The Lady and the Tiger

The Community Police Review Commission has placed its public report on the Terry Rabb officer involved death online at its Web site.

Terry Rabb OID

Rabb, a Black 35-year-old man suffering from diabetes died in police custody after two officers, Camillo Bonome and John Garcia had responded to a 51/50 call at Rabb's friend's residence.

Missing from the public report, is Commissioner Jim Ward's insightful minority report. When that issue came up to a vote, other commissioners voted against its inclusion in the official report. An assistant city attorney, Susan Wilson, who just happened to be on hand at the meeting said that they could not proceed with a minority report unless they had a process already in place. Actually, the commission has been issuing minority reports on citizen complaints for several years now, and in fact, was encouraged to do so by Chief Russ Leach at a workshop on March 17, 2004. So there is already a process in place.

The lack of a similar written process involving the final disposition of the department's officer-involved deaths did not stop City Manager Brad Hudson from opting out of the process entirely on the Summer Lane shooting and leaving it up to one of the parties in dispute(in this case, Leach) to make that decision. Was there a representative from the city attorney's office present at the time, advising Hudson to put together a process in writing first?

It's doubtful, but the city attorney's office has been fairly busy making up for the years it had spent disinterested in the CPRC, during the past several months and then some.

Susan Wilson has been attending the CPRC's meetings during the past several months not long after a flurry of wrongful death claims and law suits were filed in connection to three out of the past five officer-involved deaths. If the family of Douglas Steven Cloud follows through on its intentions to pursue litigation, then it will be four out of the last five.

Currently known or proposed litigation against the city on officer-involved deaths includes the following:

Summer Marie Lane: At least one law suit filed by family members

Terry Rabb: Two claims filed against the city by family members

Claims filed in Rabb case

Lee Deante Brown: One claim filed by Brown's family

Claim filed in Brown case

Douglas Steven Cloud: A claim could be pending

Family hires attorney


Some more statistics to drop off:

Percentage of OIDs in litigation or threatened litigation, pre-Summer Lane: 16.6%

Percentage of OIDs in litigation or threatened litigation Lane and beyond: 80%

With statistics like this, what's a city to do? Well, wait until opportunity drops into your lap, this time courtesy of a law suit filed by the Riverside Police Officers Association. Or more specifically, by one of its members, Officer Ryan Wilson. On Sept. 5, he filed his lawsuit against both the CPRC and the city of Riverside. The RPOA is duty bound to represent Wilson in a law suit whether it agreed with him or not, though it's likely that it is in agreement in this particular case.

The response I received from city residents who heard the news about this latest law suit, was why on earth would Wilson, the RPOA, the department and the city want to reopen that chapter of the city's history again? After all, many people had thought that the city manager's decision not to make a decision and its end result had closed the book on Lane, as far as those parties were concerned. Well, except for any law suits filed by Lane's family members which are currently being litigated but that's another story.

Councilman Dom Betro himself had explained this process, and then said, that was that. It's time to move on.

Well, it's clear that everyone was wrong about that.

Summer Lane has returned to the forefront again, even as other incustody deaths that have occurred since hers have either come in front of the CPRC or are closing in on their dates of deliberation and decision.

The Rabb case still awaits a finding released by the CPRC, although the clock ran out on that case nearly three weeks ago. The police department has finally released its iron grip on its files pertaining to the Brown shooting and those three case books are currently being examined by the CPRC, with an estimate of 30 days until that is completed. The police department is also scheduled to brief, but not take any questions from the CPRC on the Cloud shooting next week.

Still, Lane, otherwise known as the case which will not go away, has reemerged, thanks this time to Wilson and the organization which represents his interests. The five-page law suit provides insight into what format that will be.

In Ryan Wilson v the City of Riverside (RIC456429), Wilson alleged that he was denied due process when his attempts to administratively appeal a finding against him regarding the Lane shooting were denied. At first glance, this allegation is puzzling giving that the final disposition on the Lane shooting was definitely in his favor. In fact, as stated, Hudson opted out of the decision making process and deferred that responsibility to Leach who backed both his own department's investigation and his Internal Affairs Division's own finding that the shooting was in line with the department's use of force policy, to the surprise of no one. That outcome should have made Wilson, the RPOA and the department happy, but apparently some concerns still linger at least on the part of Wilson.

What Wilson is actually stating in his law suit is that he wants to appeal the CPRC's finding on the same shooting, which was that the shooting violated the department's use of force policy. The same finding that was again, essentially nullified by both his direct employer, Leach and by the city government including those members of the city council (through their public silence) who ran on successful election campaigns while claiming that they were firm supporters of the CPRC.

According to state law and the police officers' bill of rights, an officer who has completed his probationary period has the right to appeal a sustained finding and/or any resultant discipline through an arbitration process, as well as through an earlier Skelly hearing. Almost always, the cases that wind up in front of arbitrators are those where the final dispositions have been against the officer and those officers have been disciplined to the extent that they experienced a loss in wages, through either suspension without pay, demotion or termination of employment.

Writ of Mandamus

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One exception occurred in the case of Caloca vs the County of San Diego (1999), a case which is cited in the RPOA's law suit. This law suit which was based on a claim similar to Wilson's was decided in the county's favor in trial court, then overturned on appeal. The response to it has differed from one jurisdiction to the next.

