Responses and reportaire to the Miller anniversary and blogger harassment

Over 150 people appeared at the Kansas Avenue Seventh Day Adventist Church to memorialize the 10th anniversary of the officer-involved shooting death of Tyisha Miller. About a dozen speakers from different parts of one of Riverside's most significant chapters spoke on where Riverside was 10 years ago and where it is today.



(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

"The ultimate issue of justice is with the community. Does it meet the criteria of our society as being just?" said Jack B. Clarke Jr., who headed the mayor's use-of-force panel after Miller's shooting.

The Riverside Coalition for Police Accountability, a community watchdog group borne of the Miller shooting, will meet Jan. 12 at 7 p.m. at the church, 4491 Kansas Ave., Riverside, to discuss the issue. Information is available on the group's Web site, http://www.rcpa.weebly.com./

Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge, who also spoke at the service, said the council's governmental affairs committee likely will take up the commission matter next month. He told those in attendance that the Police Department has made considerable progress since Miller's death.

The department under Chief Russ Leach has shown leadership and professionalism, Loveridge said. Changes include stronger supervision, increased training and better equipment, he added.

"We can do better. We will," Loveridge said.

For two years after Miller's death, there were no fatal police shootings, said Andy Roth, a civil rights attorney who represented the Miller family. Since then, however, there have been 15 officer-involved shootings, including three this fall, he said.

"Remember what we felt, joining our voices together, the protests, marching the streets," Roth told the crowd. "We can rededicate ourselves to fight police violence."

Afterward, people gathered near the 76 gas station on Central and Brockton for a candlelight vigil and prayer.




More comments about the Press Enterprise's 10th anniversary coverage of the Miller shooting, mostly from entities named "Crazy Horse" and "Shockwave", which I guess are not really their names, because the former individual is a major historical figure has been dead awhile. He's now been reenvisioned as a bigot just as an unknown individual who posted under "Serpico", an actual living figure here, was the antithesis of that person.


It's difficult to follow these conversations sometimes because of the format but this one's quite interesting as a bunch of people with aliases go back and forth on the issues as they often do on articles involving the Riverside Police Department.



This is "Shockwave" whose actually written some pretty interesting prose in the past on male officers being afraid to undress in front of other male officers in the locker room and about bubble bath and candles. Here, he fearlessly tackles a more serious topic with his usual syntax and accentuated punctuation. His love for putting a lot of words in quotation marks provides some elegance to his comments even as his overexuberance for exclamation points hasn't quite been tamed.


(excerpts)



november19...Just trying to make sense of your ignorant comment. First of all, facing a person armed with a firearm would make me "gun happy" too. Sounds like your a little jaded because maybe the police shot your dog. And I beg to differ, Riverside area law enforcement is top notch. It's a tough job dealing with "bottom of the barrel" members of the community, like yourself.




Grow up?? That officer should get a medal for saving a man's life! By that logic, I guess all of those LAPD officers involved in the North Hollywood bank robbery gun battle should be bannished from field duty for all the misses. Of course since your an expert now, you know that shooting at a paper target at the range vs. a real life situation is exactly the same, right?? Wow!,,you passed the "firearm requirement". Well heck, lets give "Raw Reality" a "Jr. G-man badge"!!





On the other side of the three rings, "Crazy Horse" joins in with among other things, the his list of people he doesn't like, cribbing off the name of a renowned American Indian leader to among other things express his paranoia that brown people are taking over the country led by some sort of secret plot by well known and respected community leader Mary Figueroa who by the way is a strong supporter of the police department. How can simply explaining the future reality of Riverside and California being a majority minority state be tied on with any form of "Mexican agenda"? Hopefully, he'll expound in future comments because it just sounds ridiculous.




First, Mary Figueroa should shut up now. What an irresponsible statement on her part. Second, I think she's got a Mexican agenda as evidenced by her frequent comments in public that in 20 years, Riverside will be overwhelmingly Mexican. She says it with a smirk.

And third, I don't care to hear anymore about some loser female gangster who acted like a fool and was shot by the police. Good riddance.






"Crazy Horse" moves around the different comment threads quite a bit. Here he discusses the importance of having a place to vent on the serious issues which impact the city's infrastructural political hierarchy.

He's absolutely right. It's good that he has some place to get it out of his system before he goes into the field.


(excerpt)



Having a presence in these article forums is the exact reason for their existence by the way. Better a presence here than by doing ignorant things like screaming in front of the D.A.'s office using little children from the neighborhood, or by walking onto the 91 Freeway like mental cases.








"Zisiskaos", the most imaginative and clever moniker of the group chimes in with a comment about an earlier comment. He comments on the lack of correct word usage by "November 19" for "their" and "there", which is useful to know, just as it might be to understand the correct usage of some other pronouns. He provides some helpful grammar information and in other posts, delicately and flawlessly implements the always difficult to master, ampersand.



November 19. I'm guessing that is the day you were born. November 19, 2008. I'm impressed that you can type at such an early age. When you graduate from grammer school, develop some common sense and learn the difference between the words "there" and "their", come back and leave an intelligent comment.






And what did "November 19" write? The following.



Riverside's police departments are all gun happy! They will shoot anything; if they think they will get away with it. Black, White, Mexican, but mostly they like to shoot dogs, then claim it was in defense of another cop but in reality they just wanted to shoot it. If you ask me they should be taught how to write an incident report without lying, and bring up there standards a little! Riverside sheriffs and police departments are the bottom of the barrel. Please no reply from cops Wife’s!


Obvious some of these individuals have met on earlier threads, it seems in a matter of speaking. Watching them interact is interesting.



The discussion continues, on all the articles posted on the Tyisha Miller 10th anniversary special section.








