Five before Midnight

State of the Union: Elections during an Economic Recession

2009-11-09T15:06:00.000-08:00

"I like to promote women because they're easier to control."

----City Employee, allegedly said during a meeting last year.

The Riverside Police Officers' Association is currently holding elections including for the president spot which comes up biennially. Nominations were fielded at the general membership meeting in October and it looks like current president, Det. Chris Lanzillo will be facing off against challenger, Sgt. Cliff Mason after Sgt. Gary Toussaint who initially entered the contest withdrew his name from consideration. The association which currently numbers about 370 will be casting its ballots this month to determine its leadership and its future in some very uncertain times. So far this election looks difficult to call.

Perhaps Toussaint's decision not to run means he's going to throw his lot behind Mason? The sergeants have probably been left feeling that they have lost the most this past year or so with having not only positions frozen which impact assignments and staffing at their rank but they are also adversely impacted by the lieutenants freeze since more than a few of them have undergone the arduous process to put themselves on the list for promotion into a rank where there's currently no upward movement. What they've wanted more than anything appears to be a condition in their MOU that is similar to that enjoyed by the detectives since the early 1990s and that is a mandate on the filling of any vacancies within that rank. And there's been some turmoil between members of that unit and their sergeants representatives, which have seen some degree of turnover in the past year or so. So, it's not that surprising that one has emerged from this rank to run for the presidency spot given their sentiments that their situation has gotten more difficult as the city's budget picture gets bleaker. Not to mention the dynamics between the city manager's office's micromanagement of Chief Russ Leach that continue to play out, in front of an apparently apathetic city council. Although one former city councilman, Art Gage, said that he had spoken with City Manager Brad Hudson on this issue several years ago and Hudson had promised to stop doing it. Clearly that hadn't happened, Gage said recently and it needed to have stopped.

But it won't until the city council says no to Hudson and his department. And that kind of majority just doesn't exist on the city council right now.

The detectives on the other hand have seen their vacancies get filled thanks to the MOU that dates back to former chief, Ken Fortier but have faced work-related crunches in their respective assignments. In addition, among the 15 people who currently comprise the sergeants' list (and that promotional process has also seen some recent changes) were detectives who like the sergeants above them are hitting a brick wall due to the current stoppage of promotions at the supervisory ranks. The detectives have been successful at having members of their ranks win the presidency, the most recent being Lanzillo who received the lion share of the new officer vote when he ran in 2007. And that's probably the largest population within the union right now, are officers hired within the past 5-7 years. That's due to the tremendous hiring that took place in 2000-2004 not to as much fill new positions as fill old ones vacated when the department underwent a staggering 80 percent turnover beginning in 1999 after the fatal officer involved shooting of Tyisha Miller and after the city entered into its consent decree with the office of then state attorney general, Bill Lockyer. During the consent decree, the department grew by hiring new officers especially between 2003-06 but also began piling on more management positions as well anticipating a day when it would be quite larger and perhaps as part of a pattern in a city which is somewhat top-heavy especially since Hudson came to town. The biggest changes under the decree came with the sergeants who saw their numbers nearly double with mandates put into place involving officer/supervisor ratios in the patrol and traffic divisions as well as the expansion of the Internal Affairs Division's roster of investigators.

In 2005-06, 45 more positions for officers were created but before all of them were filled including several in traffic that had been promised, things began to get chilly in the city's economic picture and the freeze began. Hiring since about 2008 has been very uneven and except for the thawing of six positions (which attracted 80 applicants within several days of posting), has been at a standstill.

Still, even with the department being on average, fairly new and very young, the officers at the entry level face vacancy rates which lessen the number of officers on work shifts with only six being loosened up in recent weeks and the city failing to get stimulus money from the federal government to fund up to 15 positions. And concerns about staffing particularly staffing on shifts continues to grow, even as the city has less money to spend on its basic services including public safety. It's not likely that police officers will be laid off as the public safety employees which also include fire fighters, paramedics and code enforcement officers so far are exempt from city layoffs. A better situation than in other cities including in the Inland Empire but still a difficult situation with no end at least not until 2012.

Still, that's small comfort to people who call the police and they either don't get a response or face delays because the police are receiving so many calls especially the swing shifts. One security guard at a city-owned facility had called that a man was mentally ill and trying to hit him with a chair while threatening. The officer he encountered a day later while that officer was patrolling apologized on behalf of the department but admitted that sometimes, they couldn't respond quickly or at all to the calls they received. He didn't seem happy about it, just realistic.

State of the Union

Traditionally, sergeants haven't been favored by union voters at least not in recent years and not since Sgt. Jay Theuer elevated to that position in late 1999 and he was elected after being involved in a lawsuit when he failed to be promoted to lieutenant. The supervisory unit used to be about half of the size it is now but it's still fairly small compared to the size of the officer unit. And being in the supervisory positions over both officers and detectives, there might be some dynamics between those two ranks that might impact the voting patterns. But then the RPOA membership has been deeply divided in different factions, divisions which extend even into the board of directors.

The last presidential election showed that with Lanzillo defeating Tutwiler by about 80 votes, with about 70 or so members not casting votes for either candidate or at all which reflects some pretty deep splits. Not much has changed in the past two years in that regard as the union leadership found some pretty big obstacles to its goals in the city manager's office and their own police chief who of course is currently directed by the city manager's office. It's interesting that anyone in the RPOA would want to run for the top office in one of the most difficult time periods in the city's history. A time when any wish lists will mostly end up being put aside and with more rocky labor negotiation efforts on the horizon but two have stepped forward to make a race out of it. No doubt, both will take their cases to the voters as to why they should be chosen and that the union's members will cast their votes accordingly until a winner is chosen to lead the union for the next two years beginning in January.

The Board and particularly its Political Actions Committee have seen resignations, most notably by long-term board member, Sgt. Christian Dinco last spring not long after a particularly contentious endorsement process involving the fourth ward city council race. Some of the board members backed incumbent Frank Schiavone while others worked on the campaign for his challenger, Davis. One board member said last spring that the morale and tensions within the police union hadn't been this extreme since the days after the Miller shooting. If that's the case, then no matter who winds up having tallied the most votes, the president elect (whether that's the incumbent or not) will have his work cut out for him. Dealing in a city that has a reputation among its unions for being unfriendly to labor and the reality of a budget crisis which hasn't spared the police department from huge cuts.

Different versions of events emerged of what happened during the ward four endorsement process that took place last spring as to whether the vote was unanimous or not and if so, which vote. Whether all the members of the PAC had been present on the day of the final endorsement votes.

Still, the RPOA followed by the Riverside Police Administrators' Association had endorsed Schiavone. Actually, it was more of an interesting development on the side of the RPAA which had initially taken a position that it wouldn't endorse any of the candidates running for the city council and then abruptly decided to endorse Schiavone and the two other incumbents, Andrew Melendrez and Nancy Hart in their races. That caught people's attention mostly because the former president of the RPAA, Lt. Darryl Hurt and Lt. Tim Bacon, who served on its PAC were suing the city over what they called both the politicization of the promotion process and the practice of retaliating against union leaders. One of the defendants and the focus of some of the most serious allegations, was Schiavone. In their lawsuits, Hurt and Bacon had stated that Schiavone had threatened one lieutenant who associated with them to stay away from those "troublemakers" if he wanted to get promoted.

Bolstering the potential impact of Schiavone's alleged statements was the fact that at the time they were made, Chief Russ Leach was allegedly living in Schiavone's pool house. Both Schiavone and Leach had defended that situation at a community policing meeting held at the Orange Terrace Center in the months before Schiavone's election by saying that Schiavone was not Leach's boss like Hudson was but it's probably a safe bet that City Attorney Gregory Priamos is left to come up with a legal strategy to limit the impact of that living arrangement on the litigation filed by the two lieutenants in terms of how much civil liability the city faces if it pays out on these lawsuits either in settlement or after a trial.

Some people at City Hall and elsewhere really hoped that once Schiavone was out of office, that the situation involving the police department would improve and that the police chief would be free of his influence. One council member said that the recent problems with the creation of Strategic Plan 2 might have been more related to Schiavone's influence on the police department before he left office. Allegations of Schiavone's involvement were pretty prevalent during the election and included whether or not he tried to get some department's detectives (who allegedly complained) to initiate investigations against his adversaries including one who allegedly visited a man who appeared at a court hearing involving Schiavone's legal action challenging then candidate Paul Davis' campaign statement, and whether or not as alleged in the lawsuit filed by the two lieutenants, he had involved himself or had any influence on the department's promotions. It's hoped that these allegations were duly investigated if reported and that they were just, allegations and put to rest although the ones alleged in filed lawsuits will continue to be litigated in court. But allegations with merit or not, the environment of micromanagement by City Hall and the perceptions it's created make for a situation ripe for problematic behavior and even greater perceptions that it's the rule.

But the disturbing part of that was that there was that incident where four members of the public were expelled from a city council meeting and at The Group meeting, several officers said that someone on the dais had tried to call detectives to investigate the four people's actions and none of them would do it. If that's the case, who on the dais did that given that Schiavone was one of the individuals directing the expulsion?

At any rate, not much has changed since Schiavone's ouster because no one has stepped up to the plate to address the dynamics of the police department and city management.

Many had hoped that when Leach came back off of his recent medical leave for back surgery and held a larger than normal meeting with command staff in July that it would be a sign of a newly independent leader of the police department but that future hasn't yet shown itself. And as stated, it won't until the city council as a body addresses that issue because face it, if that's what Hudson and DeSantis are doing, then no one else can effectively rein in their enthusiasm but those who meet regularly to evaluate Hudson's work performance.

It's not clear if there's been a ripple effect on the RPAA from the litigation that's been filed against the city by two of its members and the fact that it endorsed one of the defendants in the city council race, essentially opting to throw its support as a body of individuals (which is different than individual bodies) to one of the lawsuit's defendants rather than two of its own dues paying members.

What often goes undiscussed or even unknown is the tremendous work expenditure done by the board members of the RPOA. Whether or not you agree with them on everything or anything, you can't fault their work ethic. And dealing with the current turmoil inside the police union which stems largely from the economic rupture in Riverside has been made it even more difficult.

Traditionally, union leaders often feel overworked and under appreciated and whether or not that's the case of the RPOA, is not clear but if so, that's hardly unusual. However this summer, rumors emerged that for the first time that the RPOA was contemplated hiring a retiring officer to provide administrative support or even run the union getting paid to do so. A practice which has been done in other similar associations and if true, wouldn't be surprising either because of the time constraints on members of its leadership especially right now in an understaffed police department. After all, it must be difficult to balance two busy tasks, working as a police officer and running a labor union not to mention everything else in a person's life.

But being president of a union in the city of Riverside has never been an easy task during the best of times and these are not the best of times. It's bad enough to chew up and spit out any leader, in a city where its management is hardly labor friendly and its elected leadership seems to too often bend to the will of that management. Lanzillo is no light weight (having served about 10 years in the union board) and some compared him favorably to a pit bull, when it comes to dealing with issues but the city's been biting its unions back, as the SEIU's leadership experienced when it voted to receive its already set 2 percent raise increase during a time when some members of management including department heads were getting raises of at least 10 percent.

But the SEIU benefited heavily when the city management apparently didn't read the entire MOU and inadvertently approved something that it wishes to revoke. Good luck, and reading the fine print of labor contracts should be part of any competent public policy and city management training curriculum.

Uh Oh

Last year, one department head's spouse allegedly began bragging to the wrong people that this department head got a hefty raise (and this spouse emphasized just how hefty) at a time when the department itself was facing cuts to its budget of over 25 percent. That created a firestorm and between that and penalties being faced by another employee who was trying to retire using his higher salary which was vetoed by CALPERS (the city's retirement plan for its employees) made for a quandary or two. This employee allegedly wound up not being able to retire for at least a year. The alleged reason was that the city had never publicly posted his higher salary, an action remedied when it posted a bunch of ceilings for raises of about 40 executive and management employees last December. Still people posted online on the Press Enterprise that employees were being laid off from Public Works while its head, Siobhan Foster (who has run afoul from some of her department for allegedly not having an engineering background) received a 15 percent pay raise in a division which historically has been an epicenter for labor pains in this city. Did she or didn't she, some asked while others said, of course she did. That's the state of the city, the part of it that doesn't appear in Mayor Ron Loveridge's annual address at the Convention Center that actions by the Seventh Floor have created a turbulent and unhappy environment in areas of its work force.

Then when Leach renewed his contract until 2013 last December, people asked themselves, did he agree to take the same salary, a lessor salary or did he get a raise. If so, how much? Believe it or not, his new maximum ceiling raise would grant him a higher pay check than it would his boss, Hudson. And I wasn't the only one who noticed that as it had members of several labor unions scratching their heads.

Human Resources Board Vice-Chair Ellie Bennett asked some pretty intense questions as she's prone to do and asked Human Resources Director Rhonda Strout and her colleague Jeremy Hammond who's deputy director what steps that department heads including themselves have taken with making sacrifices like those they expected of the nonmanagement city employees including those who were laid off. Because Bennett continued, if employees had to make sacrifices and take cuts, furloughs or whatever, management should show its leadership by lining up at the front of the line to face them first.

There was complete silence and the two employees looked at each other and then they looked down. What does that mean? It's true that even management employees had to forgo the 2% raises like everyone else but was this offset by maximum ceiling raises received last year? Assurances have come out of City Hall that no one got raises (and to be accurate, this means everyone even those who signed new contracts last year in public safety department head positions), but the doubts have only increased, including now as it's become clear that if SEIU employees in particular, are safe from layoffs until Jan. 15, that all bets are off the day after that moratorium ends.

It's not likely that the police officers will face a similar situation but if the department is forced to make more cuts like the rest of those in the city, it's pretty clear that these will be the unkindest cuts of all, given that the police department is so bare-boned and approaching skeleton crewed that it's starting to fall back into the pattern of unfilled vacancies and fewer supervisory positions that haunted it during the 1990s, the final decade of not only the century but of the department's independence from outside oversight and scrutiny. One veteran employee recalled how when he was working as a sergeant pre-consent decree that he supervised 15 officers and that was when the department's officers averaged about 10 years older than they do now in 2009. He said that at minimum, veteran officers needed 30 minutes of involvement a day and newer hires more along the lines of an hour and a half. Is that still happening now and is it possible for it to happen?

Being a sergeant is the toughest of all ranks, many have said including Leach on an occasion or two. It's not difficult to see why that might be true. With one step on the streets and one step in the administration, a sergeant has to balance themselves between both worlds without declaring allegiance to either and all while learning in a small department to supervise the same officers they might have been peers with a day earlier. It's not like the Los Angeles Police Department with nearly 10,000 officers and miles of city horizontally or the New York City Police Department with 40,000 sworn bodies and miles of city both horizontally and vertically where they can assign sergeants far away from their former partners or squads. Riverside's only got about 370 some bodies and a few miles of city and thus, it's harder to give new sergeants distance from their old haunts.

One concern of sergeants is that they want to make sure they have the time to spend with a younger work force and not have to compromise that level of involvement with higher ratios. Officers want to work knowing that they'll first of all be backed up when necessary by other officers and second, that there will be officers doing so who aren't fresh out of the academy. Both have reason to be concerned now with vacancies across the board. Initially, lower numbers of officers might more gravely impact front-line officers and assist sergeants with the ratios but the continued decline of sergeants which is expected to continue next year will soon reach the critical level of no return if that hasn't happened already. If the lieutenant positions remain frozen and increase as expected in the next year, then the employees at that level may see their burnout increase and the numbers from that rank that have to go on medical and stress levels increase. After all, they are humans not machines and since lieutenants were in some cases working at least partial double shifts and having difficulty scheduling vacations (to the point where there was at least discussion of having the command staff work in reserve watch command capacity), it is looking to be a very difficult year for this rank as well.

Although the Field Operations Division will be heavily impacted, Special Operations is facing the loss of two out of three of its lieutenants including its second traffic lieutenant in 18 months. The plan is to fill the traffic lieutenant position which is necessary but that will either strap the lieutenants further in the field division or it will lead to the promotion of a lieutenant in title only. Lt. Larry Gonzalez who's been in the assignment less than six months but is more than capable of handling any additional challenges will inherit the PACT division and the K9 unit will be received back into the field operations division fold.

Some have said that the response from the city manager's office to requests for more police officers have been complaints by one employee in particular, Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis that police officers already get paid too much money. The response to that has been that DeSantis should himself become a police officer, undergo the training and go out on the streets. No offense, but it would seem that first of all given his unfortunate tantrum in Hemet, he probably wouldn't get hired and that's most certainly for the best. He's busy enough apparently micromanaging the police department anyway, when he's not making the labor negotiations process more arduous for all involved, in fact the last contract involving the RPOA that was signed in 2006 was mired for months until he left the table and then after that, things went more smoothly.

But that was then and this is now, and this election is taking place in the midst of the city's economic meltdown, which has been spun in so many different ways, some more realistically than others. Police officers drive cars with hundreds of thousands of miles on them and rotate their take home cars even at the higher ranks (though Leach is much more partial to Chrysler 300s than the tried and true, Crown Victorias), while employees in the city manager's office allegedly go through their take home cars including Crown Vics (which incidentally are riding off into the sunset after 2011 putting a lot of law enforcement agencies in knots trying to find a sturdy replacement with great reverse drive) somewhat more quickly.

So any president elect or re-elect is going to face serious challenges and it's up to the voters in the union to decide amongst themselves which of the two candidates can better handle that or at least according to their beliefs. Of course reality is what it is, and often it's difficult for any elected official even a labor president to understand what the job is really like, until they plunge into it themselves. One complaint and it's often valid is that there's so many issues to deal with and many complaints and that a person can only do so much and it can get to be overwhelming at times, and time is something that might be at a shortage if officers serving on the union board are carrying a lot of over-time in their schedules.

Until a person has held that position and all it entails, it's often difficult even to imagine what lies ahead and that makes things really tough. That's probably something Lanzillo learned and had to find a means to address and that will be the case with Mason as well if he gets elected instead, especially if this election further divides the union into more and more pieces. Who will be assigned the task of rebuilding the puzzle? Who will be entrusted with trying to do the impossible task of keeping the department from sliding further into a state where it reaches the level of being unable to provide adequate staffing? Because unless the public becomes more involved in this troubling issue, that's what will happen. Maybe a surprising observation from a critic (and I am that) but maybe you have to be a critic to see it because one thing about cheerleaders is that they never look really closely at anything and if you don't, you won't see the larger picture. Hans Christian Anderson figured that out about the disconnect that exists between emporers and those they rule in one particularly insightful tale.

And so it will be the case here. As always.

Here's some basic information about the RPOA.

Approximate size of the units

(and these numbers are rough estimates due to constant fluctuations in departmental staffing in these positions)

Officer Unit: @320

Supervisory Unit: (sergeants) 48-50

Past presidents:

Det. Jeffrey Joseph, 1999

Sgt. Jay Theuer, 2000-2001 (until promotion)

Officer Pat McCarthy (2002-2005, promoted to sergeant during second term)

Det. Ken Tutwiler (2006-2008)

Det. Chris Lanzillo (2008-)

Current Board of Directors

The association including its leadership have seen a lot of turmoil this year for different reasons, including the massive budget cuts faced by the city which have impacted even its public safety departments including police. The department has seen up to 30 or more sworn positions frozen including at the supervisory level and even a greater number of civilian positions remain vacant. By the time of the year, five lieutenants and six sergeant positions will remain unfilled. In addition, another sergeant or two are on leave and apparently it's not clear whether or not they will return to work. Labor negotiations were fairly stagnant given that it wasn't realistic to achieve any gains in salaries and benefits and most of the attention by this labor union as well as others was to protect what they had.

The Budget Picture and Staffing Positions

The association leadership had asked Paul Davis in 2008 quite a while before he ran for city council to audit the city's preliminary 2008-09 budget as well as its anticipated revenue stream to fund that budget. It wanted this information and any projections of the fiscal picture down the road so that it would be able to strategize effectively for its labor negotiations beginning in early 2009.

Davis did what the leadership asked and said that by November 2009, the city would be experiencing a $14 million shortfall in its revenue projections, a prediction as it turned out came true. The picture that has been painted of the city's budget situation was much different than that which occurred the last time the RPOA had negotiated its contract in 2006. That negotiation process had been filled with greater turmoil and turbulance given that the RPOA after contesting the negotiation practices of the city manager's office were locked out of the process by City Hall for two months. One lawsuit and a large rally during a city council meeting later, the RPOA had its contract but in the meantime, the nation entered into its worse economic downturn since the Great Depression and as since the epicenter of this latest recession triggered by the collapse of the housing market was located in the Inland Empire, Riverside is caught in an economic mire that shook it in 2009, with it probably hitting bottom by the end of 2010.

This put all the bargaining units including the RPOA on much different footing as merit pay was cut citywide including in the police department and step pay was frozen as well, which greatly impacted the promotional process. The department promoted officers recently who were given the higher rank but apparently not the salary increase that customarily goes with it. That puts the department in a huge dilemma as its supervisory levels dip into some pretty critical territory. Do these promotions get filled and the resultant bodies assigned to fill critical vacancies including two vacant lieutenant positions in the Special Operations Division? What about that vacant position sergeant position in the Sexual Assault or Child Abuse Division or in the Vice unit? But oh wait, they might be filled through promotions but it might take a while before your paycheck reflects it. That's pretty detrimental to the lieutenants to be making sergeants salaries because unlike sergeants, lieutenants aren't eligible for over-time pay which makes them good workhorses by the way. So if they don't get lieutenants' pay do they still get sergeants' overtime? So if you have a couple or more lieutenants go out on medical or stress leave including at least one who ultimately retired in the past couple of years, is there any relation?

Remember what consultant Joe Brann told the city council and city manager's office (though Hudson was absent) about issues that could be encountered like burnout and stress among officers including supervisors working in situations of high vacancy rates and lower staffing? After he presented that information among other cautionary notices about needing to address the department's staffing issues, Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis responded with some very suspect statistical information that he was never able to back up factually and then the city manager's office made sure that was the last audit that Brann would give under his contract which expired about six months after that audit. When the city manager's office was asked through the California Public Records Act to provide the data to back up DeSantis' calculation of a 4.5 officer to supervisor ratio in June 2008, Hudson's office deferred that request to City Attorney Gregory Priamos who responded with a link to the fiscal budget which didn't include information on officer/supervisory ratios.

The officer/supervisor ratio currently stands at about 5.5 according to different sources and is artificially lowered by the reduction on the officer side of the comparison, given that all but six officer positions have remained vacant. Even if there are fewer sergeants including fewer field sergeants, the ratios can remain lower if there are fewer officers and promoting into the sergeant rank can directly impact the number of officers if officers are promoted directly to the sergeant positions or indirectly if detectives are promoted to sergeant and then their positions are filled (as by mandate under the MOU) by officers.

Captains:

Dave Dominguez

Mark Boyer

Lieutenants:

Pete Villanueva (summer, 2008)

Brian Baitx (autumn, 2009)

Robert Meier (autumn 2009)

Rick Tedesco ( by December 2009)

Ken Raya (by December 2009)

Sergeant:

Kevin Stanton (autumn 2008)

Leon Phillips (promotion, July 2008)

Lisa Williams (transfer, 2008)

Don Taulli ( had postponed his retirement for a year, December 2009)

Duane Beckman (December 2009)

Patrick Watters (December 2009)

Officer: 19-26 (depending whether cited figures include six recently approved positions)

Civilian : At least 35

Police Department Vacancy Rate: 10%

To (as always) be continued...

Another business in downtown Riverside shuts its doors, this time it's a bank.

A Lake Elsinore city councilman who is the focus of a recall petition speaks out after being arrested for drunk driving.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Buckley said today that he has no intention of resigning his council seat.

"I apologize. I take responsibility. I hope the community understands. I'm already working to resolve the matter quickly and appropriately," he said this afternoon.

"It's never a good time for somebody to do something stupid. It's never a good time for a council member to do something stupid. It's really never a good a time for a council member facing a bogus recall to do something stupid," Buckley said. "I hope the community will be able to separate the two issues."

Lake Elsinore police Sgt. Marc Cloutier said that, while a DUI checkpoint was underway Friday night at Mission Trail and Malaga Road, Buckley was stopped about 9:30 p.m. on nearby Casino Drive because he had no front license plate. Cloutier said the officer was on the lookout for drunken drivers who might be trying to avoid the checkpoint. Cloutier said they have no reason to think Buckley was trying to avoid the checkpoint and the officer did not witness Buckley driving erratically.

Cloutier said that, while talking with Buckley, the officer became suspicious that he had been drinking. Buckley took a Breathalyzer test, but Cloutier declined to release his blood alcohol content. Cloutier said it is the department's policy not to disclose that information in any DUI case.

About a week after announcing that it might have to do employee layoffs, Riverside County's financial director announces his resignation.

Press Enterprise Columnist Dan Bernstein comes up with names for the Riverside County District Attorney's office new SWAT team if it ever creates one.

Vehicle sales have dropped in Riverside County which translates into less revenue through sales taxes.

Press Release

City of Fresno Selects Eddie J. Aubrey As First Director of the Office of
Independent Review

11/04/2009

Joined by Mayor Ashley Swearengin and community
members, City Manager Andy Souza today announced the appointment of Eddie J.
Aubrey of Federal Way, Wash., who has 29 years of public service experience
as a former police officer, deputy prosecuting attorney and judge, as the
City of Fresno's first director of the Office of Independent Review.

As director of the Office of Independent Review, Aubrey will work
independently of the Police Department chain of command to provide City
policymakers and the public with an objective, third-party analysis of
internal investigations to ensure those investigations are conducted in a
thorough, fair and unbiased manner.

"The role of independent reviewer requires excellent analytical skills,
research ability, investigative skills, knowledge and experience in the
profession of law enforcement, problem-solving, integrity, forthrightness,
innovation, transparency, and effective communication, " Souza said. "Eddie
Aubrey has demonstrated throughout his career that he possesses all of those
essential characteristics. " Mayor Swearengin also said Aubrey's background
will put him in a "unique position" to carry out the responsibilities of the
independent reviewer.

"Eddie Aubrey's experience as a police officer, prosecutor and judge will
give him a 360-degree view of the issues that the independent reviewer will
be called upon to address," Mayor Swearengin said. "Combined with his
integrity, excellent communication skills and strong commitment to reaching
out to the community, he will be a catalyst in ensuring that there is trust
between law enforcement and Fresno residents."

"I'm honored to be given the opportunity to make a difference in Fresno,"
Aubrey said. "I'm committed to building trust, adding value and helping to
strengthen policecommunity relations in the city."

Aubrey, 50, spent five years as a police officer with the Santa Monica
Police Department and nine years as a police officer with the Los Angeles
Police Department. During that time, he conducted thousands of
investigations as an officer with those departments.

During his time with the Los Angeles Police Department, Aubrey used his
skills of problem solving in high-stress, high-pressure situations while
conducting numerous town hall meetings with citizens following the Rodney
King incident in south-central Los Angeles. Aubrey also trained new police
officers in both Santa Monica and Los Angeles.

Aubrey also spent 10 years as a deputy prosecuting attorney in the King
County Prosecutors Office. Most recently, he served as a judge pro tem with
King County District Court in King County, Washington, and as director of
public safety and risk manager at Tacoma Community College in Tacoma,
Washington.

Aubrey, who will report to the City Manager, will start work on Nov. 30. He
will be paid an annual salary of $107,000.

The Office of Independent Review will be located in the Dickey Youth
Development Center, 1515 E. Divisadero, Fresno.

Aubrey received a juris doctorate from Seattle University School of Law and
also earned a bachelor's degree in business management from the University
of Phoenix. He is a member of the National Association for Civilian
Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE), a non-profit organization that brings
together individuals and agencies working to establish or improve oversight
of police officers in the United States.

Riverside City Hall will be hosting a public discussion on the future of Magnolia Avenue at its 3 p.m. meeting Tuesday, Nov. 10 which is like today!

Breaking Story: Riverside Finance Committee meets at City Hall

2009-11-06T16:16:00.000-08:00

Breaking a nearly year long drought, the Riverside Finance Committee met inside the Mayor's Ceremonial Room at the top floor of City Hall. An audience of about six people including representatives from The Group awaited Chair Nancy Hart, Vice-chair Paul Davis and general member, Mike Gardner as they arrived for the meeting. Hart chaired the meeting but Asst. City Manager Paul Sundeen did most the talking as he presented the agenda item which was on electric and water revenue refunding bonds.

[Vice Chair Paul Davis (l) and Chair Nancy Hart discuss issues pertaining to utility bonds at the annual Finance Committee meeting]

[City staff members representing the city manger and city attorney's offices along with public utilities field questions from city council members and the public at the Finance Committee meeting.]

During the meeting, members of the committee including Gardner and Davis asked questions as did people in the audience including Jennifer Vaughn-Blakely about the impact of Riverside Renaissance and its massive expenditures on the city residents. Interestingly enough, some of her questions were answered but some weren't though a lot of words were said particularly by Sundeen.

Sundeen did say that the internal audits of the city by an outside firm would be scheduled to be presented to the Finance Committee in January. It's not clear yet whether the committee will hold another meeting next month or whether the ongoing freeze on this once-major committee has really substantially thawed. That will remain to be seen in the months ahead but holding this meeting was hopefully a first step in the right direction as financial accountability and transparency particularly during these difficult times continues to be a major issue for many city residents. That's been something that's been fading away since the current administration has been in place since June 2005 although it's hoped with the last two election cycles which have redrawn the city council will stem this process and reverse it. Although that still remains to be seen.

One issue that came up is that it looks like there will probably be more employee layoffs though the committee members were not sure how many there will be.

During its heyday, the Finance Committee was one of the committees to be on and especially chair. Former chairs include former council members Frank Schiavone, Art Gage and current councilman, Chris MacArthur. But after it started disappearing on the agenda, Schiavone switched committees and Gage said that he was unable to get items on the agenda for the meetings and soon enough, the meetings started being reduced in numbers within months of the city council's installation of Former Riverside County Economic Development Agency head, Brad Hudson as its city manager in June 2005 and the city manager's office brought the city's finance department into its fold and picked Sundeen as the first assistant city manager of finance over the man who had once supervised him, Jim Smith who had served as interim assistant city manager under interim city manager Tom Evans.

There were some issues about whether the Finance Committee will cover the issues that it did in the past when it wasn't spending its time packed away in some municipal closet wrapped in moth balls. It's been quiet lately because the current and past chairs of the committee seemed content with awaiting instruction on the city manager's office on when to meet to discuss the financial issues of this city and the chairs are the only committee member who can call meetings. Other committee members in the present and past have expressed frustration with this stagnation on meetings of the finance committee as have city residents.

When asked about the issue of community block grant funding coming to the Finance Committee, Asst. City Manager Belinda Graham said she couldn't remember that happening in her five years with the city. Well, actually the committee discussed that issue at its April 18, 2005 meeting according to this meeting agenda. And that was the last time this issue came to the committee since Hudson has served as city manager.

The last meeting to discuss the audit reports was on Dec. 8, 2008 according to this agenda.

The last meeting to discuss user fees, an issue which was traditionally addressed by the Finance Committee at least once annually was March 10, 2008 according to this agenda.

The Finance Committee also reviewed budgetary recommendations for the public safety departments in the city back in the day when it was allowed to perform this function.

And why the subject is committees, this is how active the city council's committees have been since they were reconfigured in June after the latest round of city council elections.

Community Services and Youth ( chaired by Paul Davis): 4

Development (Mike Gardner): 4

Finance (Nancy Hart): 1

Governmental Affairs (Andrew Melendrez): 2

Public Safety (Chris MacArthur): 2

Transportation (Steve Adams): 2

Utility Services Land Use Energy Management (Rusty Bailey): 5

Municipal Matters

The Riverside City Council is set to hold another one of its meetings on Tuesday, Nov. 10 at both 3 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. and will cover this agenda which includes business of both the council and the Redevelopment Agency which are pretty much the same people. If you haven't seen the agenda in the last day or so, check it again as it appears to have been revised.

If you attend the evening session, better not blink your eyes or sneeze or take a bit of a nap because it looks to be one of the shortest meetings in modern history, with only one presentation and one discussion item and a consent calendar which is fairly light. Unless of course, the public comment portion attracts a crowd of people on an issue or two as has happened several times in the past several months.

Norco is planning on moving forward after electing two city council members.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

After ex-councilman Harvey Sullivan takes his seat on the council in December beside historic-preservation activist Kevin Bash, some residents don't expect major changes in the city but minor alterations in how things get done in Horsetown USA, a city that prides itself on protecting a rural lifestyle.

"I don't think much will change. I really don't," said Pat Overstreet, president of RURAL -- Residents of Norco Urging protection of the Rural and Animal keeping Lifestyle. "If you've seen it year after year, election after election, people get in there thinking: I can get in there and do a better job. But you find there are reasons things don't get done or things go at a snail's pace."

Overstreet said things take time and candidates learn that, after taking their seats and becoming deeply involved in city decision-making.

"I don't think there will be any huge, huge, difference," said Overstreet, who voted for incumbents Dick MacGregor and Frank Hall because of their experience.

Dusty Baker dedicates the ball fields at Andulka Park.

A Close Call

Why working at horse racing starting gate can be a very dangerous job. Fortunately no one was hurt nor was Quality Road who was gate scratched due to suffering lacerations on his legs after he was unwilling to load. He won't be allowed to race again until he passes a rigorous gate loading and schooling test.

