The Road to Micromanagement Is Filled with...Intentions

*****UPDATE*****

Reports of City Manager Brad Hudson's city car allegedly being stored in one of the city's corporate yard with damage to it after reports of vehicle crash. If this is the case, was Hudson tested for drugs and alcohol intoxication pursuant to city policy and was a report taken of an accident?








[Mayor Pro Tem Steve Adams settles in the Big Chair after Mayor Ron Loveridge again misses a day of city council meetings. Given that the countdown has already begun for Election 2011, Adams has softened his demeanor at meetings in preparation for his third run. But it's going to take much more than grasping simple dais etiquette to get him reelected. ]





[Riverside City Manager Brad Hudson tries to sell a car to residents from the Overlook Parkway area which though included in a long-term strategic plan for further development and neighborhood disruption was apparently not included in an ambiguously written agenda item for the afternoon session of the City Council. Hudson wears many different hats, which include according to many, that of police chief.]





[Some of the players in the House That City Hall Built are discussing of all things, the handling of a complaint filed through the ethics complaint process. Only those arbitrating the complaint were the same individuals who belonged to the subcommittee it was filed against. ]






Some of these individuals are also cast members of a theatrical production currently in research, titled, RPD: The House That City Hall Built which will be sure to come to a venue soon. So you'll be reading a lot more about them and their fellow cast mates and the house that they built out of cards. But alas, this isn't a fairy tale and it's not going to be a very happy journey through the back door politics of Riverside. No need for a Play Bill because most of the characters in this sad tale will be familiar to most readers here.

The RPD Updates on the Strategic Plan

With all the uproar that's been going on with the Riverside Police Department, it's pretty easy to lose track with the fact that the department's been working on its next five year Strategic Plan which has been moving forward in a manner of speaking even with all the turmoil in the department. After all, the chief's wrestled with City Hall over the creation of the plan through quite a bit of last year and he's not around anymore, having slipped off into retirement and having just completed his 15 days of home detention. The acting police chief, John DeLaRosa hasn't been as visible since the release of cell phone records implicating his work phone in the controversial handling of former Riverside Police Chief Russ Leach's traffic stop. The remaining deputy chief, Pete Esquivel is abruptly retiring after 30 years not long after Personnel Capt. Mike Blakely allegedly had Internal Affairs (which is under his umbrella) investigating people at the mid-level and higher and has been busy doing his thing. Is this the first chapter of what could turn out to be the RPD's own version of Survivor Island? It's still too early to tell.

But anyway, there's still quite a few people hanging around, enough to talk about the department's Strategic Plan.

The department provided an update to its ongoing process of creating the next five-year Strategic Plan to the Public Safety Committee. Chair Chris MacArthur and members Nancy Hart and Andrew Melendrez listened and asked questions during and after the presentation by a clearly energized Blakely and Sgt. Jaybee Brennan, who is on the Audit and Compliance Bureau. Blakely passed on his apologies that DeLaRosa couldn't attend the meeting but said that DeLaRosa had been busy supporting the department's Baker to Las Vegas relay team where the department exceeded its own goals in the final results.

They provided information on the results of the online survey that was conducted several months ago as well as community forums and meetings and said that the information they received helped them formulate the core values and key components of what when completed, will serve as the blueprint of policing followed by the employees of the department until 2015. They had studied the old plan mandated through the stipulated judgment and looked for its strengths and weaknesses and also looked at other department's plans where they discovered that they had borrowed from Riverside's original plan.

The survey results showed a few things.

97.3% of the respondents worked and/or lived in the city

87.3% thought Strategic Plan was necessary.

74% thought the department was good or excellent.

16.5% thought it was adequate

7.3% thought it as poor.

88% of respondents thought officer behavior was good, very good or excellent

12% thought the conduct of officers was fair or poor.



Top three priorities: Patrol, Calls for Services and Criminal Investigation.


The Strategic Plan will be coming back in a finalized form to the Public Safety Committee and then if approved, will be going before the complete City Council. The new chief whoever he or she might be will have a chance to provide some statements in the plan to give him or her "ownership" over it. As much as any police chief under City Manager Brad Hudson can have ownership of anything. It was very interesting to see Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis say anything favorable about the Strategic Plan because the city manager's office has never been a huge fan of it or its predecessor at least not behind the scenes. Because a strategic plan that was created before they got there could be viewed as crimping their actions at running the police department. This time around, the process will lie in their hands, even after it is completed by the police department at some later date.

After the city had dissolved its first stipulated judgment with the State Attorney General's office, the city council had held a workshop in March 2006 to come up with a strategy to continue the implementation of the original five-year plan which sunset last December. It didn't take long during the long hot summer of 2006 for Hudson to attempt to derail the city council's vote by nearly "failing" to get a contract with a police practices consultant. Earlier last autumn, Hudson and DeSantis had apparently blocked the police department from moving forward with plans to create and implement this latest strategic plan and especially to receive public input from city residents for it. It was only when two city council members began asking questions about the status of the plan, that it moved forward. So flash forward months later and it's just fascinating watching people like Hudson and DeSantis now enthusing about it. If there were enough city council members including on the Public Safety Committee even paying attention to what their city manager was doing, they might actually realize what had been going on but since they've handed off the keys of the city including most of its financial accountability mechanisms to the city manager's office, they've been left in the dark by choice.

It remains to be seen how the strategic plan will be enforced, given that many components of the first Strategic Plan aren't in effect or in place and quite a few of them were casualties of budget cuts. The department itself has seen its ranks get depleted and its vacancy rate currently stands at around 10%. There's been a thinning of the ranks at the top of the command structure and the vacancy rate of lieutenants is about 33%. Both labor unions in the sworn side of the police department support filling at least some of the vacancies at the supervisory levels but City Hall said no.

Blakely, who lost his personnel lieutenant, Gary Leach to the field operations division addressed the department's vacancies during the meeting by saying that he was fully confident that the department should be providing the services as well as it had when fully staffed and that vacancies needed to be "shared" which essentially means that filling one rank exclusively might deplete another. Which is true and something that needs to be considered but it's interesting how there's a long discussion during the meeting on the importance of adequate and accountable management and supervision and then later comments on well, we're able to perform our services even with big chunks of both missing. Even though quite a few people are noticing that contacting anyone in the police department or just trying to find anyone in "command" is very difficult these days because people aren't quite sure who's in command and because the chain of command at the top has been somewhat volatile in recent weeks. The comments and the actions just don't see to really go together, sending a message which is very mixed.

Councilwoman Nancy Hart bristled somewhat that the vacancy issue would even be addressed. She said the city council was kept abreast of every single vacancy in the department and whether it was "critical" or not and that hopefully some day some of those positions might be refilled. That's good to know that she and other dais mates are fully aware of the vacancy rates and can therefore be more readily held responsible for the consequences of maintaining staffing vacancies if anything does happen as a result. Because they are fully informed and on top of the situation as Hart said at the Public Safety Committee meeting.

Blakely and DeSantis threw off some interesting body language during some comments in the meeting about the department recently promoting its first female supervisor in nearly five years. DeSantis leaned back in his chair and seemed a bit petulant while Blakely emitted a sigh. DeSantis behavior is really not that surprising if you look back at his somewhat less than stellar history when it comes first, to inserting himself in the promotional process upon direction by Hudson and second, to his own dubious record of involvement in the promotion of higher ranking female officers.


Blakely can’t be blamed for looking less than thrilled at the mention of it taking so long to promote a female supervisor, as the person in charge of the personnel division. And given the current situation at the level of middle management and supervision, it puts the department in an interesting position given that the promotional ranks most impacted, have been those of sergeant and lieutenant and for both of those ranks, there are women and African-American men in the top positions on thosepromotional lists.


This situation weakens the oft tossed out argument by the department that people in neither groups are getting promoted in supervision due to "low numbers". But then the promotional processes involving both ranks were changed in the past several years in order to accommodate the promotions of individuals from anywhere on the list that those in charge of promoting chose to pick them. This practice increases the necessity of lobbying those engaged in making the promotional decisions for consideration when promotion times roll around, to make yourself stand out as a candidate because rankings on lists don't appear to serve that role. Testing near or at the top of the list for sergeant or lieutenant is no guarantee that you'll be promoted even if tons of vacancies open up to be filled. That increases the power of the individual or individuals who actually make the promotional decisions.

It also makes it much more likely that highly motivated candidates anywhere on the list will try to present their cases for being promoted to those they perceive or have been told are responsible for making promotional decisions. It also means that you're not safely promoted until you've been pinned with your new rank, because any time up to that point, another candidate can engage in a strategy which will pull the rug right out from under you. Promotional decisions can and have changed literally in the 11th hour and the current system of promotion kind of makes a situation like that inevitable at some point. But the impact of the this system involving the promotional process of the police department has clearly been felt and has reverberated both up and down the ladder and even into City Hall. It's also helped shape the command staff currently in place.

After all, being at the top of the list means that your work has just begun. And that's actually where it might end, if it comes down to whose "team" you're playing for, which is what a promotional system like the one in place encourages, and in Riverside, it's complicated even further by the many hands involved in the promotional process of the police department.


