When past is prologue: The case of the missing officers
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever does."
---Margaret Mead
"The kind of humor I like is the thing that makes me laugh for five seconds and think for ten minutes."
---William Davis
“One person can make a difference and every person should try.”
---John F. Kennedy
"All the world's a stage,And all the men and women merely players."
---William Shakesphere
"Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down."
---Robert Frost
Turmoil between City Hall and the Riverside Police Officers’ Association has been the conversation all this week by different parties.
Budget cuts in the police department have led to a freeze on hiring police officers in the department and filling vacancies including those at the supervisory and management level. Several positions which were vacated or will be by retirements include one or more lieutenant positions, one or two sergeant positions and the deputy chief position that was vacated by the retirement of David Dominguez to take the chief’s spot in Palm Springs.
The budget situation and the decisions which have resulted from it have apparently also led to at least half of all “on call” detective positions being frozen. Among those listed as being impacted are detectives from the gang unit, property crimes and the sexual assault and child abuse unit. This would mean that if any of these crimes took place after hours, they would be handled by patrol officers who most often are the primary responders to thefts, rapes, child abuse and gang violence. However, what would happen is that if the detectives in these divisions couldn’t come out after hours, detectives who are already “on call” for divisions including the homicide and robbery division would be given the task to handle these crimes. But these detectives might be already busy handling crimes that they are "on call" for in units like homicide.
However, the most seriously impacted positions from this deep freeze could be the sergeants who work in the field operations division and the officers they would be supervising. Why? Because the department has since 2001 been adhering to specific officer to sergeant ratios in field operations. This was done to comply with one of the required reforms of the stipulated judgment imposed by former State Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
Lockyer was adamant about the serious problems caused by staffing shortages in the writ that he submitted in Riverside County Superior Court which charged the city and its police department with multiple violations of state law and its constitution. He was adamant about the problems created by having a lack of supervisors to oversee the actions of rank and file officers or who were assigned to supervise too many of them on one or more shifts.
He understood the reality of having to make difficult decisions including those involving personnel in the police department during fiscally difficult times brought upon the city through recessions and other economic crises. However, he also understood that once the city began slashing positions, those positions often weren’t restored even during years when the fiscal budget picture was much more rosy. That was the past but is it now prologue?
And he was right to be concerned. Quite a few people are concerned right now.
Look at what is happening seven years and more than $22 million later and only two years after the department's biggest bargaining chip for maintaining the growth of its staffing levels was gone. The city has come full circle with having to make decisions about freezing supervisory positions. When Lt. Ken Carpenter, who runs the traffic division, retires as anticipated, he won’t be replaced and it’s not clear whether he’s the only lieutenant retiring or whether there are others. Two sergeants in field operations are also due to retire or have retired and at least one of those positions won’t be filled. Actually, maybe two won’t be filled, but the fate of the second position is not known as of yet and remains the center of a fair amount of confusion and perhaps at this point, indecision.
Why is this chain of events playing out potentially very bad news for the department and the city?
Pick up a copy of the department’s strategic plan or peruse the lawsuit, The People of the State of California v the City of Riverside filed in 2001 and you’ll find out why. It’s mentioned certainly in the lawsuit so many times throughout, you’d have to be asleep to miss it. On second hand, maybe some city employees getting paid high salaries have slept through it. After all, how long did it take Hudson to drop the ball on carrying out the 7-0 wishes of the city council on how to implement and monitor the strategic plan during the spring, summer and into the autumn of 2006? How long did it take the city council to get their direct employee back on track?
According to page 22 of the Strategic Plan 2004-2009, the mandate under the stipulated judgment was to “maintain a 7 to 1 officer to supervisor ratio”. During a workshop conducted by the city council in March 2006, the body voted to maintain implementation of most of the terms of the stipulated judgment even after its dissolution several weeks before the workshop. In fact, the mention of it in the Strategic Plan is that this reform is “ongoing”. This is very important because it was the failure of the city and department to properly staff the department with officers especially supervisors during fiscally difficult times which bred the conditions which led to the department being investigated by multiple outside agencies at the county, state and federal level.