The number "4" horse was eventually winner Zenyatta and she goes in the gate but "12", Quality Road as you can see balks, and throws a temper tantrum putting everyone around him in a dangerous situation along with himself. They put the blindfold on him, spin him around and then lead him through the gate but as soon as girth touches the sides, he starts bucking and kicking forcing his jockey, John Velasquez to have to dismount (and jockeys have been killed and badly injured in starting gates) off to the side. The blindfold becomes dangerous when while trying to back Quality Road out the open gates in the back after it's clear he's at risk of injuring himself seriously, he moves forward and activates the safety mechanism in the front gates which allow them to open when a horses pushes against them and gets out the front. Fortunately, one handler grabs him and putting his life at risk, manages to control him until the blindfold is removed.

Quality Road acted up in a similar fashion in the Jockey Club Gold Cup and to a lesser extent in the Travers Stakes.

Don't envy the guy who got headbutted by a 1200 pound thrashing horse as soon as he got through the front gate. Ouch.

The Board of Library Trustees will meet in the Arlington Library on Monday, Nov. 16 at 5 p.m. If you want more information, you can find it at this Web site.

The Metropolitan Museum Board meets at the downtown museum conference room on Tuesday, Nov. 9 at 4 p.m.

The Community Police Review Commission will meet on Wednesday, Nov. 18 at 5:30 p.m. in the Fifth Floor Conference Room at City Hall. Due to the holidays, this meeting will take place one week earlier than usual.

COMING SOON:

The Battle over the Soul of the RPD

Mayor Ron Loveridge Directs Human Relations Commission to Deal with Nazi Problem

2009-11-05T11:19:00.000-08:00

Snapshot of a Commission

Who: Human Relations Commission

When: Thursday, Nov. 5 at 6 p.m.

Where: Mayor's Ceremonial Room at City Hall

What: Neo Nazi and anti-Nazi rallies

The Human Relations Commission met on Thursday, Nov. 5 at 6 p.m. to address what has become the problem with a group of Neo Nazis demonstrating in Riverside in recent months. The Nazis are actually a chapter of the National Socialist Movement that is based out of Detroit, Michigan and numbers about several hundred members in the United States. If you can't read through the Web site, the renowned source, Wikipedia published this article summarizing them. The Riverside chapter is actually the so-called state headquarters and was started in 2005 during times apparently much quieter than they are now because the city hadn't seen or heard much from these Nazis until earlier this autumn.

These are what the so-called Nazis look like. They may or may not shave their heads. They wear tee-shirts where the American flag has been hybridized by the swastika. Ironic, considering how many Americans died fighting the Nazis in Europe. They're not raising their arms for a deodorant commercial but to invoke the Heil Hitler sign that the Nazis in Germany did when they were in the presence of people higher up in the pecking order than they were in the structural hierarchy. They basically despise anyone who's not a White Christian Anglo-Saxon straight person and think that they don't have a right to live in the United States even as citizens.

The Nazis are directed by their 25 point plan which is here but you're kind of limited to being able to only access it through the European languages. The Swahili or Hindi or Mandarin Chinese versions of the plan aren't available yet and there's no date yet announced when versions of the Nazi platform will be included online in those and other languages.

No Nazis attended the HRC meeting, but about two dozen concerned residents and members and leaders of community organizations and various groups against hate appeared offering input on the recent rallies and offering action plans. People criticized the counter demonstrators who until there were counter rallies against the Nazis to criticize, didn't have much to say about the issue at all.

They tried to present themselves as the voice of reason when that voice might have been quite helpful at about 10:05 a.m. on the day of the October protest at Madison and Railroad Street when a group of people ran across the street to attack the Nazis and the fistfight started. It was interesting because the Brown Berets who said that they were supposed to offer security at the rally blamed the police for conspiring to cause a riot and they said they had video proof of this happening at least 12 times without mentioning that there's also video posted everywhere from one end of the internet to the other of a group of them including the guy who spoke at the meeting rushing across a thinly drawn police line and over a couple of steel barricades to attack the Nazis within five minutes of their arrival. It's like a bar fight where the bouncers rather than preventing it or stopping it actually start it. It was interesting to watch their leader say that his organization was the only thing stopping violence from breaking out in Casa Blanca at the October rally.

But here are some snapshots taken of the meeting. They're not great because people don't keep their bodies and arms still when discussing controversial issues. But I have to say that Chair Gladys Walker ran a tight ship by keeping the meeting moving while respecting the right for the public to be heard. It's such an interestingly and rather marked contrast to the somewhat more dysfunctional and intensely micromanaged Community Police Review Commission which resembles a free for all brawl more than it does this commission when it conducts its monthly meetings. Someone said as they left that it's really nice to have a commission where it's apparent that its members respect each other.

Maybe it's just a coincidence or maybe it's because the HRC runs out of the Mayor's office not the city manager's office and the HRC has a parliamentarian at its meetings not a pair of city attorneys and a manager who wears like three different hats.

[Hate crime expert, Brian Levin from the California State University, San Bernardino addresses the Human Relations Commission at a special meeting.]

[Members of the Human Relations Commission including Chair Gladys Walker discuss the recent Neo-Nazi demonstrations in Riverside.]

Some commissioners spoke before they took public comment and some waited until afterward. Guest Speaker, Brian Levin, a former NYPD police officer who is now a nationally recognized expert on hate crimes provided information on the latest batch of Neo Nazis to hit Riverside. He also provided a history of the national organization of the NSM (which was founded by some Nazis 35 years ago) which he said historically had been the "laughing stock" of the Nazi movement in this country. Today, it's the largest by default because most of the others had splintered off as their leaders got arrested for crimes and some of the organizations themselves had imploded. He said that the Nazis' strategy is to go into polarized areas and to try to foment a violent response to them so that they can either claim to be victims of violence or sue the cities for not protecting them. The NSM chapters have been having these demonstrations at day laborer sites all over the country to prepare for their national rally which will be held in Phoenix, Arizona this month.

Levin mentioned that there were 928 hate groups in the country and it's the splintering of groups, the increased hatred of Latinos in the country masked as hatred of undocumented immigrants, the election of a biracial president and the Islamaphobia that have contributed to the increase in organizations. The hate groups have also formed alliances with biker criminal gangs.

Damon Castillo, who was once hired by the city to evaluate the HRC, was critical of the counter demonstrations and said that these were fiscally difficult times for the city and the demonstration last month cost the city $51,000 so the city couldn't afford to pay for any more of them. Others countered by saying that there were contingents from out of town including a troupe of anarchists in Claremont who were planning to protest anytime, anywhere the Neo Nazis did. That's what is going to happen whether you like it or not, one speaker said.

The commissioners made some comments of their own at different parts of the hour long meeting.

Commissioner Beth Skinner said that giving the Neo Nazis minimal attention was best. As long as they feel unwelcome and unwanted, then that was the message that should be sent.

Viet Tran, also on the HRC, said that the thought of the Nazis gaining a foothold in the city bothered him.

"Hate is not welcome in this city," Tran said.

Chair Gladys Walker said she didn't want to give the movement any credibility.

"It's about us, not about them" Walker said.

Commissioner Lorraine Saint said she wanted to make a positive situation out of a negative one and city residents who attended had good suggestions from having tolerance conferences to multi-cultural festivals, to reaching out to high school students and young adults who are vulnerable to recruitment by hate organizations. The commission agreed to create another ad hoc committee to address the Neo Nazis situation.

All of this came about because Mayor Ron Loveridge convened one of his Multi-Cultural Forum meetings last week and expressed his concern that something be done about this situation immediately. The city didn't demand any action be taken when the Nazis announced that they were going to protest in September. The city didn't demand action after the first rally and counter demonstrations (although Loveridge did condemn the Nazis during comments at a city council meeting). Not even when the Nazis announced they were going to return to Indiana and Madison in Casa Blanca to protest in October. No, it wasn't until the second counter demonstration put Riverside on news channels and in stories published through the Associated Press wire that showed Riverside on a map with a swastika imposed over it that something had to be done. Because of that, it's not really clear what Loveridge and others at the 'Hall are upset with more, the Nazis (which they clearly don't like) or the counter demonstrators namely because the confrontation between the two entities is what brings in the media to cover a part of Riverside that City Hall might not want prospective companies trying to do business with Riverside during an economic downturn to see.

Although it's clearly the Nazis that has got City Hall upset, the powers that be in Riverside have never been fond of street demonstrations which of course, make it more difficult to sell Riverside as an economic entity, a "most livable" city and so forth. And that's become more important because it's clear that the recession which is said to be ending elsewhere is still entrenched in Riverside and the rest of the Inland Empire and that the tax revenue in Riverside is still in decline (as the city again readjusts its budget). Still, the move towards utilizing the HRC is much better than the city's decision to hire a public relations firm after the fatal officer-involved shooting of Tyisha Miller in 1998.

But the commission didn't really address the strong anti-Latino sentiment (and this group experienced the greatest hate increase in hate crimes including citizens) that is what drives the Neo Nazis to believe that Riverside's fertile recruiting ground for their brand of hate. Mix that in with the high unemployment rate of at least (officially) 15% and the housing crash in Riverside and it's not surprising that a bunch of Neo Nazis has suddenly reared its collective head after staying below the radar for four years.

Day After Election, City Announces Potential Layoffs

Not long after Riverside City Hall settled a labor dispute with its largest union, the SEIU General Unit, it's released news that more employee layoffs might be looming due to a projected $4 million decline in revenue. Which is worse than what the county and state are facing, according to the article. It's interesting that this news waited until the day after the mayoral election to slip out. No actually, it's called playing politics to ensure that another incumbent doesn't get penalized while running for office with an untimely piece of unfortunate civic news.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Just after winning re-election Tuesday, Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge acknowledged the looming deficit and said the council will have to decide whether to make cuts or spend reserves. Councilmen Paul Davis and Mike Gardner said in separate phone interviews Wednesday that layoffs may be necessary, and Gardner said the council may get a budget update and begin addressing the deficit as soon as December. So far this fiscal year the city has only made small job cuts, and Gardner cautioned that it's too early to say if there will be more. "Layoffs are certainly on the table. I'm just not sure they'll be part of the solution," he said. Any layoffs likely wouldn't happen until after Jan. 15. The council last month agreed with the city's largest employee union not to cut union jobs until then. Davis said he expects the gap to be closed with a combination of layoffs and spending general fund reserves. While Loveridge said Tuesday the city has continued to provide residents "first-rate services" even as the budget has been trimmed, Davis said he's worried about cutting staff to the point that services suffer.

It's interesting that in a city where layoffs are taking place, its infrastructure still remains quite management heavy, including having management in positions where there's no one to manage. Which makes a lot of sense naturally. For one thing, does the city manager's office really need four assistant managers, especially since every city manager until Brad Hudson had to make do with just one assistant city manager, whether it be Larry Paulson under John Holmes, Penny Culbreath-Graft under George Carvalho or even interim, Jim Smith under interim Tom Evans.

But under Hudson? Four assistant city managers. In these difficult economic times when employees much lower than the management level are facing more layoffs (and some management positions in other city departments have been frozen) can the city really afford to keep all four of them in these positions, since two of them were directors or lower level management not too many years ago.

Still Counting Ballots In Mayoral Race

More on Riverside's mayoral including what's up with those write in votes that haven't been counted yet even though the results of the election have been announced.

Meanwhile, the city council election in Norco continues on as one of the candidates refuses to concede in a tightly contested race.

Let's Get Ready To Rumble:

The Riverside County District Attorney's Office Vs The Sheriff's Department

A feud broken out between two of Riverside County's public safety departments which has led to investigators from the Riverside County District Attorney's office boycotting the Ben Clark Training Center, which is run by the Riverside County Sheriff's Department.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Riverside County Sheriff Stanley Sniff said he doesn't object to the district attorney having a special activities unit. He said he "stays clear of meddling" in other departments' business. But Sniff added he was "somewhat puzzled as to the need for a SWAT team or SWAT training within any district attorney's office.

"Very specially trained units are much more closely tied to law enforcement agencies, with 'uniformed first responder' responsibilities within the criminal justice system," Sniff said.

Horst said the unit does not carry out the more familiar SWAT activities -- no armored vehicles, hostage negotiators or helicopters.

But, Horst said, basic SWAT training is proper for the roles his office does take on. He said it also fits guidelines suggested by the California attorney general's office and police training standards.

"I think it is safe to say this bureau has taken a more pro-active role in public safety," Horst said.

Election by Appointment Continues in Riverside County

Riverside County supervisors appointed a sheriff now one of them has been appointed as well as Sacramento selects the latest new supervisor. Who else but John Benoit

(excerpt, Inside Riverside)

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has once again shown his disregard and utter contempt for the people of Riverside County by appointing a member of the do-nothing State Legislature to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors. If you thought the budget was bad before, just wait for John Benoit to put his years of experience on the State Budget to work on the County's Budget.

Fortunately Benoit will have to face election to the seat next June. He will likely face former Republican State Senator Jim Battin. That will likely be one of the costliest and nastiest races in the history of Riverside County.

The power struggle between Atlanta's police commission and that city's police department continues onward.

(excerpt, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Chief Richard Pennington said in an e-mailed statement Wednesday that APD is “currently developing a standard operating procedure that will define procedures between the Atlanta Citizen’s Review Board and Atlanta Police personnel

His office did not respond when asked via e-mail if officers could be disciplined if they decline to answer the board’s questions.

Meanwhile, the police union said its lawyers would continue advising members to decline to answer the board’s questions. The union contends their answers to the board could be used to bring criminal charges.

“We still strongly believe they [the Citizen Review Board] shouldn’t be doing these investigations,” said Sgt. Scott Kreher, president local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers.

He said there are many other agencies better equipped to do these kinds of inquiries — APD, the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, the FBI, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, to name a few.

“That may not be the sentiment of the people of the city of Atlanta,” said Cristina Beamud, executive director for the board. “The people of Atlanta, through their elected representatives, have required that an oversight board be established so that citizens can review the investigations that are conducted into these types of allegations.”

But the commission urges the chief of the police department to keep his promise. Doesn't going to look like it's going to happen. But then again, this city's police department was investigated by multiple agencies after the murder of Kathryn Johnston by narcotics officers employed there and at least one investigating party told the world he found evidence of corruption.

Another Los Angeles Police Department officer has been indicted, this one for illegal importing guns

(excerpt, Contra Costa Times)

Johnny Augustus Baltazar, 50, who was placed on administrative leave by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) last year, is named in an indictment handed down by a federal grand jury October 23. Baltazar is charged with one count of unlawful interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition. He is expected to make his initial appearance in federal court Monday afternoon.

The indictment is the culmination of an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that began when U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers intercepted and seized the weapons at Los Angeles International Airport.

According to the indictment, Baltazar sought to ship a container packed with firearms and ammunition to Belize. The weapons included eight .40-caliber handguns and two 9 mm handguns along with more than 1,500 rounds of ammunition.

Investigators believe the weapons were intended for use by officers with a Belize-based company called Elite Security which is owned by the defendant. The defendant did not have the required licenses to export the firearms.

A police officer currently sitting in jail in Missouri talks about the pressure to steal money seized by the police from drug dealers.

(excerpt, St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Liston was the lead officer, the one responsible for writing the report and logging the evidence. And for turning in the cash.

"I had no intention of taking it," he said in a recent interview after being sentenced to federal prison for doing just that.

Liston said that for weeks, he had been under increasing pressure from one of his partners, Officer Bobby Lee Garrett.

Welcome Home

My cousin Bruce is on his way home from his year-long deployment as an individual reserve in Bagdad, Iraq.

Two Financial meetings in Riverside's City Hall

Friday, Nov. 6, 2009: The Investment Committee meets on the Seventh Floor at City Hall at 2 p.m. and the much anticipated Finance Committee meeting will take place after that at 2:30 p.m.

Hiding in Plain Sight: The Stats on Recruitment and Retention of Women

2009-11-03T08:18:00.002-08:00

`What: Human Resources Board

When: Monday, Oct. 2 at 4 p.m.

Where: Riverside City Hall, Fifth Floor Conference Room

The Human Resources Board met on Monday, Nov. 2 and Riverside Police Department Chief Russ Leach finally appeared to do his presentation on issues pertaining to the recruitment and retention of female officers in the police department.

Leach arrived at the meeting with his adjutant, Sgt. Jaybee Brennan and a female administrative analyst from the city manager's office who had done the audit on female recruitment and retention for the department's audit and compliance bureau. It was indeed news that the city manager's office had placed one of its administrative analysts on the police department's audit and compliance bureau when that hadn't been the case several years ago back when the police department had more civilian employees. But then the city manager's office has placed its administrative analysts everywhere. This office even operated under the mistaken impression that one of them was qualified to manage the Community Police Review Commission for six months which just created a huge backlog on complaint reviews when the latest permanent one was hired.

What was also interesting is that Leach in his presentation cited statistical information that was taken from his recent internal audit on the retention rates of female officers done by that bureau. The same statistics which were deemed unreleasable to the board by the city attorney who delivered his ruling on that issue through Human Resources Director Rhonda Strout. Priamos' rationale for barring the release of that information was that the information was confidential including the stats. Meaning that when the board had requested this information in the past, it was told by Strout that it could not do so because it was connected to the internally generated audit. Obviously, for whatever reason that's all water under the bridge now because Leach provided those same apparently taboo statistics in his presentation. Only in Riverside, is information confidential in one meeting and not the next. It seems that it's not so much a list of rules or even laws that are followed but simply games that are played with information that is essentially public. Unfortunate for the city of course but it makes blogging more interesting.

But what were those formally top-secret statistics that magically poof, became publicly disseminated information? There are some cited below and they do provide more information about the issues of women and policing in the city's department.

The current percentage of female officers in Riverside's police department is 10%, a slight increase from the 9% share that existed in the 1990s and early 2000s. The FBI listed these stats that show the national averages for percentages of female employees and officers in law enforcement agencies serving different sized cities for 2005. Riverside's police department would be in the category of cities between 250,000 to 500,000 where the average figure is 15.2%, somewhat higher than Riverside's current stat. The overall national average is about 11.6% because large-sized agencies are not the norm in this nation and the smaller law enforcement agencies have lower percentages of female officers. The vast majority of department have less than 100 employees and the average sized law enforcement agency has about 50 sworn officers. Riverside's Police Department has about 370 nonvacant positions.

The attrition rates by gender between 2001-2008 differed greatly between male and female officers in the police department. The "washout" rate during this time period was 29% for men and 45% for women. For women, out of 31 hired, 14 left. 11 resigned, two terminated and one retired. The men showed higher rates of departure for disciplinary reasons than did the women who showed higher rates of resignations.

As far as trying to get hired by the department, about 15% of individuals who applied for positions in the department were female. In terms of the officers that the department actually hired, 13% were female. Both figures are higher than the current percentage of female representation in the department but lower than the dropout rates and comprise the time period between 2001-2008 in the department's history.

The picture of what happens to male versus female officers during their probationary periods also proved to be interesting though the retention rates for male and female officers weren't as disparate, according to Leach's statistics.

For officers employed there for 18 months or less, , the percentage of dropout rates were 72% of the total dropout rates for men and 79% for women. Again, fewer women than men terminated or retired but more women than men resigned, percentage wise. Women had lower rates of discipline, complaints and use of force incidents, according to Leach which is the case of female officers in most law enforcement agencies across the country.

Here's a cross section of women who left the police department by year for this current decade.

2001: 1 (Asian-American) dropped out the first day of the academy
1 Failed Field Training Officer program
1 dropped out five days in academy

2002: 1 dropped out five months into the academy

2003: 1 dropped out seven days into academy

2004: Failed FTO program

2005: 1 Terminated after six months in academy/department (Kelsy Metzler)

2006: 2 Failed FTO program
1 lasted one month in academy

2006/07: One retired on medical leave (actually two, Amy Munoz and Tina Gould)

2007: 1 Failed FTO program

2008: 1 Terminated (Laura DiGiorgio)

The Fate of the Department's Pre-Academy

The audit conducted by the department's bureau actually mostly covered the two week pre-academy that the department holds to prepare its newly hired personnel for the rigors of the basic academy. After the audit was conducted, the department made changes in the pre-academy program particularly involving the use of the drill sergeants and the role they played. One area that wasn't changed as much was the physical training involved with the curriculum, according to Leach. But the area where women had the highest dropout rates included the academy and the FTO programs (particularly between 2006-07). Not to mention one area they didn't discuss which was the several women who left after about 2-3 years working with the police department.

For women of color, not much has change there in five years in terms of their numbers. One Asian-American woman, three African-Americans and four Latinas (down from six) are included among the list of female officers, along with 29 White officers. The net increase for women officers since 2001 is about 5-6 female officers, which brings them up to about 37.

Leach said that the department needed to make it clear to women what law enforcement was about so they didn't bring a false impression or were given a false impression and then drop out after all this money had been spent recruiting and hiring them. One step he proposed was moving the mandated psychological testing earlier in the application and screening process.

He also talked about attending all the graduation ceremonies for the police academies where future officers sponsored by the police department graduated and how he always saw the women walking around in green uniforms. We like them better in blue, he said. He talked about how the county sheriff's departments were getting more women because the women want to work in jails and not out in the field.

The reference to more females being hired by the county agencies in the inland empire is a noteworthy one. It’s true that women are overrepresented in the corrections division of both the Riverside and San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. That certainly was the case according to statistical information I received from both agencies twice in the past nine years. The rationale for these statistics was that more women than men were drawn to corrections because these positions enjoyed more structured work schedules and safer working conditions. That could be true, however if you examine the statistics from both agencies for male African-American employees, you will find a similar trend of them being overrepresented in corrections and equally represented or underrepresented in the field divisions. There may be entirely different reasons behind the trends shown by these two demographics or there might be similar causal factors including how the police culture in many agencies views men of color including African-Americans and women of all races as being outsiders.

It might also be that both groups are negatively impacted by an institutional culture that might be more pervasive in the field divisions than in the correctional divisions or it might be the same but the more amiable working conditions provided by the correctional division might blunt some of the cultural impact on one or both of these groups. The two demographic groups that tend to be most negatively impacted by police culture are African-American men and women of all races. If women were scared off by the dangers of working in the streets, departments like the LAPD, the NYPD and the several other agencies in major cities wouldn’t have shown the higher percentages of female officers that they have and these agencies don’t have corrections divisions. And the Philadelphia Police Department which had 25% of its officers as female ranked seventh in the nation in 2003. Most of the cities with higher percentages of women such as the LAPD developed these numbers after being placed under 20-year consent decrees by the federal government including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Another factor that might be working in favor for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department is that some years ago before the election of former Sheriff Bob Doyle, the department created an ad hoc committee or task force of community members called the Recruitment, Retention and Diversity Panel to address these issues pertaining primarily to different ethnic and racial groups, secondarily to gender. At the end of their fact finding and researching efforts, the committee issued a report of recommendations for the department to follow to improve its record in this area. It's not clear whether the Sheriff's Department issues regular reports on its progress in implementing these recommendations.

Leach said in his presentation that he didn't believe women wanted to be promoted especially female detectives who he said were excellent by the way but tended to like to stay in that position with a more regular schedule. However when he mentioned detective testing which was conducted this past summer, he said there were no women high on the list. He did mention a couple of applicants for sergeant that might be good candidates for promotion were female.

Breakdown by rank

Captains: 1 out of 4 (total): Meredyth Meredith

Lieutenants: 0 out of approximately 13-15

Sergeants: 4 out of 46

Jaybee Brennan, Melissa Bartholomew, Michelle Jackson, Lisa Williams

Detectives: 10/61

Officers: 22/217

Total Sworn: 37 out of 370

During his presentation, Leach said that the department did exit interviews for employees who left but that they were on a voluntary not mandatory basis. He added that they couldn't force the women to be interviewed and some didn't want to be interviewed at all, they just wanted to get away from a bad experience. That last sentence by itself should throw up some red flags as to what these "bad experiences" are. But the reality is that many women who resign may not want to be interviewed for fear that any complaints they raise might be used against them as a means to blackball them from getting hired by other police agencies if they decide to try to find a job elsewhere in the profession. After all, most of the women who leave the Riverside Police Department are resigning rather than getting fired or retiring.

A national expert on gender and policing once told me that female officers don't drop out of agencies or resign because they were ignorant about the realities of law enforcement but because they weren't ignorant about the realities of law enforcement for women in many of these agencies.

This interesting study on female police officers focuses particularly on the experiences and perceptions of Black female police officers.

The Effect of Consent Decrees on the Recruitment and Hiring of Female officers. This study shows that the decrees were instrumental in raising the representation of men of color and women in the agencies like the LAPD during the 20 years that they were in place. After they expire, the numbers slowly start to decline in a relatively short period of time although there's no sudden drop.

Speaking of Leach, he made an appearance at the afternoon session of the city council meeting, presumably to meet in closed session on the lawsuit filed by Los Angeles Police Department Sgt. Wayne Guillary against the city. The city council has scheduled this lawsuit on its agenda twice in the past several weeks for the closed session portion of its agenda.

Here is Guillary on videotape working at a demonstration in Los Angeles several years ago. He was the subject of a campaign by activists in L.A. to give him positive views at the Rate My Cop site where his profile has received over 30,000 visits.

Mayor's Election

In case you haven't heard, Mayor Ron Loveridge was elected to another mayoral race carrying around 70% of the vote. Challenger and former councilman, Art Gage conceded earlier in the vote tally.

Results as of November 4 1:05am, 100.00%% of Precincts Reporting (97/97)
Candidates (Vote for 1)

Ron Loveridge 12,630 votes 69.17%

* Occupation: Mayor

Art Gage 5,629 votes 30.83%

* Occupation: Businessman
* Email:amgage@att.net

So another election is finished and out of the way and the parties have wound down. At least this one was decided quickly. When my cousin ran for mayor in another place, it took days for the tie vote between her and her challenger for the position to be broken, but it finally was. So never say that voting is a waste of your time and your vote counts for nothing because you never know.

The Press Enterprise Editorial Board supports an extension of the state's public records act to include court records.

Employee layoffs likely next year in Riverside County.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

"Next year's budget will inevitably include staff reductions," he said. "That is the stark reality."

Even before the new revenue projections, the county had to impose 10 percent cuts and impose furloughs on Fridays to reduce expenses. Supervisors set a Nov. 24 workshop to discuss the current budget outlook.

The first-quarter report also includes results of a so-called "stress test" used to see if county departments are on track to finish the fiscal year within their budgets.

Twelve departments failed the test, including the Sheriff's Department, the district attorney and county counsel offices, according to the report.

Sheriff Stanley Sniff told supervisors his department is doing its part to reduce expenses.

For the current fiscal year, Sniff said the department started with a $13 million budget deficit but has reduced the figure by securing grant money, participating in an early retirement program and keeping some upper-level management positions vacant.

But Sniff said the challenges remain. It has nearly 800 vacancies and will need hundreds of deputies to fill the expanded Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in Banning.

And the next police chief of the Los Angeles Police Department is ....[ Insert Name ]

Off-duty officers in Delaware have been accused of fighting.

(excerpt, Delaware Online)

The early-morning fight began inside Dude's Sports Bar, owned by Wilmington police Sgt. Mark Christopher, and spilled onto Union Street, where patrol officers from Wilmington and troopers from the state police briefly clashed while trying to subdue the four men.

At one point, a uniformed patrol officer applied an electric Taser to trooper Vincent Clemons, who was off-duty and struggling with another man.

State and city police have released few details, declining to identify by name anyone in the fight, but they have acknowledged that a Wilmington officer and a state trooper were involved. No arrests have been made.

"Chief Michael Szczerba assures the public and all involved in this incident that it is being thoroughly investigated, and further states that any and all allegations will be reviewed," Wilmington police spokesman Sgt. Steven Barnes wrote in an e-mail. Police would not acknowledge any racial complaint, but Barnes said: "If an allegation of a racial slur is made by anyone, it will be thoroughly investigated."

Complaints filed by residents against officers are up over 18 percent in Chicago.

(excerpt, Chicago Tribune)

Much of the 18.6 percent increase in complaints received by the Independent Police Review Authority has been driven by a steep rise since March of this year, IPRA Chief Administrator Ilana Rosenzweig said.

For most of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, the authority was receiving about 2,300 new complaints against police every three months. But in the second and third quarters of this year the numbers jumped to 2,600 and then 2,800.

The increase has forced the authority to deploy more investigators to fielding new cases, causing a slowdown in the rate at which investigations are completed, Rosenzweig said.

The authority closes about 60 percent of its cases within six months, down from about 65 percent the previous year, she said.

Columbia, Missouri finally has its civilian review board.

San Jose's police department becomes the first to use new camera technology.

Change the name of this iconic product. Surely you jest.

Taser shocks contribute to death but not delay in CPRC's investigation of Acevedo death

2009-10-31T13:19:00.000-07:00

****ELECTION UPDATE*****

Art Gage Concedes Mayoral Race

But in San Bernardino Jim Penman waits to do so.

Riverside Mayoral Race

64.95% votes counted

Ron Loveridge: 11,175 69.99%

Art Gage: 4,791 30.01%

Source: Smart Voters

On the first anniversary of the officer-involved death of Marlon Acevedo in Riverside, California, the Riverside County Coroner's office stated that taser charges contributed to his death.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Dr. Scott McCormick, who performed the autopsy on Acevedo, said, in that case too, the Taser was one factor among many, the most important of which was PCP intoxication. Weighing all factors, including the proximity of Taser shocks to his time of death, McCormick decided the Taser should be listed as a factor.

"Absent the use of the Taser, he most likely still would have died. I don't think this is a reason to demonize the use of the Taser," McCormick said.

Riverside Police Department spokeswoman Sgt. Jaybee Brennan declined to comment on the case. Acevedo's family has sued in federal court, alleging wrongful death and excessive force.

Deputy Chief Boris Robinson of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department said this is the only case in which the coroner's office has cited Taser shocks as a contributing factor. Sandy Fatland, spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County coroner's office, said her office has never cited them as a factor.

One of the Inland people dying after being shocked was a 19-year-old at a mental health facility in San Bernardino. He appeared agitated and was wearing a gas mask when police tried to restrain him last month. Two others died in Riverside County in July and August after encounters with sheriff's deputies near Hemet and in Moreno Valley. Authorities said the men behaved as if they had mental problems or were under the influence of drugs. Details about the causes of death in all three cases have not been released.

It's interesting that the media was aware of the content of the autopsy report from the Riverside County Sheriff-Coroner's office months or perhaps years before the Community Police Review Commission has access to that same report. Maybe the city council should come up with other excuses besides the integrity of a criminal investigation when defending its collective actions against the CPRC fulfilling its charter mandate for investigating and reviewing officer-involved deaths. Especially since the city's legal representatives have claimed that the investigations of officers for incustody deaths by their investigations bureau aren't really criminal investigations at all in defense against two lawsuits filed by the Riverside Police Officers' Association in 2003 and in August 2009. The RPOA lawsuit filed two months ago also alleged that management and supervisory personnel in the department called one shooting "good" before the involved officers were even interviewed and that the department saw no reason to allow one of the involved officers in that shooting to retain a lawyer for his interview with investigators.

On Halloween, the Marlon Acevedo case became the third officer-involved death to hit its first year anniversary without the CPRC being allowed to investigate it since it was first barred by City Manager Brad Hudson and later by a majority of his city council from exercising its charter mandate, a responsibility given to it by the majority of the city's voters when Measure II passed in November 2004.

It's a practically a given that the fourth death, that of Russell Hyatt will probably hit its first year anniversary in mid January before the ban is lifted on the CPRC on investigating any of these deaths. Such is the state of the city council on this issue including those who have endorsed the passage of Measure II which was set up to protect the commission from exactly the same interference it's facing now.

At the time, the city council voted 5-2 to essentially bar the CPRC from doing investigations until after the police department had decided it was fine for it to do so, council members, department officials and Hudson and company assured the public that these delays would last six months at the most. As you can see from below, the city and department are 4 for 4 for officer-involved deaths that have passed the 180 day mark. The city council and Mayor Ron Loveridge who backed the council's decision last March owe the public an explanation as to why their forecast did not come to pass.

Luckily, the CPRC will provide them with this opportunity to do so given that the commission as neutered as it's become has voted 7-1 (with contracted employee Peter Hubbard naturally voting nay) to send another letter of "clarification" to Loveridge and the city council as to why these cases have been allowed to lag so long without the ban being lifted. It remains to be seen whether there will be anymore of a response to that letter than there was one sent last autumn not long after the Hudson directive was issued. It took a tremendous push to place what had taken place behind doors outside the public's eye into the public forums and place the city council and mayor in the position of having to publicly do what had intended to be done in private. And the leader of the movement to bar the commission from investigating incustody deaths, former councilman Frank Schiavone witnessed his voting support from several key neighborhoods in his ward evaporate and disappear, something that he perhaps is left to contemplate back in the private sector.

Here's the time line on the four outstanding officer-involved deaths in Riverside.

Carlos David Quinonez, Sr. (Latino) died Sept. 1, 2008: 426 days

Fernando Luis Sanchez (Latino)died Sept. 11, 2008: 416 days

Marlon Acevedo (Latino) died Oct. 31, 2008: 366 days

Russell Franklin Hyatt (White) died Jan. 17, 2009: 288 days

At its last meeting, some members of the CPRC sat and wondered whether it was usual for officer-involved death cases to be delayed this long by the police department and/or Riverside County District Attorney's office and no it is not. The previous record for a delayed case was about 300 days for the 2003 fatal shooting of Volne Lamont Stokes which had actually been completed by the Officer-Involved Death Investigation team earlier but had been placed on hold in the Internal Affairs Division headquarters until someone from the OID team could transport two copies, one to the D.A.'s office and the other to the CPRC at the same time. The cases before and after that took less than a year, with Summer Lane taking about eight months and Lee Deante Brown about seven before reaching the CPRC which of course per the charter had initiated its own investigations by that time.

And is the current load the highest the department ever had to investigate and review at one time? No, between November 2002 and December 2003, there were five officer-involved deaths and at least five nonfatal shootings, including three in April 2003.

As for the coroner in this case, it remains to be seen whether Taser International which manufactures the devices will sue for the striking of the use of tasers as even a contributing factor as the company did in Ohio.