For example, the last two promotions for lieutenant, one that took place in July 2008 and the other more recently, the individuals who were promoted, Leon Phillips and Andy Flores apparently ranked #11 and #6 respectively on their lists. Phillips is a much more familiar name to most people now than that of Flores because of his involvement in the Leach traffic stop as the watch commander on duty during that shift.

The captains' positions are more firmly entrenched in management and the promotional processes at this rank had already been changed before the department had changed those at the lower ranks to more closely adhere to the informal system being used to promote the department's captains and above. By thrusting much more power through changing the rules on those making the promotional decisions, that also changed the roster of people who would be making those decisions either individually or in tandem with others. After all, those who promote gained more power under the new system and who in the vicinity wouldn't want to get their hands on that? As it turned out, quite a few people did.

Now this type of system clearly is fraught with problems and so much potential for problems and even corruption. What else can be expected of a system where promotions aren't the outcome of a process of testing and being listed but by using other forms of negotiation? And with the depletion of the ranks at top already starting in part because the house that's been built through this process has been shaken to its foundation, it's going to be interesting to see whether these routines for promoting at the mid and upper levels of the department will be part of the pattern and practice even when a new police chief arrives to take the helm of the department. How will the new chief promote, and more importantly how much freedom will he or she be given to promote including at the top level of management?

In upper management, the departures appear to have begun with the announced retirement of Deputy Chief Pete Esquivel and could continue if others at or near that level follow suit especially individuals at or close to retirement age. It's not really clear who's going to go and who's going to stay. Speculation says that DeLaRosa's days are numbered although he's apparently got no plans to make it easy for those who wish he'd walk away. But even as City Hall appears to act as if there's not at the very least confusion at the top, many community leaders and residents have picked up on the obvious difference between the police department before Feb. 8 and the one that's being reshaped as a result.

And that speaks to the confusion that city residents including community leaders are experiencing with trying to figure out who to contact in the police department near or at the top of its leadership. There does seem to be a lot of confusion out there about who is in charge of the department. And with City Hall freezing the newly vacated lieutenant positions by calling them “unpaid” (like the deputy chief position vacated by Dave Dominguez’ retirement), some people have been scratching their heads even as people like Hart and Blakely assure everyone that the department’s handling its staffing shortages. But as the vacancies increase as do the freezes, concern has been growing outside of the sphere of city government that the department and the city is beginning to reap the consequences of how the department's been handled the past five years since Hudson and DeSantis came to town. Since elected officials decided to involve themselves in ways inappropriate with the police department's operations.

The police department’s current lieutenant’s list as stated earlier is in a very interesting place, though one that might unsettle some individuals both at the top of the command inside the police department and inside City Hall. For one thing, white male officers don’t dominate the top of it. And some of the candidates who are most favored by Blakely apparently finished near the bottom of the current list. So the decision not to fill the 33% lieutenant’s vacancy which given the exodus that might be starting higher up in the department’s infrastructure takes on different overtones.



1) White Female

2) White Male

3) White Female

4) Black Male

5) White Female

6-13) White male



But with the lieutenant positions being frozen for the unforeseen future, it's not clear how this will all turn out. Whether the lists at the lieutenant and sergeant level will be diluted by the changes in promotional processes which had a similar impact on the captains' lists. And if who gets promoted comes down to who is the most persistent or the most talented at lobbying and selling themselves to the people that count as prime candidates, how will that impact the makeup and operations in both ranks? After all, the entire city is witnessing what similar practices have impacted promotions at the captains level and higher. Where it maybe not as much about what you can do, but who you know. Who to make happy and who to never, never piss off. And what happens when you reach the pinnacle and discover that it's not what you thought it would be and the job skills that the position requires are not the ones you used to reach it.


During the stipulated judgment with the State Attorney's General office, there was some talk about the importance of infusing a business culture into the department's management level, to essentially turn the department into where it appeared to resemble a corporation rather than a public agency in that respect. If you examine what's transpired while the department's been operating under that system including through its promotional process, it becomes clear what has happened to the department as a result. As well as what's happening now.

The police department and the City Hall which leads it traveled a twisty and turny road to get where it arrived in the early morning hours of Feb. 8 and it sure wasn't pretty. And the end results of that journey have been anything but.

The Sound of Silence: Riverside's City Hall and Its Probe

UPDATE:


Deputy Chief Pete Esquivel to retire on May 7th....as rumored. Will Acting Chief John DeLaRosa follow?


Lts. Tim Bacon and Darryl Hurt settling lawsuit


Why do you need a policy that says you should not give preferential treatment to police or city employees. Isn't that 1) already in the training and 2) obvious?


----Comment at PE.com



City Hall through City Manager Brad Hudson blames the "police management" for the clear attempted cover up of Former Riverside Police Chief Russ Leach's traffic stop on Feb. 8. But releases no details of actions taken and against whom. The only really positive part of it was that the two patrol officers, Grant Linhart and Jeremy Miller were cleared because they did nothing wrong. They should have been cleared much more quickly when it became clear that they had very little role in what happened besides performing the DUI evaluation using a check list of DUI "objective" signs according to statements released by the California Highway Patrol which still refuses to release its report to the public. After they noted the signs in Leach, they called for supervision which took over including Sgt. Frank Orta who served as the primary officer.

It's hard to take the policy recommendations seriously because they should have been in place already and the contention that no prior violations of preferential treatment took place, no that's hard to swallow as well. It's not acceptable just to pass off unequal enforcement and treatment of the law as inadequate policy creation and/or implementation. It's not about policy, it's about the philosophy of policing specifically but doing business in general in Riverside so that it's truly not a double standard between city residents without connections and city employees or elected officials who are connected up in high places. Something like Feb. 8 doesn't take place in a vacuum. These problems didn't take place because there was a shortage of policies in place, they occurred because there's clearly a dearth in professional ethics in higher places which creates a climate where trying to do the thing just gets you into trouble with those same individuals.

No, this incident was likely the latest sad chapter in a sordid book of past transgressions involving preferential treatment. It's a bit disingenuous to come out publicly and condemn professional treatment when you yourself or employees in your office have benefited. After all, one of Hudson's own employees was issued a concealed weapons permit in "error" by Leach despite not living in the city. This employee was also the subject of a 911 phone call from a woman alleging that he had threatened her with a gun yet the Riverside County District Attorney's office never received a police report from the Riverside County Sheriff's Department on that incident. How many times were city officials and city management employees given preferential treatment in different situations, for example? While what the department's management did is clearly wrong and unacceptable behavior by leadership, is City Hall an appropriate venue for the finger pointing to be coming from? Who created the climate where this type of misbehavior takes place so easily, and with a few simple phone calls?


Kind of Obvious at this point, don't you think about the Police Management being involved? But City Hall and Brad Hudson, how long has this been going on and covered up by everyone involved? In fact, how many sergeants in the Internal Affairs Division were compromised by prior interactions with Leach enough to be disqualified from being involved in the probe? Did these prior involvements with Leach have any relations to their later assignments to the IA Division?

What else has been covered up involving the handling of the police department? And who will investigate that? I'm assuming the comment about no prior violations is tongue in cheek because it defies simple logic? That Hudson had no idea that Leach had problems with alcohol and had alleged prior incidents? Really, now?

Why was Leach given a medical retirement at tax payers' expense; what did the city receive in return?


The Hudson Probe as it were will receive further analysis here but my favorite line is probably where he writes that the written report doesn't tell the whole story. Including the reality that the original copy of that report allegedly bore a signature from one of the parties who likely will be among those retiring soon.

It doesn't tell the story of how the current command structure in the RPD wasn't exactly built through anything resembling a promotional process that makes any sense unless you're a fan of Shakespeare. But if the police department didn't build its management level by promoting the "best of the best" then who or what did? And how big will the price tag be when it's all tallied up for payment from the handling of that process?

It doesn't tell the story of how while the city manager is wagging his finger about how preferential treatment will no longer be issued out to "high profile" individuals, there's nothing about how it will build a climate in the RPD where individuals can report misconduct involving both city management and the police management without fear of retribution. An agency where officers have the ability to challenge or disobey orders from management and/or supervisors or City Hall which require them to engage in policy violations and/ or illegal conduct, including obstructing or interfering with a criminal investigation which is what happened here with Leach.

And when and where did all this intrigue that led to a controversial traffic stop really all begin...




RPOA President Cliff Mason speaks out on high number of vacancies at supervisory levels, which he has apparently listed as one captain (actually two, though that could change), six lieutenants and more than eight anticipated sergeant vacancies (which weren't mentioned by Mason in the press) by the end of 2010.


To be continued....


Hudson statement is at Press Enterprise here.

Who Said Riverside Has No River?

[The recent rainstorm brought a return of the notorious Arroyo River, which blocks the street as it forges across it to the other side of Victoria Country Club's Golf Course delivering Class II rapids.]

Dude, Don't Get Me Wet

[Only days after AT&T finished replacing over a dozen of the Wi Fi network's Bell 200s with new ones to resolve a two month outage, the recent rain storm kicked an unknown number of them back offline but most appeared to have survived this round of rain including the newly re-installed Bell 200s. The city and wireless provider are negotiating an amicable divorce from their current contract while the city looks for the replacement network maintenance and management vendor.]