Because several vacant or soon to be vacant sergeant positions have been frozen by the city, the ability to maintain this critical ratio may be in trouble. From what people have been saying at the very least, it might be close to being in trouble. Too close for a city and department that have had to go through such an arduous and expensive process to be at. Would we be this close if this city actually had leadership both on the dais and in the city manager's office who actually remembered what it was like to be in a position of being under a consent decree due in part to these problems? Do any of them remember what it was like when these problems were endemic in the department?
Obviously not. And maybe this situation is simply beyond their scope.
Do any of them even want to take one step back into that era? Because a major concern by those who are following this situation is how much they don't want to go back to those days. That in itself is a sign of progress.
But the sergeants aren't the only supervisors who might be feeling the squeeze.
Also, at issue is the impact of the freezing of anywhere from one to three lieutenant positions depending on how many of them retire besides Carpenter and whether or not these freezes will impact the ability of the department to deliver on this component of the stipulated judgment which is that the majority of the shifts, there should be a lieutenant working as watch commander. In cases where sergeants are assigned to that position, then it should be only for a portion of the shift or at least there should be a lieutenant on call.
According to documents from 2003-2005, the department had a more difficult time fulfilling this mandate than it did maintaining the 7 to 1 supervisor ratio but it was still successful a majority of the time although during the department's audit by a hired consultant earlier this year, it was noted that the percentage of shifts where there was a sergeant watch commander was slowly increasing. Will that continue with fewer lieutenants in the department? The department and city needs to address this issue as well as that involving the other hiring freezes.
The police chief and the city manager's office need to respond to this situation and how it's going to be handled and the city council needs to provide a public forum to do so. At least two city council members, Mike Gardner and Andrew Melendrez have expressed concern over the situation but it's not clear whether or not the rest of them are even paying attention. Too much of the debate is going on behind closed doors at City Hall and too much of the battle over the implementation of the components of the stipulated judgment which remain is taking place off stage.
It's time to bring the public into the loop because ultimately it's also the public that will be impacted by these decisions.
The Eastside Neighborhood Plan was discussed at Longfellow Elementary School in the Eastside and attended by about 30 residents, along with city employees and elected officials.
Mayor Ron Loveridge dropped by the meeting and greeted the audience. He said usually the city focused on two neighborhood plans a year but this year, only the Eastside would be the focus.
“This is not an idle exercise,” Loveridge said.
Ward Two Councilman Andrew Melendrez said that the process had the mayor’s full support and that this meeting was just the beginning.
“This is going to be an exciting evening,” Melendrez said.
Residents gave their suggestions for what they wanted to see and the list grew long fairly quickly. Affordable housing, more local businesses, gang intervention programs, well-maintained streets, creative arts programs and other things were on the wish list.
Strong points in the Eastside included the cultural and racial diversity, the close proximity to public transportation and the number of parks.
But what went unmentioned for the most part except by one resident was the impact that other long-range plans like that unveiled by the University of California, Riverside would have on the Eastside’s future. Given that many Eastside residents feel that the downtown is expanding from one direction and UCR is coming from the other, leaving them smack in the middle as they call it.
The next meeting will take place on July 17.
Meanwhile, in downtown, the police department transferred the area commander, Lt. Chuck Griffitts out of that assignment and replaced him with Lt. Vic Williams who spent the past several years as a watch commander.
Returning to town after three months spent at the FBI Academy, was Lt. Larry Gonzalez who is the East Neighborhood Area commander. He attended the Eastside Neighborhood Plan meeting where residents greeted him after his sabbatical.
Being denied an expansion permit by Riverside's planning commission was Carlos O'Brien, after a police detective appeared at the hearing.
Press Enterprise Columnist Dan Bernstein says, bye, bye DHL.
(excerpt)
DHL, the wounded duck of domestic air freight, will most likely flap its way out of March Air Reserve Base (one international flight excluded).
But Snapple will be bottled and distributed at the old George AFB in Victorville. And MoVal could be the Empire's next colony of warehouses.
It is the unwritten Law of Hubdom: They come and they go. Hubs are not forever.
