TGIF: Politics and protests

"That was 39 shots, the last thing Kathryn Johnston heard. She died in the sanctity of her home."




---Atlanta Prosecutor Kellie Hill at the trial of former Atlanta Police Department Officer Arthur Testler who's being tried in connection to the fatal police shooting of Johnston, 92 in November 2006.




People have been asking me why I don't really attend city council meetings much anymore, including some of my critics. I simply explain to them that the last thing that the current city council wants to see in front of it are city residents and there are better thing to do on Tuesday nights than to sit and watch a governmental body go through the motions of discussing issues when it just appears that the public is missing out on most of what is actually going on. And given the diminished number of city council committee meetings this year and last, it's becoming more clear that the decisions might not be made at this level either and that the city council meetings are pretty much put on for show.

Are the decisions made as rumored at local restaurants, the Sire's Bar and Grill coming most quickly to mind? Probably not, because after all, that might not only be illegal if the Brown Act is violated but it's not ethical and it's not indicative of favoring a transparent democratic system of government. Besides, they don't have to be. The city council appears to have handed off its workload to City Manager (and aspiring future CEO of the county) Brad Hudson and his staff. Don't pay any attention to the man behind the curtain.

The presentations are the only part of the meeting which really involves city residents and it's the only part of the meeting where participation can take place, albeit without being critical of course. The rest of the time several individuals on the dais would rather you go on home. One of those individuals has been boasting of "accomplishing" this through among other things the restrictions that have been placed on pulling items from the consent calendar meetings. Apparently, it's been the work of him along with another city council member to discourage people from attending particularly people who are critical of what the city's doing. But if you're taking credit for discouraging or restricting public comment from city residents, that's a pretty sad state of affairs.

Although in previous years, the consent calendar had bloated to an enormous size and contained many high-priced ticket items on it, in more recent months, the overall size of the city council agenda including the consent calendar has shrunk down to where most city council meetings are done by 8 p.m. and if you notice, it seems like the afternoon sessions are more and more often beginning later as well. There haven't been any old ladies escorted from the podium or barred from attending meetings lately, but maybe it's simply a quiet spell. The year's still young after all.


But outside the meetings, many people are talking about what happens at meetings that few people in the city even bother attending.


What's been the subject of many comments I've heard lately is how short city council meetings have become in recent weeks. People call them, the "blink-and-you'll-miss-them" meetings or the "sneeze-and-you'll-miss-them" meetings, well you get the picture. The city council sits down and then suddenly seems in a hurry to get on out of there. Which is perfectly fine because another topic that's beginning to be discussed is the next city council election cycle which kicks off next year. Candidates for Wards Four and Six have been floating around for a while, especially in the former district. And the mayor's race could shape up to be one of the most competitive and memorable in years, if the much-discussed contenders all file their running papers.

The anti-incumbent sentiment which defined last year's elections most likely will continue right into the next cycle and there's more attention being paid to this cycle than to what's being said on the dais. It could be the biggest and fastest turnover of the city council since the earlier years of this century. At least that appears to be how it's shaping up, with a mere 10 months before the epic challenges begin and those in the competitions file their forms with the city clerk's office, formally tossing their hats in the ring.

There's some exciting names coming up who are interested in representing the fourth ward on the dais and expect a packed race whether or not Schiavone runs for reelection or not. Who they are and why they're interested will be discussed in upcoming months. So fasten your seat belt, because Election 2009 could top its counterpart from 2007 especially if the city council continues in its current direction, cutting city service budgets while flooding Riverside Renaissance projects with money.

The one thing that Riverside Renaissance hasn't done is get politicians reelected.

And of course, the more competitive and more contentious the elections are, the more likely that the items on the wish lists of city residents can almost compete with those on wish lists of out of county developers and business firms which have pretty much redefined the motto, "shop Riverside" otherwise known as having the tourists shop here while the elected body which is taking great pride in telling the to shop locally, shops around outside the county and even the state (including in Arizona) for businesses to carry out the construction on the city's Riverside Renaissance projects.

With that said, prepare your "wish lists" now to be ready for the upcoming cycle if you are a mere city resident.


The antics of this current elected people have turned people away from attending its meetings as hoped by several sitting on the dais, but have provided popcorn moments for people watching at home in between discussions of next year's elections. And as usual, it's always interesting to see what's happening in Riverside in comparison to our sister cities up and down the Inland Empire. Starting with Colton.