OOOPS!

City Misses Mayor's Deadline for Announcement on Hudson Probe


Anyone Really Surprised Here?

(River City)-----Tuesday, April 13, 2010


No news…is well no news and that’s the status of the ongoing internal probe into what really happened the early morning hours of Feb. 8 and in its aftermath. That’s when former Riverside Police Chief Russ Leach when he did quite a bit of drinking and got behind the wheel after to drive through Riverside’s streets even after hitting some “undetermined” object or two with his vehicle. He had been stopped by two of his department’s patrol officers who when seeing that the chief had exhibited “objective” signs of intoxication, called for supervisor, Sgt. Frank Orta a court recognized DUI expert. At some point, the watch commander, Lt. Leon Phillips appeared onscene and after a series of phone calls between him and a not-present Asst. Chief John DeLaRosa, Leach was not given a field sobriety test or arrested for DUI but driven home and the troubling incident was later “filed” away through a handwritten report produced at some point that day by Orta. And so a criminal act, of the misdemeanor variety, was effectively re-scripted as being nothing of the sort.

The cover up continued as the police department didn’t initiate any criminal investigation of the incident and had Leach’s vehicle towed to a holding area at the Magnolia Policing Center, a temporary stop before quietly sending it off to have any traces of the accident removed. Out of sight, and hopefully out of mind as well, certainly before news of what had happened could spread like wildfire, putting Riverside once again in the spotlight. Not as a city of arts, culture or innovation but of scandal like some of its neighbors in other corners of the Inland Empire. The ones that Riverside no doubt poked its finger at, and said that's clearly not us. But it's becoming clear, that the walls of City Hall despite the lack of transparency are made of glass after all.


No doubt there were probably hopes that the incident would never reach the light of day because there were certainly efforts going on after the traffic stop to ensure that this wouldn’t happen in different corners. Even when a mysterious woman had contacted Mayor Ron Loveridge’s office at City Hall a few hours later to inform him of what had happened, attempts were probably made at City Hall to determine what had taken place which ran parallel with efforts made to keep the embarrassing incident from extending outside of City Hall or to the media. After all, how long did it take City Hall to publicly admit that the accident had even taken place after it did? Did City Hall issue a press release informing city residents through the media outlets of what had happened at all on Feb. 8. Did it do so during the morning of Feb. 9 or by early afternoon?

The answer to those questions is so obvious, they really are rhetorical.

No, what happened is that various media outlets were burning the phone lines at the police department and City Hall about Leach’s mysterious crash which catalyzed two separate actions to be taken by the city. The first, which was admitting that the accident had happened and the second, being the police department’s “decision’” to transfer its “filed” incident of a “traffic collision” to the California Highway Patrol agency for well, an actual investigation. The CHP started its investigation behind the gun as its representative aptly called it but ultimately generated a 500+ page report including 40 pages of criminal analysis and the Riverside County District Attorney’s office filed two misdemeanor counts of DUI against Leach who did plead guilty through an attorney at his arraignment and received sentencing.


City Hall did come forward with information on the incident but only after being severely pressured by the media and wanting to avoid the embarrassment of being exposed through media attention which before long, extended nationwide. The city’s disclosure wasn’t done in the interest of accountability and transparency but under severe duress because otherwise it would have been done sooner. It kept the secret as long as it could before it got away. So City Hall did the next best thing which was to further the keeping of the secret of what really happened by instituting an inhouse probe shrouded completely in secrecy.

After all, this is the same city that when through the Governmental Affairs Committee, it put together an “ad hoc committee” including community leaders last year to examine investigative protocol for how civilian oversight mechanism investigate officer-involved deaths or shootings, it kept what should have been a public forum for community participation so secretive that not only were the meetings closed to the public, but the public couldn’t even be notified when these meetings took place. So if the city manager’s office, with tacit approval of its employers, the city government would go through measures to keep its handling of a relatively nonthreatening issue a secret, can you imagine that it would handle the unraveling of a scandal in any manner remotely associated with public accountability and transparency?

Leaving a Trail of Crumbs to the RPD

But Riverside went further this time by carefully dispensing a trail away from itself through the selective release of information by Hudson's office. Remember when Hudson and DeSantis cried foul early on to the press by saying that neither had been notified by the police department's management about Leach's traffic stop as required by city policy? If that's indeed the case, then yes that's indeed a policy violation. But it's curious that amid what's likely to be a sea of policy violations going back at least the past several years, that there's a public service announcement being released about this particular one, in the interest of "transparency". And it's interesting how Hudson and DeSantis to this day have remained much quieter about whether or not either of them adhered to another city policy which requires that office to test its employees for drugs and alcohol intoxication after they crash city-owned vehicles which Leach had done.

That question's been asked including here and at city council meetings and it's not been answered. So why is it so easy for Hudson and DeSantis to allege that others violated city policy and not even answer with a simple yes, or no whether its office adhered to a policy it had been required to follow?


So here's that question again...

Was the Driver of This City-Owned Car Tested for Alcohol and Drugs by Hudson's Office as Required by Policy?

Well Was That Policy Followed Hudson?

Hudson has also not answered questions asked by city residents at public forums whether or not he knew of prior problems with Leach and whether or not his office had dealth with them. He's already told people at these same forums and through the press that very little concrete information will be released by City Hall in relation to its "sweeping" probe. But then the city became even more selective when it came to releasing information including Orta's infamous written report. If you read the report, you will notice the city generously released CAD information about the original collision of sorts on Central and Hillside but zippo meaning no such information on the so-called traffic stop at Arlington and Rutland. Why wasn't that information included in the six-paged report as it should have been because the traffic stop of Leach was just as relevant in terms of either being investigated (which it was not) or filed away in some cabinet somewhere.

Then there's the cell phone logs that the city turned over to the Press Enterprise most likely to avoid a date in court and yet despite the information about cell phone calls made by members of police management like DeLaRosa in the wee hours of the morning to people at the traffic stop, there's again, more questions raised by the omissions than answers raised by what was released. Like how did DeLaRosa know to call Phillips at 3 a.m. the same time that Phillips was overseeing the situation involving an intoxicated Leach and his damaged vehicle? And why did it take so long for employees like Hudson and DeSantis to have phone calls show up on Feb. 8's records, given that the tip first hit the mayor's office between 9-10 a.m.? Why didn't City Attorney Gregory Priamos release his own calls and redact the confidential phone numbers? Because the Press Enterprise Editorial Board was right on when it talked about ahem, gaps in the phone call trail involving that incident and its aftermath..

Elections are Like Christmas Time

It’s pretty clear if you examine pattern and practice in this city when it comes to both aspects what the answer to this question would be and this doesn’t appear to be a pattern which will be broken any time soon not unless doing so is tied in with the political survival of elected officials. After all, remember the roller coaster ride involving fluctuating electric rates that took place before, during and then after the election cycle last time? Remember the bumping up in priority of two city parks that happened in the 2007 election cycle? Election cycles are the time of well-behaved elected officials and gift giving as the last two election cycles have clearly shown, even though quite a few elected officials, namely Dom Betro and Frank Schiavone who tried to tone their public attacks of their critics (though Betro experienced greater difficulty) and issued promissory notes on various issues were still sent packing. Still incumbent Steve Adams who’s up next year has been playing nicer at meetings than he had in the past. Will it reap him another term in office? You'll have to wait until the action packed months of Election 2011 to find out.

But even after the Leach incident broke, the city tried to shield itself through a probe being initiated and essentially micromanaged by one of the city council’s direct employees who instead should be answering some questions himself about his own actions involving the police department and the handling of its chief since his hiring by the city council in 2005. Until the city council and mayor take the bold move of holding the city manager and city attorney’s offices more accountable, then there’s really no hopes that anything will change to ensure that the department’s next chief will become any less of a puppet than the outgoing chief had been.

A couple of weeks ago, Loveridge in hopes of upstaging the criticism of that probe by the Eastside Think Tank through a press release had announced that there would be a statement about the completion of that probe through City Hall which of course, never bore fruition. City Hall’s been awfully quiet since an excellent editorial was published in the Press Enterprise last week which essentially blasted the city leadership for shrouding a cover up in yes, another cover up. Showing the city the dynamic in action which actually since it’s been in place leads straight up to incidents such as that which took place in early February. The current scandal involving Leach and the department which has once again put Riverside on the national radar in a most unflattering way isn’t just the result of one incident, but the growing sense among the city’s residents that the Feb. 8 traffic stop was only the latest and the last in a series of related incidents involving Leach since his hiring as police chief nearly 10 years ago. The problems apparently began to intensify with the election of several current and past council members to the dais after the city entered into the stipulated agreement with the State Attorney General’s office to reform the police department in 2001. They didn't abate during the entire period that the state had been involved in its court ordered mandate to address serious problems inside the police department.