DHL's sleep-deprived relationship with the Empire was tension city from the start. But Snapple promises to be an excellent fit, especially now that the Debtinator has declared a statewide drought.
While not zipping along, the trials in Riverside County's court system are proceeding more quickly than anticipated under the new guidelines.
Columnist Cassie MacDuff of the Press Enterprise asks what effect will Prop. 99 that was passed by voters have on San Bernardino's attempts to move forward with vacating 82 acres of its city to build a lake?
Sandra Hutchens is now the Orange County sheriff after being sworn in office.
As gas prices rise, more and more people are relying on public transit including Metrolink and the Metro Red Subway lines in Los Angeles. The trends seen in Southern California match those seen elsewhere in the country as gas prices reached the $4/gallon mark on average and are approaching the $5 mark in this state.
In Los Angeles, there will be Metrolink, Amtrak, the Blue, Red, Green, Gold and Purple light rail lines, three bus companies and Greyhound.
In Riverside, there's Metrolink, Amtrak Connection service, the RTA and soon, Adams-Shuttle Service-for-Stranded-Greyhound-passengers.
Two Barstow Police Department officers filed lawsuits alleging retaliation in the workplace.
Also getting sued are two Liberty Borough police officers who sexually harassed a female high school student.
Friends of Marcial Cax-Puluc, the Guatemalan man who was fatally shot by Dekalb County Sheriff's Department Deputy Derrick Yancey have said they won't rest until his innocence is proven, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Several weeks ago, Yancey while off-duty shot Cax-Puluc because he said that the man had shot and killed his wife, Linda. However, suspicion has clouded the double murders given that Yancey had been arrested several times in past years for assault including an incident where he had allegedly brandished a gun and chased his son threatening to shoot him.
So there's been some speaking out as the shootings remain under investigation by the tight-lipped police department.
(excerpt)
"We know they killed an innocent guy who was just trying to get some money to help his mama in Guatemala," Perez said.
Yancey could not be reached for comment Tuesday. No one answered phone calls to his Stone Mountain home.
Roommates at the Stone Mountain-area apartment complex where Cax-Puluc lived described him as a "timid" teenager who didn't speak much. "He was a quiet kid. He didn't smoke. He didn't drink," Jose Perez said.
"He was just getting used to us," said another roommate Luis Perez, 30.
Atlanta's police chief has said that three of his employees should be fired for covering up the child pornography crimes of another employee.
The California Public Utilities Commission will hold a public hearing to talk about the electric rates in western Riverside County.
(excerpt, Press Enterprise)
While taking no position on the proposed rate increase, the Western Riverside Council of Governments hopes to focus attention on its push to change the baseline electricity allowance for local customers.
The baseline is the amount of power needed to meet 50 to 60 percent of the energy needs for the average household. Power is cheapest at the baseline level. Customers are charged more if they exceed their baseline amounts.
Representing 14 cities and Riverside County, the council argues western Riverside's baseline is unfair because the region is grouped with coastal communities, which have cooler summers and warmer winters.
As a result, the coastal areas use less power than this region, so Riverside County customers easily exceed their baseline allowance, the council maintains.
Friday, June 20 at 7 p.m. at the County Administrative Building on Lemon Street.
Visitors to this blog have included the following:
City of Riverside
County of Riverside
California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer
United Nations
Loma Linda University Medical Center
University of California, Riverside
Davis Design (Ontario, Canada)
Old Sixth Ward Community
Edelman PR
MD Consult, LLC
CJ-CABLENET (South Korea)
University of Toronto
Tel Aviv University Network (Israel)
Northeastern Illinois University
FEDEX INTERNATIONAL TRANSMISSION
Medical Research Council (Head Office)) (United Kingdom)
Advantica Restaurant Group
Rock Creek Corporation
Classic SleepCare LLC
Alexander & Alexander Information Technology
Telenor Business Solutions AS (Norway)
New York Institute Of Technology
Top Six Countries by visits:
United States
United Kingdom
Canada
Australia
Germany
France
Top three continents (out of six visited):
North America
Europe
Asia
Top five languages:
English
Korean
German
Turkish
Spanish
---Margaret Mead
"The kind of humor I like is the thing that makes me laugh for five seconds and think for ten minutes."