Vote on Tuesday

Election day will be hitting this Tuesday, Nov. 3 so head for the polls if you haven't voted absentee. The Press Enterprise released its list of endorsements. This blog doesn't endorse in elections because it's up to every registered voter to educate themselves on the candidates running, the issues they stand for and behind and to come up with a voting decision they can be proud of or at least live with. The important thing is to go out and vote either in person or through absentee ballot rather than not participate at all. Don't opt out of the process because you don't think your vote counts for much or at all.

Riverside elections have been decided with as few as four to five votes. And more times than you might think especially lately, it's been by no more than a dozen or so votes, or even less.

And if you're eligible to vote and aren't registered then go out and get registered so you can participate in future elections because there's quite a few coming up in 2010 at the county, state and national level.

Here in Riverside, there is the mayoral race that has been playing out for the past several months.

Current Mayor Ron Loveridge is a long-time incumbent which makes him tough to beat and on his brochures, he's taking credit for issues that are usually dealt with by municipal legislative bodies particularly in a weak mayor system. It's difficult to compare him for better or worse with San Bernardino's mayor Patrick Morris because the role of mayor is much different in that city. On the other hand, the mayor is directly elected by voters citywide in Riverside whereas in some other cities like Moreno Valley, mayor's are appointed from and by council members who themselves were directly elected by voters in their legislative wards.

Former councilman, Art Gage is running as an "outsider" to a system he was once smack dab in the middle of and if he gets at least a third of the vote or so, it will be a win for him because he's probably hoping to get some name recognition for the first open mayoral election in years which is set for 2012. There's some pretty big names or more accurately, blasts from the past who are planning to line up for that one so a little recognition doesn't hurt.

There's also two really good write-in candidates in Ken Stansbury and Troy Kent, who's 18 and still in high school. Both are running to offer alternatives to the status quo in Riverside which many people believe has gone on for too long.

So don't forget to vote. It's your voice.

Former Riverside Police Department officer arraigned on 12 felony counts

Former Riverside Police Department officer David Reeves, jr. was arraigned on the 12 felony charges he faces and plead not guilty in front of presiding judge, Richard Fields in Riverside County Superior Court. He still remains in custody under $500,000 bail.

Operations Safe Parks, the revamping of an old program shared by the Riverside Police Department and the Parks and Recreation Department gets started back up again.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

"The best thing that happens is when the community contacts us and says, 'Hey, did you know there's an issue over here,' because we don't live in the neighborhood," Manning said in a phone interview.

At White Park, Manning said information from residents recently helped police solve about 30 burglaries in the Mount Rubidoux area and led to a sting resulting in the arrests of nine drug dealers.

"It was absolutely a result of the community partnership," Manning said.

Judy Cunningham, who lives a few blocks from White Park, is among the residents who started talking regularly with police.

Earlier this year, she noticed an increase in drug dealing and general loitering in the park. After the fenced park closed at dark, people would hang around outside the gates, she said Thursday while standing in the park.

"About six months ago it was crazy. You would walk through and there would be people over there and over there," Cunningham said, gesturing toward the trees and bushes along the fence line surrounding the park. "They would verbally say stuff to you or block the way."

More delays in the retrial of a man convicted of killing two Riverside Police Department officers in 1982. Both phases of the trial were kicked out by a higher court several years ago.

The revenue earnings by Riverside County continue to plunge.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

The county will again tap a contingency fund to stabilize the budget, but the revenue losses have pushed the structural deficit past $70 million. The gap is the difference between revenues and ongoing expenses, which are budgeted at $680 million.

"We will need every dollar in county reserves if we hope to manage multiple years of budget cuts that otherwise would decimate general-fund services," county Chief Executive Officer Bill Luna wrote in the report to the Board of Supervisors.

"While using reserves mitigates immediate issues, it does nothing to address our growing structural deficit and further erodes our fiscal safety net."

The county can achieve long-term fiscal stability by permanently cutting ongoing general-fund expenditures, Luna wrote.

"Our problems are complicated when adopted budget targets are not met, and projected revenues underperform estimates," Luna said.

Paul McDonnell, the county's chief financial officer, said the current budget did not adequately take into account the property tax revenues transferred to the newly incorporated cities of Menifee and Wildomar.

In addition, supplemental property tax refunds have skyrocketed, McDonnell said in an interview.

When a person buys a house, the owner receives a supplemental property tax bill. If the new value is more than before the sale, the owner gets an increased bill. If the opposite is true, the owner gets a refund check from the county.

With so many foreclosures, short sales and other distressed properties on the market, the refunds have dramatically increased, Assessor Larry Ward said in an interview.

"We don't send out a lot of bills right now," Ward said.

Norco gets its city manager by hiring its interim manager.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Norco Mayor Pro Tem Malcolm Miller said Friday that extending Groves' contract to become city manager is the best decision for the city.

"She's gotten a quick handle on what is important for the community," including economic development and historic preservation, Miller said.

He said he would like to see Groves focus over the next two years on preventing the city from continuing to dip into its reserves, generating new projects and continuing to work on existing ones that will bring tax revenue into the city. He also wants her to see a proposed waste-to-energy power plant to completion.

Miller said he expects one challenge Groves will face over the next two years is reducing city spending on public safety.

"I still believe that we're spending too much on public safety and we need to find ways to reduce those, find a way that's acceptable to citizens at an alternative price," Miller said.

Councilman Berwin Hanna said the decision to make Groves permanent just makes sense.

"She's already kind of familiar with the city and how we work. Then we wouldn't have to go out and go through another hiring procedure," Hanna said.

San Bernardino County unveiled its new courthouse but few people came to see it.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Disappointment at the low turnout showed clearly on the face of James C. McGuire, presiding judge of San Bernardino County Superior Court. Row after row of seats sat empty. Most of the cookies and punch on a table in the back of the room were untouched.

McGuire headed a list of municipal, civic and court leaders who attended the event, including San Bernardino Mayor Pat Morris and San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos.

To Morris and others, the 362,000-square-foot court building, projected to begin construction in 15 months, represents more than a utilitarian function of unclogging the county's court system. The new court complex is viewed as another way to revitalize a deteriorating downtown.

"This is a very important project for the county and for the city that is known as the county seat," Morris said, noting that a new transit center is planned two blocks away. "We think this will bring a new face to downtown."

Meetings

Monday, Nov. 2 at 4 p.m. the Human Resources Board meets on the Fifth Floor conference room at City Hall. This meeting, Chief Russ Leach of the police department has been scheduled to appear. Will he get permission from his bosses in the city manager's office? It's hoped that he will be able to attend and speak to the board on what's going on in the police department, at least what can be talked about.

The board's agenda for this meeting is here. The Human Resources Board also has a Web site which is located here.

Tuesday, Nov. 3, at 3 p.m. The city council will hold its typical election day abbreviated meeting meaning there will be no evening session. this agenda will tell you what you need to know.

The lawsuit filed against the city by Los Angeles Police Department Sgt. Wayne Guillary is back on the closed session agenda for the second time in several weeks. Does this mean the city's in settlement talks?

Friday, Nov. 6 at 2:30 p.m. The Finance Committee breaks its nearly year long drought on holding meetings and will discuss business on the Seventh Floor of City Hall. The agenda has been posted here and This report has been written by Asst. City Manager and Financial CEO Paul Sundeen.

Twitter De Dee

The blog Inside Riverside is on Twitter here and blogs about how much longer the Press Enterprise will last on Belo's watch.

(excerpt)

Likewise, the Press-Enterprise/Press Enquirer destroyed its credibility by failing to conntain its opinions to the Editorial Page. When reporting on political matters, articles that could injury politicians the paper supported did not receive the proper coverage or were ignored entirely, as were articles that would be positive for elected officials The Press-Enterprise did not like.

But there is a silver lining in all of this.

The Press-Enterprise's failure to report certain news items and the Editorial Board's out-of-touch views of the world led to the birth of Inside Riverside.

Without the shortcomings of the Press Enquirer this blog never would have been born of necessity.

So we thank the leaders of the Press Enquirer for creating the opportunity to build this blog which has had an explosion of readership at the same time your once great newspaper is going the way of the Dodo.

More Press Enterprise Layoffs

Will there be more coming? The link above clicks to show layoffs six months ago. A few weeks ago, more employees including reporters were laid off. When will the hemorrhage end?

The drought appears over for the Finance Committee

2009-10-29T15:56:00.000-07:00

Finance Committee to Meet

I received emails and messages today that one of the city's longest running droughts may be ending next week and that's involving the failure of one of the subcommittees formed by the Riverside City Council to meet in nearly a year. The Finance Committee is actually set to meet on Friday, Nov. 6 at 2:30 p.m. in City Hall on the Seventh Floor. Not tentatively set to meet as it has been various times during the year but it's actually on the schedule with a set agenda.

The Finance Committee last met on Dec. 8, 2008 to receive a report on the fiscal budget from Asst. City Manager and Finance Director Paul Sundeen. The latest activity from Sundeen in relation to the committee was to assist Committee Chair and Councilwoman Nancy Hart in explaining during a recent city council meeting why there hadn't been any meeting in so long. Tentative meetings were scheduled on nearly a monthly basis but they were always canceled even before any agenda could be posted. This issue has been blogged about extensively here and at that recent meeting, Hart told the mayor, the city council and the viewing audience that she was responding to questions she had been asked by various individuals as to why this committee never met, during a period of time set aside for elected officials to make remarks near the end of the meeting.

One of its members, Councilman Paul Davis had allegedly been promised the chair position by Mayor Ron Loveridge when he and interim mayor pro tem at the time, Councilman Andrew Melendrez had been coming up with prospective appointments to the city council committees. But when the decision was made, former vice-chair Hart was elevated to chair and Davis inherited her position. It's been said that City Hall went with Hart because it was very unlikely she would ever convene a meeting during her tenure as chair and in fact, her comments seemed to indicate to many listeners including those who contacted me (and it was a bit surprising the fervor this issue caused) that she had abdicated the decision on whether this mechanism of financial accountability and transparency would ever meet, to the city manager's office. Davis on the other hand had campaigned on financial accountability at City Hall including projects under the Riverside Renaissance banner in terms of finding out exactly what the costs will be and he was working on getting the committee to hold a meeting.

It remains to be seen if the city manager's office will be too happy about closer examination of the Renaissance which has grown from an initial budget of $700 million to an astronomical $2.1 billion and depending how much of the budget was based on bonds sales, that number could grow for future generations to pay the bills. And the city's residents really deserve to know the truth about how much they and their future descendants will be paying for the Renaissance party. Not to be told that they are misinformed about where the money's coming from because if that's the truth, then City Hall didn't do its job in educating the public about this massive municipal experiment paid for with their tax dollars in one way or another.

Now, before anyone says that to critique the Renaissance is to be a party pooper, there's a lot of good projects that have helped upgrade infrastructure issues in this city to improve them but some of the other items, such as the seizure of private businesses through threat of eminent domain by the Redevelopment Agency have been more problematic. And the uncertainty among city residents about where the money is or will be coming from needs to be addressed in a transparent fashion.

This is what a Finance Committee Agenda looks like.

Just click "Finance Committee", "2009", "Agendas" and then the one for Nov. 6, 2009 which covers utility bonds and you will be witnessing a historic moment in Riverside.

Hopefully, it means this important subcommittee which provides a layer of transparency and makes it a tiny bit harder for any Seventh Floor backdoor deals to continue, will meet on some sort of regular schedule again. But things look a bit brighter for the city. Just several weeks ago, it appeared that both the Finance Committee and the police department's second strategic plan were benched. The strategic plan which was first announced by Police Chief Russ Leach at public events last spring somehow ran aground in the interim and was allegedly being roadblocked by City Hall management. Others say that it might have been the pallor of former Councilman Frank Schiavone's role in defining and influencing the direction of the police department which might have been a factor until he was voted out of office in June.

But that plan also seems to be back on track...at least for now, but like the Finance Committee and about a dozen or so other issues, it will require constant vigilance to make sure it stays on the right track.

Under New Chair, CPRC Spins its Wheels

[Left, Brian Pearcy listens as fellow CPRC commissioner, Chani Beeman tries to make her point. A motion to lift the current ban minority viewpoints and/or minority reports died for the lack of a second. ]

City Hall won more points with its favorite plaything, the Community Police Review Commission when a push by Commissioner Brian Pearcy to undo what he called a "void" vote banning minority reports in August withered on the vine for the lack of a second. Or so that's how it was explained to people who couldn't stay for the marathon meeting.

Pearcy who missed the meeting where the vote took place questioned its validity given that he didn't think it was properly agendized and pointed out that while the motion on record said that minority reports had been banned, the expression of minority viewpoints perhaps included within the majority report had been allowed. Yet, you had people like Commissioner Art Santore go on about how there should be no minority viewpoints period when he had been one of the majority who had voted to allow written minority viewpoints if not minority reports. So did Santore change his mind?

No, he just clearly didn't pay attention to what he was voting on when that whole sad state affairs went down in August's general meeting. Nor did it appear did most of the other commissioners who didn't seem to be sure what they voted upon which has to be the most ridiculous state of affairs since they voted to include a minority report that they later admitted they didn't read. And if they had read it, they would have voted against it even though a majority body voting against a minority report because they disagree with its content is not something that many people would think happens in real life. Wonderland maybe, but not real life.

Apparently, by the end of the meeting, most of the commission, well actually all of it except the person left standing trying to salvage the minority viewpoint had lost their moral compass and Pearcy's motion died for lack of a second. And that's kind of funny in its own way because earlier there had been two motions on the floor, both with seconds. What's even more interesting is if you watch the Planning Commission, the Human Relations Commission and the Human Resources Board and compare their members' behavior to the CPRC, the CPRC stands alone in having meetings where the majority picks on the minority voices and doesn't try to just silence them but makes personal attacks against them. It's interesting watching Rogan scold commissioners like Chani Beeman for their "style" (as if that's even his role at all) when she asks commissioners to engage and then when commissioners like Ken Rotker push through some sort of passive aggressive innuendo and then insults through the back door commissioners like Chani Beeman, they get passes by Rogan.

But Rogan provided the most entertainment when he either appeared confused or tried to confuse people's concern about delayed investigations into officer-involved deaths with saying it doesn't matter because the deliberations of these cases by the commission wouldn't take place any sooner if the CPRC began its investigations sooner. Seriously, if he's that confused about the separation of those two processes and the time sensitivity issues that are unique to each one, then what is he doing there earning over $150,000 for what in reality (if not by city definition) is a part-time job? I'll take his "false specter" that he mentioned and raise him his latest "straw man argument".

Former chair Sheri Corral resigned and was replaced by Hubbard as chair. Hubbard slouched in his chair the whole time and like Corral, sought guidance for most of his decisions from CPRC Manager Kevin Rogan. It usually went like this. Someone would say something. Hubbard looks lost. Hubbard looks at Rogan. Rogan nods or shakes his head and then Hubbard verbalizes what Rogan has done. Some people say that's the biggest problem with the CPRC these days, its lack of leadership. No, a bigger problem is when the commission handed off its leadership role to its own employee Rogan which is kind of like the city council's biggest problem that it handed over the keys to the city to its direct employees.

The newest commissioner Rogelio Morales from the second ward made his debut and presumably made it through the entire meeting. He was probably the most vocal of any new commissioner in recent history and asked good questions including a couple that some of the other commissioners should have asked six months ago. But he also asked if the meetings could be conducted via the internet so that they could sit in their pajamas and talk about cases. Newest commissioner, meet the Brown Act. Well, maybe they can just hold the meetings at City Hall in their pajamas.

Something did get accomplished during the meeting. The commission did vote 7-1 with one vacancy and Hubbard of course dissenting, to send another letter to the city council and mayor asking for further clarification on the situation involving the delays for investigating officer-involved deaths that were first foisted on them by City Manager Brad Hudson and City Attorney Gregory Priamos. In fact, it was Priamos who informed them in one particularly animated meeting that there could be year-long jail sentences and hefty fines for charter violations, which is pretty interesting considering that Priamos apparently believed that even putting an item on the agenda discussing the possible hiring of independent legal counsel was some sort of charter violation. Which most people might think of as being a conflict of interest at work. Priamos kind of quieted down after he was the one who got written up in the Press Enterprise in a negative way last year for actions involving the CPRC and the ethics code and complaint process that were actually done by Hudson's office. Relations between these two direct employees of the city council are said to be less than warm because Hudson allegedly had believed when the city hired him that it needed a different city attorney. If that's the case, who can blame Priamos for being miffed?

But the commission voted to send a letter reminding the city council and mayor that when they voted by majority to bar the CPRC from launching independent investigations of officer-involved deaths, they and representatives from the police department and city manager's office had reassured them that there wouldn't be more than a six month delay in their investigations. But as three out of four of the officer involved deaths have or will shortly pass their first anniversaries by this weekend all without independent investigations being initiated by the CPRC, clearly these individuals' reassurances were for naught and the waiting periods have gone way beyond those forecast by Hudson and the city council.

It's not clear whether this latest letter will generate any meaningful response from the city council but the number one question that is arising in many communities about the CPRC for most people who are asked about it, is what is with this delay of officer-involved deaths?

Just when you don't think this commission can get any more dysfunctional, the valiant commissioners of the CPRC prove you wrong once again. Dysfunction as an art form, that's the CPRC in a nutshell.

Speaking of Hubbard, he's on deck at the Mayor's Nomination and Screening Committee this month on Monday, Nov. 23 as the subject of an ethics complaint for conflict of interest because he is employed in a high-ranking position with a company, American Medical Response, that has a contract with the city manager's office.

In more CPRC business, interviews for the Ward Three commissioner vacancy will be held Tuesday, Nov. 17 at 2 p.m. on the Seventh Floor at City Hall.

City Hall new security system creates captive audiences at meetings...by keeping them captive

They say that the sign of success of a meeting is getting people to show up and even more if you can get them to stay, but recently in at least one scheduled meeting at City Hall, people attending had to wait until the meeting was over before being allowed to leave the building because of a new security system installed at City Hall, in lieu of the security guards who used to man the buildings while meetings were conducted in the evening.

If you are in City Hall attending a meeting after 7 p.m. and you need to leave, you might be stuck inside the building unless you can find a city employee willing to let youout. That was the case during the CPRC meeting when virtually everyone who attended left before the latest marathon session of bickering and power plays had been adjourned. CPRC Manager Kevin Rogan had to escort people out of the building and disengage the security system so that people could leave without setting it off.

That wasn't the case involving a recent meeting of the Riverside Neighborhood Partnership. People attending that meeting had to remain for its entirety without being allowed to leave Seriously, in the latter meeting, the city employee from the Office of Neighborhoods/Development leading it said that if anyone left the building, they would trigger the alarm causing the police department's SWAT team to rush over to City Hall so they had to wait until the meeting adjourned before being allowed to exit the building. There was no prior notification on the meeting agenda or posted at City Hall that this would be the case and it's difficult to find any legal justification for preventing people from leaving a meeting before it's over especially when they haven't been notified of those rules beforehand. In fact, it's not clear whether the public has even been informed that this new security system was installed.

There should also be notification on the agendas of meetings like the RNP that start at 6:30 pm that if you're late to the meeting and get to City Hall after 7 p.m. that you will not be able to get inside the locked down building to attend that meeting.

The city council and mayor tell everyone to "shop Riverside". In fact, there's a campaign of sorts trying to get people to do this. But what happens when the mayor doesn't during his campaign?

(excerpt, Inland Empire Weekly)

Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge is currently seeking a fifth term in the city’s highest post. And like all political hopefuls, he is spending dough on mailers, a campaign website, consultants and—of course—signs. And to whom did Mayor Loveridge turn for the printing of these election-era eyesores? Surely to one of the many qualified, affordable print shops in the City of Riverside, right?

Right?

So, sir. Some of Loveridge’s lawn signs were printed by COGS South Signs, a print shop based in Santa Ana. Although COGS does not appear anywhere in the Mayor’s campaign disclosure firms, there’s no way to deny it—the signs themselves are printed with the firm’s logo and telephone number, according to The Press-Enterprise’s Dan Bernstein (Loveridge’s responses were lame like: “You hire vendors that make a good product. They’re found in different places. People you’ve done work with in the past, you continue that relationship.”

Curiously, just a few months ago, Loveridge described shopping Riverside as the “most important” part of an overall effort to get the city out if its economic doldrums, during a Jan. 22 “State of the City” speech.

Justin Tracy sees a parallel between these campaign spending decisions and the way the city is run. Tracy, who bills himself as a “reasonable guy,” is the owner of PIP printing in Downtown Riverside. He understands that if a merchant offers a better service or a better price, it makes sense to use that business’ goods or services, even if it is outside the city. “He should task his campaign manager with finding services within the city, but if he does find a better deal outside the city, then he should not let them print the info on the sign!” The decisions about how a campaign’s money is spent naturally fall to the treasurer of the re-election committee, in this case, Jim Dudek. In reference to Loveridge’s negligence in his delegation of authority, Tracy asks, “Isn’t it reflective of the oversight he provides the city in general?

Press Enterprise Columnist Dan Bernstein discusses the Neo-Nazis rallies and counter demonstrations.

And there's some Nazi chatter here from someone identifying himself as Mike O'Dell who participated in the Nazi rally in Casa Blanca on Saturday.

(excerpt)

The Blacks have the NAACP, The Mexicans have MPA, "Mexican Political Association

But when we create our own group, then we are called "racists"...

I don't think so.

God Bless the Neo Nazis... Thank you Mike O'Dell

Dear Mr. O'Dell,

You need to go back and read the NSM's 25 point plan which talks about expelling anyone who's not White which isn't in the platforms of either organization listed. Oh and it's not Mexican Political Association, it's Mexican-American Political Association but then again, your own plan states that people of Mexican ancestry can't be American citizens under the Nazi version of utopia.

Oh, and the NAACP was created when your brothers in the Klan started hanging Black citizens from trees and your ideology stemmed from the murder of over 6 million people, an event that's obviously makes the current generations of Nazis uncomfortable enough to engage in revisionist history by pretending it never happened.

Cheers,

There's a changing of the guard coming to the Los Angeles Police Department with the departure of current chief, William Bratton who is taking a high-paying private sector position. This series of articles from the Los Angeles Times discusses the responsibilities and challenges faced by Bratton's successor.

Bratton writes this article about keeping Special Order 40 in place even after he is gone.

Pittsburgh's form of civilian oversight is finding it difficult to meet.

(excerpt, The Pitt News)

The Citizen Police Review Board plans to hold a public hearing concerning the G-20 Summit-related arrests in Oakland, but the University’s feelings about the meeting are unclear.

The review board, an independent group that investigates police behavior, tentatively scheduled a public hearing from 6 to 8 p.m. Nov. 10 to hear students’ and business owners’ complaints about police conduct during and surrounding the Summit.

Beth Pittinger, the board’s executive director, said the group initially hoped to hold the meeting on campus, “because [the demonstrations] happened there.”

If it can’t hold a meeting on campus, Pittinger said, the group will hold one at another location in Oakland.

Robert Hill, Pitt’s vice chancellor of public affairs, said it was “premature” to comment on the Citizen Police Review Board’s plans because the University hasn’t yet received a request to use its facilities.

“We have not established a position,” Hill said.

Will voters approve a new civilian review board in Fort Myers, Florida?

(excerpt, Wink News)

The police union is campaigning against it, saying it would cost taxpayers too much. They're sending out fliers to voters, urging them to vote no on the new police review panel, when the city already has one. Supporters say the mailings are distorting what they consider to be the truth.

"It's shameful politics that they're playing," says activist Anthony Thomas, who has led the charge for citizen review of the Fort Myers Police Department since the officer-involved shooting death of Ernest Weston in 2007.

He says the police union's opposition mailings overstate the taxpayer impact of the proposed panel.

"The city has put it at more than a million dollars. We think it'll be more like $100,000," Thomas said

A clash between the Chicago Police Department chief and the civilian review mechanism has emerged about who decides on discipline for police officers.

Riverside news briefs, elections, Neo Nazis and Parkview Hospital

2009-10-26T08:27:00.000-07:00

Just days after the latest Neo Nazi demonstration and counter demonstration in Riverside, there's a lot of reflection going on in different places. The Neo Nazis emboldened by their ability to draw the attention of hundreds of counter demonstrators from Southern California and dozens of representatives from four state and local law enforcement agencies have announced to the press that they are planning on more regular demonstrations at the day laborer site near Indiana and Madison in Casa Blanca, Riverside. And why shouldn't they? There has never been eight more people holding as much power in their White Supremacist hands as this small band of Nazi Germany nostalgists do now at least not for a while. More power in that manner, than politicians and even members of the Greater Chamber of Commerce. Do you think if a city council member or prominent business leader issued a press release to show up that they would get this kind of response?

Maybe Sheryl Crow or Pat Benatar will rival that kind of responsive audience when they appear at the Fox Theater next year.

The coalition that formed among 60 political organizations and religious institutions isn't sure whether or not they will sponsor another counter demonstration if the Neo Nazis decide to protest. They appeared shocked at the actions taken by some of the counter demonstrators including members of the Brown Berets at the demonstration on Saturday. About five minutes after the Neo Nazis arrived at a dirt lot adjacent to the railroad tracks, a small group of counter demonstrators ran from across Madison and broke through police lines and over a metal barrier to get into a fistfight with Neo Nazis.

But the majority of the demonstrators protested peacefully and passionately against the Neo Nazis who numbered about 20 for about three hours. The police were restrained, creating police lines after the fistfight and after the demonstration, many people went to relax at the park.

La Indy Media provided its coverage of the events. The posters there claim the Nazis lost and they won like it's some kind of sporting event.

There's a lot of talk about stamping out hate in the Inland Empire before it takes root and then associating the emergence of the representatives of the NSM while patting themselves on the back for doing this. But the problem with that, is that the Nazis didn't bring hatred, they're tapping into hatred that's already been in this region for years and as it turns out, the NSM chapter in Riverside is about four years old. The region has long been a location where hate groups and gangs congregate and set up chapters or cells, whether they are Western Hammerskins/Nation, Christian Nationalist Movement, Public Enemy Number 1 (fastest growing), Nazi Low Riders, Into Everything, Aryan Brotherhood, White Aryan Resistance, White Aryan Army, IE Skinheads, Ku Klux Klan and others. The NSM if it's setting up a more hefty chapter in Riverside is simply another one on the list.

Most of the above organizations don't protest visibly and some of them are not even known about until a law enforcement agency such as the Riverside County Sheriff's Department arrests them and at press conferences, their arsenals are put on displays on tables along with their racist paraphernalia. Or in the case with the Hammarskins, a number of them are arrested after a racist attack against a member of one of their target groups, as was the case with the attack against a Black man, Randall Bowen in Temecula a few years ago. What is attracting so many hate organizations and gangs into this region? Why do they find this region very productive recruitment ground?

And when they take their banners, drums and signs home at the end of the day, Riverside itself remains unchanged in that regard. There's many good things about this city and its people but there's problems as well particularly in the area of race relations. Which is one reason why organizations like the NSM are trying to get a foothold in Riverside facilitated by the poor local economy, high unemployment rate and high percentage of people who commute long distances to work leaving their kids at home with their computers.

I ran into Mayor Ron Loveridge in the elevator and he was talking about the multicultural forum on Friday pretty early in the morning. He seemed a bit wigged out by the Neo Nazis and the counter demonstrations and when I told him that the Neo Nazis might be doing more protests and he walked away saying that wasn't the announcement that he wanted to hear.

Neo Nazis setting up chapters in California, according to the Anti-Defamation League and mirroring some of the activities of the Save Our State (founded by the current "outreach" consultant of the San Bernardino Police Officers' Association Joe Turner) and the Minutemen. The latter two groups tried to disavow any connection with White Supremacist organizations like the NSM but I guess since a couple of their members were there holding Nazi flags at the latest rally in Riverside, that this stance has...changed.

A Changing of the Guard on the CPRC

The Community Police Review Commission is set to meet again, with eight members given that the Rogelio Morales who is the new Ward Two commissioner has finally been processed and sworn in and there's a new vacancy because of the resignation of Chair Sheri Corral. With her gone, Vice-Chair Peter Hubbard will become chair and there probably won't be an election to fill his spot as there is no language in the bylaws or policies and procedures covering the filling of vice-chair positions mid-term. And besides, City Hall probably hasn't figured out which commissioner it wants to fill that position. No doubt, when it finally does, another highly questionable election will be held filling that position.

As for Morales he's expected to make his debut at the CPRC meeting as a commissioner. He attended the last meeting and left about half way through. It wasn't clear whether that was because he had a prior commitment or he just got disgusted like most of the people who attend commission meetings after sitting for about 30 minutes.

It's not sure what kind of chair Hubbard (who manages or regionally directs a company, American Medical Response, that has a public safety contract with the city manager's office) and it's not clear whether there will continue to be fewer meetings than there is now, even as the number of days on average it takes the CPRC to review complaints has increased especially since the new leadership of the CPRC took office in March.

Complaint time lines involving the CPRC will be on the agenda for the current meeting for discussion along with a reemergence of the issue of minority reports. The latter was placed back on the agenda by commissioner Brian Pearcy who was absent when all but two of the current commissioners voted to eliminate them pretty much forever.

More Election News

Speaking of elections, the Riverside Police Officers' Association is gearing up for its own election next month to fill board positions. So far, there are three candidates who have thrown their hats into the ring to run for the presidency which has a two-year term including incumbent, Det. Chris Lanzillo. Two opponents, one an officer and the other a detective have also been nominated. Last time out, Lanzillo won by about 80 votes including many cast by newer patrol officers. The union has been facing its own divisions within its ranks during the past several years and has also filed at least one lawsuit against the city in recent months for the department's interrogation practices during investigations which may or may not be defined by the department as being investigations.

Challenges faced by the association will include future contract negotiations, freezes on step pay increases and freezes in hiring and promotions. Although technically it's not the promotional positions that have been frozen, it's the pay increases that come with the higher level position to the person being promoted as there have been promotions done already where the people didn't get the increases in pay that usually accompany them.

The RPOA also apparently tried to get on the agenda for a CPRC meeting but were allegedly told by CPRC Manager Kevin Rogan that they couldn't be on the agenda. That situation appears to have been straightened out and they are awaiting a date to appear on the agenda at a future date. It will be the bargaining unit's first appearance at a meeting in front of the commission since March 2004.

Parkview Hospital needed money from Riverside in the past and now it needs more funding again. From somewhere.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Parkview Community's financing search is a result of a decision made by one of the hospital's lenders to get out of the commercial finance business, the hospital's attorney said.

City officials recently asked Riverside's Washington, D.C., delegation, including Rep. Ken Calvert and Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, to help Parkview Community with HUD's application process, Mac Arthur said.

City officials got involved after Riverside's business community expressed concerns about the hospital, Mac Arthur said. He said he didn't know why the hospital is looking for money.

"This is an economic engine for the community," Mac Arthur said. "We need to make sure the hospital stays open."

Parkview Community, a 193-bed hospital, filed for bankruptcy-court protection in 2002 after years of losses. In 2002, the city of Riverside and a private donor loaned the hospital $1.5 million to save it from liquidation.

Lemar Wooley, a HUD spokesman, said officials at Parkview Community had submitted preliminary information but had not yet applied to the department's Federal Housing Authority mortgage insurance program.

"We have invited their lender and the hospital to Washington, D.C., for a preliminary meeting," he said. "(There is) nothing scheduled as of now."

Is the proposed multi-modal transit center in Riverside back on track?

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

City and county officials said other stumbling blocks hopefully can be addressed in the next two months. Riverside Councilman Andy Melendrez said planners must make sure the center doesn't conflict with the planned widening of Highway 91 through downtown Riverside, including a new intersection with 14th Street.

"I'd hate to see this site compromised by the widening," Melendrez said.

At first glance, the widening of Highway 91 will take some of the property, but probably not enough to impact the project, Gardner said. There should be plenty of room for buses to turn at the planned transit center once buildings are demolished and the new building -- mostly a shelter for riders waiting on buses, with restrooms and possibly some small space for Riverside Transit Agency staff and Greyhound ticket sales -- is finished.

Gardner said the most optimistic schedule would have construction start early next year and take until early 2011. Most of the cost would be covered by the federal transit money awaiting the bus system and other Riverside Transit Agency funds.

With weeks of study left, officials remain optimistic, but they are not ready to declare the center a done deal.

"I'm just pleased to get this far," Gardner said.

The vacancy in the Riverside County Board of Supervisors once again delays action.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger still has not appointed a replacement for the late Supervisor Roy Wilson, leaving the board with little margin for either disagreement or unexpected absences.

Last week, Board Chairman Jeff Stone was absent, forcing the delay. This week, Supervisor Bob Buster missed the meeting.

As a result, Stone asked county officials to fax copies of Tuesday's continuances to the governor's office to show the effect the lack of an appointment is having on Riverside County.

"It is becoming very critical for Gov. Schwarzenegger to make the appointment necessary to fill the 4th District seat," Stone said.

Stone said he spoke with John Cruz, the governor's appointment secretary, Monday and "stressed that we are coming into a fiscal crisis, not because we don't have the money but because we don't have the votes to disburse the money."

Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said Tuesday the Riverside County board still has a quorum to do business. Only certain items, such as budget adjustments, require a four-fifths vote.

"The focus for us on boards and commissions is to appoint those boards that do not have a quorum," McLear said. "We recognize that there's a vacancy on that board. The governor is currently looking for the most qualified candidate to fill that seat."

Inside Riverside has started writing on the upcoming election for Riverside County's next sheriff. Currently, it is a bit of a contest instead of a coronation between current sheriff, Stan Sniff who was elected by three board of supervisor members last year and an ex-employee of the department, Frank Robles.