The Micromanaging Duo and The CPRC

But things really got cooking after the hiring of certain city management employees in 2005 after the newly aligned city council voting bloc had ousted George Carvalho nearly a year earlier about the time that Schiavone later said Hudson had put out signals that he was interested in leaving his job with the Economic Development Agency of Riverside County. It didn’t take long for Hudson and DeSantis to begin their efforts to micromanage the police department including Leach and not long after that, both men turned their sights on the city’s civilian oversight, the CPRC. The conflict which arose between the city management office and then manager Pedro Payne ultimately left to Payne’s “resignation” less than one month after he was kicked out of a meeting at City Hall by DeSantis who hadn’t cared for Payne’s refusal to go with the newly instituted program of micromanagement by the duo. Hudson and DeSantis remedied that vacancy soon enough by hiring a former captain of the Pomona Police Department, Kevin Rogan who would be paid a full-time salary to work part-time to carry out their agenda involving the CPRC.

During the next year, public outreach would disappear, the annual report would face long delays and the complaint reviews would seriously backlog due to problems both with the CPRC’s management including its interim management by someone completely unqualified as well as ongoing issues with the police department’s Internal Affairs Division. One would think that an employee with this kind of record would have problems when it came time for performance evaluations. Not so with Rogan which begs more than a few questions and did among community residents who witnessed the serious and very steep decline of the CPRC. Particularly when it came to dealing with the community it's supposed to be interfacing with and even its own members dealing with each other. Things had become so acrimonious that on April 14, the CPRC will be receiving treatment on professionalism and courtesy according to this agenda.

Meetings had taken place involving Hudson, DeSantis and at least one CPRC manager where the city management employees allegedly ordered the employee to control the commissioners better and to keep them under control. Clearly that hasn't been the case at recent meetings probably because the type of acting out by some of the commissioners is precisely what is wanted to keep any real work from being done. That's why Vice-Chair Art Santore was able to verbally attack one city resident in attendance over some outside meeting that the two had both attended some time before. That's why you see the side bar conversations from former chair, Sheri Corral and outgoing chair, Peter Hubbard while community residents speak not to mention commissioners like Hubbard who have apparently napped during meetings, lots of eye rolling and sighing.

After watching what's happened with the CPRC since Hudson and DeSantis arrived, it's really not too difficult to build a case that both individuals have engaged in similar behavior involving the Riverside Police Department. Though the impact on the police department because it's a larger city department with an important purpose with a lot of risk attached to it, proved to be much more devastating than what's happened with the CPRC. Still, the micromanagment of the civilian oversight mechanism provides a good model at examining the similar handling of the department the commission was set up to oversee.

And when the micromanagement of the police department is further analyzed, it will become more apparent how good and useful a model the CPRC will serve as, because guess what, the same cast of characters on and off the dais who tried to undermine the CPRC had their hands in the cauldron of the Riverside Police Department.

And What of the Silence on the Dais?


Loveridge: Allegations of Micromanagement, "Fiction"

Loveridge claims it's "fiction" but that's because he has to do so even though he should really know better. He knows much differently because he's been in political office the longest. He's the most aware of what the dynamic of the city had been including with the police department before Hudson and DeSantis arrived. Most of the other city council members either have little or no basis of comparison to work with or are themselves actively taking advantage of Hudson and DeSantis' actions as is the case with one of them. But Loveridge has witnessed what's happened with the CPRC firsthand as well as what's been going on with the police department. He's not said publicly whether or not he's been aware of past issues involving Leach and alcohol including whether or not there were prior traffic stops by other law enforcement agencies. He also teamed up with Hudson not long after Leach had taken his medical leave (on his path to a medical retirement) to announce the search for his replacement, hiring one of his favorite businesses, the Roberts Consulting, Inc. to do the search. But don't be surprised if there's a candidate for chief who will have been waiting in the wings all along? After all, think back and remember how Hudson had been hired by City Hall.

Of the four city council members facing reelection next year, only Councilman Mike Gardner has made any comments to the public about the situation including asking questions about the role of management personnel at least in the police department in the traffic stop and preferential treatment given to Leach by his own department. Others like Rusty Bailey and Chris MacArthur have zipped their lips, deferring to Hudson's inhouse probe and Adams who probably has the least reason to want to attract attention to himself at this time, contents himself with grumbling about the community organizations/city residents/public/disgruntled activists/ never being satisfied with anything.

There's been rumors about candidates already getting ready to declare in the political races faced by Gardner and Adams, not as much the other two although don't be surprised if you do see some interesting matchups next year in the light of the city council's silence on one of its most pressing issues in recent years. Because the number of comments and insights about the police department's role in the situation remain strong but they've not increased in recent weeks quite like those involving City Hall. Which shouldn't be all that surprising because the public might be busy, it might be distracted because these are after all, challenging times even without an embarrassing screwup by the city in its midst, but one thing the public is not, is stupid. And the fact is, if City Hall continues to treat its constituents as if they are stupid, it will find out beginning next year, exactly how incorrect its assumption is, through the next round of civic elections which are already coming in the heels of two election cycles which showed a flair for ousting entrenched incumbents. So shall we see if history is just getting started.

Major Downtown Business Closes, Citing Problematic Practices by City

One of downtown's main business fixtures, the BioKorium on Main and will be closing its doors after things became rockier when the city purchased the building. Javier and Vivian Moreno, the owners and others came to city council while this issue including interactions with an employee who called himself "Larry the Liquidator" who apparently was connected with the property management company hired by the city.

It seems like the problems with the city's Development department have only increased since it hired Deanna Lorson to run it. Employees have left that department, "dropping out like flies" as one person called it including older employees who resign at an age where it's very difficult for them to find other jobs. The Human Resources Board was so concerned by the statistics of resignations and terminations particularly those involving men of color and women that it wanted to meet with Larsen to talk with her about the situation. City Manager Brad Hudson nipped that in the bud saying through his conduit to those meetings, Human Resources Director Rhonda Strout that interviewing department heads was outside the purview of the board. When the board met with him later at one of its monthly meeting, he appeared to reverse his position but then told the board it needed to redefine its mission.

Unfortunately, this isn't the first business to have problems downtown, including with the city. Probably won't be the last as there are other vulnerable tenants out there. One possible guess, is that the city wants to sell the building at some point sooner rather than later and that there's going to be some other pesky tenants in its way. It's a shame that this is happening and that a situation which one council member admitted was at least partly the city's fault led to its ouster but perhaps some day, the city will implement strategies which help small businesses which provide local jobs (and don't bring most of their own labor with them) and you know, do things like add to the sales revenue which becomes part of the city's general fund. But if you hear from a lot of small business owners,

Speaking of which, where was the Greater Chamber of Commerce and Riverside Downtown Partnership (which the Morenos likely paid business tax to during their tenure) when businesses like this need their advocacy? Per usual, no where to be found if it means challenging City Hall or if the business owners are men or women of color.

But someone left this interesting note at the PE.com site:



Of course the managers of the City of Riverside will not consider negotiating lowering rent to the tenants of city owned property. The city needs every penny it can get to pay expenses incurred by city officials. Such as replacing a car that was wrecked & then driven on the rims. And also to pay for retirement & sick-leaves, ooooh and lets NOT forget the city needs $$ to pay for stripers, drinks & drugs.

These are far more important then keeping a day-spa business open in the city. Maybe the owners of this businss should change it from day-spa to a strip club, then the city leaders would be more inclined to help them stay open, and be regular customers as well!!
Vivian and Javier Moreno, owners of the spa, I feel horrible that you have to close your doors. Such a sad situation! The best of luck to you both.








The University neighborhood in Riverside is trying to get a community center. Even with all this Riverside Renaissance spending still going on, there's not enough bucks for the Center that they've been asking for a while at meetings.





No threat to Hemet Police Department building seen, said one employee as as a fire breaks out at a shooting range. A lot of problems going on there and whether or not they surround the actions and subsequent raids involving the Vagos motorcycle gangs isn't clear.





Judge Paul Zellerbach who's running in this year's District Attorney's race against incumbent, Rod Pacheco will be allowed to keep his campaign statement after a judge rules against attempts by former Riverside County Sheriff's Department employee and political candidate to have it removed.

Blogger Archives Returned!

Sometime not too long ago, many of the monthly archived posts vanished about 90% of them, poof like that! Well, I researched the issue and sent a request through the Blogger's forum for a solution to fix it. But before Blogger responded, I figured out that the auto-pagination feature that Blogger had mandated (to great controversy as it turned out) had suppressed the full display archived posts on some of blogs using certain older templates. So I was finally able to find code to manually add to bring in pagination and thus a return of the archived posts, hopefully anyway.

Now if you want to see older posts on the home page, or archived pages, just scroll to the bottom and you'll find "older" posts and click that and that will bring up the formerly missing archived postings.

Hopefully this will be a permanent fix.

Enough Secrecy at City Hall and the Need for an Independent Probe

When Public Disclosure

Raises More Questions Than it Answers

"No Lie Lives Forever"


---Martin Luther King, Jr.