---William Davis
“One person can make a difference and every person should try.”
---John F. Kennedy
"All the world's a stage,And all the men and women merely players."
---William Shakesphere
"Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down."
---Robert Frost
Turmoil between City Hall and the Riverside Police Officers’ Association has been the conversation all this week by different parties.
Budget cuts in the police department have led to a freeze on hiring police officers in the department and filling vacancies including those at the supervisory and management level. Several positions which were vacated or will be by retirements include one or more lieutenant positions, one or two sergeant positions and the deputy chief position that was vacated by the retirement of David Dominguez to take the chief’s spot in Palm Springs.
The budget situation and the decisions which have resulted from it have apparently also led to at least half of all “on call” detective positions being frozen. Among those listed as being impacted are detectives from the gang unit, property crimes and the sexual assault and child abuse unit. This would mean that if any of these crimes took place after hours, they would be handled by patrol officers who most often are the primary responders to thefts, rapes, child abuse and gang violence. However, what would happen is that if the detectives in these divisions couldn’t come out after hours, detectives who are already “on call” for divisions including the homicide and robbery division would be given the task to handle these crimes. But these detectives might be already busy handling crimes that they are "on call" for in units like homicide.
However, the most seriously impacted positions from this deep freeze could be the sergeants who work in the field operations division and the officers they would be supervising. Why? Because the department has since 2001 been adhering to specific officer to sergeant ratios in field operations. This was done to comply with one of the required reforms of the stipulated judgment imposed by former State Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
Lockyer was adamant about the serious problems caused by staffing shortages in the writ that he submitted in Riverside County Superior Court which charged the city and its police department with multiple violations of state law and its constitution. He was adamant about the problems created by having a lack of supervisors to oversee the actions of rank and file officers or who were assigned to supervise too many of them on one or more shifts.
He understood the reality of having to make difficult decisions including those involving personnel in the police department during fiscally difficult times brought upon the city through recessions and other economic crises. However, he also understood that once the city began slashing positions, those positions often weren’t restored even during years when the fiscal budget picture was much more rosy. That was the past but is it now prologue?
And he was right to be concerned. Quite a few people are concerned right now.
Look at what is happening seven years and more than $22 million later and only two years after the department's biggest bargaining chip for maintaining the growth of its staffing levels was gone. The city has come full circle with having to make decisions about freezing supervisory positions. When Lt. Ken Carpenter, who runs the traffic division, retires as anticipated, he won’t be replaced and it’s not clear whether he’s the only lieutenant retiring or whether there are others. Two sergeants in field operations are also due to retire or have retired and at least one of those positions won’t be filled. Actually, maybe two won’t be filled, but the fate of the second position is not known as of yet and remains the center of a fair amount of confusion and perhaps at this point, indecision.
Why is this chain of events playing out potentially very bad news for the department and the city?
Pick up a copy of the department’s strategic plan or peruse the lawsuit, The People of the State of California v the City of Riverside filed in 2001 and you’ll find out why. It’s mentioned certainly in the lawsuit so many times throughout, you’d have to be asleep to miss it. On second hand, maybe some city employees getting paid high salaries have slept through it. After all, how long did it take Hudson to drop the ball on carrying out the 7-0 wishes of the city council on how to implement and monitor the strategic plan during the spring, summer and into the autumn of 2006? How long did it take the city council to get their direct employee back on track?
According to page 22 of the Strategic Plan 2004-2009, the mandate under the stipulated judgment was to “maintain a 7 to 1 officer to supervisor ratio”. During a workshop conducted by the city council in March 2006, the body voted to maintain implementation of most of the terms of the stipulated judgment even after its dissolution several weeks before the workshop. In fact, the mention of it in the Strategic Plan is that this reform is “ongoing”. This is very important because it was the failure of the city and department to properly staff the department with officers especially supervisors during fiscally difficult times which bred the conditions which led to the department being investigated by multiple outside agencies at the county, state and federal level.