What's interesting is the argument taking place on the comment thread between various self-identified members of the Riverside Sheriff's Association including one post where Inside Riverside's administrator had to edit out a swear word. Look for the Sheriff's race to heat up for a change and that should prove to be quite exciting in the weeks and months ahead until next year's election.

Recall election efforts are totally in vogue in Riverside County this season. In Moreno Valley, a city councilwoman's sighing in relief because a recall effort against her has failed even as a councilman in Lake Elsinore faces a recall election.

In Perris, voters will decide whether prospective city clerks should continue to run for election.

Riverside County is trying to hold onto its money.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Under the current budget, the state will borrow 8 percent of the property tax revenue designated for cities, counties and special districts in fiscal 2009-2010.

The state is legally required to pay back that money with interest by June 30, 2013, which will allow the local agencies to pay off the debt.

Though not ideal, county officials say the move will stem short-term cuts and help keep the county on sound financial footing.

"It allows us to keep that money in reserve to handle emergency issues," Supervisor John Tavaglione said. "It allows us to keep it as a cushion."

As of Thursday, the joint powers authority, known as California Communities, consists of 400 cities, 57 counties and 902 special districts.

Once the bonds are sold, the proceeds will remain in escrow until the state withholds the property tax payments. Then, on Jan. 15 and May 3, the joint powers authority will distribute the money to local agencies to make up for the loss from the state.

Even though the state is required to pay back the money by 2013, Tavaglione said he still worries the repayment might not happen, given past state budget problems.

"There is always that risk," he said.

The mental competency hearing for a man who is being retried for the murder of two Riverside Police Department officers in 1982 is being scheduled for next week.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Daniels is expected to meet with the psychologist Wednesday. If he is found competent to assist his attorneys, the criminal trial and death penalty proceedings could remain on track for a Nov. 2 trial date.

If the judge finds evidence that Daniels is not competent to face the murder charges, Daniels would be ordered to a state prison mental facility for treatment.

The case would not resume until Daniels is deemed mentally fit for trial. Given his age and fragile health, his attorneys say that may never happen.

Assistant District Attorney Bill Mitchell said he believes Daniels is competent and able to assist his attorneys. He said he has shown awareness and cooperated with the court for the past several years.

Riverside Public Utilities is promoting measures to conserve water in this time of severe drought.

The end of an era in the Los Angeles Police Department in more ways than one. The department has finished with its new administrative headquarters and they're saying goodbye to Police Chief William Bratton.

(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)

City Hall, across the street, was reflected in the new building's windows, while a gigantic American flag was draped over part of the structure's exterior, occasionally moving in the gentle breeze that gave relief to those sitting under the blistering sun.

The Los Angeles Police Department Band, taiko drummers and Mexican folk dancers provided a musical backdrop for the occasion.

"What a beautiful Los Angeles morning it is," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told those attending the ceremony. "Today we can celebrate great progress. Today we can celebrate the changes, perceptions and opinions of our Police Department."

Construction of the 500,000-square-foot building began about three years ago. A price tag of $437 million covers the headquarters complex and three related structures nearby. Funds came from Proposition Q, a public safety facilities bond measure approved by voters in March 2002.

The bond measure also provided money for the repair of some LAPD stations, as well the construction of new ones in Canoga Park, Koreatown, San Pedro and Boyle Heights.

On Saturday, Police Chief William J. Bratton, who is leaving the department at the end of this week, talked about the symbolically significant location of the new headquarters -- flanked on three sides by City Hall, the Caltrans building and the Los Angeles Times. He said those three neighbors represented the Police Department's obligation to serve the community, its requirement to cooperate with state, federal and county governments and its need for transparency to the media and public.

"You couldn't ask for a better siting," Bratton said.

In San Jose, police officers are being investigated for the beating of a college student, an incident that was videotaped last month.

(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)

A grainy cellphone video posted on the San Jose Mercury News website shows at least one police officer subduing the student with a baton. The San Jose State student can be heard screaming on the recording. Police had been called to a home Sept. 3 after a report that the student, Phuong Ho, was fighting with his roommate, police said.

The department is conducting a "thorough investigation" that will be turned over to the Santa Clara County district attorney's office for review, Sgt. Ronnie Lopez said.

Lopez said the department launched the investigation immediately after learning about the incident late last week. Investigators are interviewing witnesses and reviewing the posted cellphone video, along with other video.

"Our investigators are reviewing this entire case from beginning to end," he said. "They want to make sure that the force used was necessary."

Two officers, Kenneth Siegel and Steven Payne Jr., are seen on the video, police said. Two other officers were also at the scene. All four are on administrative leave.

Few city residents are turning to the civilian review board in Boston. Given all the upheaval over that process in that city, the results of a study conducted on user satisfaction giving it less than passing grades aren't surprising.

(excerpt, Boston Globe)

Interviews by the Harvard team with 27 people who did not appeal to the board after their abuse allegations were dismissed found that the vast majority were disillusioned with the way the police department handled their cases. Only one of those surveyed knew the civilian review board existed. Many believed that the police department’s internal affairs division, which investigates allegations of misconduct, as well as the independent civilian review board, favored police officers and would not take their complaints seriously.

Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis said he was “surprised and disappointed’’ that so few people have used the board, and he is committed to making it work. He said he is trying to “scare up’’ money for a more comprehensive review by Harvard, and is also trying to better inform the public about the board by sending officers to neighborhood meetings and putting up more signs in police stations.

The civilian review board, formally called the Community Ombudsman Oversight Panel, is made up of three people appointed by Mayor Thomas M. Menino; one of the seats has been vacant since August. The police department currently informs people about the board by mailing them a letter if their complaint is dismissed by internal affairs.

Davis said he is also trying to establish a mediation process to review complaints, which the Harvard report recommended. Davis said that not only are citizens unhappy with the system, a survey of officers would probably show “a similar feeling of dissatisfaction with the whole procedure.’’

“I’d be very upset’’ if the panel did not succeed, Davis said.

Activists are seeking to reform the Internal Affairs Division in San Antonio's police department.

(excerpt, San Antonio Current)

SAPD Chief Bill McManus called in the D.C.-based police-consulting group, Police Executive Research Forum, to review and advise the department on use-of-force measures. When those 141 recommended changes were released last summer, McManus quickly accepted most of them.

However, measures to reform Internal Affairs were handed over to a special task force to hash out over months of meetings. Thanks to the resistance of the San Antonio Police Officers Association, many of the most vital reforms didn’t make the cut, said Mario Salas, chairman of the San Antonio Coalition on Civil and Human Rights and task force member.

“This police union is out of control,” he said this week. “There’s not accountability, as far as that’s concerned, and there’s no transparency.”

Antonio Diaz, of the Texas Indigenous Council, has been agitating for reform. He told the Current this week that he took his concerns to Assistant City Manager Eric Walsh, who is leading contract negotiations with the union. While Walsh failed to return a Monday call from the Current and the city’s communication office still hasn’t gotten back with us, Diaz said in email that police aggression in the city is “getting worse.”

“As an Activist I get complaints from people that are afraid to go before Internal Affairs because of the biased way that it is setup. The Civilian Review Board is a joke,” Diaz said.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

October 22, 2009

CITY AUDITOR'S INDEPENDENT POLICE REVIEW DIVISION ANNOUNCES
CITY COUNCIL APPOINTMENT OF SIX NOMINEES TO SERVE
ON THE CITIZEN REVIEW COMMITTEE

Mary-Beth Baptista, the Director of the City Auditor's Independent Police Review (IPR) Division is pleased to announce that six nominees will be presented to the Portland City Council today at 2 PM in Council Chambers, by Auditor LaVonne Griffin-Valade, for appointment to serve on the Citizen Review Committee (CRC).

IPR and the nine-member CRC were created in 2001 to help improve police accountability, promote higher standards of police services, and increase public confidence. These volunteers were selected by a committee that included one past and two current (but not re-applying) members of the CRC, two representatives from the community, and the IPR Director.

To learn more about IPR: http://www.portland online.com/ auditor/index. cfm?c=26646&

To learn more about the CRC: http://www.portland online.com/ auditor/index. cfm?c=27069

Contact the IPR office @ 503-823-0146.

NEW CITIZEN REVIEW COMMITTEE (CRC) MEMBERS NOMINATED FOR APPOINTMENT

1. Jeffrey Bissonnette

2. Ayoob Ramjan

3. Myra Simon

4. F.G. (Jamie) Troy II

Jeffrey Bissonnette is the Organizing Director for the Citizens' Utility Board of Oregon (CUB), representing residential utility ratepayers in Oregon. In that role, he leads CUB's legislative program and coalition work. He has been appointed by the Public Utility Commission to the Portfolio Options Committee, overseeing renewable energy products offered to customers and serves on the boards of the Northwest Energy Coalition and the Renewable Northwest Project. Bissonnette was formerly a board member of Portland Community Media and the Steering Committee of the Oregon League of Conservation Voters' Multnomah County chapter.

Appointed October 2009 — term is from October 22, 2009 through December 31, 2011

Ayoob Ramjan has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from Oregon Institute of Technology and a Masters in Business Administration from Marylhurst University. He is currently a Research and Development Manager at Hewlett Packard Company in Vancouver, Washington — Printer Division. Ramjan served as a citizen member on the City of Portland Budget Committee from 2006 to 2009, an appointment then by Mayor Potter. He has volunteered since 2001 on the Portland Police Advisory Committee; he also served as the citizens' member on the Portland Police Performance Review Board; and is a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Citizen Advisory Committee. Ramjan is an active board member of the Islamic Social Services of Oregon State, an all-volunteer social service organization which helps Portlanders in need. He is an active member in his community trying to bridge the gap of understanding between the diverse communities of Portland. He lives in Southwest Portland.

Appointed October 2009 — term is from January 1, 2010 through December 31, 2011

Myra Simon is a graduate of Lewis and Clark College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and a Masters in Teaching High School Social Studies. She currently works at Regence Bluecross Blueshield of Oregon as a Strategy and Performance Manager. Prior to working in health care, Simon worked with homeless and at-risk youth in downtown Portland. She currently volunteers with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Appointed October 2009 — term is from October 22, 2009 through December 31, 2011

F.G. (Jamie) Troy II is a graduate of the College of William & Mary and of Lewis and Clark Law School. He works with the law firm of Troy, Rosenberg and Wolfe, P.C. where his practice focuses on Juvenile and Family Law cases. He is on the Board of the Bill and Ann Shepherd Legal Scholarship Fund working to fund the education of future attorneys dedicated to eliminating bigotry and discrimination based on sexual orientation. An avid marathoner, Jamie currently leads training runs for the Portland Marathon Training Clinic and looks forward to increasing the double digit number of marathons he has completed to date. He is an East Coast (Virginia) transplant who has resided in the area for over a decade. He lives in Northeast Portland.

Appointed October 2009 — term is from January 1, 2010 through December 31, 2011

CITIZEN REVIEW COMMITTEE (CRC) MEMBERS NOMINATED FOR RE-APPOINTMENT

1. Loren Eriksson

2. Hank Miggins

Loren Eriksson retired after 25 years of service as a Portland firefighter and volunteers his time and resources to help the Portland community. He is a member of the Portland Police Bureau's Use of Force and Performance Review Boards and serves on the Employee Information System Advisory Committee. Eriksson has also been a member of the Force Task Force (it analyzed the Bureau's use of force data and provided reports to the Chief of Police in 2007 and 2009).
Appointed December 2003 — term is from January 1, 2010 through December 31, 2011
(Current CRC Recorder)

Hank Miggins has an extensive background in multi-faceted services with experience in managing diverse personnel. He was a former City Manager for the City of Spokane and is currently a mortgage consultant. Miggins has held positions with Multnomah County: Animal Control Director, Interim Director of the County Exposition Center, Deputy County Auditor, Executive Assistant to the Chair of the Multnomah County Commission, and Interim Chair of the Multnomah County Commission. He is a member and serves on the Board of Directors for: the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, the Center for Airway Science, and the Board of Trustees for De La Salle North Catholic High School. He is a former member of civic organizations that include: Board of Bar Governors, Oregon State Bar, the Oregon Assembly for Black Affairs, Project Pooch (a rehabilitation program pairing dogs with incarcerated youth), and the Mainstream Youth Program, Inc.

Appointed October 2001 — term is from January 1, 2010 through December 31, 2011
(Current CRC Vice-chair)

Mary-Beth Baptista, Director
City of Portland/City Auditor
Independent Police Review Division (IPR)
1221 SW 4th Avenue, Room 320
Portland, OR 97204-1900

503-823-0146
Interoffice Address: 131/320
mary-beth.baptista@ ci.portland. or.us

www.portlandonline. com/auditor/ ipr

Candidates Forum

The NAACP in Riverside will be holding a mayoral candidates forum at Emerson Elementary School on Monday, Nov. 2 from 5-9 with the speakers coming at 6 p.m.

Meetings

Mayor Ron Loveridge is holding a Multicultural Forum on Friday, Oct. 30 from 7:30 a.m to 9 a.m. at City Hall. One of the topics on the agenda will be the Neo Nazi demonstrations.

The Latest Nazi and counter demonstration in the All-American City

2009-10-24T14:56:00.000-07:00

Who: About 20 Neo Nazis, 700 counter demonstrators and police from state, county and two city agencies not to mention representatives from the Department of Justice Community Relations Division and the National Lawyers' Guild.

What: Neo Nazi Rally and counter-rally, some scuffles, two arrests

Where: Indiana and Madison in Casa Blanca

When: Saturday, Oct. 23 between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.

[The Neo-Nazis showed up with their props and their own security, aka "stormtroopers" which were basically men dressed up in black, including helmets and carrying those plastic wrist bracelets on their chests.]

[The Neo-Nazis after they arrived near Indiana and Madison in Casa Blanca surrounded by police dressed in riot gear.]

[Riverside Police Department Det. Lavall Nelson working on crowd control detail today. Representatives of the police department, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, the Corona Police Department and the California Highway Patrol were called out as well. Would Nelson be a citizen under Nazi America? Of course not, yet here he is still protecting the Nazis right to speech anyway.]

[One of the activists, aka Trumpet Man spent much of the demonstration playing music pretty well. Here he's conversing with members of the Riverside Police Department's Metro division.]

[The motor division of the police department awaiting instructions. That's pretty much the entire division.]

[Trumpet Man and other protesters who marched for four miles around Riverside before arriving at the main counter-rally played their drums and chanted on Madison during the last hour of the demonstration.]

[Counter demonstrators met up with police after a second contingent arrived about halfway through.]

[Protesters clashed not long after the Neo Nazis arrived after some Brown Berets allegedly allowed some people to leave the closed off area and cross the street. The metal barricades being used for the first time by the department caused more problems than anything else.]

[A small group of counter demonstrators crossed the street and went over to where the Neo Nazis were standing trying to get their flags again. Police came and pushed them back.]

[Police in riot gear stand between the counter-demonstrators and the Neo Nazis behind them.]

[Two Neo Nazis doing well, the Heil Hitler thing doing nothing to distance themselves from their predecessors in Germany which isn't surprising.]

Morning Breaks

Morning broke over Casa Blanca, a predominantly Latino neighborhood with deep historic roots as it usually did and people came from all over to congregate near the intersection of Madison and Indiana in force to protest and rally against a small cluster of Neo Nazis drawn from Riverside, San Francisco and San Diego who were returning to the site where they had protested and had been run off earlier in the month, their flags in tatters. It was clear very early on that the Neo Nazis would be vastly outnumbered even more this time as over 60 organizations were represented at this latest rally. The coalition of organizations had assigned dozens of "monitors" to the rally to try to keep the peace. They would have their work cut out for them as both demonstrations unfolded and some of those who had said they were there to keep the peace changed their minds.

But before all that, people began to arrive and assemble on the sidewalks and in the driveways of local businesses and restaurants and talk with each other within the final hour before both demonstrations would begin. Monitors with colored hats (pink for monitors, green for National Lawyers' Guild) and pink armbands began to circulate. Media outlets began to arrive including several satellite trucks. Mainstream media of course is afforded the privileges that alternative media is not when the department's designated media screener abruptly changed the rules after the demonstration had turned into a conflict and apparently didn't apply those amended rules to about a dozen men with video cameras and no credentials of any kind who were actually mostly just wandering around, at least one clearly inebriated the whole time, swearing up a storm and calling for people to charge the Nazis. Lesson learned for future blog coverage, apparently if you carry a video camera around or wear a camera around your neck, get plenty sauced up ahead of time and swear up a storm, you'll pass muster with the police department's press screening division because clearly this gentleman and others did.

Still, some interesting photographs made it on this site as you can see here and there were a lot of stories that came out of this day which can't be narrowed down to the sound bytes that you see on television. Life's more complicated than that even in Riverside. Actually, especially in Riverside.

Having written for a community newspaper for 10 years that had to fight for every space it ever covered any news event even amid threats and news racks getting tossed by the dozen in the back of a city-0wned vehicle by an irate city, you learn to go with the flow with the realization there's just a multi-tiered list of privileges or rights or whatever you want to call them for different media outlets. Certainly in Riverside which is ironic considering that the Los Angeles Times vacated its office in downtown and the Press Enterprise appears to be on life support, certainly in its coverage of Riverside. Someone once told me that one of the former reporters there told him, it is difficult to be a journalist when you're on a leash. That's a pretty sad state of affairs for what was once a fairly good and very respected family owned newspapers, one of the last to sell out to a major conglomerate in the country and is apparently represented by the same major law firm as the city of Riverside.

It was interesting watching several credentialed photographers and reporters completely get into everybody's way and even their own way so apparently with that piece of plastic doesn't come common sense. It's always a bit strange to watch major events unfold, try to cover them from that different perspective and then here that examining a piece of Riverside's history is by invitation only. When in reality, history belongs to everyone who witnesses it not just a select few and face it, the daily newspapers including the Press Enterprise are in their death knells unless they radically change the direction of journalism in a technological age.

Early on, one of the credentialed guys who must have been at his first demonstration gasped at the first skirmish between the Neo Nazis and the Brown Berets calling it a riot and got on his cell phone calling someone to tell them he was standing in the middle of a riot. I just looked at him and shook my head. No, because if he were actually standing in the middle of one, he'd probably toss the cell phone and run down the street.

No, a riot is when you're sitting in a taxi cab in a foreign country and a dozen people are pushing on it and trying to turn it over while you're trying to crawl out of it while being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

No a riot, is when a city explodes into fire and rage and not being able to locate your mother who's working at a hospital blocks away from ground zero (and brought home a car covered with some dents from someone dancing on it) and a stepfather who is sitting on the patio and watching the smoke of buildings burning down several blocks away, or for many people, when you lose your business, your neighborhood, everything you've ever known, or your life experiences shared by thousands of people in different cities. Riot is a term that tends to get tossed around a lot to describe any physical confrontation but true riots themselves are less common for the same reasons that any major firestorm in an area is a rare event. Because the fuel that is needed to build both takes years, even decades to develop until all it takes is one spark to set it off, burning out of control. Riots are brief episodes of frustration and rage burning up years worth of fuel followed by years more of pain as people are left to rebuild everything from ashes. They aren't something you quickly forget and it's not a term that you quickly throw out around but many people do and did including on this day in Riverside.

So no, this wasn't a riot or even close. These were physical skirmishes, between one side that brought the most vilified symbol in human history into a neighborhood filled with people who didn't want it there and hundreds of people who were opposed to Nazis in their midst but were diversified to the point where they brought in agendas which were different from each other. Most people wanted to demonstrate, but peacefully and others came prepared for an encore performance of the last time that the Neo Nazis and counter-demonstrators met which is something the two opposing sides had in common, because the Neo Nazis wanted that repeat performance too so they would have the chance to script a different ending this time where they walked back to their foreign made cars (albeit under police escort) rather than being chased back to them.

Of course, it didn't start that way. The morning began quietly enough with most people in good spirits looking at the demonstration ahead, to make a peaceful stand against the Neo Nazis in their midst. They brought their signs and banners and their voices. Several people brought newspapers and pamphlets to circulate on a wide variety of issues from immigration to health care to socialism. People passed out water bottles as they would do so all day. Some people brought their lawn chairs so they could sit back and watch the show under the hot sun.

Joe Vazquez who owns the security firm that works at the nearby Home Depot had at least a dozen of his employees many packing guns stationed around the store and the sidewalk lining the north side of Madison. Rudy Chavez, the owner of the Chavez Auto Parts store across the street from where Vazquez was stationed had been in business at that location since 1970 and he and friends were watching the events unfold just as they had at the previous one in September. Christina Duran, an activist and leader in the Eastside was one of the monitor captains who would be running around trying to address flareups that took place during the protest before they could more fully erupt. She would get barely any rest during the next three hours.

Incidentally, all three of these people are citizens and all would be deported under Nazi America according to the NSM's 25 point plan because they're not White. Yet Duran stopped a counter demonstrator from throwing rocks at the Nazis at one point in the demonstration.

The entire command staff of the police department(including both those who would and wouldn't be deported by the Nazis in their vision of America) along with Chief Russ Leach appeared at the intersection with police officers wearing the green uniforms that identify them as SWAT near a mobile unit truck ready to deploy while others stood on the roof on top of Farmer Boys' Restaurant looking down below. The SWAT division headed by both Capt. John Wallace who is in charge of Special Operations and Lt. Larry Gonzalez who soon may be the only lieutenant in that division after the two others retire were out in full force as well as what appeared to be most of the rest of the department's patrol division along with detectives, officers in personnel and training and even the current domestic/family violence sergeant.

Not to mention the half dozen or so plain clothed officers who were members of the Gang and Vice/Criminal Intelligence units officer was videotaping the counter demonstrators. The under cover officers were probably the only White people there not carrying one sign or another saying they were for or against Nazism. It's not clear whether the Nazis themselves were actually videotaped by police officers but they were videotaped by everyone else including the aforementioned inebriated cameraman.

Because the police department didn't want a repeat of the last clash between demonstrators, so its officers created a different game plan this one or so that was the plan.

Protesting on the grassy knoll for anyone was out this time around so everyone was to be given a designated spot in the dirt adjacent to a railroad tracks. Actually the Neo Nazis got that location by default after counter-demonstrators began arriving before the protest with dozens lining up by 9:30 a.m. one immediate problem was created when the Neo Nazis arrived just after 10 a.m. with their own security dressed in costumes and positioned themselves on that location and that was that a troop of Brown Berets had picked a spot for themselves immediately adjacent to where the Nazis were to be located. At about this time, another 100 demonstrators from Riverside Community College were doing a four mile walk for peace playing drums and chanting slogans while carrying banners although they hadn't arrived at the main rally yet. Some people said that people they knew in Casa Blanca had been warned not to to go to the counter demonstration by police. Reports also came in, including one that police officers had headed off a group of people carrying sticks who were coming to the rally and no one seemed to know how much truth there was to any of it. There would often be a fine line between rumor and fact that day.

The Neo Nazis Arrive

The group of Neo Nazis finally arrived to a crowd of counter demonstrators lining both Madison and Indiana streets waiting for them. Most of them looked puny in stature and were clearly not long out of high school. Almost all of them were men except for a blond woman who was photographed at the last demonstration doing the Heil Hitler gesture and posted as some heroine on Inland Empire Craigslist where the Nazis had been doing some advertising before they began demonstrating in Riverside. Several had tattoos on their shaved scalps, others on their arms and all of them wore dark colors and darker sun glasses including the so-called "storm troopers" who alas, weren't dressed like the ones in Star Wars. There were more of them than there had been at the previous demonstration which wasn't surprising because they clearly had spent the interim between both performances in rehearsal. They tried to look impressive but a lot of people talked about how underwhelming they looked in person when they arrived.

The story is that most of them are very young people having their strings pulled by some older members of National Socialist Movement out of the Bay Area. The older guy who had come down from San Francisco to help them has been photographed at rallies held by SOS and the Minutemen in various locations in Southern California, predominantly in Orange County. The national organization of the NSM is actually based in Detroit but chapters very small in size have been popping up in different states and holding similar rallies. At some point, a guy in Riverside decided that his city would be a perfect location for the NSM's California chapter and he started it out of his own home.

The Inland Empire is actually not a bad choice for Neo Nazis to show up and try to attract membership, given the current recession which has hit this area much harder than other areas and the high unemployment particularly in the blue collar sector. Combine that with the fact that one of the most fastest growing demographics for hate crimes are Latino citizens and immigrants and it's not surprising that a group of people with a White Supremacist ideology would come calling. Whether anybody actually answers and their numbers grow remains to be seen but demonstrations like the last two have given them plenty of fodder to use in recruitment in what they clearly see as a hotbed for finding warm bodies to join up.

They are targeting their recruitment efforts at people opposed to undocumented immigrants but in reality, they believe that even illegal European immigrants belong in this country and people of color who are legal citizens do not so it's got very little to do about the contentious subject of immigration and more to do with promoting White Supremacy. After all, one guy had "white power" on his shirt sleeve and they yelled as many insults about Jewish people as they did anyone else. Because after all, in their version of America, the Jewish people would be deported as well and the undocumented White immigrants from Europe would of course be moved to the front of the line for citizenship under Nazi America with the Nazis' version of a magic wand.

The Fists Start Flying

The first eruption took place not long after the long-awaited attraction with an audience of over 500 and at the time about $40,000 in police overtime waiting for them to come and do their thing which consists of waving flags which were either a composite of the Stars and Stripes with the swastika or a flag depicting the twin lightning bolts and yelling slogans like "Jews wreck the economy." Oh and when things slowed down, they did the Heil Hitler salute several times with better synchronization than most watches. As one woman told another who had just arrived at the demonstration, "the Nazis are here and oh wait, one of them just lifted an arm." News traveled back and forth through the long line of counter demonstrators on Madison like a game of telephone as people watched things unfold.

The Nazis had been protesting for all of about five minutes before a small group of demonstrators including members of the Brown Berets who were there to do security purportedly at the request of Casa Blanca they said, started rushing to the opposite side of the street to go chase down the Nazis calling on other people to join them. Several of them reached them and began throwing punches and trying to grab them and the Nazis threw punches back. Police including the SWAT team moved in quickly after first appearing to be caught a bit by surprise and broke up the tussle, taking one member of the Brown Berets named Rudy away to be arrested or detained. He was not seen for the remainder of the protest but it's ironic as one organizer said later, that the person who was arrested was a "peacekeeping" captain. Most of the other monitors worked very hard to try to keep things peaceful.

More police arrive soon after including those from the Riverside County Sheriff's Department and the Corona Police Department. California Highway Patrol officers show up to close off Madison street and the nearby onramp to the 91 freeway where traffic backs up in part because people on the freeway are watching what is going on in the streets below them. The police helicopter from Riverside's police department and the CHP both flew around in circles during the demonstration.

Welcome to Riverside and just another day in one of America's Most Livable Cities. Now move along. Look, there's Corona!

Strategizing Hate

One of the organizers later said that the monitor captain who was arrested felt a bit sorry that he had gone over there where the Neo Nazis were but that he couldn't help himself when they had shown up. That organizer later said that he felt "betrayed" that some of the people who had engaged in the first round of tussling at the past demonstration had broken what he said were promises not to do it again, but on the internet, protesters from that demonstration had said that they were bringing their saliva and flag ripping skills back to Riverside on the 24th of October. They talked about it on some sites around early October and then went quiet, most likely because they were fully aware how law enforcement agencies monitor those sites for information about upcoming demonstrations and probably had moved their discussions elsewhere.

As stated earlier, the Nazis had one simple objective, to hold their ground for the three hours of protest time and to get plenty of footage of any physical confrontation between themselves and the counter-demonstrators to use in their future membership drives. Much as they did the last demonstration of what they called the Great Eight (not the most creative of slogans but they don't seem like an imaginative bunch) who withstood machetes, rocks in an "hour" of "street fighting" which is very dramatic stuff except for the fact that they had only been protesting for about 15 minutes before fleeing and there were no such weapons seen in any of the video footage taken by media outlets including the Press Enterprise. But their version sounds so much more exciting than what really happened even if their own visual depiction of the earlier demonstration doesn't back it up and so they have sold it all over the internet to attract an audience. The Press Enterprise and other media outlets had written enough about there being a physical confrontation between the two without going into details which provided them with an avenue to embellish on.

More Nazis came out this time, including some from out of town, and they seemed much more animated and sounded much louder. Which is very useful when you're Riverside's latest tourist attraction. Not that they are the first batch of White Supremacists groups, gangs or social clubs (and people seem really loathe to call them gangs even when they're violent) to come to Riverside but they're the most visible and wear the best costumes. People treat them as if they are the great thing to fear when in reality what really exists to be afraid of or concerned about is already here and they're just the latest offshoot of that.

They're not the ones to be afraid of, it's what brought them out here and out of the woodwork. It's what makes them feel that Riverside, the city with a half a dozen slogans none of which mention the Nazis, is the epicenter of their latest movement. That is why that chasing them off isn't going to be as easy as some people seem to think. A young female member of the Brown Berets actually said an interesting comment when asked why they had reacted to the Neo Nazi presence with force this time. Because we thought if we got them angry enough, they would turn around and leave, she said, seemingly surprised that their actions had just made them more steadfast at staying on a strip of dirt next to a railroad track in Casa Blanca.

And they won, because for there being only about eight of them, all they have to do now is issue a press release that they're going to demonstrate and hundreds of people show up, many demonstrating peacefully, some not not to mention dozens of law enforcement. That's an incredible amount of power that's just been given to the latest hate group to seek a home in Riverside and it didn't cost them very much. When the Ku Klux Klan protested in Riverside in 1999 riding on the coattails of tremendous upheaval after the shooting of Tyisha Miller, they attracted very little attention and soon withered away, never to issue another press release of a demonstration again.

The actions of a few just ensured that the Nazis will be more entrenched in the fabric of this city than they were already. That's how it often works with hate groups and gangs especially those who constitute the minority of a population. They expect to be hated by the people they hate so they aren't surprised when they show up with their symbols of hate that are meant to incite and people react exactly the way they want them to react. As long as this strategy is used against them, they'll get stronger because hatred is what fuels their cause and negative attention is still attention. Hatred, and the absence of anything that's positive is what their movement is all about. If they are like many White Supremacist gangs, maybe hatred or the absence of its opposite, love is the only thing they've known in their lives. The only way for them to have "White Pride" or pride in their racial identity as they call it is to believe that everyone else is inferior or animalistic in comparison.

One church going man figured that out and his story is below.

After the first skirmish, the police officers changed their positions pushed people back in several directions including across the railroad tracks which were blocked for the majority of the protests but no trains passed through Casa Blanca during the demonstration. Only the yellow tape that is often used at crime scenes to seal them off kept the demonstrators apart from the line of riot police which separated them from each other. And it was stretched as tightly as many of the emotions and nerves there.

The main reason this group of Neo Nazis had planned to target Casa Blanca because of the day laborer site that exists near McDonalds and Home Depot on Indiana and Madison and because they were hoping for a polarized response which is exactly what they took home with them. It's a safe bet that even as this blog posting is being written that the Neo Nazis after their own victory celebration are probably sending out accounts and videos of the "violence" against them all over the internet, much like the counter demonstrators are doing the same thing about their victory but who really "won" here? Because even if they "lost" the last round which is debatable, they won this one. And that will be the case any time they are physically confronted by a large crowd of people, as long as any punches they throw are in self defense.

They won it within the first five minutes of the rally, they won it when several counter demonstrators began throwing rocks, bottles and some fruit at them that were stashed allegedly inside a plastic barrel that had been used as a drum, and they sealed the deal when they left three hours after they had arrived including one who had a napkin pressed to his head from where a rock had hit him. And when the monitors including a woman tried to tell people to stop throwing things at the Nazis and the police officers, at least one of them, the woman, was physically assaulted and might have been hurt if the guy's girlfriend hadn't interceded.

But then the sexism and downright misogyny was unfortunately pretty thick among some of the men in this demonstration particularly its final hour. Since the Nazis like most White Supremacists essentially view women as breeders, either desirable (Aryan) or not (everyone else), it seemed a natural direction for them to take their rhetoric and it turned out to come just as easily for some of the counter-demonstrators as well.

About that time, both sides ran out of slogans to yell at each other and so they started insulting each other instead and the best way that men might have to insult each other is to label each other as women. One side would say that he had fucked the other one's wife and the other would say that they were a bunch of "pussies" because of course demeaning each other, by demeaning the entire female gender is a great way to get your point across, proving that whether ideology exists, misogyny has not been thoroughly or even partly stamped out of it.

But the majority of the counter demonstrators kept on topic and ignored the Nazis pleas to the White contingent of that group to "wake up" and come right on over to their side. Nobody did.

Hundreds of demonstrators waved American, Mexican and Israeli flags from the side of Madison near Farmers' Boys and chanted slogans against Nazism and hate. As usual, that upset more people in the Press Enterprise's comment section than the reality that the Nazis had taken the American flag and merged it with the Nazi Germany flag to create a Stars and Stripes version with a swastika in the middle of it. It's ironic to have almost an entire generation of men and women go to war as Americans to fight Nazism and then to come full circle by having American flags with swastikas stitched on them.

Still, the people who counter demonstrated were people of all ages, ethnic and racial backgrounds and represented the different economic and social strata of life. It's interesting how the Nazis labeled the counter-demonstrators as "violent Jews, Illegal Immigrants and homosexual Rights Activists" and the Press Enterprise called them "Mexicans, blacks, Jews and Gays", both essentially trying to place identity labels on the counter demonstrators that define some of them but not all of them. In the final version of its article, this portion of it apparently was deleted.

It's difficult to know how the Press Enterprise reporter could have ascertained people's sexual orientation on sight unless she conducted a poll ahead of time and known that every Latino was a citizen of Mexico when the majority of Latinos in attendance were in fact citizens of this country and quite a few of them were of Guatemalan ancestry. And people of Central American ancestry often don't like being called Mexicans very much. Not to mention that not all the White straight Christian people protesting there were Nazis or aligning themselves with them, since they comprised at least half of the counter demonstrators. But it's not the first time the publication has tried to marginalize the definitions of demonstrators.