[Excerpts from the city's first attempts to prove there's no cover up but most people who read Sgt. Frank Orta's handwritten report of the incident to be "filed" away would come up with more questions than the city could possibly answer. And so it's with cover ups including of the municipal variety. Whenever there's an attempt to prove they don't exist through the release of information, often that information bears evidence of that cover up. And so Orta's report inadvertently became a notorious symbol representing the covering up of a criminal act in the city of Riverside, albeit a mere chapter in a much longer book. And whose fingerprints are also to be found in it and if you follow the trail, where will it lead?]







Enough secrecy states the Press Enterprise Editorial Board and this blogger has to say, amen to that.

It was something nice to wake up to as far as an update goes, rather than the usual deception hidden by catch phrases and a whole lot of silence from the government that's supposed to be elected by and for the people of Riverside and its direct employees. It's hard to have faith in a system that appears to be pretending that there's no serious problem, no breach of trust involving the city government, one of its public agencies and the city residents both are supposed to be serving. It's a bit disconcerting to observe how out of touch the city appears to be, or is acting, and I know I'm not the only one to feel that way. Many others feel like they're in the same boat with how this is being played out by the city. Can anyone really believe that the very same situation would be playing out in the same manner if this all happened not in the spring of 2010 but instead, during the same time in 2011, a pivotal election year for four elected officials? I think everyone knows the answer to that and it might appear cynical but it would definitely be a whole different ballgame.

The Editorial Board echoed the call for an independent probe into the situation that has rocked Riverside beginning with a traffic stop conducted by two Riverside Police Department officers involving their boss putting the city again in the national spotlight in perhaps a way it wouldn't have chosen for itself...once again. But there's been a call for an independent probe from various corners already which pretty much hasn't even been acknowledged by the power structure let alone answered through decisive action. Even as the police department's former chief was convicted of drunk driving and its current acting chief has come under a huge cloud of suspicion involving his own actions involving the incident after the release of his cell phone logs. And who knows how many dominoes might be waiting to tumble?

A probe independent of City Hall and the police department. That's what has been called for here since the day this debacle first took place and that many city residents in different venues have also been saying. And it appears that with the recent revelations that have been coming to light apart from the probe, the calls for it and addressing the cover ups have been increasing.

That a truly independent probe of this incident be conducted. That any priors and the involvement of both the police department and City Hall be investigated because otherwise, you've got the fox guarding the chickens or more than one fox in this case. This blog also called for the investigations of City Manager Brad Hudson, Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis and City Attorney Gregory Priamos. At least two of these employees possibly all three are apparently heavily involved in this probe despite needing to answer some questions about their own actions going back to at least 2005. Given the involvement of all three personalities in the operations of the police department in the past few years, it's pretty much what would be expected. But in what must be one of those truly great...coincidences, these are the three individuals who have the most reason to want to ensure that any "sweeping" probe avoids well...a few dusty corners. And yes, there are a few corners that needed to be avoided that have developed over the past several years, which helped contribute to what finally broke in February.

Including an apparent failure to investigate serious allegations made to the city council and Mayor Ron Loveridge through a correspondence received in December 2005 by the government not long before the former police chief's contract came up for its first renewal. But as it turns out, the public will never find out how much these three individuals knew about Leach and when they found out about the Feb. 8 because they have effectively insulated themselves from any accountability by imposing a lack of transparency in the process of the city's probe into the affair. In fact, Hudson won't even make any public revelation about whether or not his office adhered to a city policy which requires its employees who crash city-owned vehicles to be tested for alcohol or drug intoxication even as he and DeSantis separately claimed that the police department violated a city policy to report Leach's stop as a "high profile" contact with police. The selective finger pointing and related release of information by Hudson's office isn't lost on nearly as many people as they might believe.

That's the stance that City Hall's currently taking mostly through its silence that a top-secret inhouse probe is the way to go, and the Press Enterprise is right to call its cast of residents on it. The publication has echoed what many city residents have been saying these past two months and what at least one community organization has said publicly. Otherwise, it had been pretty quiet at City Hall and among other community leadership when it comes for calling the probe which indicates a strong disconnect between city residents and these dual entities. Many community leaders are focusing on getting positions on the panels that Hudson has used as carrots involving the selection of the police chief yet many city residents view it as very difficult to put the cart ahead of the horse. After all, community leaders participated in a similar panel for the hiring of the current executive manager of the Community Police Review Commission, and in fact, chose Kevin Rogan. Yet, it's pretty clear that Rogan's micromanaged by Hudson through DeSantis much in the same way that both attempted to micromanage his predecessor Pedro Payne.

Other independent department heads like former Human Resources Director Art Alcaraz were pushed out because they didn't bend easily to the will of Hudson and DeSantis, in this case changing the educational requirements for assistant city management positions. The pushing out of former director of housing, Tranda Drumwright, who is African-American, for not being "management" material unlike the less experienced White woman she worked with who got the job of supervising Drumwright before Drumwright was fired not long after filing a grievance and former complaint with the state.

But it's not going to change anything by putting a police chief at the helm of the beleaguered police department without considering what led to the situation in the first place.

Meaning that serious problems in the relationship between the police department and City Hall must be addressed first, because otherwise the police chief won't have any independence to address the issues within the troubled agency including those that contributed to this scandalous incident. There can be an independent probe done now or it can wait until the next time there's another screwed up situation involving the police department while it's under the watch of Hudson and DeSantis, one that bursts on the public scene because it can't be contained. But at some point, it will be done because the path that the city has set itself on is so very clear and is heading in that direction whether it takes the shortest path or the more scenic route. With this probe, the city's trying to make it appear that it's addressing the problem when in reality, it's probably setting itself for the next public relations disaster just around the bend. Because this latest crisis appeared to have been some years in the making and even before the ink had dried on the dissolution papers for the city's consent decree with former State Attorney General Bill Lockyer, it appears that the path of the department had already been set to reach this point.


This blog stands on those earlier listed recommendations as much or even more today than back when the whole mess came to light. If City Hall doesn't like that, well then it doesn't like that. If the police department's command staff doesn't like that, then they don't like that either. It's hard not to be cynical of what stands for municipal accountability in this city, but there's really nothing more cynical than watching City Hall release crumbs of information and only a portion of the public information requested of it (while people like Hudson and Priamos applaud themselves in the media for this partial compliance and release of information to the media) and then applaud this behavior as showing true accountability and transparency when it reality it's showing neither. But what those involved in the original cover up as well as those invested in maintaining it are putting on is a good show, it's just too bad it's at the expense of over 600 law enforcement employees and 350,000 city residents.

Trust in either one of these entities doesn't seem to be very high right now and neither are their approval ratings. Both housed individuals that put themselves in the positions where they currently stand but there's apparently little motivation for either to really change to improve the respective pictures of what they represent. Though it's interesting to note that members of the command staff have been busy as bees as of late in hopes of impressing the incoming police chief in hopes of ensuring their own survival. But given the state of the department under theirs and Hudson's (and DeSantis) watch, with over $24 million in claims for damages filed in the past year or so not to mention an arrest and prosecution rate (and this is not counting just arrests or cases of criminal conduct which should have been investigated) of 1 in 65 officers (which is much higher than the national average), should all these players in the department and City Hall keep their status quo?

That's a question that's been asked a bit but an answer hasn't been forthcoming and it's not likely to be coming out of any probe controlled by Hudson or an apparently rudderless City Hall. No matter how individuals like Hudson or anyone else paint it. And it's an especially interesting situation right now considering that Hudson along with the city council's other two direct employees just underwent a performance evaluation behind closed doors. One wonders what kind of "grade" he received from a city government that in the past he's been able to appease fairly easily. That will probably be the case until the city council realizes that the political futures of its own membership ride on Hudson's performance in public as well as his behavior in private particularly concerning the police department. If any of its members see political vulnerability, then Hudson will see career vulnerability, it's really that simple. In a way, the political survival and job security of both of them is intertwined and there have been more recent rumors that members of the city council have applied unprecedented pressure on their city management employee. If that's true, it's long overdue.

But no, this blog's not anti-government, it's just written in hopes that some day in the future, maybe there will be some accountability and transparency in Riverside's government, that it will be seen as a priority and not a detriment. That the government will have a city attorney's office that embraces the Brown Act and open government rather than use the state's "sunshine" laws to reduce public access by city residents to their government. That we won't have a city manager's office that micromanages the city's law enforcement agency and many people wind up paying the consequences for that and the decision made under that system. That there will exist a city government that truly holds its direct employees accountable when it engages in said micromanagement rather than calling it "fiction" when it or they should really know better. What this incident has unfortunately made all too clear is that this day is not here yet and may not be coming up for a while as far as the city government as a collective body of representatives is concerned. And that some of the battle lines for next year's legislative elections may be set in part by the city government's response or lack there of to its greatest crisis in recent years.


Severe distrust has erupted both in the police department and City Hall as a result of the initial handling of the incident but even more because of its aftermath which includes this so-called probe. This trust won't be won back easily but it won't really be won back at all as long as this inhouse white wash is allowed to stand as City Hall's strategy of handling it. It's the secrecy practiced among certain parties involving Leach and the police department that played a large role of causing this situation to finally erupt the way it did and more secrecy just insures that despite everyone's assurances, it will happen again and again. Because after all, the best way to address the kind of secrecy that harms public agencies is to of course, engage in more secrecy. That sounds silly to most people but apparently not to the city because it's following that playbook again.