Because several vacant or soon to be vacant sergeant positions have been frozen by the city, the ability to maintain this critical ratio may be in trouble. From what people have been saying at the very least, it might be close to being in trouble. Too close for a city and department that have had to go through such an arduous and expensive process to be at. Would we be this close if this city actually had leadership both on the dais and in the city manager's office who actually remembered what it was like to be in a position of being under a consent decree due in part to these problems? Do any of them remember what it was like when these problems were endemic in the department?
Obviously not. And maybe this situation is simply beyond their scope.
Do any of them even want to take one step back into that era? Because a major concern by those who are following this situation is how much they don't want to go back to those days. That in itself is a sign of progress.
But the sergeants aren't the only supervisors who might be feeling the squeeze.
Also, at issue is the impact of the freezing of anywhere from one to three lieutenant positions depending on how many of them retire besides Carpenter and whether or not these freezes will impact the ability of the department to deliver on this component of the stipulated judgment which is that the majority of the shifts, there should be a lieutenant working as watch commander. In cases where sergeants are assigned to that position, then it should be only for a portion of the shift or at least there should be a lieutenant on call.
According to documents from 2003-2005, the department had a more difficult time fulfilling this mandate than it did maintaining the 7 to 1 supervisor ratio but it was still successful a majority of the time although during the department's audit by a hired consultant earlier this year, it was noted that the percentage of shifts where there was a sergeant watch commander was slowly increasing. Will that continue with fewer lieutenants in the department? The department and city needs to address this issue as well as that involving the other hiring freezes.
The police chief and the city manager's office need to respond to this situation and how it's going to be handled and the city council needs to provide a public forum to do so. At least two city council members, Mike Gardner and Andrew Melendrez have expressed concern over the situation but it's not clear whether or not the rest of them are even paying attention. Too much of the debate is going on behind closed doors at City Hall and too much of the battle over the implementation of the components of the stipulated judgment which remain is taking place off stage.
It's time to bring the public into the loop because ultimately it's also the public that will be impacted by these decisions.
The Eastside Neighborhood Plan was discussed at Longfellow Elementary School in the Eastside and attended by about 30 residents, along with city employees and elected officials.
Mayor Ron Loveridge dropped by the meeting and greeted the audience. He said usually the city focused on two neighborhood plans a year but this year, only the Eastside would be the focus.
“This is not an idle exercise,” Loveridge said.
Ward Two Councilman Andrew Melendrez said that the process had the mayor’s full support and that this meeting was just the beginning.
“This is going to be an exciting evening,” Melendrez said.
Residents gave their suggestions for what they wanted to see and the list grew long fairly quickly. Affordable housing, more local businesses, gang intervention programs, well-maintained streets, creative arts programs and other things were on the wish list.
Strong points in the Eastside included the cultural and racial diversity, the close proximity to public transportation and the number of parks.
But what went unmentioned for the most part except by one resident was the impact that other long-range plans like that unveiled by the University of California, Riverside would have on the Eastside’s future. Given that many Eastside residents feel that the downtown is expanding from one direction and UCR is coming from the other, leaving them smack in the middle as they call it.
The next meeting will take place on July 17.
Meanwhile, in downtown, the police department transferred the area commander, Lt. Chuck Griffitts out of that assignment and replaced him with Lt. Vic Williams who spent the past several years as a watch commander.
Returning to town after three months spent at the FBI Academy, was Lt. Larry Gonzalez who is the East Neighborhood Area commander. He attended the Eastside Neighborhood Plan meeting where residents greeted him after his sabbatical.
Being denied an expansion permit by Riverside's planning commission was Carlos O'Brien, after a police detective appeared at the hearing.
Press Enterprise Columnist Dan Bernstein says, bye, bye DHL.
(excerpt)
DHL, the wounded duck of domestic air freight, will most likely flap its way out of March Air Reserve Base (one international flight excluded).
But Snapple will be bottled and distributed at the old George AFB in Victorville. And MoVal could be the Empire's next colony of warehouses.
It is the unwritten Law of Hubdom: They come and they go. Hubs are not forever.
DHL's sleep-deprived relationship with the Empire was tension city from the start. But Snapple promises to be an excellent fit, especially now that the Debtinator has declared a statewide drought.