Soon after, the marchers with their drums and one guy who played a trumpet joined the other demonstrators and were met by the police department's motorcycle division and the people played their instruments and chanted and the police officers revved up their sirens which created quite an interesting cacophony. The inebriated cameraman still swearing up a blue streak and others photographed them lining up toe to toe with the squad of motor officers until the Nazis departed.

Riverside: The City of the Arts, Innovation and...Nazis?

If you watched the news to check out the coverage of the Neo Nazi rally and the counter rally, you'll see several different maps with Riverside written on them, superimposed with a swastika. That image was shown everywhere on news broadcasts and apparently outside the state as well, with some people wondering if Riverside was being overrun with Nazis. So in a city where the government loves to engage in the exercise of voting a new catchy logo or slogan once a month or so, has now had one adopted for it by the media and it's the most reviled logo of all time. And what you've seen also in the past month with the exception of Mayor Ron Loveridge is silence from City Hall on this issue. And if you know anything about the history of protesting in Riverside, a lot of it comes about when a critical issue or incident arises or occurs and there's not a peep about it out of the elected government until long after the fact. Loveridge obviously figured this out albeit with some help after the protests that took place in the aftermath of the Miller shooting in 1999 which began during what some called the month of silence out of City Hall. But the rest of the city council wasn't in office when that took place and have hit a rather steep learning curve though at least they haven't hired a public relations firm to speak for it at least not yet.

The Nazis have also made some appearances in different places since the last demonstration. Whether it's to intimidate people they don't like or do some form of community outreach, was very clear in some cases, not so much in others.

People have been talking about the experiences in the past few weeks and different "Nazi sightings". One demonstrator talked about how two Nazis had come by his church and dropped in while the church was conducting its choir practice. He invited the Nazis to come and sit down to help with the singing and they just muttered something and left the church soon after. On this day, the man who have extended some hospitality to the visiting Nazis wore his tee-shirt for peace and held his sign on the street with hundreds of others. In early October, two Nazis had come to a Jewish temple and unfurled their Nazi flags. Racist and antisemitic graffiti had appeared at other religious institutions. Those actions just brought out hundreds more people to the counter demonstration.

What's always discouraging is reading the Press Enterprise threads and seeing the blatant racism on them including support and sympathy towards the Nazis and their cause which was presented as being against illegal immigration and the day laborer site in Casa Blanca. Okay, if that's your issue and you're down with them, then ask yourself this. If this group of Nazis is just about that issue then why were they yelling slurs against the Jews and the gays and lesbians? No, if you go to their national Web site and read their 25 point plan, they're very clear about what their platform is even if they were intially less than honest about putting their hatred of non-White, straight, Christian people on display until yesterday. So go read that plan and see if you're still down with them. They were a little bit less disingenuous about just how many groups of people they hate in this demonstration as opposed to their last one but the national site will give readers more of an idea about exactly where they stand against people who aren't well...of the Aryan standard. And yes, that might mean you, your family, your coworkers and your friends.

To Protect and Serve Nazis?

There was a lot of talk at the protest and afterward about why the police including SWAT team members were protecting the Nazis and whether or not that meant that they openly or secretly identified themselves in that group. Actually, they weren't there to protect the Nazis just their freedom of speech under the United States Constitution. One of the mottoes of the American Civil Liberties Union is that the Constitution is in place to protect the minority from the majority, which in this case were the Nazis.

But at the demonstration, you had the Nazis who make it clear in their 25 point plan that they don't respect the right to freedom of expression, speech or the press for anyone but themselves. Yet they have been demanding that they have a right under the American Constitution that they wouldn't include in an encompassing way in their own Constitution under Nazi America. Then you had other individuals who tried to make sure within five minutes of their arrival that the Nazis didn't have the ability to exercise their rights either. And some of them made it clear on Los Angeles Indy Media and other sites that their intent wasn't merely to counter demonstrate against the Nazis either in September or at protests after that date, but to shut them down and chase them out of Riverside. So they run across the street at the demonstration in Riverside after promising the coalition of organizations that they wouldn't, even when there were children at the protest (and people had been advised not to bring their children) to do just that. Then they are surprised when the police officers in riot gear form a line between them and the Nazis?

The police near the railroad tracks stood there for several hours as a group of counter demonstrators taunted them and one officer who as it turns out is actually well known for his helpful demeanor and his professionalism by many people was singled out for most of the harassing comments.

But the police were very restrained, especially compared to the actions taken by the Los Angeles Police Department at most of their demonstrations including the one that took place on May Day during 2007 and so far has caused the city $13 million in the settlement of claims. After probably about $15 million in settlements involving the lawsuits filed by injured journalists are settled, it will probably be the second most costly police action (after the beating of Rodney King) and misconduct in the last 20 years.

I had discussions a while back with personnel in the Riverside Police Department's management about the MacArthur Park incident and what strategies would be employed by the department's own crowd response detail to avoid a similar incident. They outlined actions that they would take that were different and some of those actions were on display during the three hour rally in some pretty difficult circumstances. Even when the projectiles started flying.

What Comes Next?

When the demonstration finally ended at 1 p.m. after the Nazis left the scene under a police escort, many of the counter demonstrators went to a nearby park for a festival and the police contingent left for a post-rally debriefing. The Nazis did their little post-rally briefing where they mentioned that they would be protesting in Casa Blanca on a regular basis. The counter demonstrators' coalition wasn't sure what it wanted to do at this point.

Comments began crowding the Press Enterprise site, about half supporting the Nazis either directly or indirectly and about half not.

In the quiet between the demonstrations, that is when most everything happens, the conditions which contribute to the Nazis' beliefs that the Inland Empire in general and Riverside in particular is the perfect spot to set up their state chapter office. And the question always is there to be asked, what are people doing when the cameras aren't there, and the Nazis aren't in plain sight in Casa Blanca or protesting at the nearby synagogue bringing their symbols with them. Are actions taken by people really the solution, are they quenching the fire or are they fueling it? If the Nazis think that Riverside is a hotbed for racism, antisemitism and hatred, what are people doing to address that situation, not just once a month facing off against the most visible manifestation of what has been festering in Riverside for a while now, but on a daily basis? Are the Nazis and their supporters at the NSM in Detroit right about Riverside being the place for them? Are they wrong? And who and what will ultimately answer that question?

I guess we'll all find out in the weeks and months ahead.

The Rise and Fall of an RPD Officer, According to One of Them

2009-10-21T23:37:00.001-07:00

******UPDATE******

Neo Nazis, counter demonstrators, police show up in force in Casa Blanca. More to come.

[The front of the Robert Presley Detention Center in downtown Riverside that houses inmates awaiting trial like former Riverside Police Department Officer Dave Reeves, jr although he's residing at Smith Correctional Facility in Banning. ]

The arrest of former Riverside Police Officer Dave Reeves, Jr. is being discussed in different venues including here. One officer who knew him wrote about his impressions of the situation which he defined as an officer who spiraled out of control after several years in the police department due to emotional problems stemming from an alleged addiction not to illegal drugs but to ones that can be obtained through a doctor's prescription. Here Reeves is discussed in the past tense which might be fitting because his life as he knew it is now over.

(excerpt)

I would like to add by saying that drug addiction, particularly to pain killers, can and will cause people of all occupations, races, and life statuses to make dumb desperate bad choices. Cops aren't immune to depression, drug/alcohol abuse, suicide ect..especially after we become one. In Daves case, some of these issues came up after he became a cop, after an injury caused by an accident. I, like all of us who knew Dave, was completely shocked by these robberies, and how far over the deep end he went with his addiction. I'm still in shock because I knew Dave before he went downhill. And, yes, I do feel betrayed by what he did because our department, as well as LE in general, is now taking a beating over this.

In fact, law enforcement officers are at higher risk of drug addiction and suicide than the general population, according to studies that have been done. Some studies based on statistics have stated that an officer may be 2-4 times more likely to by his or her own gun than by being shot by someone else. And the number might be even higher because some "accidental" shootings usually during "gun cleanings" might actually be suicides. Some police officers might have been shocked by the robberies even those who might have known about Reeves' problems including an alleged addiction to pain killers, a euphemism for legal narcotics that are considered controlled substances.

It would have happened easily and not taken nearly as long as many people expect for a person like Reeves to become addicted to pain killing drugs as many of them are as addictive or even more so than illegal drugs like heroin. Stories abound including those involving famous athletes and celebrities of reliance on drugs to mask physical pain or painful emotions and of what happens when people ignore the dangers of overdoses of a drug or combination of drugs which prove to be fatal. Example after example has been broadcast in the national spotlight about celebrities who take drugs, go to sleep and never wake up.

The fact is that many police officers suffer injuries on the job and they also like Reeves suffer off duty injuries including orthopedic injuries that necessitate the taking of pain killing drugs including narcotics to function or make physical pain bearable. The SEIU, which is Riverside's largest bargaining unit, entered into an MOU with the city on its drug policy including drug testing that is a fairly strict, "zero tolerance" drug policy. I asked a member of the SEIU about the police department's drug use and drug testing policy and if it was similar to that used by his union. He looked shocked and said, no because in his opinion, if the police department's officers were under the same policy as the SEIU, many would be unable to work and police the streets. Is that the truth, or an exaggeration of the injury rate in the Riverside Police Department and the use of both over the counter and prescription medication by police officers, not just for injuries but for other medical conditions? And if is the truth than how is the department handling this issue?

Reeves' actions are his own and he bears responsibility for what he has done and yes, his actions are going to leave many police officers including close friends in shock and upset and feeling betrayed by what he has done. It's going to leave the agency and its officers feeling as if they are being painted with a broad brush, but that's partly because law enforcement departments tend to be cohesive but insulated and often very isolated organizations surrounded by the public they protect and serve.

But if Reeves was indeed a drug addict dressed in blue, then it brings to light issues that are difficult to grapple with or face in a profession that is encharged with arresting people involved in both the buying and selling of illegal drugs or legal drugs sold or used illegally. What does a department do about its own employees who are equipped with badges, guns and police powers who are drug addicts? Does it go the punitive route or the rehabilitative route? What route was taken with Reeves? And which thought came first when the department uncovered the depths of his problems if it ever did?

And this dilemma mirrors the conflicting attitudes in different states including California about drug addiction. Voters in California for example passed Proposition 136 which was intended to promote rehabilitation of people addicted to drugs over punitive measures. But with police officers, you have the additional factor that because they are public safety employees who interface with the public in different ways from taking reports or interviewing crime victims and witnesses to using lethal force, they are not only a danger to themselves if they are addicted to drugs but to other officers and the public at large. They also put the cities and counties that employ them at a higher risk of civil liability if they commit either accidental or purposeful police misconduct while addicted to drugs or if they fail to act in their capacity in situations because their judgment or other faculties are impaired.

Reeves became a police officer in 2002 following a father and an uncle onto the force. Not long after he had an off-duty accident and severely fractured two cervical vertebrae. Although he apparently recovered enough to return to active duty at some point, unfortunately, neck injuries by nature never really go away and can be a source of great chronic pain. Apparently, according to a lawsuit he filed against the city about a week before his arrest, Reeves reinjured his neck late last year. Soon after, the department decided to drug test him and he was ordered by Capt. Michael Blakely to first undergo field sobriety tests and then submit a sample for testing. In his lawsuit, Reeves denied being under the influence of drugs or even having used them during that day in January 2009. Because that lawsuit was filed on his behalf by the Riverside Police Officers' Association, the public has some information about what was taking place behind closed doors in one of the most secretive environments in a profession filled with secrets.

Some years ago, the police department allegedly offered one-chance drug rehabilitation to officers who failed blood and/or urine tests to avoid job termination. And there has been officers who have gone to rehab and returned to work, never looking behind them. It's not clear whether Reeves ever asked for any assistance with his problems or whether he was offered any by the department. The answers to those questions are shrouded in secrecy with the rest of his personnel record. It's not clear whether Reeves was working his assignment in patrol including in Casa Blanca while allegedly addicted to drugs or whether he was removed from the streets early on. If drug addiction truly did Reeves in, when did it first start? Back when he suffered his first serious injury, or when he suffered his second one?

A person gets addicted to drugs through their own actions but if there was an addiction to narcotic pain medication here as this anonymous officer states, then were there physicians who monitored his condition while prescribing him medications to see if he had developed any dependency or addiction? Did his family members notice anything wrong with their loved one? This officer mentions that he had many friends on the police force. Did any of them notice anything wrong before he spiraled downward and self-destructed in a major and highly visible way, a way that not even the state's confidentiality laws regarding peace officers can hide any longer?

There are signs of drug abuse that can be subtle and there are others that are not. And even if people suspect, then know and then try to approach or help the individual, it's very unlikely that their assistance will be accepted or their questions even wanted.

While this is most likely and certainly hopefully an example of an individual example of serious criminal conduct by a police officer and not an institutional one, no man and certainly no police officer is an island. Each individual one such as Reeves is interlinked with other officers and interwoven into the organizational structure of the law enforcement agency that employs them. One wonders how Reeves' problems ever came to light and when. Did any of his peers notice any problems and do they work in an environment where they can report them to supervisors? Did his supervisors notice anything wrong with him or his job performance while he was allegedly addicted to drugs? Was he ever given an option of going to rehab which has been offered to officers in the past? And what about the department's Early Warning System which was created after the Mayor's Use of Force Panel recommended it in 1999 and then later tightened by the State Attorney General's office during the five year stipulated judgment.

Very few of the department's officers are believed to be tracked by the department through this computerized system at any given time but was Reeves ever included in this group and would it have made a difference in his situation if he had been? There are many questions to be asked that perhaps will never be answered. And can't be in the State of California, which leaves many of its residents in cities where tragic incidents like this happen left wondering what is going on.

He also writes about Reeves, jr.' career before his arrest. His work as an officer in a neighborhood where his work was lauded by officers, complained about by more than a few residents (as he received the second highest number of complaints of any officer there)but then it's not rare for police and community residents to have different perceptions of the same officer.

He talks about the familial connections for Reeves and attributed his downfall to the injury that he suffered off-duty and what he said was the department's handling of it.

(excerpt)

He actually strongly resembled a heavier version of Napolean Dynamite. He wears glasses, which aren't in the booking photo. Gangsters in Casa Blanca referred to him as Napolean Dynamite. Dave came from a family of Riverside cops. His father was a well respected Sgt. who retired several years back. His uncle is a Motor Sgt. now. He has two brother-in-laws on the department, both well respected. Dave was a police exporer and cadet for RPD before he became a cop. I worked with all three of them, and Dave was a good street cop before his problems overcame him. An off duty accident several years ago caused a lingering neck injury, which got him hooked on pain killers. The department recently began investigating him for the drug addiction, took him off the street and suspended his police powers. The city doctors were most likely going to retire him for his neck injury, but since the accident was off duty, he was not going to get a medical retirement. Dave didn't want to retire, and he began to have huge family/money problems. His addiction overcame him, and he went over the deep end.

Dave was a friend of mine, and it's hard to read some of the posts here,,,but I don't blame anyone for their anger or disgust. How can anyone justify these robberies. But, he had alot of friends on the department that were completely shocked and saddened by this, and you can imagine how his family feels. Dave wasn't a "Thug" or a "G", he just snapped..that's the only way I can describe it.

So an officer whose entire family appears to have been tied to the Riverside Police Department, who had been involved with the department beginning in the Explorer program and continuing as a police cadet and then later as an officer was not only facing retirement but was ineligible for a medical retirement due to the nature of his injury. An individual who is raised in a family where most of his role models are law enforcement officers might be more likely to identify himself more strongly that way and be more reluctant to surrender that identity. Did that make him more desperate than he would be otherwise? That's a hard question to answer as some people in his shoes commit crimes but many don't so it's likely that other factors came into play here.

This officer writes about shock and feelings of betrayal at the behavior of a fellow officer and friend. No doubt there is a department filled with employees feeling the same way, not to mention a city of residents who are very concerned about what has happened in their midst and some of them may be indicting the entire agency by the actions of one. That's not really fair to do but the department itself could go along way in addressing any erosion of public trust by how it addresses this issue to examine whether there is anything they can uncover through investigation and reflection to prevent future David Reeves before their meltdowns collide with other people's lives potentially placing them in jeopardy as Reeves' actions did last week.

The department hopefully does as it should recognize that police officers due to the stress and physical demands of their jobs are at higher risk for drug addiction among other problems and be more vigilant of any officers heading down a similar path. Because the number one question in many discussions right now is apprehension over whether Reeves is truly an isolated case and whether or not there are other ticking time bombs inside the department. Officers should evaluate each other to see if there's any reason that a person they work with might be in trouble and the police culture which often punishes those who "tattle" should provide a more accommodating environment for officers to report concerns or even apprehension with working alongside certain police officers.

Drug rehabilitation should be a viable option at least for the first offense so there might be more self-reporting or be reported by others he or she works with. At some point, the department must have figured out there was a serious problem with Reeves if what this individual wrote is correct and took steps to investigate, which inevitably brought his situation to a head. Situations like those involving Reeves should be handled as critical incidents subject to investigation and review not just on individuals but much more broadly. The public is most reassured and has the most confidence in the police agencies that protect and serve them when they have the most faith and trust in them that this is being done as a matter of course.

Field supervisors should keep an eye on their charges and be ready to either approach the officer or their supervisors if there are problems suspected much, much earlier in the process than likely was the case involving Reeves. However, considering how strapped the supervisory ranks are because of frozen vacancies and promotions, that might be more of a challenge than it was in the past.

And communities should keep an eye on their officers and if they're behaving strangely or inappropriately, they should report it to a supervisor or file a complaint so that the department has an opportunity to check into what is going on with a particular officer.

But the department should take the time right now to thoroughly investigate this critical incident and check to see whether it's early warning system of identifying and tracking problematic behavior is doing the job that it should be doing in hopes of preventing more David Reeves from c0ming to light in a horrifying way.

Riverside City Council members will be riding a mechanical bull for charity at an event sponsored by Habitat for Humanity.

Hoe-Down with Habitat

When: 5 p.m. Saturday; dinner is 6-7:30 p.m.

Where: Riverside Rancheros arena, 1198 Washington St., Riverside

Cost: $40, includes one drink

Information: 951-787-6754, ext. 120, www.habitatriverside.org

A recall drive against Moreno Valley Councilwoman Robin Hastings appears to be falling short.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

For her part, Hastings said she was "cautiously optimistic" that the recall attempt would fail. "But I'm superstitious. I don't want to comment until after 5 p.m."

Reeder said her committee gathered more than 3,300 names but must collect at least 4,508.

Hastings took office in December. Her opponents say they're angry about her February vote in favor of a 1.8 million-square-foot Skechers distribution center. Her backers point out that the shoe warehouse won unanimous support on the council, and that if she'd voted no, the project still would have been approved by a 4-1 tally.

Don't rush to cityhood. So the Press Enterprise Editorial Board warns Eastvale which is chomping at the bit to do just that.

Riverside County Sheriff's Department candidate Frank Robles has a campaign Web site.

Mayoral candidate Ken Stansbury will be appearing at the Friday Morning Club on Friday, Oct. 23 at 10 a.m. at the Janet Goeske Center on Sierra near Streeter.

Riverside Councilman Paul Davis is hosting a meeting tonight at the Orange Terrace Center in Orangecrest at 6:30 p.m. . There will be city department representatives there and topics will be discussed.

UC Riverside is hosting an all-day event culminating in a 8:30 p.m. vigil commemorating October 22, the national day against police abuse. It starts at 10 a.m.

City Manager says RPD's Strategic Plan back on track

2009-10-20T15:57:00.000-07:00

We interrupt our regular meeting....

Another city council meeting held in Riverside, another public service announcement issued by an elected official on a topic that seems to come out of no where. At some point, the elected official then asks a designated representative from the city manager's office to help him or her deliver his or her announcement. This has been an interesting ritual that has developed over the past few weeks, offering a treat to viewers at the meetings and at home.

A few weeks ago, Councilwoman Nancy Hart informed the public both in the audience and the viewing audience at home with assistance from Asst. City Manager Paul Sundeen as to why the Finance Committee hasn't met in nearly a year and not at all during 2009. People listening and watching left that with more questions than answers as Hart had essentially abdicated her role as chair which is to call meetings to the city manager's office. This issue has become more pressing as more and more people have been discussing it if not in the city council chambers outside of it. One member of the finance committee said that when he's tried to ask when it's going to meet, he's told by Hart that there is no meeting scheduled because there's nothing to discuss. But there is interest with at least one committee member that a meeting should be held which is reassuring to hear.

But that was then and this is now and it's time for another topic to be deemed worthy of being a vaunted public service announcement and this week, the topic involved the Riverside Police Department.

This week, the conduit for the PSA was Mayor Ron Loveridge. The topic? The Riverside Police Department's Strategic Plan, not the current one that was mandated by the state but the new one which was to replace it when it sunsets in December.

This blogging covered the alleged stalling of Strategic Plan 2 which was to have begun earlier this year, not long after Chief Russ Leach told community groups and organizations that the department would be creating and implementing a new blueprint for future development and direction in the agency to replace the first one soon set to expire. Leach said there would be plenty of opportunities for community input to the plan, essentially telling people who attended various community policing forums held across the city that it was "your plan". However, silence followed those announcements and an inquiry into the status of the plan led to information that the plan wasn't moving forward due to forces inside City Hall. This blog posting attracted quite an influx of readers from as far away as the State Treasurer's office up in Sacramento interesting when you consider who is the current treasurer right now.

But what a difference a week makes!

At the city council meeting, Mayor Ron Loveridge pulled up an email from Leach telling him that the department would be working on the strategic plan and that it would be ready to present before the city council by March 2010. His boss, City Manager Brad Hudson stepped in on Loveridge's cue to explain that the plan wasn't mandated like its predecessor but it was something they wanted to do, sounding oh so thrilled about it all just like he did after the embarrassing episode involving the city council's plan to implement the strategic plan in 2006 mercifully was resolved.

At some point the public safety committee chair and city staff would be involved and perhaps there would be some kind of public forum. Hudson always gets this strange expression on his face when he talks about any type of "community input" or "public participation" which is kind of interesting to watch. Every bite on a sour pickle?

But at any rate, this is an interesting development at City Hall which will have to be closely scrutinize in the weeks and months ahead. It's not clear whether Hudson truly embraces the strategic plan part deux or whether someone higher on the food chain than he is gave him a little nudge but the strategic plan is now moving forward, instead of running in place. It's more likely that it was the latter and that individual or individuals should be thanked because the Strategic Plan doesn't cease to be important just because former State Attorney General Bill Lockyer signs off on a mandated reform plan or because the first one is set to expire. And it's not just something the Riverside Police Department needs but is something that every law enforcement agency should have.

But the city and police department need to bring some more transparency into this important process. Here are some ways to do this.

1) Bring the issue for presentation and input to the entire public safety committee in public at City Hall not just to the chair of that committee, Chairman Chris MacArthur to be discussed behind closed doors.

2) Bring the plan back to the city council for presentation at an evening meeting with plenty of time to outline the plan, take comments and have discussion.

3) Rather than have one "public hearing" as suggested by Hudson, have meetings throughout the different neighborhoods, at least one per Neighborhood Policing Center to receive as much input from the public as possible and to reach all different groups of people.

4) The police chief personally should be coming to these public meetings as the main architect of this Strategic Plan at all its stages.

There was discussion about how the public utilities belongs to the people and well, so does the police department. It should be treated in that fashion rather than as some shiny toy that some politicians, past or present including former Councilman Frank Schiavone and their direct staff get to play with when they feel like it.

There will be much more coverage of this issue in the future because after all, another week, another opinion on whether or not there will be a strategic plan or not. Kind of like picking from daisies to determine whether someone likes you or not. It's unfortunate that City Hall has to take the more dysfunctional route towards getting on board to get something like a strategic plan done but at least it's getting done. That's the important thing and there will be regular checks done through this process to make sure that there's no backpedaling by any of the parties. Because we all know that has happened in the past too.

The Jolly Councilman

In other council business, Councilman Steve Adams left the meeting for a while and came back some time after public comment (so alas, there was no editorializing this week) in a much more jolly mood than when he left. He discussed the businesses at the Riverside City Walk in some sort of promotion drive for Shop Riverside or something like that mentioning a nail salon. He waxed about getting pedicures and well, getting waxed at this establishment. Perhaps a little bit more information than the viewing public wanted to know from its elected official. But never a dull moment at the city council meetings.

City Attorney Gregory Priamos was gone for a while too but didn't come back more jolly than he had left. There was no reportable action on any of the lawsuits on the docket during the closed session of this meeting.

Snapshot of a City Committee

Mayor’s Nomination and Screening Committee

Chair: Mayor Ron Loveridge

Members: Governmental Affairs Committee
Councilmen Andrew Melendrez, Steve Adams and Rusty Bailey

Meetings: Tuesdays as required. It has met more times this year than the Finance Committee.

(Riverside, CA) The Mayor’s Nomination and Screening Committee met at 1 pm on Oct. 20 to select applicants to interview to fill the Ward Three vacancy on the Community Police Review Commission. The mayor and city council seem to be moving much more quickly with filling the vacancy created by the resignation of CPRC Chair Sheri Corral than they did when filling the Ward Two vacancy that remained vacant for nearly six months. In fact, the current Ward Two commissioner Rogelio V. Morales has just been sworn in.

The qualifications of the applicants based on what they submitted as part of their initial applications was quite weak, partly due to the fact that five of the six applicants were submitting applications for multiple boards and commissions so they didn’t tailor their responses to the questions specifically to the CPRC. Only Deborah Wong who was one of the original applicants for CPRC in 2000 submitted any information pertaining to the CPRC.

According to the report submitted by City Clerk Colleen Nicol, there were six applicants from this ward who applied for the CPRC. They are listed below.

George Perez

He’s employed by U.C. Riverside as a store worker and purchaser and has lived in Riverside 50 years. A former member of the Community (now Human Relations) Commission

Robert M. Righter

A 10 year resident, Righter works for Home Depot and moved to Texas for a while and then came back to Riverside.

Dale Roberts

A senior analyst at JPL in Pasadena, Robert stated he had no specific experience except family members who were in law enforcement or in the military.

Tonya D. Snively

She has lived in Riverside for over 37 years and wants to be a city council member some day. She works for Tom Ford Fragrances.

Lilliam Snow

She’s lived in Riverside about one year and calls herself a “volunteer in need”
.

Deborah Wong

A professor at UCR who has lived in Riverside for 11 years. She is chair of the Riverside Coalition for Police Accountability. She stated when the commission was six years old, that it was at a crossroads.

Janice Bielman: A neighborhood watch captain and member of the Magnolia Area Neighborhood Alliance, she once worked for a retail mangement/loss related business.

After the usual conferring among themselves and asking each other which candidates they knew or didn't know, the committee members finally chose for intereviews, Bielman, Wong, Roberts and Perez.

The date which will be set aside for city council members and the mayor to interview the applicants for this appointment to the CPRC have not yet been announced. But it seems like the process for filling this latest vacancy is going much more quickly than it did when the city council was trying to fill the position vacated by Jim Ward last March.

The death of Riverside County Supervisor Roy Wilson has forced the rest of the body to jettison much of its business.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has yet to appoint a replacement, giving supervisors little leeway in approving items that require four votes.

Supervisor Jeff Stone was absent Tuesday, leaving just three supervisors to handle the county's business.

As a result, they had to delay more than a dozen items, ranging from an amendment to the Sheriff's Department contract with Palm Desert to the allocation of Homeland Security grant funds.

The county has critical things on our agenda, Supervisor Bob Buster said.

"It does create a set of problems," he said. "You don't know when the governor will make his appointment."

Budget adjustments, sanitation and sewer deals and changes to construction contracts are among the things that require a four-fifths vote, county spokesman Ray Smith said.

There is no deadline for the governor to make his decision, and for weeks supervisors have urged Schwarzenegger to tap a replacement. Wilson resigned just days before his Aug. 26 death.

Wilson, the county's fourth-district supervisor, had recommended State Sen. John Benoit, R-Bermuda Dunes, to succeed him. The remaining supervisors have backed a Benoit appointment.

Other names floated as possible successors include former state Sen. Jim Battin, former Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia and former Palm Springs Police Chief Gary Jeandron.

On the campaign trail with the candidates running for the Riverside Unified District School Board.

The city council approved a large-scale public utilities project that cost nearly $20 million and is intended to avoid blackouts several years from now.

The Press Enterprise purge continues

About 30 employees have been let go from the Press Enterprise in recent weeks, mostly reporters, copy editors, editors and one photographer. And in a new move, the publication owned by Belo Enterprises in Texas is firing reporters and then offering them opportunities as free lance writers, something readers will see in the Press Enterprise more in the future.

There's only one reporter left in Riverside and Riverside County has no general reporter as the newspaper continues what some say might be its death spiral. Could there ever be a day when Riverside doesn't have a daily newspaper? Five years ago, could you have even entertained that question?

One of the reporters there who is left will be hosting a live forum on the issue of medical marijuana, one that's come up here again in recent weeks.

It's being held today from 2:30 p.m. -4 p.m.

A Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy who had been missing was found dead and will be the subject of an autopsy.

The Riverside County District Attorney's office said keep that search warrant sealed in the case of a search involving the home of a San Jacinto councilman.

Isn't it interesting how the only warrants that ever seemed to have to be sealed are usually those involving politicians? But then even though the office still technically has a public integrity unit, it seems to go after activists more than well...public officials.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Prosecutors called the release order "unlawful and without authority" and said it will hurt their investigation. The targets of the investigation have not been identified.

In papers filed Monday with the Riverside-based 4th District Court of Appeal, prosecutors claim "the First Amendment opens no doors to warrant proceedings," and asked the appellate court to halt the release order issued by Riverside County Superior Court Judge Helios J. Hernandez II.

Hernandez originally upheld sealing the warrants in Aug. 26, but reversed himself and granted their release on Oct. 6 on a renewed motion from The Press-Enterprise.

Meeting in Ward Four

Councilman Paul Davis is holding another public meeting at the Orange Terrace Community Center in Ward Four. It's Thursday, Oct. 22 at 6:30 pm. There will be department headsin attendance and particular issues will be the focus of discussion.

So Ward Four residents should head on out there. But what would help a lot of people would be if the RTA would start a busline that actually goes to Orangecrest rather than bypasses it.

Annual Meeting and Neighbor hood Caucus

Saturday, October 24, 2009

9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Bordwell Park, 2008 Martin Luther King Blvd.

Special Presentation by Mayor Ronald Loveridge

Seven (7) RNP Board seats will be up for election, three (3) are in Area 4.

Please see attached document on election information.

Grounded: Riverside's Finance Committee and the RPD's next Strategic Plan

2009-10-18T09:27:00.000-07:00

The Riverside City Council has called for another meeting to be held on Tuesday, Oct. 20 at both 3 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. at City Hall. Already discussed is the plethora of civil litigation which is set to be discussed behind closed doors in the conference room just off of the newly renovated city council chambers. No less than 12 agenda items are on the closed session docket and that is a bit unusual for the city council to be so lawsuit orientated but tis the season. Along with the increasing number of police lawsuits and the usual round of litigative jabs that Riverside's lobbing at a growing number of other cities in Southern California, there's some Redevelopment legal action as well.

This agenda also includes items that will be held in open session including this one discussion item on the construction of two energy resource centers that are set to be built for Riverside.

In addition to that one discussion item, there are eight consent calendar items which is a laundry list of items that can only be pulled by those on the dais for further discussion. As far as the consent calendars go, this one's rather paltry. Unless there's some major discussion during the discussion item or one of the consent calendar items get pulled or another crowd comes out for public comment (yay!) or Mayor Ron Loveridge starts talking about the League of Cities again, this week's evening meeting could clock in at a trim 90 minutes.

And what of the Finance Committee?

And then there will be time set aside at the end for mayor and city council comments although it is unclear whether or not there will be any status report on the latest chapter of the Mystery of the Disappearing Finance Committee. At the Friday Morning Club, former councilman and mayoral candidate Art Gage did ask the people sitting there when was the last time that a finance committee was held, one person thought that there might have been a meeting held this year. However, that hasn't been the case and the last meeting was actually held last year on Dec. 8. People at the meeting were kind of shocked at that news. Which makes sense because why does a committee exist even though it never meets? While it's true that Riverside's leadership often goes down its own beaten path, it's strange that there are individuals on the dais who are taken aback by city residents asking questions or expressing concern about meetings being scheduled and posted on the city's Web site even though these meetings never actually take place.

As we all know by now, this committee's been missing in action since it was apparently enclosed in mothballs and stashed inside some closet at City Hall somewhere, waiting for some enlightened city official to take notice and resurrect it. That day still hasn't come but it's interesting listening and reading comments about the plight of this standing committee from individuals who have read the postings on this site.

What's interesting is that the meeting that took place before that one on Sept. 8, 2008 had this agenda item on it. And what is this agenda item? It's a report being presented by Asst. City Manager Paul Sundeen on interfund loans. It isn't a very impressive report in terms of the quantity of trees killed to create it, checking in at only three slender little pages but it's full of implications for the future financial accountability of Riverside's City Hall.

And what of the recommendations?

(excerpt, report by Sundeen--red ink is my contribution)

Obtaining the approval of the City Council for the expenditure of funds and a related interfund borrowing if necessary, is very important. These approvals are now obtained. Staff recommends that the specific fund from which money is borrowed is incidental information and need only be disclosed once a year in connection with the preparation of the annual financial statements. Alternatively, any changes in the borrowing could be disclosed as part of the monthly summary currently provided to the City Council.