As politically dysfunctional as Colton's elected body is, at least it took measures to better itself including how it conducted itself at weekly meetings. Colton as you know, hired an etiquette consultant which did many things including sitting in and taking notes during public meetings. What was funny about that situation is how the behaviors the consultant saw as contributing to the "dysfunction" of the city government were the same behaviors that many people have witnessed from several city council members on Riverside's very own dais of power. But while the Colton's city officials are more than a bit sheepish at being called on their own mannerisms, the city council members in Riverside seem to take great pride in the same behavior.



When I witnessed one council member gesturing to Mayor Ron Loveridge by making a slashing motion with his hand, the kind you make when you want someone to shut off by symbolically cutting off their head to cut off a city resident during public comment, it became even more clear to me how disinterested some elected officials have become during their tenures in office to listen to their constituents, even as others pay attention or do what the consultant in Colton recommended, adopted a "poker face" when listening to praise or criticism from the podium.



The "poker face" is something that several city council members have yet to master to mask their indifference or their disinterest. Now, the eye roll is perfectly performed, as are the pursed lips, the grunting, the grimacing, the sighing, the inter-council conversations, the sinking into the chairs, all behavior that was observed by the consultant hired to fix up Colton's dais behavior in elected officials there.



But the allegations aren't just from those who speak at the podium in city council meetings.



In March, two lieutenants from the Riverside Police Department filed a claim for damages with the city alleging that their political involvement in their labor unions was being used against them by the city manager's office as well as two sitting city council members. According to the allegations, one officer was told to distance himself from the two lieutenants or risk not getting promoted, by a city councilman. Another was told he wouldn't be promoted because he supported a political candidate who was opposing an incumbent city councilman during an election. If the police chief is supposed to be the one who is in charge of the promotions of his officers, why all the commentary about this person or that person getting a promotion depending on whether or not they supported either politicians or their positions?

It was like something out of that action-packed political commentary disguised as entertainment, City Hall, the film not the reality. But in Riverside, is it possible to get promoted inside a city department if you're politically involved or you are critical of the current power structure? Let's hope so but as these episodes rack themselves up, it's difficult to know for sure.

That question has been asked now in legalese, and City Attorney Gregory Priamos has walked the well-worn path and spoken the oft-used words that there's no merit to the claim. Before you breathe that sigh of relief, you have to remember this. Priamos also made similar statements in response to the filing of five wrongful death lawsuits involving police officers in the past several years. And at least in three of the cases, the settlements totaled so far will approach $1.5 million by the time the signatures on the checks have dried.



Then there are allegations raised that City Manager Brad Hudson and his sidekick, Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis allegedly tried to get a list of the names of lieutenants from the Riverside Police Administrators' Association who voted in support of a lawsuit that was filed against the city in the summer of 2006. As for those who voted, the two men allegedly told them to "be careful". Of what, that part is not made clear but it sounds like there's an unsaid "or else" attached to it. Hopefully, if this claim goes to a lawsuit and the lawsuit goes to trial, these two men can better explain through their testimonies.

Allegations have also been raised that the city manager's office is trying to union bust the RPAA because in the past, it's shown intensive interest in converting some of the police department's management positions to serving "at will". At the will of whom, has never been really figured out, because the attempts to do this to three positions in the police department led to members of the RPAA and its sibling union, the Riverside Police Officers' Association rallying at City Hall.



But it's discomfiting, realizing that the police department might be facing the similar hands-on management by this office that other city departments have been facing. But like the other city departments, the employees of this agency have fallen into line, even as rumors of an expedited political hiring have spread during a time of alleged hiring freezes city-wide. The freezes of course, not counting the hiring of the county's laid off housing engineers and serious questions. Still, questions have been raised more than once now about who makes the decisions on upper management promotions and whether or not the city manager's office is running the police department and if so to what extent.

If that's true, that can explain some of the other things I've heard lately.

All of this is academic at this point until the issues raised receive an airing out through the court system. Questions that only a trial can answer do need to be answered.



So if you don't want to attend city council meetings, check out the flick Cloverfield instead which is chock filled with politics. It's a relatively low budget (clocking in at around $30 million) Godzilla meets the Blair Witch Project. Some people actually got motion sickness while watching the jerky camera angles when it was on the big screen. No such problems with the DVD.

It's kind of strange that someone would actually be filming themselves being chased by what looked like a marriage between a giant praying mantis and a bunny rabbit (and check out those fleas!) but film he does as he and his four friends go running around New York City on an ill-advised rescue mission, because the main hero is still upset that his girlfriend left the going away party with some guy.