While not zipping along, the trials in Riverside County's court system are proceeding more quickly than anticipated under the new guidelines.
Columnist Cassie MacDuff of the Press Enterprise asks what effect will Prop. 99 that was passed by voters have on San Bernardino's attempts to move forward with vacating 82 acres of its city to build a lake?
Sandra Hutchens is now the Orange County sheriff after being sworn in office.
As gas prices rise, more and more people are relying on public transit including Metrolink and the Metro Red Subway lines in Los Angeles. The trends seen in Southern California match those seen elsewhere in the country as gas prices reached the $4/gallon mark on average and are approaching the $5 mark in this state.
In Los Angeles, there will be Metrolink, Amtrak, the Blue, Red, Green, Gold and Purple light rail lines, three bus companies and Greyhound.
In Riverside, there's Metrolink, Amtrak Connection service, the RTA and soon, Adams-Shuttle Service-for-Stranded-Greyhound-passengers.
Two Barstow Police Department officers filed lawsuits alleging retaliation in the workplace.
Also getting sued are two Liberty Borough police officers who sexually harassed a female high school student.
Friends of Marcial Cax-Puluc, the Guatemalan man who was fatally shot by Dekalb County Sheriff's Department Deputy Derrick Yancey have said they won't rest until his innocence is proven, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Several weeks ago, Yancey while off-duty shot Cax-Puluc because he said that the man had shot and killed his wife, Linda. However, suspicion has clouded the double murders given that Yancey had been arrested several times in past years for assault including an incident where he had allegedly brandished a gun and chased his son threatening to shoot him.
So there's been some speaking out as the shootings remain under investigation by the tight-lipped police department.
(excerpt)
"We know they killed an innocent guy who was just trying to get some money to help his mama in Guatemala," Perez said.
Yancey could not be reached for comment Tuesday. No one answered phone calls to his Stone Mountain home.
Roommates at the Stone Mountain-area apartment complex where Cax-Puluc lived described him as a "timid" teenager who didn't speak much. "He was a quiet kid. He didn't smoke. He didn't drink," Jose Perez said.
"He was just getting used to us," said another roommate Luis Perez, 30.
Atlanta's police chief has said that three of his employees should be fired for covering up the child pornography crimes of another employee.
The California Public Utilities Commission will hold a public hearing to talk about the electric rates in western Riverside County.
(excerpt, Press Enterprise)
While taking no position on the proposed rate increase, the Western Riverside Council of Governments hopes to focus attention on its push to change the baseline electricity allowance for local customers.
The baseline is the amount of power needed to meet 50 to 60 percent of the energy needs for the average household. Power is cheapest at the baseline level. Customers are charged more if they exceed their baseline amounts.
Representing 14 cities and Riverside County, the council argues western Riverside's baseline is unfair because the region is grouped with coastal communities, which have cooler summers and warmer winters.
As a result, the coastal areas use less power than this region, so Riverside County customers easily exceed their baseline allowance, the council maintains.
Friday, June 20 at 7 p.m. at the County Administrative Building on Lemon Street.
Visitors to this blog have included the following:
City of Riverside
County of Riverside
California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer
United Nations
Loma Linda University Medical Center
University of California, Riverside
Davis Design (Ontario, Canada)
Old Sixth Ward Community
Edelman PR
MD Consult, LLC
CJ-CABLENET (South Korea)
University of Toronto
Tel Aviv University Network (Israel)
Northeastern Illinois University
FEDEX INTERNATIONAL TRANSMISSION
Medical Research Council (Head Office)) (United Kingdom)
Advantica Restaurant Group
Rock Creek Corporation
Classic SleepCare LLC
Alexander & Alexander Information Technology
Telenor Business Solutions AS (Norway)
New York Institute Of Technology
Top Six Countries by visits:
United States
United Kingdom
Canada
Australia
Germany
France
Top three continents (out of six visited):
North America
Europe
Asia
Top five languages:
English
Korean
German
Turkish
Spanish
Labels: Budget 2008 Watch, consent decrees and other adventures, judicial watch, labor pains, officer-involved shootings, public forums in all places, What is past is prologue
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