News came from Mayor Ron Loveridge that the Community Police Review Commission is headed off for discussion at the Governmental Affairs Committee chaired by its biggest foe, Councilman Frank Schiavone. There, it is expected to face further recommendations to weaken its power given that none of the three city council members serving on the committee support either the commission or the will of the city's voters to protect it from the very same political manipulation that it's currently facing now.

Governmental Affairs Committee meets on Wednesday, Jan. 7 at 3pm and hasn't announced its planned agenda yet. Several days ago, a lot of people received an education on exactly who and what in the city's leadership structure is beneficial to the CPRC and who's detrimental to its future. Just in time for an upcoming election year. It's expected that the draconian recommendations expected to be slipped out of this committee will be exactly that, designed to weaken the CPRC, the canary, to avoid addressing what's happening in the mine, the police department.




The page on "Another blogger harassed" set a page view record today and for this past week with 3,000 readers so far not counting feeds, including over 1,000 today and currently averaging 175 views per hour. These readers come from all around the world including six continents. The story of a woman who blogs on law enforcement related domestic violence and who has been threatened on the internet over it, has obviously struck a chord as it should.

More than a half a dozen other sites have picked up her story, some through this site. Hopefully, attention will spur Palm Beach County Sheriff's Department to do the right thing and initiate an investigation involving its deputy who came to his fourth law enforcement agency with a record no law enforcement officer should have and still remain in what's supposed to be an honorable profession. When you refuse to even initiate an investigation into any allegations of misconduct of your employees, you are simply showing that law enforcement again has very serious problems with self-investigation. That attitude as abhorrant as it is and because it's just that, is a good advertisement for civilian review mechanisms. This is why many members of the public want them in their cities and counties so they can be assured of an independent, thorough and objective investigation or at least review of their complaints.

Speaking of which, there were two press releases on openings in bodies involved in this process.







Complaints about Riverside's so-called Wi Fi abound especially in the last few weeks as it being totally unaccessible. It offers a free service and maybe you do get what you pay for but it's also intended in part to attract paying customers to the provider, AT&T.

I tried some test runs on the free service myself to test these allegations and I said, tried because even though I tested it at different points, different times of the day, it failed to connect pr to respond in any meaningful way every single time. Either it failed to connect to the internet from its server or lost its connection or it was so slow, the medium time for loading web pages was 7.5 minutes. During one test, the home page to log in had crashed as well.

Most popular error message? "The server at [IP address] is taking too long to respond."

Once, it failed to identify itself properly and was listed an unknown and on particular time, it kept saying it was accessible or had low connectivity. I had no desire to test the paid version as much of the time, it wasn't picked up as a wireless signal at all or it and the free version were apparently draining each other's signals.

Any attempt to click links for "customer service" or "contact AT&T" merely led to an error page saying the certificate for the site was invalid. Eek.


So after testing that complaint a few times, I found it to be sustained. The city's Wi Fi just might be a disaster in the making and anyone who invests in AT&T wireless service with their money is probably looking at some serious misery if their advertising version is any indication. And since the city installed its current Wi Fi equipment through a contract with a company that it no longer has on contract means that it can't as readily repair any problems that do arise.

It's primary purpose is for emergency public safety use and it's hoped that its performance on that level is a whole lot better than at the internet level.





Volunteers needed for Citizen Review Panel

The City of Tacoma is recruiting volunteers for the Citizen Review
Panel, which is a policy advisory panel to the City Council with
oversight of Tacoma Police Department policy. The Citizen Review Panel
is a five-member volunteer panel that is currently seeking
applications for two positions.

Members of the Citizen Review Panel are appointed by the City Council
for three-year terms and are responsible for:

* Conducting policy review
* Reviewing trends in complaint investigation and statistical reports
* Engaging in community outreach
* Attending monthly public meetings

Qualified applicants will be screened by a criminal background check
and must: be a registered voter, have lived in Tacoma for at least two
years immediately before applying, not hold any other elective public
office, not currently serve as a member of the Tacoma Police
Department or be an immediate family member of a department employee.

Applications must be submitted to the Mayor's Office by Jan. 23, 2009.
To apply, send a completed application to Cindy Leingang, Mayor's
Office, Room 1200, Municipal Building, 747 Market St., Tacoma, WA
98402. Applicants can download the required application for
committees, boards and commissions from the City's Web site at

www.cityoftacoma. org/Page. aspx?hid= 1834

or call (253) 594-7848.

NACOLE announces it filled two board vacancies with Barbara Attard and Myrian Rangel.

The NACOLE Board of Directors is pleased to announce that it appointed Barbara Attard and Myrian Rangel this month to fill two vacant Board seats.

Barbara recently completed her term as the independent police auditor in San Jose and previously held oversight positions in Berkeley and San Francisco. Myrian is an assistant ombudsman for the County of Los Angeles and has prior experience working for public safety and criminal justice agencies in the Los Angeles area.

Following the announcement of the application process that went out over the NACOLE listserv in November, the Board was faced with the difficult task of choosing two candidates from among the 13 who applied. It was a very impressive and highly qualified group of candidates and we are grateful for the level of interest in NACOLE shown by those who took the time and made the effort to apply.

The two vacancies arose when Andre Birotte was elected as the president-elect at the annual conference in Cincinnati and when Sam Pailca had to resign due to other professional commitments. Barbara will fill the unexpired portion of Andre's term (2007 - 2010) while Myrian will fill the unexpired portion of Sam's term (2006 - 2009).

The Board looks forward to including many members of the wider NACOLE community in the work of the organization during the coming year as we also prepare for the next annual conference in Austin, Texas (October 31 - November 3, 2009).Wishing everyone a Happy New Year!Phil EurePresidentNACOLE Board of Directors