So being accountable to the city council on interfund borrowing involving specific funding sources such as the use of the city's sewer fund to buy up businesses in the downtown is seen as being "incidental information"? Perhaps it is to "staff" which is a rather generic and vague term for the city manager's office but it should not be viewed that way by the mayor and legislative body which oversee the city manager's office. Not that interfund borrowing is necessarily a bad thing. However, there needs to be an accountability mechanism in place to oversee it as well as the transparency of having this business transactions including borrowing from funding sources to use elsewhere be disclosed to the public. And it's interesting how the "advantages" of Sundeen's proposed changes are presented but the disadvantages such as reduced accountability and the limits of monies in the funds that can be spent on what the money in those funds is actually designated for were not mentioned.

That shows inherent bias by Sundeen and his department because when they listed their recommendations, they didn't provide a more objective perspective of advantages and disadvantages. In some circumstances, it could be seen as asking the fox for advice on how the hen house should be secured. Not that the finance division of the city manager's office is necessarily in the role of the fox, but the perception leans more in that direction when mechanisms of accountability and transparency are being stripped away, mostly by those the public has entrusted with fiscal responsibility and that is the city council.

According to these minutes, the Finance Committee without formal motion agreed to have Sundeen and the city manager's office disclose any changes in funding in the monthly reports provided to the city council. But by doing so, did the Finance Committee ensure its further decline to the point of near extinction? After all, the city council just appears to have kept giving away pieces of its control of the financial accountability of the city manager's office in this city.

What were some of the things the currently defunct standing city council committee has done? It's done budget reviews of city departments, addressed community block grant funding, evaluated various interfund transfers and tackled other financial issues that arose from the perspective of a portion of the legislative body set up in part to address issues involving the city's finances. And the Finance Committee is apparently the latest casualty because after all, people walked away from Chair Nancy Hart's comments believing that she was essentially waiting until the city manager's office notified her it was okay to meet. And if she's waiting for those instructions, the day for the next time the Finance Committee meets could be a long time coming.

This once critical committee also received annual budget reports and annual audit reports done on the city by different independent firms including in those years listed below. Of course, given that there hasn't been any finance committee meetings this year, there of course hasn't been a meeting of the finance committee to receive this report.

2007 annual audit presented in January 2008

2006 annual audit not presented to Finance Committee in 2007

2005 annual audit presented in January 2006

2004 annual audit presented in February 2005

However, the Finance Committee has not met once this year to discuss any of the above issues or any issues at all for that matter. But then that's possibly because the issues that it used to discuss in the open so that the public could attend the meetings are now being discussed by the city staff behind closed doors with limited opportunities for public comment before these issues get to the city council and wind up on the consent calendar because the city council's made up its mind on most of the issues which come before it by the time they get there.

The next Finance Committee meeting is tentatively scheduled on Monday, Nov. 9 at 2:30 p.m. but it's unlikely that it will actually take place given the track record of this committee this year under both the chairmanship of Councilman Chris MacArthur and current chair, Councilwoman Nancy Hart who along with Sundeen issued a public service announcement at a recent city council meeting as to why there had been no meetings this year. But it's really confusing to follow because for some reason, City Hall schedules meetings that might never actually be held. Makes a whole lot of sense to most people outside of City Hall. Well, not really but there definitely seems to be people inside City Hall who think it should make perfect sense.

But Las Vegas currently places the odds of the Finance Committee meeting as follows:

The Finance Committee will meet on Nov. 9 40:1

The Finance Committee will meet in 2009: 15:1

The Finance Committee will meet ever again: 9:1

So if you're feeling lucky in city futures, go and make your bet.

Other Committee News

There will be no meeting in October for the Public Safety Committee. The tentative date for the next meeting is here. I'm a bit hesitant to actually post it because it might not actually meet on that date. The public safety committee has actually met five times this year.

Here are the number of meetings scheduled for the other standing committees this year so far.

Community Services and Youth: 9

Development Committee: 6

Governmental Affairs Committee: 7

Mayor's Nomination and Screening Committee: 6

Transportation Committee: 5

Utility Services, Land Use, Energy Development: 11

This is assuming that these committees actually met on all the more than tentatively scheduled (but apparently not quite set in stone) dates.

No new Strategic Plan for the Riverside Police Department

As you know, the city of Riverside was forced to enter into a stipulated judgment with the State Attorney General's office in March 2001 after a year-long investigation by that office discovered violations of state laws and a pattern and practice of serious problems within the department in different areas of operation. One of the reforms mandated by former State Attorney General Bill Lockyer was the creation of the five-year Strategic Plan which the department did, putting it into place by late 2004.

The 2004-2009 Strategic Plan mandated by the state is here.

As you can see, it's a comprehensive set of guidelines and objectives that the department had hoped to achieve during the five-year period in several different subject areas. It's a critical tool as it would be in any law enforcement agency to be able to strategize and plan ahead when it's in a period of intense change and growth and it's important to have that blueprint for change, development and reform in writing so that all the involved parties and stake holders understand what is going on and what the future will hold. Most people accept this as simply common sense. However, certain individuals in City Hall do not and that is to the detriment of everyone because a police department without a strategic plan especially in fiscally tight times is not heading in the right direction. And there doesn't seem to be much interest at City Hall in getting it back on track by creating and implementing along with the community and department a new strategic plan.

Now, Lockyer always said that there had to be a three-way partnership in the reforming of the police department and that it had to involve the city, the communities and the department. But there are certain entities that have no concept and certainly no care of what that really means and unfortunately, those people hold positions of tremendous power over the department's future and the process (whether for good or bad) used to get there. And so it goes...

There is no controversy there, that's just fact as unfortunately some of us found out within several months of the dissolution of the stipulated judgment in March 2006 when a certain entity at City Hall was told by a legislative entity above it to carry out simple instructions to ensure the continuation of the successful implementation of the Strategic Plan. Instead, these individuals tried to change the instructions they were given by their bosses and even derail the process completely. Whether that was willful behavior or simply because they didn't know any better, what the city manager's office pushed during the summer of 2006 wasn't exactly what the city council had ordered.

Fortunately, enough city council members, okay two of them, later began paying attention and they managed to stir the S.S. Hudson on the right path. That might have been before Gage had his alleged conversation with Hudson who had promised then to stop micromanaging the police department. But two years after that alleged conversation, his office appears to be doing exactly that with questions raised about whether any allocated money can be requested and/or spent by the department without having to be approved by Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis first instead of the police chief. And as most people know, the police chief is the person usually responsible for the budget including allocations and expenditures and it's the chief who usually holds the purse strings.

But apparently not in Riverside. Gage also made the comment that Riverside might be the only city in the country where the police department is run by a city manager. People at the Friday Morning Club meeting were more than a little taken aback by that revelation.

But once again, another strategic plan is endangered and that was to be Strategic Plan part 2 which was proposed by Chief Russ Leach as an objective of the police department at public forums earlier this year. He told city residents at these forums that he was going to get public input on what should be included in the next five-year plan as he had with the previous one. But there will be no plan because apparently, City Hall said no and vetoed it.

Just another way that City Manager Brad Hudson has shown his lack of interest in the forward progression of the police department just 3 1/2 years after the dissolution of the judgment against the city. That's unfortunate but after all, Hudson arrived late on the scene of the police department's reform process and perhaps is unaware of how important it is to avoid making the mistakes of the 1990s now in the 21st Century.

The police department has seen difficult times in the past several years with vacant positions not being filled due to budget cuts including more than a dozen supervisory positions and the department having to shuffle the remaining supervisors around in the different divisions. And now not only is it losing staffing but it has no forward plan that was created through discussion and input by all the involved stake holders. That is what you get when you put the city manager's office in charge of the police department.

A third man has died after being tased by police officers from agencies in the Inland Empire.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

The man was taken to a St. Bernardine Medical Center where he was pronounced dead, according to the San Bernardino County coroner's office. An autopsy is pending to determine the cause of death.

Friday's fatality occurred at a residential mental health center listed as one of the partners of the county's Office of Behavioral Health. Orchid Court is a state-licensed assisted living facility.

The incident marks the third time in less than three months that a suspect has died shortly after being stunned with a Taser by police in the Inland area. Jonathan Nelson, 27, of Rancho Cucamonga was stunned twice on July 30, once by deputies in Hemet and again in a Riverside County jail cell.

Terrace Clifton Smith, 52, of Moreno Valley was Tasered by police and suffered a fatal seizure on Aug. 9.

Civilian oversight and review is a very rare thing in Iowa.

(excerpt, Des Moines Register)

Iowa City's Police Citizen's Review Board is the only such body in Iowa and one of about 60 nationwide. The group fields complaints about police directly from the public. Though they have the power to subpoena records and documents, the board primarily reviews the findings of internal police investigations of incidents.
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"We provide another check in the system," said Donald King, a former security guard who is vice chairman of the board. "We're another set of eyes for the public."

Though advocacy groups occasionally call for a similar board in Des Moines, home to Iowa's largest police force, the idea has never taken root. The most recent cry for police review came after Octavius Bonds and Erin Evans, a Des Moines couple, said they were victims of police brutality after a 2008 traffic stop.

The officers involved, Mersed Dautovic and John Mailander, both rookies, resigned under threat of termination. The attorney for Bonds and Evans, Peter Berger, called for civilian review of police after a jury acquitted his clients of interference with police and assault charges in March. The couple has also filed a civil suit that alleges the officers violated their constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment, unlawful search and seizure and infringements on their due process rights.

Des Moines Police Chief Judy Bradshaw believes police face strong internal and external scrutiny and a civilian review board would strip the department's managers of authority when governing officers.

"I believe if the public trusts us to investigate murders, the most immoral crime, they should be able to trust us to hold ourselves accountable," Bradshaw said.

Miami-Dade County in Florida kills civilian review.

(excerpt, Miami Herald)

Funding for the Independent Review Panel ended Oct. 1. It's the only county office to be eliminated in the mayor's budget.

In a last hour attempt to keep the panel operating, a resolution sponsored by Commissioner Barbara Jordan passed 11-1 on Tuesday asking the mayor and county manager's office to report back to the commission in 30 days with possible sources to fund the IRP with a reduced $450,000 operating budget.

While the commissioners wait for the county's findings, layoff and reassignment letters are being handed out to IRP's four-member staff.

``I received mine,'' said Eduardo Diaz, IRP executive director. ``It says to report to the Water and Sewer Department.''

Diaz expects the office to be open until Oct. 27, but ``technically as of the first we no longer exist,'' he said.

Information on upcoming anti-Nazi Rally in Casa Blanca

Media and Public Update: Rally Against Hate on October 24 in Riverside

A Riverside rally at 10 am on October 24 sponsored by dozens of community organizations will express "rejection of Nazi intolerance, racism and violence," reports Kevin Akin, spokesman for the community coalition. Nazis from the "National Socialist Movement" (NSM) have announced that they will be demonstrating in Riverside on Saturday, October 24, and the coalition intends to show that the Inland Empire rejects the Nazis.

"Our rally will be entirely peaceful," states Akin. "We will rally on the other side of the street from the Nazis, and we have been assured that there will be a large enough police presence to keep the Nazis from crossing the street. We will have an orderly, peaceful, disciplined demonstration, and will not permit anyone to participate who engages in violence or attempts to provoke violence. Our message is too important to let disruptions draw attention away from it." He says that the message will be conveyed through chants, singing, and signs in both English and Spanish. Some of the signs being prepared feature such slogans as "Tolerance Yes, Hatred No," and "Inland Area Rejects Nazi Hate."

At the same time as the community rally at Madison Street and Indiana Avenue, a picnic and play event for children will be held four blocks away at Villegas Park. When the Nazis leave, the demonstrators will march to Villegas Park and hold a "victory rally" with live music. Organizers ask that children not attend the rally at Madison and Indiana, but stay with a relative or guardian at Villegas Park until the march arrives. Demonstrators are urged to park at or near Villegas Park and walk to the rally. Organizers ask that each person bring a can or box of food to donate to local food banks, and put the food in collection boxes at Villegas Park.

Akin reports that organizers have been in contact with the Riverside Police Department and have secured permission to use the bandstand area at Villegas Park from the Riverside Parks and Recreation Department. He estimates that "about 40 monitors will help keep the demonstration orderly and effective." Final details of the "Rally Against Hate" will be settled at a meeting of representatives of sponsoring organizations on Wednesday, Akin reports.

For more information: Kevin Akin (951) 787-0318, cell (951) 675-2813 kevinakin1950@hotmail.com

Meetings on the proposed high speed train may be coming to a venue near you.

Meeting Info

Five public meetings are planned to discuss the planned high-speed rail route.

Monday: Murrieta Public Library, Eight Town Square, 24700 Adams Ave.

Tuesday: Corona Public Library, West Room, 650 S. Main St.

Thursday: Bobby Bonds Park, Cesar Chavez Community Center, 2060 University Ave.

Nov. 2: Ontario Airport Administrative Conference Rooms, 1923 E. Avion St.

Nov. 3: Feldheym Central Library, Kellogg Room, 555 W. 6th St.

Source: California High-Speed Rail Authority

The Riverside Police Officers' Association sues the city

2009-10-16T15:25:00.000-07:00

“It was a good shooting and that…he did not need an attorney and is not entitled to an attorney.”

---Departmental Captain John Carpenter and Sgt. Patrick Watters to Officer Daniel J. Floyd after he requested legal representation during questioning by investigators, according to the RPOA's lawsuit.

“They are a jumbled mess of conclusions of law, and the facts that are provided are contradictory and ambiguous.”

---The city in its motion for demurrer in the RPOA's lawsuit against the city.

"I can change that direction by not going into office to make friends inside Riverside City Hall in order to have a bigger political future for myself by 'playing the game'".

---Mayoral candidate Ken Stansbury on his Web site

"Brad Hudson can't run the police department. He's not qualified."

---Riverside mayoral candidate and former councilman, Art Gage at the Friday Morning Club meeting.

"All I can say is that drug addiction can cause people of all races, occupations, and statuses in life to make bad, desperate choices."

---"Shockwave" at the Press Enterprise Web site

A former RPD officer arraigned on 12 felony counts

Riverside Police Department officer David Reeves jr. was arraigned in Riverside County Superior Court on 12 felony charges including four counts of robbery, one count of attempted robbery, burglary and Assault with a deadly weapon, an gun. All the felony charges have enhancements involving the use of a gun to commit the crime. His charges stem from three armed robberies in Riverside and Moreno Valley, all of them auto parts stores within the past two weeks.

He also faces one enhancement of stolen property/public service which is PC F496(A).
Bail is currently set by $500,000 and Reeves intends to retain his own private counsel before his arraignment which has been rescheduled for Oct. 30.

The Riverside Police Officers' Association vs the City of Riverside

This labor development has been in the works for months but the Riverside Police Officers’ Association finally sued the city of Riverside on behalf of six of its police officers, alleging violations of due process in relation to state law and the Peace Officer Bill of Rights Act by other representatives of the police department when these individuals were interrogated involving internal investigations being conducted. It may or may not be followed by another similar lawsuit in relation to interrogations and procedure involving the investigations of officer-involved shootings. The RPOA last sued the city over investigative protocol for officer-involved deaths and/or shootings in August 2003.

The officers listed as plaintiffs in the action are Daniel J. Floyd, Sanchez Lopez, Juan Munoz, Paul Turner, Sgt. Ron Whitt and Giovanni Ili. These actions were alleged to have taken place January, February, March and December 2008. Below are a list of allegations made in the lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit, representatives of the police department interrogated and investigated petitioners without informing them about the nature of these interrogations and investigations and subjected them to offensive language, threatened punitive action, actually took punitive actions against petitioner and denied them representation during the interrogations and investigations. An investigation is currently open into the violations of this Act.

Officer Daniel J. Floyd

According to the lawsuit, the 2008 shooting by Daniel Floyd and David Reeves, jr. happened after they intervened in a drug sale. Floyd tried to detain seller. The driver tried to drive away and Floyd attempted to break windows and shut the vehicle off. The driver stopped vehicle and Reeves walked in front of it. The driver began to drive vehicle towards Reeves and Reeves shot that individual.

Floyd requested counsel from Vince Morris prior to an internal interrogation by department and DA. Department Captain John Carpenter and Sgt. Pat Watters told Floyd, “It was a good shooting and that…he did not need an attorney and is not entitled to an attorney.”

Because even though the witnesses and involved officers had yet to be interviewed, the investigation apparently was in a sense done. Which makes you wonder why so many officer-involved death investigations are over a year old now without reaching the Community Police Review Commission if the decision is made whether it's "good" or "bad" by supervisors and management personnel within the first few hours. Not that communities believe anything differently than this happening because the perception is strong that officers will back other officers no matter what and statements like these when they slip out in interrogation rooms and later through lawsuits don't exactly challenge that belief in a meaningful way. But anyway, the main point is that Floyd was apparently denied an attorney and if so, that's a violation of due process for criminal investigations and possibly of state evidence codes and the Peace Officer Bill of Rights as well. And that's what is being contested in this lawsuit.

But then you really have to forgive the lack of knowledge of these laws because Hudson and DeSantis probably haven't gotten to those pesky legal issues in their crash course they took when they decided to become police chiefs.

Julio Jaramillo, an attorney with the law firm on contract with the RPOA attempted to enter interrogation room and represent Floyd but Sgt. Derwin Hudson blocked him and informed them “You can’t come in…he doesn’t get an attorney because they are treating him as a witness.” He also said, “it’s not coming from me, they told me not to let you in.”

A side note, what's fascinating about Jaramillo representing Floyd is that when Jaramillo a former Santa Ana Police Department officer worked for the Riverside County Public Defender's office several years ago, he represented a woman on trial for battering Floyd and resisting arrest during an incident in Casa Blanca in October 2004. He cross-examined Floyd during that trial for over four hours. That experience provides a touch of irony in this case as he has clearly found himself on the other side of the proverbial coin but he's very acquainted with Floyd going into the interrogation.

A few days later Floyd was contacted by the department, to be interviewed to “clear up a few issues” and Floyd was not informed about it and the interview lasted 10 minutes.

Since this incident, management had stated “made a mistake by allowing [Petitioner Ili] to have an attorney. Will not allow attorneys in the future.”

This particular case is extremely fascinating for reasons included in relation to the allegations in the lawsuit but also because of the city's representation of officer-involved shootings (and deaths) being "criminal investigations" with "crime scenes" which need to be preserved from among other things private investigators hired by the Community Police Review Commission. But the funny thing is that here, the city's taking the same position that it did in a motion for summary judgment that it filed against a similar lawsuit filed by the RPOA in 2003, and that's insisting that as far as the officers are concerned, these type of onduty incidents are not criminal investigations.

According to the city, the officers are victims and witnesses, not criminal suspects and the purposes of their interviews is not to interrogate potential criminal defendants but to get information that is equivalent to what would be provided in a written report. This may or may be what's really involved here, but it's always been the city's position in legal documents that officer-involved shootings and/or deaths are not criminal investigations. The city and some department heads have rhapsodised on about how these are sensitive criminal investigations when its legal position (and probably procedural as well) is that if anyone is being subjected to a criminal investigation, it's the person who was shot and/or killed by the officer. If that person is deceased as in a fatal shooting for example, then that person can never be charged with a crime. So that criminal investigation as the city defines it is over.

It's ridiculous to continue to hold the CPRC hostage over its officer-involved death investigations by claiming that these cases involve sensitive criminal investigations when the city makes it clear over and over in responses to litigation filed by the RPOA that it believes the opposite. It did this during the RPOA's lawsuit filed in 2003 and it has already done so with the current one filed in autumn 2009, roughly one year after first the city manager's office and then the majority of the city council by vote essentially brought the CPRC's ability to effectively carry out its charter mandate to investigate incustody deaths to an end.

And if these officer-involved deaths and/or shootings are indeed criminally investigated by the department, then get these officers their attorneys already or be quiet when selling the city residents a stolen bag of goods about things like the integrity of the crime scene being jeopardized by CPRC investigators. Because the city is trying to have it both ways and it can't.

Officers Sancho Lopez and Juan Munoz

On Feb. 22, 2008 Department Sergeant Denny Corbett called Lopez in his office to discuss why Lopez and Munoz did not take police reports on a vandalism. After that meeting, Lopez went to write the report. Lopez is informed that Lt. Guy Touissant wants to speak with him. Lopez went to meet with Toussaint. Toussaint immediately yelled at Lopez stating that he was “pissed off” and that Lopez had blown Corbett off and that his answers to Corbett were “bullshit.” Toussaint accused Lopez of lying and threatened that he would “do Juan and Lopez”. Toussaint pushed a copy of PC 135 towards Lopez and said he was thinking of calling DA to file criminal charges against Lopez and Munoz for destruction of evidence.

Toussaint then allegedly threatened to remove Lopez from FTO program and retrain all his trainees.

“You make a blue rag look like shit”—Toussaint allegedly said to Lopez.

Ten minutes later, Lopez was called in by Toussaint and given a chance to “make it right” by going back to reporting party and taking report. Corbett later apologized to Lopez for the incident and said that Lopez and Munoz would receive a negative preliminary investigations report. Lopez and Munoz were told they wouldn’t be allowed to ride together until the investigation was over. Lopez was never given Miranda or Lybarger (a compelled statement can not be used against him by criminal investigators or prosecutors although this doesn't apply to federal agencies) before being threatened with the criminal charges, according to the lawsuit.

Officer Paul Turner

In March 2008, Turner was called into the department watch commander’s office and interrogated about a traffic collision hit and run that Petitioner Turner disputes the occurrence of though it doesn't elaborate on whether Turner was involved in it or took a report on one. If it were the former, then the allegations of him not being mirandized or given the Lynbarger admonition would make more sense than if he were just there taking a report or had actually witnessed it.

Still, Turner allegedly had asked for a RPOA representative and was denied. He was never advised that he was under investigation by the department. He was never given Miranda and Lynbarger admonition prior to being interrogated by the alleged criminal hit and run violation.

Officer Giovanni Ili

He was involved in an officer-involved shooting. At first management denied Ili access to RPOA representation but then they finally relented. The department or city's attorneys later called the denial of attorney a "harmless error".

Sgt. Ron Whitt

On Dec. 17, 2008, Whitt was reassigned from Special Operations Bureau to the Field Operation Bureau. He was informed that the reassignment was due to a “perception issue” and if he failed to be reassigned voluntarily, he would be “packaged up and mov[ed] anyway[s].” Whitt lost his 3% bonus pay that came from that assignment and he wasn’t provided with an administrative hearing to appeal it.

The legal action alleges multiple violations of governmental codes that were committed by the department's management.

The lawsuit asks that the court issue a permanent injunction against further violations of the act and that the city pays attorney's fees, back pay to the officers with interest and reinstates Whitt to his old position in the Special Operations Bureau.

The city responds

The city filed a motion to demurrer to try to throw the lawsuit out and in it, states that the petition should be denied by the judge because it is “uncertain, vague and ambiguous, unintelligible and contradictory”. The city alleged that Lopez wasn’t interrogated but was questioned and admonished in the normal course of duty and that initially denying Ili an attorney was a harmless error. The city stuck mostly to semantic issues when addressing the allegations in the lawsuit rather than substantive.

The city also argued that the lawsuit was formulated incorrectly in violation of a state rule of court.

“They are a jumbled mess of conclusions of law, and the facts that are provided are contradictory and ambiguous", the city claimed.

The attorneys for the city also claimed that both Floyd and Turner knew they were being interrogated while they had claimed they did not. Even if the people weren’t notified, it was a harmless error on the part of the department.

Toussaint’s reprimand was called an “informal verbal admonishment" given to an officer by the city. It's interesting that the city didn't challenge the actual content of this reprimand or challenge Toussaint's alleged use of colorful language. If that's the case, is using profanity the city's idea of an informal reprimand and the lack of the use of such language called a formal one? Of course, it's just as possible that Toussaint never said these things but then the city really should be defending him on that if that's the case as that would be the appropriate action to take.

This lawsuit is just getting started as the RPOA is currently accepting nominations from its members in anticipation of the upcoming biennial president's election. A couple individuals were thinking of running including one patrol officer who said he would carry the patrol division but that he probably wouldn't run and a sergeant and a couple members of the RPOA board or committees both long time members who might be thinking about it as well. The election if called will be held probably in November with the new term starting at the beginning of next year.

It's raining Police law suits at Riverside City Hall

If you happen to look at an agenda of the Riverside City Council meeting that is going to be held Tuesday, Oct. 20 at City Hall, you'll notice that the list of closed session items has increased a bit in the past month or so. This week, there's a plethora of litigation and "anticipated" litigation. And there are included on the docket two lawsuits filed involving the police department on the wake of discussion talks by the city council at an earlier meeting about the lawsuit filed by Los Angeles Police Department Sgt. Wayne Guillary against the department alleging racial profiling and excessive force during an incident in late 2008.

Just look at the agenda where there are two lawsuits filed by individuals in the Riverside Police Department. Both of the lawsuits including the most recent one filed by the RPOA will be covered in future postings of this blog. But as far as the city's concerned, most of the discussions involving the lawsuit filed by Lt. Tim Bacon and Lt. Darryl Hurt and the lawsuit filed by the Riverside Police Officers' Association (which is outlined above), all the discussion will take place in absolute secrecy behind closed doors. In fact, if you click the above links, there's actually nothing about the lawsuits except the parties involved and the case number, plus a bunch of generic language which is part of a form letter.

But just like any lawsuit, there's a lot going on behind closed doors and inside court rooms in both federal and state court with these case. The issues arising in both lawsuits and any future ones that are filed will be the topics of analysis and discussion in the weeks and months ahead as the police department faces a multitude of issues. Also to be discussed is the historic role of the city manager in the operations of the police department, most particularly that involving current City Manager Brad Hudson and his assistant, Tom DeSantis as well as the role of City Attorney Gregory Priamos.

Not to mention the diminishing role of Police Chief Russ Leach who doesn't appear to have been given hardly any autonomy by his bosses to run his own department. And this case could be one example of what can happen when city administrators start expanding their role to running individual departments including those in public safety. A police chief like Leach is probably cognizant about labor laws pertaining to peace officers whereas the knowledge of the city manager's office might or might be just enough to fill up the space on a postage stamp because their education is usually not that specific. If there are indeed labor violations such as these occurring inside the police department, then that would because people inside it are either not running the agency or being directed to run it in a specific way by an entity outside of it because police chiefs usually have the experience and acknowledgment of their specific area of management as part of their profession to avoid these problems and Leach certainly is no exception to that.

The lawsuit filed by Lt. Tim Bacon and Lt. Darryl Hurt speaks more through the allegations to whether or not outside entities are micromanaging the police department including Hudson, DeSantis and even then and current members of the city council, all of whom were named as defendants and/or were prominently mentioned in the lawsuit.

Because it's only been three years and some months since the dissolution of the stipulated judgment and the police department has definitely gone off-track. The city council as a body in its worship fest involving Hudson (including city council members who chair committees and wait to be told by Hudson or one of his assistant managers to be told what to do including when to hold meetings) has allowed him and DeSantis to continue to micromanage a police agency. According to former councilman and current mayor, Art Gage, Hudson had been the topic of some discussions on his handling of the police department at least two years ago and at the time, he had promised to stop micromanaging it. But apparently, that behavior is still continuing and it will be the topic of discussion in the continuing series of blog postings, Too Many Chiefs in the RPD's Kitchen.

Micromanagement 101's more humorous side

This one's kind of funny and it involves one of the most micromanaged entities at City Hall which is naturally the CPRC. Either DeSantis or his conduit of choice, CPRC Manager Kevin Rogan submitted a memo to commissioners listing the criteria for when the members of the CPRC could and couldn't wear their own shirts designating them as commissioners which they bought and paid for out of their own pockets. And then telling them they had to turn them into the city manager's office when their terms expired.

Okay, what is wrong with this picture? And you would think that DeSantis would be the last individual in a position to tell people how and when to appropriately represent themselves while wearing uniforms representing the city. Let's put DeSantis in a room with CPRC commissioners and ask them all to raise their hands if they were ever wearing their city or CPRC shirts when someone called 911 reporting them. It's highly likely that only one hand would be going up in that room.

Mayoral Candidate Art Gage appears at the Friday Morning Club

About 30 people congregated at the Friday Morning Club's meeting to listen to former councilman and current mayoral candidate Art Gage who answered their questions and presented his platform to them. They asked questions about issues including the red light photo cameras in the city's intersections, to the financial accountability of City Hall to issues involving trash and utility rates. It's been interesting to see Gage's populist campaign in action. It's difficult to know what to make of it at all but he's provided an interesting counterpart as the outsider to Mayor Ron Loveridge's stance as the ultimate insider at City Hall but given that he is going to have a tough time to win here, he's likely trying to build a base from which to run in 2012 when four-year terms are back in vogue and there won't be an incumbent.

Gage also discussed the city council's apparent decision to allow Hudson, its direct employee to run the city including the police department.

He also said that as mayor, he would within the 30 days bring all the stakeholders involved in the situation involving the CPRC's inability to "do its job" and conduct independent investigations of officer-involved deaths and they wouldn't leave the room until the consensus was reached to allow the commission to do its job. He felt that it was the mayor who was in the best position to help address issues such as that one. Gage was one of the biggest detractors of the CPRC and it remains to be seen if an adversary of the commission might be a bigger asset to it than its so-called "allies" on the dais including Loveridge. Because with friends like those...you won't have a functional police commission much longer.

He also said that when he was a member of the Planning Commission, the Chinatown issue had come before them and the County Office of Education which owns the property including Chinatown could only build on it if it was parking, with dirt to protect the ground or a monument. He felt that the Chinatown should be rebuilt to serve as a site to preserve the history and attract tourists.

Press Enterprise Columnist Dan Bernstein wrote about his visit to Casa Blanca in Riverside where a community meeting was held inviting Riverside County Superior Court Judge Roger Luebs to address controversial remarks he made at the sentencing hearing after a murder trial.

(excerpt)

Longtime Casa Blanca activist Morris Mendoza sat across from the bow-tied judge in a small conference room and told him: "I felt outraged. A lot of people work hard to better this community."

Danny Garcia, a Caltrans manager and CB resident: "I took it personally," and others did, too.

What did Luebs say that so offended this group? "Neighborhood" and "community." He didn't say Casa Blanca, but our story did, since this is where the killings occurred.

"When you say 'community' or 'neighborhood,' " Mendoza told Luebs, "it narrows it down. We've been working on solutions."

This may sound like a silly discussion, but it's not. There's a lot going on beneath the surface, and it can pretty much be capsulized in four words:

"You don't know us."

You don't know about our library, our park, our recreation programs. You don't know how much we're knocking ourselves out to give kids no excuse for getting hooked up with gangs and crime.

I don't think that's entirely fair to Luebs, who's lived in Riverside for years and does know about some of these things. But as long as there's the perception that a judge is sitting on high and sounding off on something he knows little about, his words -- especially if they can be misinterpreted -- will always trump bigger problems and common interests.

As the meeting went on, Luebs allowed that he should have worded his remarks differently. But that didn't change the guts of what he had to say, and he got no argument when he said it: "Gang violence is a real problem, and the city of Riverside doesn't take it as seriously as it should." It's as if it is "someone else's problem." And not just in CB.

This violence is tolerated, Luebs said. Maybe not encouraged, but enabled and accepted.

The result: Not the same old grizzled gangbangers wreaking the same old mayhem, but "a new generation of gangbangers." This will continue "until we bring other resources to bear ... a broad community response by school districts, services clubs," etc.

What Luebs said here is what he should have said at the hearing, that the gang problems in Riverside are city issues not just neighborhood ones. After all, the latest hate group and perhaps gang in the making, the Neo Nazis just protest in Casa Blanca once in a while, they don't live there.

Hemet is $800,000 in the red

Is the city of Hemet in financial trouble? The financial situation is pretty bleak.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Hemet also faces the prospect of having to turn over $4.4 million in redevelopment money to the state, said interim city Finance Director Thomas Kanarr.

"That's a big chunk of the reserves we have left in the Redevelopment Agency," Kanarr said this week during a presentation to the City Council.

Revised budget estimates after the first quarter of fiscal year 2009-10, which was July through September, show sales tax revenue continues to be weak and federal grants remain elusive.

Hemet officials failed to get a $312,000 federal grant for traffic enforcement. The city also received less than half of a $772,000 grant sought for more police officers.

City officials plan to reapply for or seek other grants, particularly federal stimulus money.

Hemet has slashed almost 30 police and fire jobs as well as dozens of other positions over the past year.

Another Mayoral Candidate Web site

Mayoral candidate Ken Stansbury who is running as a write-in has gone online.
Ken Stansbury 4 mayor. Go check it out.

He's also appearing at the Friday Morning Club's meeting next Friday, Oct. 23 at 10 am at the Janet Goeske Center on Sierra, near Streeter.

Update: RPD Officer Dave Reeves, jr. filed claim in courts before Arrest

2009-10-16T08:11:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: David Reeves, Jr. arraigned on 12 felony counts including robbery, attempted robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and burglary. His bail was raised to $500,000. ********

The Riverside Police Officers' Association sues City of Riverside over interrogation practices involving police officers. More to come...

An update on the arrest of former Riverside Police Department Officer Dave Reeves, jr. after Moreno Valley Police Department officers responded to a 911 regarding an armed robbery at an auto parts store. Several police agencies are investigating Reeves now to determine whether or not he was involved in other similar robberies in at least two cities.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Briones said Reeves confronted a customer working on his car outside the store in the 23500 block of Sunnymead Boulevard.

Holding the customer at gunpoint, Briones said, Reeves entered the store and ordered employees to empty the safe. Employees overpowered Reeves, causing him minor facial injuries, he said.

Police arrived momentarily and took Reeves into custody. He identified himself as an off-duty officer and was found with a stolen illegal assault rifle, not related to his police duties, Briones said.

He was booked at the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside, where he is being held with bail set at $250,000.