In just a few paragraphs, the publication gets its views across on the subject of the so-called "sweeping" probe being conducted by Hudson and it does it very well. The media isn't supposed to be the spokesman of the local government, in actuality it's supposed to be its watchdog. As we all should be especially because it's our money that it plays with, including the purchase of this purported independent look at one of the more embarrassing scandals in Riverside's recent history. This blog's been called anti-government as has organizations like the Eastside Think Tank for simply challenging City Hall's actions in the wake of this incident and its aftermath. But then that's par for the course for many municipal bloggers and you just wish you had a dollar or two for every time someone said or wrote it because it would pile up quickly.

In case you don't know, the incident in question took place on the very early morning of Feb. 8 not long after Super Bowl Sunday when former Riverside Police Chief Russ Leach drank a lot of liquor, took prescription medication and went driving around the Inland Empire. While in Riverside, he crashed and damaged his car and then kept driving, completely unaware of where he was and that he had even heavily damaged his vehicle. He was pulled over at around 3 a.m. by two patrol officers in his department who did a DUI evaluation but when officers of higher ranks including management got wind of it, then the cover up began and Leach despite having an extrapolated blood alcohol of 0.22 was given a ride home probably in the front seat of a police car rather than to county lockup in the back seat of one. It's been said that this was Leach's first DUI crash but not his first time he's been stopped after drinking and even being DUI by law enforcement officers of different agencies. It's also been said that the police department's management and that at City Hall were aware that all this was going on, yet City Hall actually called for a "sweeping" probe with a straight face, knowing exactly what it was doing.


Speaking of the probe, wasn't some statement regarding it supposed to be released last week? At least that's what Mayor Ron Loveridge told the publication as some form of counter response to the Think Tank's criticism of the probe and of the city manager's office's micromanagement of the police department. It's interesting given the complexity of this particular probe in investigative logistics if not motivation that Loveridge would come out and make such a statement. If he had been hoping to enhance public trust in the government and the Hudson's probe that it has endorsed, it's unlikely that his apparently somewhat premature statement enhanced either cause.

An investigation of this type would involve at least five principal officers, the four on scene and at least one, Acting Chief John DeLaRosa away from the scene. That means that the Governmental Code 3304(d) that sets the time line for investigations that can result in an officer or officers' discipline at a year could be waived given that there's multiple officers being subject to investigations. This waiver recognizes the relationship between the number of officers involved in an incident under investigation and the length of time needed to conduct that probe, which means that there's an increased likelihood that more than a year would be needed to process both the investigation and its review. Yet after a mere two months, Loveridge makes a statement probably done mostly to appease the city's critics that a statement is forthcoming. In fact, it would be very worrisome indeed if Hudson or his current public relations person, Loveridge did release any non-statement about any investigative "findings" at this time as it would appear like more manipulation of both the process and the public's trust than anything based on honesty and transparency give the complexity of this type of probe.


And actually the resolution of the criminal case doesn't do anything to mitigate the situation of whether or not people like Leach enjoy preferential treatment by local police as directed by upper management while committing a crime. In fact, it affirms that the situation was badly handled to say the least by putting it in the public record that Leach did drive legally drunk. It calls the treatment that he received on Feb. 8 and the department's total failure to launch its own criminal investigation of Leach's conduct into further question.

But here's the crux of the editorial and what it strongly recommends for City Hall to do next. If you notice, there's a portion written in red which was done because the two questions about the phone records asked, were asked here several times too because they're both just a bit hard to overlook and City Hall really needs to explain the gaps in the phone records regarding the parties involved that night and the next day.




(excerpt)

Nor does City Hall's official attitude do anything but bolster the case for outside scrutiny. The city relies on an expansive interpretation of police personnel confidentiality laws to cloak nearly every aspect of the case in secrecy.

But that stance requires a breathtaking gullibility on the part of city residents: Does the city really expect people to believe that explaining whether there have been other instances of special police treatment unveils personnel records? Or that detailing how the city plans to ensure impartial policing in the future violates officers' privacy?

And the city's release last month of some Feb. 8 cell phone records for city and police officials merely raises additional questions. Just how, for example, did Assistant Police Chief John De La Rosa know to call the watch commander not long after 3 a.m. that night -- several minutes before the logs show anyone contacting him? And on the day the police chief is stopped after smashing up his city-owned car under suspicious circumstances, City Manager Brad Hudson does not have a phone conversation until after 5 p.m.?

The city's records do not include any text messages that may have passed back and forth, nor do they cover city land-line phones or personal cell phones. A City Hall intent on full transparency would have released all of those. The gigantic holes in the documentation show the absurdity of City Attorney Greg Priamos' declaration that the "records clearly show that no one at City Hall was involved in any decisions that were made in the early morning hours of Feb. 8."

The city will not quell public doubts with a strategy aimed at preserving the utmost confidentiality. Riverside ceded the criminal investigation of the Leach case to the California Highway Patrol because the city could no longer credibly handle that in-house. The same principle applies to the questions that surround the handling of the incident by Riverside police and City Hall. Only a public inquiry, insulated from any inside influence, can restore confidence in city government.

City Hall might seriously believe that it's "cleared" itself through both Hudson and Priamos through public statements but many members of the public have seen through the same holes that were produced by the highly selective release of the phone records. Priamos refused to release any of his records even with redactions for the city's "clients". So no folks, the cover up continues at City Hall, and that includes through the manipulation of what the timing will be for City Hall to release its non-statement regarding the "results" of the Hudson probe. The one where it states that it did the probe, it might have found inappropriate conduct and it was handled. Nothing putting names on the characters who engaged in the cover up of this incident and nothing about what happened to them or whether any action was taken at all. Nothing about who was even investigated for misconduct or whether the probe was actually used to pursue and punish any innocent parties who had nothing to do with the cover up. Nothing to explain the gaps in the information released by the city including an incomplete accounting of the phone calls made by the involved parties. Questions which have already been raised like why did DeLaRosa suddenly call Phillips up at around 3 a.m. and why were the city-issued cell phones belonging to certain key city employees including Hudson not used until the afternoon or evening hours?

Many city residents haven't bought into this sales pitch that City Hall's been making since day one and having received many comments from readers, the number one statement that's made over and over is that an independent investigation should have been instituted from the beginning.





Here's one opinion of the editorial which is worth noting. The editorial no doubt will elicit many different opinions and that's important in a democratic society which depends entirely on an active populace involved in its government in different ways. In actuality, there's very little that Hudson has done or said that's been in the interest of accountability and certainly not transparency. He started a top-secret inhouse probe probably to avoid any outside probes, put the "independent counsel" under an undisclosed contract or working arrangement with him and he cleared himself and City Hall fairly early on. Why would City Hall call for an independent probe when it's been cleared in Hudson's own probe and so quickly? Because if a direct employee of the city government gets implicated in any misconduct in relation to this mess, then the city council and the mayor would be in the hot seats to answer some questions, just as Hudson, DeSantis and Priamos should be in answering about Leach. Except for one probable exception, most of the city government probably isn't directly involved in any related issues with the police department, Leach and Hudson but what it's showing is that as a collective body, it's unwilling to be faced with having to publicly push Hudson and Priamos into accountability for their actions.

But as it comes to transparency, Hudson made statements when initiating it that there would be both accountability and transparency, two necessary components of a democratic government, involved but later to the Press Enterprise and at community forums, Hudson then said that due to state laws governing the confidentiality of peace officers' records, nothing about who did what, when would actually make it outside City Hall. Certainly not to the public, the only way that could happen under Riverside's "expansive interpretation" of the relevant state laws would be if the involved employees waived their confidentiality and just said, hey I did this, which is the best service those who made the decisions to engage in any cover up involving Leach could provide for the public they all serve at this point. To admit what they did in the interest of helping to restore some level of trust in the agency they betrayed among the city of residents they also betrayed.

Not going to happen during the Hudson probe, even if the employees had wanted to waive their protection under the law to do it. Most likely the public will be fed some statements about how the city did its probe, it found some unspecified something and it took care of it internally. Any further questions? Sorry we can't answer them because it's an internal matter and a personnel issue. And then with that, the city will attempt to put it behind them, Hudson will find a new police chief he can micromanage and things in Riverside will remain quiet until the next crisis hits. Well actually, it will be the same crisis of sorts happening again until Riverside's really committed to show some leadership and make it a leading priority to break the patterns of how business is conducted at City Hall including with the police department. Until then, the status quo will remain in place between controversial incidents which will once again put Riverside in the spotlight the way it doesn't want. Proving once again, Riverside still hasn't learned from its history.








Lake Evans version of the Lochness Monster has been caught. Now we can all sleep at least a little easier at night.

Public Meetings

Tuesday, April 13 at 2:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., City Council will meet to discuss this agenda which isn't very long at all. It's not clear whether the city council and mayor will discuss the appalling situation faced by tenants in a city-owned building on Main Street including the well-known BioKorium who have raised allegations of mistreatment by the city, the management company for the building and some guy who calls himself "Larry the Liquidator". But then the problems involving the Development Department since Deanna Larsen's been at the helm are just growing...