There's a lot of unanswered questions by film's end so here is where you can find some of the answers, including whether or not some object was really falling out of the sky behind the ferris wheel at the end and if so, what it could possibly be.





Showing that once again the county's tax dollars are at work, the Riverside County District Attorney's office is still appealing that five dollar fine that one of its prosecutors received for being late to court.


(excerpt, Press Enterprise)



While acknowledging that the fine is part of an effort by the court to speed up the criminal calendar, District Attorney Rod Pacheco's office says Riverside County Superior Court Judge Helios J. Hernandez II isn't following the law.

Hernandez needs to recite each time why the fine is being imposed and formally hold the payer in contempt, Pacheco's office argues in a 47-page petition filed with the 4th District Court of Appeal in Riverside.

Neither happened, the district attorney's office claims, on April 17 when Deputy District Attorney Phillip Greenberg told Hernandez he had arrived in court at 8:35 a.m. for an 8:30 a.m. hearing.

"Any good reason why you weren't on time?" transcripts show Hernandez asked Greenberg.

"No good reason, your honor, I apologize," Greenberg answered.

"OK. You're fined $5. Pay it by next Friday at noon," Hernandez said.

Greenberg, in court, agreed.

"Last-day cases are very important to be here," Hernandez said.

Court records show Hernandez later that day fined the defense attorney in the same case an unrecorded amount for his lateness.




It's not clear who's paying for the defense attorney to contest the fine if he or she has chosen to do so.

No word whether or not Pacheco's office has added the uppity judge, Hernandez to its growing list of judges to paper. Not a humorous matter given the current backlog crisis.







The judge in Orange County ruled against former Sheriff Michael Carona in his corruption case again, this time in connection with files containing information about three of his associates turned prosecutory witnesses.










City officials in Philadelphia claim that race didn't play a role in the videotaped beating of three Black men by up to 15 police officers in that city.



(excerpt, CNN)


There's no excuse for that type of behavior, and we certainly want to take action," Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said.

Mayor Michael Nutter said he was "tremendously disappointed" by the officers' behavior and vowed to deal with the matter.

"The conduct was unacceptable," he said. "It did not live up to the professional standards we have set for the police department." Watch the officers pummel the men »

He added that the incident has "virtually nothing to do with race; it has to do with crime."

"This is about proper police conduct, regardless of the race or ethnicity of the individuals involved," Nutter said. "We are not satisfied with the activity; it does not matter what the race of any particular defendant is."



So basically what Nutter is saying that it was "crime" that led at least the dozen or so mostly White officers shown on videotape beating and kicking three men. Including the one officer who kicked one of the men in the head at least a dozen times, which in most police departments is a violation of the use of force policy unless an officer is in fear for his life. Yet with 14 officers there, why did one officer kick someone in the head so many times?



There had been a fatal shooting that evening but what was shown on videotape were officers who looked like they were in the midst of an out-of-control frenzy and with so many officers behaving that way in public, it makes you wonder what they're doing that's not so public.

If you read "Homicide Files" a series of articles written about the Philadelphia Police Department by two reporters from the Philadelphia Inquirer during the 1970s, you'll find several anonymous officers who provided similar defenses to the beatings that took place inside interrogation rooms. Of course what happened then, was that Mayor Frank Rizzo (who was a former police chief), the District Attorney's office and over a dozen police officers were sued by the United States Department of Justice for civil rights violations.


Still despite all this, on Thursday, the city pulled seven more officers off its streets. It will be interesting to find out where the supervisor was when all this happened.







Opening statements began in the trial of former Atlanta Police Department narcotics officer, Arthur Testler who's facing charges in connection with the 2006 fatal police shooting of Kathryn Johnston, 92. Two others had plead guilty to federal charges of civil rights violations.


Hill told jurors during opening statements that this was a case about "drugs, deceit, death and disgrace." Tesler is charged with violating his oath of office, lying in an official investigation and false imprisonment.

Narcotics investigators lied to a judge to get a no-knock search warrant for Johnston's home on Neal Street in northwest Atlanta after a drug dealer they had arrested told them that there was a kilo of cocaine in the house. The police officers told the judge they had bought drugs at the house.

The officers planted drugs in the basement of the house once they realized they had been misled and had killed an innocent woman.

A majority white jury will decide a case in which Tesler and two other officers accused in the case are white and Johnston was black. The case has fueled outrage and suspicion in the African-American community, and politicians and political organizers monitored the trial this morning.