Moreno Valley police suspect Reeves in several other robberies outside the city, Briones said.

Police declined to reveal the motive in the holdup and are pursuing other leads.

A representative from the Riverside Police Officers' Association said that Reeves had been removed from the patrol division before his arrest. He later either resigned or was terminated from the police department.

The comments as they usually do in articles like this just keep on coming and so do other pieces of information.

Reeves Files a Claim for Injunctive Relief in Riverside County Superior Court

According to the court records found on the Riverside County Superior Court's Web site, Reeves filed a claim for injunctive relief against the city of Riverside with the date stamped, Oct. 7, 2009 just one week before his arrest. He had also filed a claim with the state's Fair Employment and Housing organization. The defendants in the lawsuit included the city, Chief Russ Leach, Sgt. George Masson and Capt. Mike Blakely.

According to his complaint, Reeves had been employed by the police department since 2001 and was a member of its union, the RPOA. In 2003, he severely fractured two neck vertebrae while off-duty.

In December 2008, Reeves suffered another neck injury causing him pain which he took narcotic medication to relieve and he was placed by the department on light duty. He had to undergo an examination several months later to see whether or not he was fit to remain a police officer which included obtaining medical records from various medical providers. Personnel Captain Michael Blakely gave him some time off from work. Reeves said that the records from Kaiser Medical Center took longer than expected which caused him to miss more work. Blakely then talked to him about his tardiness and said that he was suspected of using drugs. In his complaint, Reeves said there was no explanation provided by Blakely as to why he thought he was using drugs. At the time, Reeves stated he hadn't been taking any pain medication. At some point, he was compelled to take a drug test by Blakely and so it was off to the Internal Affairs Division.

Reeves said he was forced to ride in the same car as Blakely when he had requested to ride with his representative, RPOA President Chris Lanzillo. Lanzillo and Reeves had wanted to meet in private but were required to meet in the building instead. Blakely had Sgt. George Masson issue some field sobriety tests to Reeves. Reeves alleged that this was done solely to embarrass and humiliate him. He was asked to take a voluntary drug and alcohol urine test. Reeves declined. Lanzillo asked if he could contact Det. Ron Kipp to do the same tests as Masson because as a long-time narcotics detective, he had the experience to do a better job.

Blakely refused to allow that even when Reeves' attorney arrived. Reeves was compelled to undertake an administrative review by Blakely as to why he was tardy and why he showed up to work under the influence of drugs. Blakely also told Reeves that he couldn't participate in any field sobriety tests with his lawyer until after the meeting. Reeves met with a female attorney outside the building in a car with management standing by which led him to feel pressured, he stated. He finally did produce a urine sample to be tested.

So Reeves turns in a claim for injunction release for a drug test done on him a while back and that was filed a week before his arrest for armed robbery. That case is still in the courts, in its early stages without the city having had time to provide a response in return.

Reeves hasn't been charged with any crimes, just arrested for armed robbery, kidnapping and possession of an illegal gun, an assault rifle. He's in custody on $250,000 bail waiting to see what happens next.

Riverside creates yet another advisory committee. This one for bicycle riders.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

The city already had a long-term plan for bicycle facilities. In fact, the City Council heard a progress report on the plan Tuesday. But a document wasn't enough for Mayor Ron Loveridge.

"It's a plan. It just sort of sits there," Loveridge said. "We wanted to enhance the biking culture in Riverside."

Loveridge said he was impressed to learn that as many as 12,000 bicyclists per day cross the Willamette River in Portland, Ore., a city that has a bicycle advisory committee. Hoping to boost biking here, he formed Riverside's bike committee, which held its first meeting in September.

Cyclists who are on the committee said they're thrilled to see it come together.

"The Public Works Department has been working, as they put it, in a vacuum for years and years," said Pete Staylor, a member of the Riverside Bicycle Club. "Now they're getting input and suggestions from actual bicyclists."

Staylor, 56, has been biking since he was diagnosed with osteoarthritis in 2002 and had to give up higher-impact sports such as tennis and basketball.

He said his priority is maintenance and improvement of existing bike lines -- filling potholes, evening out pavement, and widening lanes -- "anything we can do to make bicycling safer," he said.

Experience vs new ideas in the Ward One City Council race in San Bernardino.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Incumbent City Councilwoman Esther Estrada, 68, was first elected to the council in 1975 and served off and on through the early 1990s. She returned to the council in 1998 and has represented the First Ward since then.

Estrada said progress is beginning to be made on issues such as downtown revitalization and Westside improvements and she wants to see those projects through.

"I'm determined to stay on the council and do the best job I can and still punch away at those things," she said.

But her challenger, Virginia Marquez, 53, questions Estrada's effectiveness. She accused Estrada of being inaccessible to constituents.

"She is out of touch with the community," Marquez said. "She is just nowhere to be found."

Marquez, who cited the deterioration of the city's Westside as her reason for running, said she can bring new ideas to the council.

Estrada dismisses the criticism as typical political sloganeering.

"That's an old argument that any challenger can use and has been used against me in the past," she said, adding that she has defeated those opponents.

Oct. 14: An anniversary and an arrest for the RPD

2009-10-15T08:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Wednesday Oct. 14, the first anniversary of an event that took place here in Riverside was commemorated in a sadly ironic way for the Riverside Police Department when another police officer employed by that agency was arrested in Moreno Valley.

On Oct. 14, 2008 former officer, Robert Forman was arrested by his own department for allegedly sexually assaulting three women under the color of authority. He is currently awaiting his trial on two counts of oral copulation under the color of authority and one count of sexual battery, all felonies. Chief Russ Leach fired him a month after his arrest.

Now a year later, on Oct. 14 at 9 p.m., Moreno Valley Police Department officers appeared one minute after receiving a 911 call about an armed robbery at an auto shop and found off-duty Riverside Police Department officer Dave Reeves, jr. at the scene. They arrested him and took him to be booked and held on $250,000 bail. Reeves was originally hired as a cadet by the department in 2001 and then became an officer. Now, he's sitting in jail awaiting his fate.

According to court records, Reeves hasn't been charged with a crime but was arrested on a 209(A) felony count of kidnapping for ransom. He has to receive a hearing in front of a Riverside County Superior Court judge within 72 hours while in custody. Not much information was released about why he was arrested by any law enforcement agency and nothing has come out of the Riverside County District Attorney's office as of yet.

This was the news brief in the Press Enterprise blog.

An off-duty Riverside police officer was arrested last night at the scene of an armed robbery at an auto parts store in Moreno Valley, according to Riverside County sheriff's officials.

David Reeves Jr., a 28-year-old Moreno Valley resident, was booked on suspicion of 9 p.m. armed robbery of the Auto Zone along the 23500 block of Sunnymead Boulevard, said sheriff's Sgt. Dennis Gutierrez.

Deputies arrived at the scene within a minute of the 911 call.

Later, the news was that Reeves had left the department the morning after his arrest. Whether he was fired or resigned was not revealed by the department as it's usually not in cases like this one.

Someone in the comment thread which filled up soon after the article was posted did provide a reason for Reeves' alleged actions.

All of you people think you know everyone,right? has any of your loved ones been in trouble. He is a good and decent man with a family. he was injured on the job and had financial and personal problems. What led him to this tragety is a mistery.We as a family love and respect him. We don't know what was going through his head, but he has all of our love and prayers.

So to all of you cop haters, he protected you and served his community since he was a kid. Have a heart!He is a good man that made a horrible mistake.What he did is not right and i'm not making excuses for that. But let god judge him. not you! who among you are worthy to judge another man? Then let our God judge you!

I Pray for his beautiful wife and children his mother his father and family. They are all good and decent people. I love him dearly and pray for him and his family. So all of you that think you are so HOLY.Think again, this can happen to the best of people and families.Thank you to all of the RPD for putting you lives on the line for us daily!

And i feel sorry for the people that take it for granted every day what you do for our community. One officer has a breakdown and you want to judge the whole department. SHAME ON YOU ALL. AND GOD HELP YOU ANYONE WHO THINKS THEY ARE ABOVE ALL OF THIS.I love David Reeves Jr. A great man and father. Yes he did wrong, but as a family we will stand together, and trust God . Romans 8;28 All things work together for good to them that love GOD

I've seen this author before several times in different places. Including the biblical verses (though it was Luke, not Romans quoted) and it's the same defenses that police officers have so despised when civilian defendants and their families use them. Yet when they're in the same spot, they do the same thing because maybe the emotions experienced by families with loved ones in these situations, civilian or police, are very similar, and it's a place that most police officers or their loved ones don't expect to be until there they are, among the human race.

Reeves was a common name that came up among city residents in one particular neighborhood on complaints, whether they were filed with the toothless police commission or not. Forman also received complaints several years before he was arrested. It’s probably not a coincidence that officers who have those kind of histories even in communities too distrustful of police complaint systems or civilian review for that matter to file are the ones who get arrested whereas officers who don’t have those histories usually do not. And many police officers in Riverside don’t have those histories of complaints that transcend years and assignments in different parts of the city but some do and where he was assigned for whatever reason, Reeves placed second in the number of complaints lodged by residents in a neighborhood which files very few complaints through official channels with the police department or the police commission.

The arrest of one officer, or maybe two in the past 12 months as has happened with the Riverside Police Department doesn’t necessarily mean the police agency is corrupted so you can’t be quick to blame the entire agency for the actions of one of its members. If there’s a pattern of them getting arrested and they were hired by a law enforcement agency with prior problems including arrest records, then that’s an indication of a police agency out of control, such as was the case with Maywood Police Department near Los Angeles. But for most law enforcement agencies, they should be viewed through the prism of how they handle these situations when they arise. Do they go back and examine the hiring procedure for an officer who gets into trouble to see if there’s anything they missed? Do they go back and see if there’s anything that can be learned from that hiring process? Do they go back and carefully examine and investigate the officer’s behavior while on and off duty including in this case a prior onduty shooting? Do they review complaints against the officer that were decided totally or largely on the officer’s version of events? Do they talk to the officer’s colleagues to see if they had noticed anything that they didn’t feel they could report at the time? Do they encourage a better reporting environment if an officer is in trouble? Do they go back and take a look at any of the systems they have in place to address any of these issues?

How does the agency respond?

That will tell people a lot about what kind of law enforcement agency is involved, for better or worse and how committed it is to taking steps to try to reduce the presence of any bad apples. It’s not necessarily indicting an agency as a den of corruption by admitting that there’s a few areas of it and/or some of its processes and procedures that might need a closer look.

It’s interesting how some people respond to Reeves’ arrest by telling people that they should become police officers themselves, a line of thinking that comes up most often in discussions involving individual bad apples in a law enforcement agency or in the profession as a whole. That might be a legitimate line of reasoning in many arguments and discussions about law enforcement but not this one. That’s unfortunate because that’s where it appears most often, at least when these issues spill out into the public arena.

By using that as your defense or response, you are essentially defending a bad apple and making him or her representative of the officers in a law enforcement agency or in the profession as a whole by implying that his decision to commit a crime (and this defense has been used all the way up to an officer being sentenced after a conviction) is related to him being a police officer or some aspect of that profession

These individuals may not be aware of it but they are essentially the ones indicting entire police forces or the profession by generalizing the criminal acts of an individual as ones that would be committed by others who share the badge, rather than judging it as the actions of an individual.

There’s great value to the adage, “walk a mile in the shoes” but how can these officers be absolutely sure they really share the life experience of the individual arrested for sexual misconduct, road rage or in this case, armed robbery and kidnapping? And why do they assume that it's an officer's shoes they have to walk through to know why some commit crimes?

These individuals are arguing the flip side of those who claim that the exposure of a bad apple indicts an entire department and profession as bad apples. They’re saying instead that you have to walk a mile in an officer’s shoes to understand his or her decision to commit a felony. As if being an officer produces some mitigating factor or some explanation as to why the crime was committed and if there’s a direct relationship between officers who don’t commit crimes and those who do.

That’s like arguing there’s some inherent part of an officer that is hardwired for criminal behavior. And these arguments are raised by supporters of law enforcement officers or officers themselves? What is it that they say about “with friends like these…”?

Those who argue this are perhaps intending to defend a profession but in actuality, they are indicting it as thoroughly as those who label every police officer with the same brush because in an indirect way, they are doing the same thing. They are using exactly the same kind of argument as those they are responding to, that something inherent in the profession creates law enforcement officers who commit crimes. Not that it might be a factor among others, but that it is the sole determining factor.

The “either you’re for us or against us” mantra that comes into play in situations like this when law enforcement agencies, management or organizations are circling their wagons. A culture defined by what psychologists define as “polarized thinking”, a behavior believed to increase anxiety.

This situation will continue to develop in the days and weeks to come. And how the Riverside Police Department handles it will define what kind of law enforcement agency it has become.

Parking for Sale

The city council in Riverside is on the verge of doing the imaginable. They plan to sell away hundreds of parking places in downtown Riverside. Now there will be fewer places for people to park while coming down to do business in the downtown. Not exactly the way to help businesses struggling there and to make it more user friendly.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

When city officials made the deal a year ago, they said they hadn't yet come up with a plan to replace the parking, which has been used by employees of the city's public utility, downtown businesses and the public.

Today, there's still no short-term solution, other than about 100 new spaces in two lots within several blocks of the city garage.

"It's a net loss of available parking for (city) employees, businesses and the public," City Councilman Mike Gardner said. "It's going to be inconvenient for people who currently use the garage."

The council voted Tuesday to move the parking deal forward by selling 400 spaces to the city's redevelopment agency, which will sell them to Silagi for a previously agreed-upon $4 million. County workers in the tower will have use of the spaces from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and they will be available to the public at night.

The city will retain use of 138 spots in the 538-space garage, which Gardner said is about 70 to 80 percent full most of the time. The city spots will mainly be for employees of the public utility, which has offices on the ground floor of the garage, and some may go to downtown businesses that buy monthly permits.

It's unlikely that any spaces will remain for the public.

If that's enough, the garage was built for $8 million and sold for only $4 million. Sounds like someone got a great deal but it wasn't the city of Riverside.

Sonja Bjelland who covered law enforcement in Riverside and Riverside County has been laid off by the Press Enterprise in recent days. This newspaper has made it a practice of either buying out or laying off their most senior (and best) reporters in the past year or so courtesy of Belo Enterprises which has hit the publication hard with layoffs since it's the only one of four newspapers owned by the corporation not turning a profit due to low advertising revenues.

The commission that could; the commission that wouldn't

2009-10-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

*****UPDATE: Riverside Police Department Officer David Reeves arrested in Moreno Valley for alleged armed robbery and kidnapping for ransom. More details to come including why this isn't such a huge shock. ********

UPDATE: Sonja Bjelland was laid off by the Press Enterprise? Is this newspaper following one bad decision with another until it compiles a huge list of them?

You know, sometimes the communities no matter which ones they are, do know their officers for better or worse. Reeves' arrest took place exactly on the first anniversary of the 2008 arrest of former officer, Riverside Police Department Robert Forman for sexual abuse. And the Press Enterprise is down to its last few experienced reporters.

One commission in Riverside, and it's not the Community Police Review Commission has stepped forward on addressing relations between the community and the police department. It's actually the Human Relations Commission which is carrying out one of the CPRC's most important responsibilities which is to serve as an adviser to the city government on community/police relations. In this case, it's tackling the leading role in addressing the controversial raids that took place involving both (and separately) the Riverside Police Department and the U.S. Border Patrol which is currently being sued by some of its agents in the Riverside office for requiring monthly quotas for both arrests and detentions. For months, there really wasn't much communication between the police department and people concerned about some raids in Casa Blanca near Indiana and Madison in January this year.

The HRC first got involved when it received reports of people who were concerned about the police department's involvement in the situation which seemed to stem from a joint meeting held between the police department and Border Patrol last year. It held several meetings of its own so city residents including people living in the Eastside as well as Casa Blanca could air their concerns and questions about what they felt was an abrupt change in policy and process.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

The discussion came after federal immigration agents arrested several people near Madison Street and Indiana Avenue in February. Since then, members of Justice for Immigrants Inland Empire Coalition and residents of Riverside, Moreno Valley and San Bernardino have attended several of the commission meetings questioning the department's role in the federal actions, according to the letter.

Commissioner Omar Zaki said his group, which was established by the city, sent the letter because it wants to make sure there is a level of cooperation between the department and residents. The letter did not request specific action.

"The primary focus is really an issue of public safety, and we want to make sure residents of the city are not in fear of calling law enforcement," he said

Councilman Andy Melendrez said there was a misunderstanding of the Police Department's role in the federal effort. The police officers knew about the raids in case they were needed to handle crime such as carrying a weapon, but they do not stop people to check their immigration status.

Why in January did the Riverside Police Department detain Latinos in Casa Blanca and then take them to the station to be processed for immigration status separately from a raid done by Riverside's Border Patrol office earlier the same morning?

These individuals detained included a number of undocumented and documented immigrants and one citizen who was given a ride home by the police department according to a statement Central Neighborhood Policing Center Commander Bruce Loftus gave outside of Magnolia Policing Station during a demonstration that month. None of these individuals were stopped for anything more serious than a misdemeanor (and those cited by police didn't include any involving weapon possession) which excludes weapon possession and brandishing which are felonies. And if the police department is only there to help Border Patrol in case where there are or may be weapons then why did the police department conduct its own separate operation after Border Patrol had already done its own?

But then there's been a number of explanations provided by the department, besides the one cited by Melendrez including that the police had only called Border Patrol to assist with determining residency status and in providing bilingual translation. The police department's management needs to clarify its position to the public whatever it is and be more forthcoming about the relationship it has with Border Patrol including a meeting held between the two agencies last autumn two months before the January raids. That is one definitive way to build community and police relations.

And there's been a lot of talk about that.

Chief Russ Leach in a meeting with an ad hoc committee formed by the HRC to address the immigration issue said that he wanted to improve relations between the neighborhood of Casa Blanca and the police department. That's always an important step to take because there's this perception that the police department is stepping away from its commitment to maintain its reform process and that's not helped by the failure of the city to and implement an action plan to put into place when the department's current compass to lead its way is set to expire with nothing to follow it. And why is that? Because that's the way the Seventh Floor wants it to be and that begins with the city manager's office and since that office is the tail wagging the dog, the city council has made it clear by doing or saying nothing on this issue that this is what it wants to. Well not that it so much wants it but because this body currently lacks the collective leadership to take a stand, it's kind of saying it doesn't want it by default.

Thank goodness, the HRC stepped up to the plate to try to find clarification on this policy issue involving the police department's involvement in immigration enforcement. It's too bad that the commission that was encharged with this power and responsibility through the voters who put it in the city charter didn't do the job that it's assigned to do.

After holding some public meetings where community members aired their concerns on this issue, the Human Relations Commission wrote this letter to the mayor and city council asking for clarification on the policy involving the detention of individuals to determine residency status. They took the initiative that they've exercised during their history which stretches back to the formation of the HRC in the 1960s to address this issue. Even though their outstanding director was one of the first casualties of the budget cuts being laid off last December from the Mayor's office.

However, one other commission did not carry out the duties assigned to it under the city's charter concerning this matter.

That was the CPRC which was also asked to address this issue but when one commissioner tried to get the RPD policy on detaining individuals to determine residency status, she was informed by Rogan that she couldn't even put it on the agenda, with the reasoning that the CPRC's involvement would interfere with the efforts being put out by the HRC. That's really like awesome and all that, but perhaps Rogan needs to take another (or even first?) look at the language about the CPRC's role in community and police relations in the city's charter. That language was put there by the majority of the city's voters in the November 2004 election.

But why isn't the CPRC involved in this issue involving community and police relations? After all, its role and responsibility in this area is spelled out in the City Charter

(excerpt, Section 810 (a))

To advise the mayor and city council on all community/police relations issues

So what part of that sentence do the commission and its manager, Kevin Rogan not understand? Okay, everyone knows Rogan's bosses City Manager Brad Hudson and his assistant, Tom DeSantis don't get this part at all. If they did, they would let the police department including its chief move forward with the new Strategic Plan which was to pick up where the old one left off when it sunsets in December. As you know, the old plan which lasted five years was mandated by former State Attorney General Bill Lockyer and even when the stipulated judgment was dissolved, the signatures dissolving it had barely dried before Hudson and DeSantis tried to derail a game plan passed by the city council in March 2006 to ensure that the Strategic Plan continued to move forward even without the Attorney General's office looking over the department's shoulder.

Which of course should fill anyone in this city with a strong positive feeling that Hudson, DeSantis or even City Attorney Gregory Priamos for that matter are fully on board with ensuring that the police department is heading in the right direction. Except they're throwing off a bunch of signs that they are not and certainly since they have eight direct employers who sit on the dais at city council meetings, it's likely either they're getting direction from their employers to behave in that way or their actions regarding the police department are being ignored by elected officials.

And we also know that this current commission is chock filled with members who identify more strongly with factions at City Hall than they do the communities in Riverside. They've made it abundantly clear to people who attend meetings that the only show that they're going to see is how dysfunctional the commission has become. Most recently, its members appeared more consumed with knocking each other off the stage than in getting anything done. The majority viewpoint led by Soon-to-be-Chair Peter Hubbard and Art Santore seem more intent on not just stamping out any minority voices but in trying to back door votes to put people in a position where they might have to resign from the commission.

They made that abundantly clear when even after they knew they would lose Commissioner John Brandriff for sure and possibly endanger the statuses of Chani Beeman and Brian Pearcy, they kept pushing it. Hubbard stuck his nose in the air and finally sensed that perhaps this wasn't the time or place to keep pushing that agenda. But even after he was perfectly willing to step away from it, Santore kept pushing the issue. It's gotten to the point where the commissioners value each other so little that one faction seems so intent in ensuring that the only perspective and voice that gets heard is its voice. The last foray into knocking each other down so disgusted two community members that they walked out in the middle with others following. The newest commissioner who's replacing Jim Ward and had yet to be sworn in, left about halfway through perhaps rethinking what he would be getting himself into when he becomes the eighth member of the most dysfunctional commission in the city.

The CPRC appears so intent on rubber stamping City Hall's agenda and in beating each other up as individual members that addressing any community/police relations issue as mandated in the city's charter is clearly beyond it. But some city council members are starting to get more active in monitoring what's going on with the commission including most particularly, the length of time it takes the commission and police department to investigate, process and review complaints filed by the public.

And then there's the other charter power that the CPRC has refused to exercise in this issue which has of course also been duly picked up by the HRC.

(excerpt, Section 810 (h))

Review and advise the Riverside Police Department in matters pertaining to police policies and practices.

This power was exercised by the HRC which was addressing a policy and practice involving the Riverside Police Department and how the communities perceived it. At the same time this was going on, the people who pull the strings of the CPRC were trying to limit its purview over policy review and recommendations by saying that this could only take place regarding policies which were directly connected to specific complaints filed with the commission. But if you read the charter, you'll notice there's no language which narrows policy review and the power of the commission to "advise" the police department on policy and practice except perhaps in the mind of the city manager's office. But the CPRC dropped the ball on this issue by once again opting out of performing its charter mandated duty. Fortunately, the HRC guided only by municipal ordinance is getting the job done.

And what does the CPRC? Try to throw each other off the island and buy themselves nifty shirts. Which they paid for with their own money but apparently have to return toDeSantis when they leave and can only wear them when he sees fit. At least some of the commissioners like Chani Beeman, John Brandriff and even Brian Pearcy when he shows up try to do their job under the city charter but alas, they're currently a minority among those who seem to be constantly waiting for their handlers to instruct them on what to do next to dilute the effectiveness of the CPRC.

Coming up, there will be a prime example of how not to foster good community and police relations in technicolor which unfortunately took place in Eastside not too long ago. For every two steps forward, one step backward or how the saying goes. And so is the same with the Riverside Police Department.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

This study has been MIA since 2007

Leach did say that he pledged to do a study of whether or not the police department was disparately arresting and detaining Latinos in comparison to other racial groups. That's going to be mirroring studies done in other cities including San Jose. But you have to wonder. The city manager's office provided $50,000 for the police department several years ago to do a traffic pretext study for 2006-08 and after the raw data was collected, it was sent to a professor at California Baptist University for analysis in the form of a written report. Yet to this date, no such report covering that time period has ever been released to the public.

So what happened to that pretext traffic study report? Will it ever see the light of day and if not, why?

The Press Enterprise covered the city council's recent sailing regatta which raised money to help fund the city's sailing program and several charities. They didn't send a reporter to the event but someone wrote on the event anyway.

(excerpt)

Davis said his victory was beginner's luck. Finishing after him were Councilmen Mike Gardner, Chris Mac Arthur, Steve Adams, Andy Melendrez and Rusty Bailey.

Davis, whose charity is Meals on Wheels, also credited Lanny Coon's instruction the day before the race.

"I did exactly what Lanny told me to do," said Davis, who represents Ward 4.

Coon, 71, of Riverside, was in the sailing business his entire career. He retired earlier this year and has been working to jump-start the sailing program.

He first became involved with sabots on Lake Evans in 1959, when he took a summer job with the city as a college sophomore. His assignment was to launch a youth sailing program. He got local service clubs to help with lessons and a few dozen students to participate. The program was a success, he said.

A certificate of recall is expected to be handed to Lake Elsinore's City Hall involving the recall of one of its councilmen.

The economic recovery in the Inland Empire could take years.

The number of cars issued to employees of Riverside County has been decreasing lately. Many of those being returned are from the District Attorney's office.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Last week, the county Economic Development Agency, which manages facilities, made 80 additional parking spaces available in a downtown county garage for the investigators' cars, agency spokesman Tom Freeman said. Investigators can pick up their county cars there each day and leave them there safely each night, he said.

Now, three take-home cars remain in the department, Assistant District Attorney Kelly Keenan said Tuesday. District attorney's employees on call for homicide cases use those vehicles, so they can reach crime scenes as quickly as possible, he said.

The district attorney's office is one of several departments to reduce their use of take-home vehicles, said county spokeswoman Lys Mendez.

The reductions come after the countywide audit found that one in five -- or 1,055 of the county's 5,300 cars and trucks -- were driven home by employees. The county pays to fuel and maintain all its vehicles. It was paying an average of $4,435 annually for each employee with a take-home car to commute to and from work, the report said.

The audit said the district attorney's office was providing take-home cars to more than 100 employees who did not require them to do their jobs.

Which Inland Empire city has the gang intervention and prevention program which is the darling of the League of Cities? It's not Riverside which has let its once nationally renowned program, Project Bridge, go fallow, it's San Bernardino.

If Mayor Ron Loveridge wins reelection, he's selling the promise that he'll be appointed or elected the president of the League of Cities but he'll be presiding over the honoring of what's happening in San Bernardino rather than Riverside.

Regattas and other local races

2009-10-09T08:59:00.000-07:00

It's not far down to paradise
At least it's not for me
And if the wind is right you can sail away
And find tranquility
The canvas can do miracles
Just you wait and see
Believe me

---Christopher Cross

From Bissau to Palau - in the shade of Avalon,
From Fiji to Tiree and the Isles of Ebony,
From Peru to Cebu hear the power of Babylon,
From Bali to Cali - far beneath the Coral Sea.

---Enya

They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows,
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose, his nose, his nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

----Edward Lear

And So They Set Sail

Amid cries of sabotage and foul play (just kidding), six council members fought it out using the tranquil surface of Lake Evans as their setting during the first annual City Council Regatta which was held at Fairmount Park in Riverside on Saturday, Oct. 10.

But in the end, only one council member could prevail and Ward Four Councilman Paul Davis coming from behind took the lead about midway through the race and sailed to victory over runner up Councilman Mike Gardner who squeaked by Councilman Chris MacArthur to steal second place. MacArthur shrugged at the finish line after disembarking from the sail boat (itself a tricky task) and said that he had miscalculated the finish line and thus lost his placing. Behind him came Councilman Steve Adams who had taken a huge lead early on, followed by Councilman Andrew Melendrez and then way, way behind came Councilman Rusty Bailey who had taken a wrong turn early on in what he defined was a strategic decision which had been a miscalculation on his part. He had tried to give himself an advantage for later in the race but the gentle winds of the sunny afternoon had a mind of their own and so Bailey set sail in the opposite direction helpless to do much about it but take in the scenery.

Davis' foray into sailing started a day earlier when the neophyte took some lessons from a representative of the sailing program who told him if he did what he told him to do, he'd do fine. Earlier in the race while Davis struggled as most of them did because the winds had ceased, he hoped that his mentor wouldn't become too upset with him. However, when the westerlies picked up again, Davis was able to take the most advantage of the situation and passed front-sailing (and also neophyte) Councilman Steve Adams for the lead.

While Davis was taking his boat out for a practice run, its rudder cracked and he got back to the docks with nary a paddle or a prayer for a replacement rudder. At first he claimed that Gardner had sabotaged his boat because Gardner was the first one there. Gardner quickly denied any involvement and said that if he had done it, it was because he had targeted Bailey's boat and hit Davis by mistake. Gardner's boat did have a dragon in the front (designed by the Riverside Community College Theater department) and the name, "sabotage" painted on the stern which attracted quite a bit of attention. Gardner, who was very instrumental at setting up the regatta, had practiced for over an hour before the regatta was was able to put that into much better use the second half of the race than the first half.

Actually no one cheated or committed any known sabotage but they did express intense signs of competitive spirit even before the regatta started and during the time period before the race when they tried to line up at the start.

Here are some snapshots from someone who's definitely not Ansel Adams or Dorthy Lange but despite having to work with the sunlight blazing over the lake, they turned out okay (so there, bad boy!)

[Councilman Paul Davis waits a replacement of a rudder that cracked during his practice run around Lake Evans.]

[Councilman Steve Adams either getting in his boat or bailing it before taking the boat out on a pre-regatta practice run.]

[Mayor Ron Loveridge emcees the boat race.]

[Councilman Mike Gardner (l) who finished second congratulates the regatta's winner, Councilman Paul Davis]

[Coming in last after taking off on his own to tour the entire lake, Councilman Rusty Bailey finally reaches dry land. Does he kiss it? No, but he comes quite close. ]

[The city council members assemble for a group photo after the race.]

The proceeds from the ticket sales for this event went back to support the sailing program as well as charities that were sponsored by each city council member. The city council hopes to turn the regatta and barbecue into an annual event.

Next up would be to have a regatta involving the commissioners of the Community Police Review Commission but then they'd just try to ram their boats into each other or try to get each other disqualified by abruptly changing the date and time of the regatta so that contestants would have to drop out. Maybe they better start with bumper cars.

The Mayor's Race

An interesting article in the newspaper about Riverside mayoral candidate Art Gage who is running against current mayor, Ron Loveridge in the election in November. That election for the abbreviated term is in its final month and the candidates are out campaigning. If you are voting absentee, that process has started and the votes are coming in. For those that are going to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 3 you should have received a sample ballot in the mail which will include your polling location.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Gage said later he doesn't think the average resident is treated fairly at City Hall -- people get passed from department to department with a question or problem, they have to fill out a card before speaking to the council, and much city business is lumped into the consent calendar and passed with one vote, he said.

Commenting to residents about the council chambers renovation, Gage said wryly, "It's government -- they do a lot of things that are stupid."

But Gage has his own critics who say his stance as an outsider didn't serve him well on the council and would work against him as mayor.

Former Councilman Ed Adkison, who endorsed Gage for his first term but not when he ran for re-election, said Gage was a maverick who didn't work with his council colleagues.

"He would try to negotiate deals outside his authority," talking with the police union and the parties in an eminent domain case, for example, separate from the city's designated negotiators, Adkison said.

"I think you need to be a bigger consensus builder as the mayor than you are on the council because you haven't got a right to vote," Adkison said. "He's certainly not a consensus builder at all."

Gage said his colleagues wanted him to talk to the police union, and his role in the eminent domain case was simply to urge two parties to talk to each other, which he doesn't think was inappropriate.

As a councilman, Gage also took barbs for going public with budget concerns that some officials said were premature or unfounded. Today, he says that although his budget figures were attacked as inaccurate, the point wasn't the numbers -- it was that the city had less money than people thought, and the public needed to know.

Gage said he thinks some of his colleagues' criticisms arose when he opposed their pet projects.

"I have a philosophy of how government should be run," he said. "I am not going to go along with something I disagree with, just to be one of the guys."

But then along came the next day, an article about Loveridge who's been mayor since well, the 20th Century and the "story" he wants to tell. One chapter addresses of course, his drive to become the president of the much vaulted by municipalities with slogans, the League of Cities. Which is funny because if he wins, he has to go to meetings all over the country and if he does that, the city can't pay for him to go because it banned out of state business travel for everyone.

Hopefully, the League of Nations will foot the bill for its own president traveling around the country if he wins both elections. But then again, do you want a mayor or do you want a League of Cities president? Because it might be difficult to both equally well.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Beyond Riverside, Loveridge is involved with a number of regional organizations. If he is reelected, he is in line to become president of the National League of Cities, a group that advocates for cities and provides them with resources.

When that issue came up at challenger Art Gage's meet-and-greet, though, some residents either hadn't heard of the league or wondered how often the post would take Loveridge away.

"I want our mayor to stay here, especially in this economy," said resident Charlotte Macaluso, who is supporting Gage for mayor. "I don't think he's going to get a one-on-one with Obama, and I don't think Obama's going to care that La Sierra's being tagged every night."

Loveridge noted that he's always reachable.

"Your office is where your Blackberry is," he said.

He said he recently was in a conference call with Vice President Joe Biden about federal stimulus funds.

"A successful city is a city that has connections beyond city hall," he said.

One of Loveridge's favorite phrases refers to "telling the story" of Riverside, something he says his national connections allow him to do on a grander scale. He describes the city as "exciting, diverse, urban and successful."

But what does telling the city's story mean?

Loveridge referred to the 1950s TV police drama whose tagline went, "There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them."