Wednesday, April 14 at 3:30 p.m. The Community Police Review Commission will meet in the Mayor's Ceremonial Room and receive much needed training on civility and effective communication at meetings. Hopefully, members like Peter Hubbard and Vice-Chair Art Santore are taking notes.

29 Coal Miners Dead in West Virginia





"Dear Mommy and Jenna,

If anything happens to me, I will be looking down from heaven. If you take care of my baby girl, watch over (her), tell her all the good things about her daddy. She was so cute and funny. She was my little peanut."




--------Josh Napper, 25, miner killed in explosion who had expressed concerns about the safety of the mine

Watching the River Run Straight to the 'Hall

"Watching the river run further from things that we've done..."

---Kenny Loggins





Do not run your emotions high on this story.A slap on the wrist may be applied to those involved and they will sweep it right under the rug.


----"Guest" at PE.com





"But I was thinking of a way To multiply by ten, And always, in the answer, get The question back again. "



----Lewis Carroll









There's been a lot of reaction to the push for an independent probe by the Eastside Think Tank not to mention that the city manager shouldn't be allowed to handle the hiring process of the new police chief but it should instead go to the city council who through the election process is accountable to the city's residents. The reasoning being that anyone hired by Hudson will just turn into his puppet soon enough given that there's been a lot of discussion and debate in various circles about how much control (or perhaps how little) Leach had over the police department especially dating back to 2005 back when City Manager BradHudson and his staff first arrived in Riverside to run its administration. A former councilman had said that he had told Hudson a few years ago to stop micromanaging the police department and Hudson had promised to do it but apparently that didn't happen. Maybe it's just an attractive toy that Hudson and his assistant city manager Tom DeSantis just can't put aside.

And thus this behavior that one politician who should know better called "fiction" continued to this present day, with of course results that can only be described, in the interests of being diplomatic, as disastrous.


And still Riverside's very own version of Wonderland continues...

Changing the City's Charter

To change the current hiring process would require the city's voters to approve a change to the city's charter which is the piece of paper that Hudson's been waving around whenever his ahem, management of the police department's been challenged by Leach or by anyone else. His favorite section is purportedly the part of it which gives him the "final" say in hirings, firings and promotions over his department heads. And Hudson through DeSantis has used that veto power on promotions made by his department heads including Leach during his tenure with the city. Sometimes with some help from an individual or two who has served on the dais.

Apparently, this veto power hasn't been exercised nearly as much by prior city managers as it has been by Hudson and apparently there's been allegations that it's been exercised in non-charter mandated fashion by elected officials on the dais past and present. Something that apparently happened at least twice involving just captains promotions by themselves since Hudson's hiring and in both cases, the same city council member allegedly intervened and involved himself in that process. And guess what, it's the same council member quoted in this article! Imagine that! Well you don't have to leave it to the imagination because this is after all, River City, the city where anything is possible and that includes having a police department that's run seemingly by committee, with Hudson, DeSantis, City Attorney Gregory Priamos and a city council member or two thrown in the mix. Why restrict yourself to only one chief when you can have a number of them? Makes you wonder if any incoming chief will be told when signing the dotted line that he or she will be nothing more than the department's mouthpiece, its public ambassador while it's being run by a group of people from behind the curtain.

That's why reading the comments by the electeds in City Hall is just too darn funny. But at the same time, it's hard not to remember the damage that's been caused by their practices and that's enough to remind anyone quickly enough that this hasn't been a very funny chain of events. But there lies the problems with handing off the hiring to the city council because there have been members of the city council who have been just as heavily involved in micromanaging the police department as Hudson has, perhaps even through Hudson. Two of them, a current and a former, are defendants in a lawsuit filed by two police lieutenants, Darryl Hurt and Tim Bacon that's in the U.S. District Court. Some of the allegations raised in the lawsuit involve the manipulation of the promotional process at the management level by various factions outside the police department including one council member who probably didn't have this much influence while working as an active police officer earlier in his life before he received an injury retirement.

That would be Adams who's already been mentioned in this posting and former Councilman Frank Schiavone who once served as a reserve officer in the police department. So it's a quandary at this point to decide which would be the most responsible with the selection of the police chief, the city council or its city manager and one important reason why is that the city manager is supposed to be a direct employee hired by the city government to carry out its will. Or at least the will of its majority. If you can't trust the city council and mayor as a body to prevent their employee from micromanaging a public safety agency, can you really trust them with hiring a police chief to lead it any more than you can trust Hudson? But what giving the council this power would do is that it would decrease the layers that shield the city from accountability by a major one because the council and mayor are voted on by the city's residents and the city manager is not. It does put more of the push for making responsible choices in the hiring of a public safety head on the elected body and if the decision proves to be problematic then that might be reflected in the voter tallies when members of this elected body come up for reelection.

Still, giving the hiring process to the city council must be viewed cautiously because the issues with Hudson's tendency to micromanage police chiefs can't be so neatly separated from the government which conducts conditional performance evaluations on him twice annually, because after all, he's an "at will" employee too. If Hudson's creating problems with the hiring process of the police chief and the handling of the city's police chiefs, then he's getting his blessings to do so from somewhere in the city's hierarchical structure above his own position. If the council disproved of his actions as a body, it would perform a correction on Hudson and he would stop engaging in the practice of micromanagement and turning police chiefs into figureheads. If the troubling dynamic between Hudson's office and the police chief has to be examined (and it does indeed), then that goes doubly so regarding the dynamic between Hudson and his own bosses, the city council and Loveridge.

But Loveridge clearly doesn't want anyone to even ask questions, calling it all "fiction". Then again, Loveridge's never been an elected who really likes bad news.

And one problem in Riverside is that the city manager doesn't act under the will of the majority of the governmental council and mayor but through the instructions of a vocal minority and in the past, that's been people like Schiavone and Adams. Not that it's not interesting to see that Schiavone has apparently gained some perspective since his election loss in that he's apparently blaming Hudson for being too involved with the police chief and Hudson's apparently pointing fingers at Schiavone and saying he made me which is what Hudson often does when caught doing something. But the issue of whether or not department heads in Riverside really have the power to promote within their realms is one that has become difficult to figure out exactly if you're outside City Hall.

And that's especially been the case with the police department because if a certain candidate in the police department is up for a promotion inside the department at its management level, what should it matter if they are friendly with a specific council member (like Adams, for example) or not. Because the promotion is supposed to be up to the police chief right? And on the list of qualifications for the promoted position, is there one included that requires a candidate to be buddies with elected officials or perhaps, endorsing them for election? But Adams himself has been involved in at least two promotional processes in the past several years and for the integrity of the process, that's two too many because the charter doesn't give the electeds the power to be involved or influential in that process. In fact, it's supposed to be illegal, something of which Adams is fully aware. Because for one thing, incoming electeds are given an orientation meeting on the rules and regulations of being an elected official in Riverside. At least the formal list of them.

Adams then stands up before the press and claims that any criticism of the micromanagement by City Hall of the police department is to be written off as them always finding fault in something for the sake of it. That's Adams being condescending because he has reason to be. But someone in the comments thread of the PE.com hit a succulent point.


(excerpt)




Finally a propective that has value speaking for the people.
Adams doesn't think that City Hall mishandled the aftermath of the chief's stop.... And we wonder where it all went wrong.



Actually not so much wondering anymore because everyone's too busy watching it all unfold and the fabric of municipal accountability, however frail it was, unravel. It's kind of like watching a train wreck, not that it won't be swept up soon enough and stashed underneath that very crowded carpet along with the Hudson probe. But at least one organization of community leaders has spoken up on the issue and has also raised the importance of instituting an independent probe of what happened not just on during and after Feb. 8 but what happened in the years leading up to that date.

No Independent Probe in Sight as the "Sweeping" Continues...

The entire city's paying the high price for this mishandling of the department right now yet City Hall has been fairly quiet about these practices and the probe itself, which will look everywhere else but at those practices which ultimately led to the probe being initiated in the first place. Not as a means to shine any real light on the micromanagement of the police department and its end result, but to divert attention away from it. That's the point behind the clearing of City Hall most notably Hudson's office by guess what, Hudson himself. Because for the probe to be truly "sweeping", it would have to include past problems with Leach and the actions taken by city officials involving the police department going back a few years. To be truly a form of "independent oversight", it would have to be conducted by an entity outside City Hall and reviewed by someone not engaged in a financial arrangement with anyone in City Hall. Because when it comes to the buildup to that Feb. 8 traffic stop and cover up, if you want to find those responsible you just need to count the cooks in the kitchen of the RPD.

This past behavior fostered by elements of City Hall is one of the major reasons why the city at least for the moment has put itself on the map of corrupt governmental entities on the Inland Empire. And face it, it's very difficult to upstage neighboring San Bernardino County but Riverside, the city not the county, came pretty close to doing just that the past several months. Public trust in both the police chief and City Hall have plummeted. And people who mused about the corruption in that other county now wonder what's going on in their own city.