Testler's attorneys argued that their client was there but of course had no idea what was going on.



(excerpt)


McKenney described a department in which lying to get search warrants and planting drugs were routine practices and fueled by arrest quotas demanded of the narcotics units— nine arrests a months and two search warrants per officer.

Tesler, a relatively new investigator and six-year veteran of the force, was not a part of the lies told to secure the warrant and was set up by his more experienced former partners, Gregg Junnier and J.R. Smith, McKenney said.

Both Smith and Junnier, who were facing the possibility of life in prison for Johnston's death, have entered into plea bargains and are expected to testify against Tesler.

"These were senior officers who were instructing the rookie," McKenney told jurors. "You will learn that 'insurance drugs' were kept by Junnier and Smith, basically throw-downs. If they searched a house and they didn't find drugs, they would plant drugs."



Narcotics officers often lied on warrants.


(excerpt, Atlantic Journal-Constitution)



Former Det. Gregg Junnier testified that detectives would tell judges that they had verified that their informants had actually bought cocaine from dealers by searching them for any drugs before the buy took place.



"I have never seen anyone searched before they go into the house — I've never seen that done — even though officers always swear to it.," Junnier said. "It's done that way in 90 percent of the warrants that are written."

Junnier was testifying in the trial of Atlanta Officer Arthur Tesler in Fulton County Superior Court.

Junnier, Tesler and former Officer Jason R. Smith secured a fraudulent warrant for a drug raid in 2006 that resulted in police killing Kathryn Johnston after breaking down her door of her home on northwest Atlanta in search of kilo of cocaine.

Drugs were found in the house but investigators later concluded they were planted after the three narcotics officers realized they had been fed bad information.

Junnier said he contended that the team needed to do an undcrcover buy at the Johnston house, which had been identified by a drug dealer they arrested earlier in the day, but their undercover informant couldn't get to the Neal Street house to make the purchase.

Smith swore out the warrant, which Junnier said he thought would protect him from retribution if the warrant was ever questioned. He said he refused to look at the warrant when Smith brought it out to him shortly before they met up with raid team.

"I pushed it away," he said. "I really didn't want anything to do with it. I felt it was tainted."








The day after over 250 people were arrested while protesting in New York City and Brooklyn, the Reverend Al Sharpton announced that more protests were to come.



(excerpt, New York Daily News)



The next protest is planned somewhere in New York City within seven to 10 days, said Charlie King, acting national director of Sharpton's National Action Network. He said no other details would be released until next week.

"Yesterday was the beginning of a long and sustained campaign of civil disobedience," King said.

Sharpton, two survivors of the shooting, the slain man's fiancee and more than 200 other demonstrators were arrested Wednesday after they blocked traffic at the Brooklyn Bridge, the Holland Tunnel and other major transportation arteries.





The United States Department of Justice has received evidence in the Sean Bell shooting case.


(excerpt, New York Daily News)




Supreme Court Justice Arthur Cooperman was asked for the evidence so the Justice Department could begin weighing if there are grounds to try the detectives on civil rights charges, the sources said.

Queens prosecutors were to meet this afternoon with Bell's parents and fiancee, Nicole Paultre Bell, to assure them they are cooperating with the feds "even though the trial is over," sources said.

While they are talking, staffers from the Queens district attorneys office will pick up a portable hard drive from the feds onto which the evidence will be downloaded.

The sitdown comes a day after the Bell family took part in a massive but peaceful demonstration aimed at pressuring the government to go after detectives Marc Cooper, Gescard Isnora and Michael Oliver.






Over 360 workers who were at the ruins of the World Trade Center after the 9-11 terrorist attacks have died since then including 80 from cancer.


(excerpt, New York Daily News)



"It's the tip of the iceberg," said David Worby, who is representing 10,000 workers - 600 with cancer - who say they got sick after working on rescue and recovery efforts.

"These statistics bear out how toxic that site was," Worby said.

Most of the deadly tumors were in the lungs and digestive system, according to the tally from the state's World Trade Center Responder Fatality Investigation Program.

Other deaths were traced to blood cancers and heart and circulatory diseases. Five ex-workers committed suicide, said Kitty Gelberg, who is tracking the deaths for the program.

Gelberg said she had not yet determined whether the number of cancer deaths was more or less than those typically occurring in men in their 20s to 50s who work as cops, firefighters or laborers - the majority of 9/11 workers.

"We are not saying all of these deaths are World Trade Center-related," Gelberg said. "Without the statistics, we are not making judgment."