should know even better perhaps of how inappropriate this conduct is and how it can impact the ability of rape victims to view the Riverside Police Department as an agency they can access for assistance as crime victims. And if you're a woman and it happens to you, then rather than hold the officer accountable, the department or city will paint you as the villainess especially if you file a lawsuit against it. At least until it settles the lawsuit and pays you money without accepting any responsibility.
This woman was painted in a negative way, she did file a law suit in federal court and the city ultimately settled with her for a sum of money. The city government and city manager's office continue to tell the communities how independent the police chief is, how he's the one running the police department. Yet, he did the right thing with Kennedy and where did his support come from?
Not from the city government.
In Riverside, the police chief has three main responsibilities. Those three major responsibilities which are often cited are to hire, promote and discipline including firing. How many of three powers does the police chief have in this city? Does he enjoy any of these powers or a combination of any of them?
What was learned from the March 2007 rally about concerns voiced that the city manager's office was involving itself in promotional decisions at the management level? Not much really, just a lot of concern and a lot of questions. Many more of them being fueled by news that two lieutenants have filed a claim against the city alleging that politics is playing a role in the position that both applied for.
Hopefully, these questions will be answered at trial in the future, through the testimonies of all the parties involved.
Not that a police chief should have absolute power and there needs to be checks and balances, but the problem with the arbitration system that's been often cited is that most of those who make decisions on cases are more familiar with the operations of private corporations not public agencies and tend to apply the same standards from the former to the latter. At any rate, there was one statistic released a while back stating that about 85% of all cases submitted to arbitration had their departments' actions and decisions overturned.
But back to Kennedy's case.
The city made a lot of noise of how important it was to appeal this reinstatement, but according to court documents, the city asked its appeal to be dismissed by the appellate court in August 2006.
Why?
Because the city settled the case with Kennedy on July 21, 2006. It probably paid him off with a retirement which meant that the city settled lawsuits filed by both Kennedy and the woman to put this distasteful chapter behind it. Because sexual misconduct inside a law enforcement agency, even inside the investigative division that's set up to investigate rape and other sexual assault crimes probably doesn't matter much in the end. For all the public knows, it might not matter at all. Especially if there was anyone in the command staff that thought it could be addressed through a written reprimand. It kind of makes you wonder.
Even a three year suspension doesn't cut it. And it's not really fair to those in the Sexual Assault Division and others in the department who act professionally and don't look at women they are supposed to be helping as objects to use for sexual gratification and don't get paid off.
Speaking of the Riverside Police Department, it's hired five women from the academy and one of them graduated second in her class. That's exciting and it's a great example of recruiting, but before anyone can start jumping up and down, you have to factor in the department's deplorable retention rate for women. Why it's been that way in the police department is a mystery given how insulated police culture is in most agencies, although the problems aren't unique to law enforcement in general. It's not clear if the Riverside Police Department has specific problems with how it deals with its female officers or other female employees and volunteers.
It's "old guard" to reject women, to say they are "too slow", they don't "meet standards" (unless that's true) and it's sexist to say as a gender, they are these things or that you don't want to work with female officers or they can never be as good as their male counterparts. The Riverside Police Department has some outstanding female officers. And I hear some explanations from the department's management and others that you can't count female officers who drop off early on in the process as part of the department's retention rate for women.
Bull shit.
Of course you can and you should if you are truly interested in finding out if there are any problems at any level of the police department involving the retention of women. Even the female (and male) officers who drop out early on have cost the city and thus its residents considerable dollars. Perhaps it might help to treat each individual as an investment, not an entity to weed out (which has been made clear through some references in public meetings to the department's pre-academy program).
You look at every single level that officers go through (and in this department, there's quite a few of them, including phases put in to increase retention rates in other phases of an officer's development into a Riverside Police Department officer. Other law enforcement departments do these things and some of them do implement steps to address these issues.
You do these things as soon as female officers are as much a priority as male officers in a police department. And as soon as this happens, the thing that need to be done to determine what their working environment is and how to improve it will be done as a matter of course. To be the "best of the best" (an oft-heard slogan), you have to treat your female officers as well as your male officers as if they are the best of the best.
The department has shown the country what it can do when it puts its mind to launching innovative training (such as the crisis mental health training which was presented to the Community Police Review Commission yesterday) to address community issues in policing so it would be useful to see some of this energy being directed towards addressing the department's poor retention rate of its female officers.
What's with the Community Police Review Commission these days? For two meetings straight, they've had no chair or vice-chair to run the meeting. Next in line, John Brandriff is a good acting chair, but between the officers not being able to make meetings and meetings barely making quorum lately there are some problems that need to be addressed for a commission that has been limping along for two years now.
And by the way, how many meetings has Commissioner Peter Hubbard missed lately? I'm beginning to forget what he even looks like.
The battle over civilian review in Galveston Texas has begun after the Galveston Municipal Police Association has launched its bid to investigate a council member.
(excerpt, Galveston Daily News)
The association will publicize whatever it finds, Bertolino said.
“If Tarris Woods is going to be a rogue council member and anti-police, it wouldn’t take a whole lot to do a recall election,” Bertolino said.
Woods won his District 1 seat in the May 10 election with 99 votes to challenger Deborah Conrad’s 78 votes.
Under city code, 10 percent of District 1 voters would have to sign a petition requesting a recall before such a measure could be put on the ballot.
But Woods is immune from recall for 90 days after taking office.
Labels: Backlash against civilian oversight, CPRC, Election 2008, labor pains, Making the grade, recruitment
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