Many Riversiders have been talking about how there needed to be a truly independent probe done of the events and intrigue surrounding the Feb. 8 incident when former Riverside Chief Russ Leach crashed his car while intoxicated on alcohol and medication and then was stopped some time and distance later by two patrol officers from his own agency. In fact most people said there should have been such a probe done from day one but of course, that didn't happen but then hey, it took a while for the criminal investigation of Leach's accident to start after the police department he led dawdled over it for nearly two days. And that was after the management at the department had already decided not to treat the incident as the crime that it turned out to be.

What happened was that Hudson opened up his own probe, hired Best, Best and Krieger attorney Grover Trask to provide "independent oversight" and assigned the lieutenant of the internal affairs division, Mike Cook to serve as Trask's liaison to the department. Hudson of course, has also kept himself appraised of what's going on very much but then given his years spent in micromanagement of the agency, that task shouldn't have proven all that difficult. Many different interviews were conducted and then the different accounts of events were left to be sifted through to determine the narrative of what had happened.

What the public will know when the "results" of the internal probe are announced to the Press Enterprise sometime next week is that this is what we did, Yes/No (pick one) there was improper behavior and if so, we handled it internally and by the way, have a nice day. That's pretty much it folks. If there's misconduct that was discovered, you won't know who the city went after, whether it was the officers, the sergeant, the watch commander or the upper management including Acting Chief John DeLaRosa. You won't know if they "got" the people who are truly guilty or those who are really not guilty of anything. That is of course by design.

You'll just know that Hudson cleared City Hall along with his own office early on in this "sweeping" probe to add to what you already know, which is that Hudson and City Hall have chosen their sacrificial lambs. Because make no mistake about it, the truly guilty parties in this mess aren't those who would be subject to a probe inside the police department which after all, is an agency with a house of cards sitting at its top waiting for a wind storm. And that "house" and those in it might be sitting quietly waiting to see if the new chief will issue demolition orders or not. Who will the police chief be and what will the command staff look like when he or she is finished with it? That's a question that's always asked when there's a changing at the guard inside any law enforcement agency especially if the head of the "guard" is coming from the outside as is the wishes of most people. But then given that the new chief will be hired by Hudson, it could very much be the same guard with a new face at the helm. It's too early to tell at this point. And much of how it will play out might be dependent on what kind of probe Hudson really conducted of this incident and its cover up.

But it will be very difficult for the public to know what really happened, a point raised in the Eastside Think Tank's press release. It will be impossible to know if the right people are being held accountable for what happened on Feb. 8 because we already know that those responsible for what led up to it won't be joining them.


But it's highly probable that not much is really going to change from the Hudson probe because it will serve mainly as a prop to keep real change from taking place. A hand or two might be slapped but because this probe is so top secret, it will pretty much be business as usual at City Hall and the RPD as most of this unseemly mess gets swept under the carpet which will then be made up to look nicer before Riverside's next chief arrives.

The RPD is Like a House of Cards...

The dominoes started falling inside the police department with Leach being placed on medical leave pending his medical retirement. DeLaRosa as acting chief started becoming less visible than ever after the city released the city logs involving the use of the cell phones of "key players" in this incident and his chances of gaining the permanent job became somewhat less than stellar. Apparently, Capt. Michael Blakely of the department's personnel division has begun issuing orders and initiating internal investigations including the placement of at least four police officers on administrative leave. The rest of the command staff's not too thrilled by this emerging dynamic, which makes it clear that these are very interesting days faced by the police department. Although it's enough to make those sitting closest to the chief spot a bit apprehensive and you can't really blame them if that's the case.

And since the members of the highest level of the command staff have already been paraded at roll call sessions talking about how they are one big happy family while looking anything but, it's interesting that the only one who's really happy right now is one-time deputy chief Blakely who some say is having the time of his life. Everyone else is left at that level is left wondering who will be standing when the new chief comes and begins heading the police department, well at least as much as a chief can while under Hudson's and DeSantis' umbrella.

And in the anticipation of the hiring of a new police chief, schedules of some captains have been adjusted and the unhappy crew have been more visible for longer periods of time but then they have to be to prove they're up to snuff when their new boss arrives. Because otherwise, the alternative might be to clean house and start anew with a new bunch of them. That's happened in police departments that have been in upheaval even greater than that impacting Riverside's police department. Will it be status quo or Survivor Island? That remains to be seen but it will be interesting to watch who goes and who's left standing, who wins what challenge and who gets a round of immunity. The only thing needed is a tropical setting and a charismatic host to this reality show.

But then this "house" wasn't built on the sturdiest of foundations and in upcoming weeks, there will be a closer look at how the house of the RPD was built. From the top, instead of its base which is how most houses are built.

Per usual in the article there are quotes delivered by city officials in response to the allegations that the police department's been micromanaged by Hudson's office that are truly gems in their own right. Because these individuals in particular should really know better.

Mayor Ron Loveridge whose office was tipped off by an anonymous woman not too long after Leach's traffic stop. Joining him is Councilman and Mayor Pro Tem Steve Adams who actually outdoes the mayor with his own insights. Mostly because of Adams' own history with the police department, not so much as a former officer but as a councilman who still apparently likes to keep his fingers in the boiling cauldron of the police department. There has to be a reason why


(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Both Loveridge and Councilman Steve Adams rejected the suggestion that Hudson and other city management staff have exerted undue control over the Police Department.

"I think the idea of (the city manager) micromanaging the police department is a fiction," Loveridge said. With multiple departments and more than 2,000 employees to oversee, "It's just not possible."

Adams dismissed the think tank's claims that City Hall mishandled the aftermath of the chief's stop, and that the process hasn't been transparent.

"No matter what happens, they're going to find fault in it," Adams said.

Actually Loveridge knows it's not all "fiction" and Adams knows that the probe's not "transparent". Even Hudson has admitted that it's not because the city residents who paid for it won't know who was responsible for trying to cover up the commission of a crime by the former police chief. So it's a bit odd for two elected officials to be quoted as saying what they said, although Adams is up for reelection next year and no doubt hoping his constituents have short memories.





Some interesting comments light up the article page including several which answered the assertions made by both elected officials.


(excerpt, Press Enterprise)




The only "fiction" in this story is that Hudson and Loveridge are competent.




City manager is a one trick pony. Tearing down buildings and building new ones. It's hard to believe he and Mayor/Council weren't aware the Chief had serious substance abuse problems after the Chief's near miss with the San Diego law five years ago. Then they all turn around and approve a new multi year contract for him.

A sorry example of failed leadership is like an orphan. In government, nobody is responsible for bad decisions. Same as it ever was.


They approved the contract because they knew Leach would let Brad Hudson run the Department. The Mayor says "That's impossible", but Brad gets it done with the help of his it midget helper Tom Desantis. It just goes to show you how out of touch the mayor realy is! That also goes for most council members!



I agree with Alex Tortes. The council should hire and fire the police chief, because they are accountable to the voters. City Government shouldn't be run like some royal oligarchy with publicly unaccountable Czars doing whatever they want under this shadowy secret bill of rights that keeps 'investigations' looking like coverups. Riverside citizens are the voters who own the city government, not the other way around.




It appears that the City's strategy in handling the alleged cover up is to simply cover it up. Brilliant!



Finally a propective that has value speaking for the people.
Adams doesn't think that City Hall mishandled the aftermath of the chief's stop.... And we wonder where it all went wrong.


Looks like Brad Hudson may retire sooner than he expected. His management style is getting in peoples way.

Steve Adams and the Mayor along with some members of the city council forget that the "Good Ole Boy" network crop's it's ugly head up from time to time. They forget they are members. Like it or not. Just like the officers and supervisor's were told by higher ups on how to handle the drunk chief.

As a former city of riverside police officer, councilman Steve Adams knows how the department works and how chain of command is law.

Not for a minute should we believe that city manager Brad Hudson members of the police department and city council members did not know the chief was a Loose Cannon.



just for giggles, ask why Tom DeSantis and Brad Hudson each drive a City owned vehicles, how much it costs per mile, and where they each live (neither in Riverside) along with how many unreported collisions have occured for each executive management staff including elected officials over the past three years that have not been formally documented.




To Be Continued...




Press Enterprise Columnist Cassie MacDuff keeps people posted on what's going down with those corruption scandals in San Bernardino County.





Corona considers cutting bus routes.

Public Meetings

Monday, April 5 at 4p.m. the Human Resources Board will hold its monthly meeting discussing this agenda including the recruitment process for the new police chief.

Tuesday, April 6 at 3 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Riverside City Council holds its weekly exercise in meeting. Here is the agenda. Coming back on the closed session agenda is this lawsuit filed by Riverside Police Department lieutenants, Darryl Hurt and Tim Bacon. A rather interesting counterargument to comments made by Loveridge and most especially Adams in the above article about the Think Tank's press release.

Finance Committee Watch

The next Finance Committee is tentatively scheduled for Monday April 12 at 2:30 p.m. Will it actually meet? Your guess is as good as mine but it appears to be back on hiatus.

Thanks Inland Empire Weekly, which mentioned this blog in its issues several weeks ago of IE movers and shakers.