"Riverside has many stories to tell," he said. "That's what makes it an interesting place."

It's true that the city indeed has many stories to tell but it's also true that Loveridge and others at City Hall pick and choose the ones they listen to, because as most people know, going to city council meetings and lobbying your elected representatives at that level on most any issue is a waste of time because most of the really critical agenda items are on the consent calendar. Most of the really important work that's done on agenda items takes place behind closed doors particularly on financial issues now that the Finance Committee has been all but disbanded because a committee that hasn't met in nearly a year isn't doing much good for city residents. It might please factions at City Hall but it's not their money that they are spending. It's not even the city council's money. It's the city residents' money and it's time to give a more transparent accounting of what's been spent especially on the Riverside Renaissance.

Columnist Dan Bernstein went further into looking at the money trail when he wrote that Loveridge wasn't shopping Riverside when seeking vendors outside Riverside proper for his campaign signs. He's been shopping in Orange County. Uh oh. So much for honoring the commitment to create a logo that the city will live up to, in this case being the "City of Arts and ~~Culture~~(removed due to alleged trademark infringement) and Innovation (trademark pending)".

In the meantime, This response to the Press Enterprise Editorial Board's endorsement of Loveridge for mayor instead stumps for Gage.

Ken Stansbury's in Mayor's Race

Ken Stansbury, activist and artist, submitted his paperwork to City Clerk Colleen Nicol and is running as a write-in candidate for the mayor's position. Apparently, there's two such candidates and the other one's a young guy in his twenties. He's out there getting the word out on the campaign trail and doesn't plan to spend money on his campaign. He's getting quite a bit of support from people who don't think that Loveridge and Gage really offer much of a choice for voters at the polls. He's also heading to the Friday Morning Club which is hosting a month of meetings with mayoral candidates, more information is listed below.

Where Art Thou Finance Committee?

This is a question that's been asked by people who either have read the blog postings about the erstwhile committee here for the past month and/or listened or watched Councilwoman Nancy Hart who chairs the Finance Committee issue a public service announcement at the end of the city council meeting on Oct. 6 with the assistance of Asst. City Manager/Financial CEO Paul Sundeen, assuring the public that there was nothing to worry just because the committee hasn't met since December 2008. Hart said that any financial agenda items released by Sundeen's office were in good enough form to go to the complete city council and that just because a meeting was tentatively scheduled (as many are on the city's Web site), doesn't mean the meeting will take place.

Perhaps Hart and Sundeen had hoped to reassure people that the Finance Committee which includes her and council members, Paul Davis who vice-chairs and Mike Gardner still exists even if it doesn't hold meetings or hasn't lately with no end to its current meeting drought in sight. But judging by the responses received, what Hart did was essentially say she was abdicating the responsibilities of her duties as head of that committee to the city manager's office. And that shocked quite a few people who are wondering which entity makes all the major decisions in the city, the city government or its direct employers in the city manager's and city attorney's offices. And why the city manager's office is left to apparently decide when this committee meets to discuss issues before they reach the entire city council, in a situation which is the equivalent of the fox guarding the hen house.

Apparently as the story goes, Hart was not the original selection to chair the Finance Committee. That position was apparently promised to Davis by the mayor in part as a deference to his background in finance. But Loveridge did his own thing and selected Hart who had previously vice-chaired the committee, some say because Hart was unlikely to convene any Finance Committee meetings. With the failure of what was once one of the most important committees to hold meetings, another mechanism of fiscal oversight and transparency over that process has been essentially neutered. As posted earlier, the statistics taken from 2001-2009 clearly showed that the volume of meetings held by the Finance Committee began decreasing about halfway through 2005 and most definitely by 2006. The dates where this trend of decline is noted is no coincidence. In June 2005, Brad Hudson officially began his stint as city manager and not long after that, the Riverside Renaissance was launched.

After Hudson was hired, the city manager's office consolidated the Finance Department as part of its division and votes began taking place in the city council involving the authorization and oversight of interdepartmental fund transfers. And so it went. The Finance Committee which once met twice monthly and met 24 times as recently as 2004 has all but disappeared, something that has people scratching their heads along with the city's practice of posting tentative dates on its Web site for committee meetings that never actually take place.

Sounds like something out of Wonderland.

The CPRC Meets!

Even though the Finance Committee has apparently been put on ice, the CPRC is actually violating its most recent trend which is to only hold one monthly meeting instead of two by actually holding a closed session meeting this Wednesday, Oct. 14. Ever since the commission elected the two members with the worst attendance records last year to serve as the chair and vice-chair, there's been fewer meetings even as the complaints filed with the commission take the police department and commission nearly a year or even longer to complete on average. At first, it was only the police department that had ventured into the triple digits for investigating and reviewing complaints but since March, the CPRC has gone beyond flirting with those figures and has taken over 110 days on average to review complaints.

Pending permission from the Agenda Review Staff (which unofficially consists of CPRC Manager Kevin Rogan, Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis and City Attorney Gregory Priamos), the CPRC has several more agenda items addressing various aspects of this issue. At its last general meeting on Sept. 23, the CPRC did inquire for more information on why the police department's process is taking so long.

The CPRC tries to claim that there was no tradition established of meeting twice monthly on the second and fourth weeks, an allegation put quickly enough to rest after reviewing eight years of minute records going back to 2000. There are guidelines in the policies and procedures which provide instruction for the meetings held on second Wednesdays being held for case review and/or training

One of the future guests of the CPRC will be representatives of the Riverside Police Officers' Association who have appeared twice at meetings since 2000. Once in late 2002 with then attorney Michael Lackie to address case review, thus shutting it down for several months and then later in March 2004, to attend a workshop set aside for it. Apparently, there were some initial problems with getting permission from CPRC Manager Kevin Rogan for them to appear but that's been cleared up and the RPOA will be allowed or invited to send representatives to a future meeting.

There will be much more excitement going on with the CPRC in upcoming months which will be duly reported here. Not to mention the events taking place with the Human Resources Board which along with what's going on with the CPRC will lead to further discussion of one of the most interesting power plays in the entire governmental and political arena called City Hall which will be that between Priamos and City Manager Brad Hudson. Are the city's boards and commissions one of the playing fields where this takes place? But then there's so many power struggles going on with the CPRC, it's difficult to count them all let alone keep track of them.

Also what happens when the tail wags the dog.

The Deep Freeze at the RPD

As has been posted here, there's been a promotional freeze in the police department at least from the sergeant level on upward. Two captains positions, five lieutenant positions and about seven sergeants have remained frozen since last year. But there's a rumor that they might be unfreezing up to two lieutenant positions and four sergeant positions some time in the future. The police department's pretty much at the bottom in terms of raw numbers and perhaps even beyond its staffing levels in the sergeant and lieutenant ranks. By December, there will only be one lieutenant of Special Operations instead of three and the number of supervising sergeants in both investigations and field operations has been impacted. And by the end of next year, the vacancy level among sergeants could hit the double digits.

The sergeant promotional process involves testing both oral and written and the formation of a single list instead of the old system of using graded classifications. And no matter how the candidates rank on the list, anyone on the list can be chosen for promotion unlike the case with the detectives (where the top ranked candidates get the positions). Currently, there are about 15 candidates on the sergeant's list. There were three vacancies in this rank filled last year, all by officers who incidentally lateraled over from the Oceanside Police Department several years ago.

There's also candidates on the lieutenants list where one vacancy was filled last year but the rest have remained in deep freeze. As for the promotion of captains, that is currently being litigated through a lawsuit filed by two police lieutenants who alleged that promotions at this level were being influenced by political forces outside the police department including the city manager's office and two then current city council members. That lawsuit was bifurcated not too long ago which means that some of the legal issues will remain in the U.S. District Court and others will be argued in the Riverside County Superior Court system.

As you recall, City Manager Brad Hudson and his assistant, Tom DeSantis tried to get the classifications for the assistant and deputy chief positions changed with among other things a provision that would make it easier not just to demote one of these management personnel back to captain (which is the appropriate classified position for upper management below the police chief) but even fire them. At the time this all went down culminating in a huge rally at the city council chambers in March 2007, there were two employees who were promoted while Police Chief Russ Leach was allegedly out of town in New York not being notified about the promotions until he returned from his trip. People felt the involved candidates were the right choices to be promoted because of what they brought to the positions but questioned the process used and just as importantly, who was using it.

A third management employee flatly refused to accept the "at will" terms fearing he'd soon be ousted by the city manager's office.

Hudson and Leach made speeches when asked by the city council to an audience which included representatives from the RPOA and the Riverside Police Administrators' Association, placating the audience that nothing had actually happened. That was technically true but in part only because of intense lobbying of several council members (who each then tried to take credit for doing it all by themselves) by the associations and the 11th hour legal interpretation provided by City Attorney Gregory Priamos which frowned upon the classification changes for public safety management employees that Hudson and DeSantis had attempted to carry out.

This chain of events while highly unfortunate did provide some insight into some very important dynamics, that of the police chief and the labor associations within the police department, that of the police chief and the city management and the clearly fractious interactions between Hudson and Priamos who allegedly was miffed a while back when he wasn't first on Hudson's list of choices to work as his city attorney.

Unfreezing supervisory positions carries the cautionary note of realizing that if sergeant positions get unfrozen and filled then down the food chain, eventually there will be officer vacancies (since detective vacancies are filled). If lieutenant positions are unfrozen and filled, then there are at the very least sergeant vacancies created. But even so, the supervisory levels are pretty bleak and it's likely they will continue to become even more vacant as retirements really pick as they often do when vertical advancement is nonexistent. Once again, heads need to be scratched as City Hall has proved once again, it either hasn't learned anything from the pre-consent decree period or it doesn't care. But the way the world works is that if it keeps pushing the police department in this direction, then it will perhaps get another opportunity to learn past lessons soon enough.

However, like everything in the department including apparently its ability to purchase what are equivalent to school supplies, it's the city manager's call.

The high drama of micromanagement of the city's police department continues onward, as even the money spent by the police department allegedly has to have every line item of appropriations approved and signed off by DeSantis which is odd because in most normal municipalities, it's the department heads which are usually in charge of the budget including the expenditures. But then this isn't exactly normal, it's Riverside.

Best in IE

Congratulations IE Politics, for being selected best blog by Inland Empire Weekly in its "Best of IE" issue. They are very deserving of such an honor.

(excerpt)

www.iepolitics.com

Granted, the Inland Empire has its fair share of blogs covering a variety of facets and locales—including individual cities and specific organizations. But the all-encompassing iepolitics.com blog doesn’t just kick down a summation of the politics that pervade our turf, it does so incredibly consistently, making it a repeat reading attraction.

For the inside dirt, log on to www.iepolitics.com.

It's must reading for checking out what's going in the Inland Empire and state because as you know there's never a dull moment in places like San Bernardino County.

On its blog roll they include many good links to governmental offices, organizations, informative resources and other local and political blogs including this one.

The Future of Wi-Fi in Riverside?

The Press Enterprise wrote about the future of Wi Fi in Riverside. It also discusses the very successful Smart Riverside program for low-income families.

But there was some discussion about the future and how long AT&T will be involved, given that like in many places, transferring users of the free service to the paid service is very difficult and slow.

One problem they might want to address with ATTMETROFI (which is the paid service) is ensuring that it maintains a constantly high signal strength. For example, while refreshing the wireless network list, ATTMETROFREE showed an excellent signal and ATTMETROFI? A paltry "low" signal. Often it's difficult to even pick up ATTMETROFI on a wireless list in some locations. It's not clear why that it's working out that way. And lowering the daily price or offering a bargain basement weekly cookie session might make some difference. Charter Communications is offering internet services for $29.95 a month and claiming to be faster than free Metro Wi Fi so business strategy would dictate that it needs to offset that.

(excerpt)

Reneker said a combination of issues prevented the city from reaching full coverage. Wireless equipment is now attached to streetlights in 1,400 places around town, but Reneker said that gear can't be mounted on all light poles.

Decorative lights on metal poles and lights that are timed to shut off won't work. In other places, tall trees block the wireless signal.

Another cause of delay was the business model.

The city's 2006 contract with AT&T, which installed the equipment and provides the Wi-Fi service, said the company would build a network for 95 percent of Riverside, Reneker said, but it has stopped adding access points.

Company officials hoped the free wireless, which is slower than other AT&T offerings, would draw in new customers willing to pay for premium service. But the reality hasn't matched expectations.

"The overwhelming majority of people who use the network are on the free service, and from our perspective we'd like to see more people move over onto the premium service," said AT&T spokesman H. Gordon Diamond.

The premium service currently costs $3.95 a day. Diamond said the company is considering lowering the price.

Reneker said AT&T will continue to provide free Wi-Fi through October 2011, but when the contract ends it's not clear what will happen. If AT&T wants to pull out, the city could negotiate to buy the equipment and find another company to provide Internet service, he said.

"I've already been in contact with four or five companies that have interest in doing that," Reneker said. "I don't think we even have to be concerned about (the network) being shut down."

Diamond said company officials haven't decided what to do when the contract is up.

But the city of Riverside's IT division and AT&T's people have been working very hard on the Wi Fi during the past several years. When problems arise, they respond and fix them quickly and they appear committed to making Wi Fi work for Riverside.

Nazi Watch

No Nazi sightings so far this week. Will report back, next week.

On Oct. 24, the Nazis demonstrators and some "storm troopers" (dressed in full Star Wars regalia hopefully) and the counter demonstrators will show up in Casa Blanca's venue of choice, Indiana and Madison. The Riverside Police Department METRO/SWAT Team will be there to referee the proceedings. And the media will cover it like it's a sporting event just like they did last time.

Whether this will help or hurt the Nazis' attempts to go more politically mainstream or not remains to be seen but it's difficult for this group of liberal leaning Nazis to gain much more membership in a fairly conservative city, where even the violent racists lean that way.

And the rest of the city will watch. Not much really fazes Casa Blanca and a bunch of young White men and women playing Nazi clearly hasn't either or even a group of activists planning to come from out of L.A. to do more spitting and stomping (as expressed in their own words). Stay tuned.

The questions as to why Riverside and the Inland Empire are such hotbeds for hate groups like this latest brand of Neo-Nazis (who are still a long way from seriously challenging the membership numbers of the skinheads based in southern Riverside who aren't protesting) is not as easy to address as chasing a few of them off.

Friday Morning Club---Mayoral Candidate Schedule

Candidates for Riverside Mayor, including the newly qualified write-in Candidate Ken Stansbury will be speaking at the Friday Morning Club, that meets Fridays from 10 to 11:30 at Janet Goeske Senior Center at 5227 Sierra Street, Riverside. All are welcome to attend these meetings. Free to attend, Free Parking.

Come with your questions for these candidates

Oct 16 Speaker is ART GAGE, Candidate for Mayor of Riverside, former City Councilman Ward 3 http://inlandempire.craigslist.org/eve/1413656175.html

Oct 23 Speaker is KEN STANSBURY, write-in Candidate for Mayor of Riverside http://inlandempire.craigslist.org/eve/1413646902.html

Oct 30 Speaker is RON LOVERIDGE Mayor, Candidate for Mayor of Riverside, former City Councilman Ward http://inlandempire.craigslist.org/eve/1413594861.html

The Group is hosting candidate, Art Gage at the Coffee Depot on Mission Inn Avenue this Thursday, Oct. 15 at 7:00 a.m.

Eastside hosts a community policing forum as the Strategic Plan prepares to sunset

2009-10-06T21:26:00.000-07:00

"Fuck..."

---A Phoenix Police Department officer heard on a 911 tape after he shot a home owner six times mistaking him for the burglar.

[Riverside Police Department Chief Russ Leach addresses an audience at a community policing forum held at Zacateca's restaurant in the Eastside.]

Over 30 people attended a community policing forum sponsored by the Eastside Think Tank held at Zacateca's restaurant in the evening. Community members and officers mingled and talked to each other before and after brief comments were made and the officers representing the field operations, special operations and special investigations divisions were introduced.

Chief Russ Leach introduced the dozen officers who attended and felt it was important for them to interact with community members.

"Behind a badge there are real-life people," Leach said.

Leach introduced the East Neighborhood Precinct Center's new area commander, Lt. Vic Williams whose stint in the assignment had gotten off to the rocky start since he was transferred from the North NPC based in downtown Riverside.

"You're in wonderful hands with Vic Williams," Leach said.

Williams told the audience he had been working with the department for 19 years since he lateraled from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. He had worked just about every assignment he could have possibly worked in the agency.

"I have a big job ahead of me but so do you," Williams said.

He told the audience that the crime in the Eastside was down by 19%. A number which ironically hurt the police department's ability to obtain stimulus funding from the DOJ's COPS office earlier this year. The city had applied for money to take 15 positions off the ice leaving 10 still unfilled but the news that came back wasn't good. The city wasn't going to receive a dime.

That's not really all that surprising because if you look at the agencies that did receive stimulus money, agencies that laid off officers (like Hemet) and/or either furloughed or planned to furlough officers (like San Bernardino and Redlands) received money as did sheriff departments including Riverside County's who were trying to fill staffing positions in their corrections division. The police department froze many positions including those at the supervisory and management level, most of which remain empty.

City Manager Brad Hudson told the Human Resources Board at its meeting on Monday, Oct. 5 that following the order of city council members, he had unfrozen police officer positions and the department was hiring again. What happened was that six positions in the patrol division had been taken off ice and within two or three days, the agency received at least 80 applicants, a scenario that has played out at any other law enforcement agency hiring across the country.

But after that period, the rest of the frozen positions remained just that, frozen.

The Riverside Police Department By the Numbers

(October 2009)

The recession and resultant budget cuts have hit the police department hard as they've hit other city departments. Currently its total personnel vacancy rate is about 10% and the vacancies are around 35 in the sworn division including four lieutenants and up to eight sergeants by the end of the year. Officers retired as did detectives and in the police department, detective vacancies are filled with what else, officers.

The department has experienced the loss of much of its experienced officers including supervisors in the past year or so due to the lack of upward movement and a lot of experienced officers being close to the retirement age of 50 and/or 30 years (in accordance with the CalPers 3% at 50).

There was some speculation that two lieutenant positions and four sergeant positions might be opening up soon but there's no certainty as there hasn't been any supervisory promotions in months and budget cuts still definite the current and future economic picture. Most of the promotions that have been done involved detective positions because of an MOU that has existed between the detectives and city management since about the early 1990s. In Riverside, it's not easy to find out information from the police department or City Hall on the staffing figures involving supervisors through the CPRA channels. Why? Because every CPRA request to any department in the city gets directed to the office of City Attorney Gregory Priamos and since that practice has become formalized, there's very little information that trickles out of the police department involving the issues that currently define it for better or worse.

The closest any CPRA request got on the officer/supervisor information was a copy of a PowerPoint presentation of an audit performed by a consultant hired by the city which didn't include the numerical figures for the then current officer/supervisor ratio. In fact, it didn't include any information at all. Either Priamos submitted it as a response to the CPRA request without checking first to see if the relevant information was even on it or his office was being disingenuous.

It is critical that information like this including documentation of how the statistics on the officer/supervisor ratios are calculated be released as the public information that it clearly is. Why the city is withholding or providing the wrong source of information on an issue that impacts public safety of city residents in this city and police officers in the department, well there are clearly many reasons behind that, none of them are good reasons for doing anything but shielding the operations of a public agency including its staffing levels from the city residents whose monies provide the city's funding for its total annual budget including the police department.

The department is a very young department given that the 80% turnover that took place beginning after 2000 and the hiring of mostly young officers in their early 20s has been most prevalent as a result. Despite the department's attempts to bring in an influx of older, more experienced laterals, that demographic of the average officer being about 23 years old and with 2-3 years experience never really changed much.

Consequently, proper supervision by experienced sergeants and lieutenants becomes much more critical. Under the stipulated judgment, the department had nearly doubled its number of sergeants to satisfy mandates involving the officer to supervisor ratio on patrol shifts and increased staffing in several divisions including the Internal Affairs Division. The number of lieutenants also increased sharply due to the mandate for 24 hour watch commanders which meant having lieutenants staffing every shift.

The percentages of patrol shifts led by lieutenants actually hovered at about 83-85% during most of the latter years of the five-year period of the stipulated judgment and a year or so after the judgment's dissolution in March 2006. Then it began to decrease because the financial crunch led to cuts in personnel overtime. Since lieutenants earn flat salaries under the Riverside Police Administrators' Association's MOU with the city, they aren't eligible for over time like sergeants (who while staffing watch commands earn as much as top-level lieutenants) so they became the department's work horses in a sense.

Consequently, the lieutenants were in some cases working double assignments in one day, or in some cases up to 30 hours over a two day period in the latter part of 2008 and possibly for a longer period than that. Brann had warned the city council and city management that the staffing conditions in the police department might put supervisors including lieutenants in a position where they might face increased burnout during an audit he gave to the body in 2008. The city's response? That was the last audit Brann would ever give despite having six months left on his contract with the city manager's office. See, audits are perfectly fine as long as all the news is good. But in the meantime, the issues that Brann did raise in that area came to pass and the command staff apparently had to find a way to relieve some of the work done by their watch commanders. Because after all, even watch commanders aren't machines.

In fact, not too long ago, members of the command staff apparently had discussions about serving as relief watch commanders while the lieutenants were on their vacations (which due to the shortage of lieutenants weren't always easy to schedule). Even the chief would serve in this capacity. It's not known for sure by the public if it actually came to this, but can you imagine all the work including the long-range strategic planning that doesn't get done if the management is manning the watch commands?

I was talking to someone at the mayor's candidate forum at the All Saints Church after it was over who knew a lot about city politics and we discussed the staffing shortages at the police department. This person made this statement in response, one simple sentence. That's what you get when you put the assistant city manager in charge of it. That statements sticks with you after the forum is done and everyone's gone home. Is that really what it's come to, three years after the dissolution of the stipulated judgment? That a former public information officer with the county who is now the assistant city manager is pretty much at the helm of the police department?

The question's been asked how would the assistant city manager know about the number of officers needed to go out into the field or do investigations. How would the assistant city manager know how many supervisors are needed to provide the appropriate supervision and training of the officers in patrol? What is the answer to those questions?

Speaking of which, here is the police department by the numbers under the city management's watch. Not a survey of who's there but who's not or might not be there after year.

Lieutenant vacancies:

Kenneth Carpenter, Traffic (vacancy filled by Leon Phillips)

Pete Villaneuva, field operations

Rick Tedesco, Special Operations-Traffic

Ken Raya, Special Operations, K9/Youth Court and other programs

Bob Meier: Investigations (postion, not vacancy filled by Mike Perea)

Brian Baitx, Audit and Compliance Panel

Sergeant vacancies:

Randy Eggleston, (vacancy filled by Dan Warren)

Kevin Stanton, (vacancy filled by Chad Milby)

Leon Phillips, (vacancy opened when Phillips promoted)

Lisa Williams, (vacancy opened when Williams transferred to new position in Communications)

Terry Mayer, (disability retirement)

Johnny Romo (vacancy filled by Julian Hutzler)

Don Tauli, (stayed an extra year)

Patrick Waters

Duane Beckman

*Frank Orta (Not vacant, transferred to graveyard, may retire in July)

*Frank Patino (Not vacant)

**Another vacancy

*These two sergeants transferred to graveyard shifts which provides them with an extra $500 a month in shift differential pay which is not uncommon before retirement.

**Possibly another vacancy in Special Operations

Patrol officer vacancies: 19-25

Civilian employee vacancies: At least 34 including many in customer service positions and the reporting process

Retirements aren't uncommon during periods where a section of the department is reaching the age where they become eligible for retirement and also when upward advancement isn't taking place and not anticipated to take place for an indefinite period of time. At this place and time, that impacted a lot of supervisors so much so that the police department is having to shuffle its organizational infrastructure around again, including inside its Special Operations Division.

Lt. Larry Gonzalez who served as the area commander of the East NPC since January 2006 left that position during a fairly large reshuffling of lieutenants in mid-July. He moved on to head the Aviation and SWAT units in the Special Operations division which usually includes two other lieutenants who each oversee various programs and units umbrellaed beneath them. Lt. Rick Tedesco was assigned to overseeing the Traffic Division and Lt. Ken Raya, several divisions including the Police and Corrections Team (PACT) and K9. But among those retiring by the end of the year were both Tedesco and Raya, which left Gonzalez the only lieutenant assigned to the entire Special Operations Division, one he had only been assigned to less than six months. As it stands now, Gonzalez will inherit a few programs including PACT while Youth Court and several others will go elsewhere with whoever handles the Traffic Division. The K9 division may return back to its earlier home in the Field Operations Division. `

The loss of lieutenants is felt very keenly, not the least of which is in the patrol division but the audit and compliance panel lost its lieutenant when Baitx retired earlier this year and other divisions lost their lieutenants. As for the loss of sergeants, there's been a variety of different statistics provided from various people about the current officer/supervisor ratio that rank from the rosy 4.5 to 1 ratio provided by Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis (to counter consultant Joe Brann's figure of 6 to 1) in June 2008. The number from the audit and compliance panel as of a few months ago was between the 5-6 to 1 range.

But the patrol division isn't the only one affected as the department's moved sergeants into that divisions from both central and special investigations. The Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Division has lost its sergeant and now shares one with the Homicide Unit which traditionally is fairly large and very busy. In Special Investigations, the vice (with two detectives, one officer) and the gang (six detectives) units share a sergeant, which naturally forces a greater reliance on the officers assigned to those units to be more autonomous and for members of that unit to be experienced in their positions. With more retirements surely to come in the next year, the department is pretty much strapped to the point where it can't continue going in the direction it's supposed to go if there are further positions frozen. A fact which seems to be lost only on those left to make those decisions at City Hall.

It's hard to say what the future will hold for the police department but if you look at the last time that staffing levels dropped at the entry level and the supervisory ranks, what followed didn't portend well for the agency and wound up playing a large role in costing the city $22 million and five years spent under state oversight.

To Be Continued....including City Hall's commitment to community policing.

The Mystery of the Missing Finance Committee:

The City Responds!

Holy hijinks!

An interesting development happened at the city council meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 6 just as its action-packed evening session was dying down. When the city council members were giving their final comments, both Asst. City Manager/Finance CEO Paul Sundeen and Councilwoman Nancy Hart both spoke up and defended the decision not to hold any Finance Committee meetings at City Hall during the entire calendar year so far, in what was equivalent to a public service announcement.

The fate of the Finance Committee has been blogged about here on this site in recent weeks both here and here.

Sundeen who once was set to retire, then came back on a consulting basis and then came back, told the city council and the viewing audience that the city management would simply forward items to the entire city council for discussion and vote if they were ready to go. Hart backed his words and added that just because a meeting might be shown as scheduled on the city's Web site doesn't mean that it is obligated to actually take place. A prudent thing to do instead would be to not post tentative meeting dates for committee meetings because doing so particularly involving committees that apparently no longer meet just confuses city residents.

But it's pretty clear that what these individuals are also saying is that this might be the first year in recent history when the Finance Committee won't meet. And that likely, the posted meeting date here won't take place. That would be the one on this date:

(excerpt, city's site)

Monday, november 9, 2009

2:30 P.M. - SEVENTH FLOOR CONFERENCE ROOM, City Hall

My guess is that this meeting like the others will probably be canceled pretty far ahead of time and another future date will replace it on the Web site. The city might as well do the city residents a favor and just not post tentative meeting dates on its site because you know in the real world, when people read that committees are set to meet on a certain date and time in the future, they usually do wind up believing that these meetings will actually take place. That's just how things normally work in most of the municipal environments that operate in a normal fashion. But it's certainly not the case in Riverside.

However, what was really disturbing is when you look closer at what Hart was really saying and what she's essentially saying is that when it comes to scheduling meetings, she'll wait until the city manager's office tells her when they're needed. And that reminds me of something that former councilman and current mayoral candidate, Art Gage brought up during the candidate forum sponsored by the League of Women's Voters not too long ago. He criticized the current mayor and pretty much the city council indirectly for allowing the city administration to run the city council and essentially City Hall. Hart's comments at the city council meeting about what she felt her role as a committee chair and secondarily as a city councilwoman entailed, only provided fodder for Gage's assertion.

Even though she's chair of the Finance Committee and as chair, is supposed to be the one who decides when this committee should meet, she seems to be operating under the leadership style that she's not the one who is equipped to make that decision. I received emails and other contacts from individuals not long after the meeting ended where they were pretty shocked with what message Hart was getting across. Because it seems like she's waiting for instruction from the city's administration on what to do rather than providing that instruction herself as both a city council representative and as a member of the legislative body which serves as the city manager's direct employer. That's pretty much her pattern and practice, to wait for instruction (not just advice) on the direct employers which on several occasions, she's described as hers like in the case of City Attorney Gregory Priamos.

But what is completely lost on the elected officials who support Hart's position is that one of the most important functions of the committee is that it brought key financial issues to public attention to be discussed in a public forum and where the public could sit in and offer input at these committee meetings much earlier than they would otherwise be made known to the public. Why? Because issues get worked on at City Hall then they go to subcommittees and get worked on some more in order to formulate advisory recommendations to the full city council which might receive them within two weeks, two months or whenever these committee recommendations were scheduled to go to the full city council.

As it stands now, they get worked on and go straight to the city council and the public at most gets the required 72 hour notice before that session of the city council. It leaves the impression to many city residents that the financial decisions are made behind closed doors on the Seventh Floor of City Hall and then rushed to city council on the consent calendar which if you recall, members of the public have been barred from pulling items from since July 2005.

That's quite a shocking development when you look at the meeting dates which are on the city's Web site here (just click any year, then click "agendas" or "minutes" and you'll get a list of meeting dates for that year)as having taken place from 2001-2008 here. There's no category for 2009 under the committee on this page because the Finance Committee hasn't met or really been scheduled to meet all year.

Now this is very compelling stuff to be sure and does illuminate the situation a little bit but it still doesn't explain why a committee that used to meet twice monthly hasn't met since late last year. It just makes it clear that the city for whatever reason felt it had to have Sundeen and Hart explain the current situation involving the missing committee.

It's interesting how this all plays out given the outcome of the 2009 city council elections. In those elections which took place earlier this year, there was one highly competitive city council race where both candidates, incumbent Frank Schiavone and challenger, Paul Davis were fairly evenly matched when compared to the other council races. It was the first election involving the city council to take place while the city was in its current recession and facing tremendous financial challenges to its annual budget. This situation actually greatly impacted how the election in the fourth ward played out, given that Davis' background was in finance and that he ran on a platform which included as one of its planks, financial accountability at the municipal level. The need to focus on this area was defined by the recession but the point really hit home during the emergence of the very troubling situation involving the Bradley Estates and particularly the roles in that matter played by Schiavone, Priamos and the city council members who voted to approve the Bradley Estates settlements (which were combined with other settled cases involving Friends of the Hills). It even emerged earlier in the 2007 elections when elected officials began to realize that all this spending on Riverside Renaissance wasn't automatically getting them reelected.

But one thing that people can be certain of is that the issue of financial accountability will continue to play a prominant role in upcoming city council elections in 2011 and probably 2013 because it's anticipated that Riverside and the Inland Empire won't really see an economic turnaround until then (and this talk about the "end" of the recession overall is probably a tad bit premature as the stock market is not the best indicator of the economic health as its upward movement is still based on short-term gains). And the candidates who win the elections will probably be those who either focus their platform on this and/or bring the best records to the process in this area.

Blast from the Past

Speaking of assistant city manager's, Riverside once boasted a star in this woman who worked under Former City Manager George Carvalho. She left the city not long before the city council voted 4-3 to fire Carvalho in the summer of 2004, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall. She moved onto to be chief administrator in Huntington Park and currently, Colorado Springs. Since then, the bar has slipped a little bit.

A Riverside County Superior Court presiding judge plans to unseal the search warrants in a criminal case involving a San Jacinto councilman. The Press Enterprise had gone to court to get the warrants unsealed.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

The district attorney's legal counsel has previously argued in court papers that the interest in protecting the investigation outweighed the public interest in disclosing the contents of the warrants, and that the sealing protected the rights and privacy of individuals served.

"We are pleased that the court records will be made available to the public ... in unredacted form," Alonzo Wickers IV, the newspaper's attorney, said outside court Tuesday.

District attorney's spokesman John Hall declined to comment on the judge's ruling.

An interesting article on inland churches and the internet. What was also noteworthy were statistics included in the article about blogs including the fact that there are over 27 million of them that are updated at least once a month.

Colton's former city manager has left the building for a new job but did he leave some nasty surprises behind?

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Admirably, Miller brought that and the overspending on the contracts for psychologist Bill Mathis and public relations consultant CV Strategies to the council's attention. And he took responsibility.

Miller, who has the energy and build of a football coach, believes in taking the bull by the horns. If the city stubs its toe, he says, it should admit it publicly.

"I'm not just the city manager, I'm the police chief. I have a standard I have to uphold," he told me in an interview in his office on Tuesday morning.

What's this? Ethics in Colton government? How refreshing.

The council brought him in to get more control and oversight of the bureaucracy, and to instill confidence in city government, he said. That will take a culture change.

He's ousting the bunker mentality and directing department heads to meet with community groups -- even Colton First, the perpetual thorn in Parrish's and Mayor Kelly Chastain's sides.

The Phoenix Police Department is being sued after one of its police officers shot a home owner believing he was a burglar.

(excerpt, ABC-News)

Even after realizing their mistake, Arambula said he was treated roughly, being dragged out of the house and transported briefly on the hood of a police car.

Now Arambula, 35, who survived but faces a lifetime of pain, is suing the city of Phoenix and the officers who responded to his house that night.

The lawsuit, filed in Maricopa County Court, alleges that Phoenix Police Officer Brian Lilly and his on-scene supervisor, Sgt. Sean Coutts, quickly conspired to cover up the mistake, not realizing that 911 was still recording Arambula's call for help.