In Berkeley, which is the home of one of the strongest and oldest forms of civilian oversight, the response of the city attorney, Manuela Alburquerque, was to cave, according to an article published in the Berkeley Daily Planet.

Berkeley's response to Caloca

(excerpt)

City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque said the Caloca case opens the door for a cumbersome and therefore costly appeal process, and she suggested that the police chief no longer use the commission's findings for any personnel-related purposes.

It is clear that the power of Caloca is entirely dependent on the integrity of the city and county officials who are left to interpret it. It is most influential in cases where governmental officials led by their city attorneys are willing to sell out their civilian oversight mechanisms on the way to denying their police officers the right to an administrative review while claiming that this process is "burdensome" or "too costly". Berkeley's refusal to honor the arbitration process for its officers is also what led it to strike a serious blow against its police review board without its long time foe, the Berkeley's police officers association, having to lift a finger.

On the other hand, this court decision has the least impact in cities and counties where the leadership honors both processes, in that they protect the rights of their civilian oversight mechanisms and they keep the administrative appeal process for officers intact as well.

It is not clear which group the city of Riverside falls into at this point.

However, in his law suit, Wilson is clearly hedging his bets, by providing the city and if not it, the Riverside County Superior Court judge(as long as it's not that Sutton trial judge) with two options in his case. The first being to "compel" the CPRC to overturn or nullify its sustained finding on the Lane shooting. The other being, that Wilson be granted an administrative hearing involving that finding. Whether or not the city government has respect for both processes or not may ultimately determine which of these two options are exercised. Behind door number one, is the process which nullifies the CPRC. Behind the second door, lies that which essentially validates it.

Kind of like the story of the Lady and the Tiger by Frank R. Stockton, Riverside style.

In earlier times in a distant setting, that was the story of a man whose life or death was literally in the hands of a woman whose intentions he was not sure that he could trust. The same is true in a sense involving the CPRC in the role of the male protagonist and the city's government as the king's daughter.

In this updated version, there lies a third option which is to not open either door, but to instead fight the law suit in court. It appears that at least initially the city council has decided to do just that. Perhaps its members are remembering that the majority of the city's voters in every precinct of every ward voted to protect the CPRC from political influence by placing it safely in the city's charter. Of course, simply because the city's voters and many of its other residents believed that the CPRC should be free to perform its duties without facing political pressure does not mean that this is what they will get, as this law suit and its aftermath will ultimately show. There are two separate entities that both want the CPRC to either be weakened or to go away, and at the moment they are on opposite sides of a court room. Months from now, they could face off together against both the CPRC and the voters who supported it and the public could be none the wiser. Or the city could choose the option which best serves both parties, thus negating the Caloca decision's impact in this city.

The RPOA has always opposed the CPRC since even before its creation by city ordinance in 2000. It is honest in its consistency of targeting the CPRC first politically through the local election process(unsuccessfully) and later legally through civil court. It is merely picking up the mantle that has been held by every law enforcement union that has ever existed in a city or county that also includes a civilian review mechanism, except that it has reversed the usual protocol. All of them work from the same playbook until they get tired and toss it aside. The RPOA is doing nothing more than what everyone expects it to do, based on its track record. After all, a tiger's got to eat.

In contrast, the city's government embraced the CPRC as that "most important commission"(a statement made ironically by one of its detractors) until it issued its ruling on the Lane case, and the city realized for perhaps the first time, that its decisions could potentially expose it to civic liability. After that, the city tried to remold the CPRC into a public relations tool to bridge the gap between City Hall, the police department and its communities. Even the commissioners met recently to determine what their role was to be, six years after the commission's inception. The community's response was for its members to get out of their seats and exercise the powers given to them in the charter.

Ultimately, it is what the city council decides behind closed doors and not what happens in public inside a courtroom that may decide the CPRC's fate on remaining the body that is heavily supported by the city's residents. Whatever decision that the city government makes behind closed doors, will likely remain there, in secret as is often the case when it reaches settlements with people or organizations that litigate against it. Though it is hard to imagine that Wilson or the RPOA would remain silent if the decision were made in their favor, a fact that would actually work in the city's favor if the finding were eventually nullified.

Whether the finding is nullified either in open court by a judge or behind closed doors by the city council, one involved party will ultimately be painted as the villain in this piece, complete with sound effects and the other party will wring its hands and say to its constituents, well we tried very hard when community members protest. In response, the city will merely point to the entity with the track record etched in stone when it comes to fighting the CPRC and there is not a single resident in the city who does not recognize the identity of that party. The other party, whose identity is also known, could be in a situation of sitting back in relief that by nullifying the finding on the Lane shooting, it has lessened its own risk of civil liability in any litigation related to that incident without being held accountable for doing so.

And that reality, which could be as inevitable as the rising sun, would not be entirely fair if it were both parties who were involved in the nullification of the Lane finding, but as they say, que sera, sera. That process began several weeks ago when one city council member publicly complained that people were not showing up at city council meetings criticizing the "RPOA's law suit".

At least, the city did respond right on schedule to the law suit through a document filed on Oct. 6 which was sent to a judge which the city finds much more hospitable than that Sutton trial judge. Handling the case is the Honorable Dallas Holmes, an individual with many civic ties.

In its seven-page response, the city rebutted nearly all of the arguments filed by Wilson, stating that it denied each and every allegation in its entirety, from the first paragraph to its last. Interestingly enough, the city challenged Wilson's contention that the CPRC was a separate legal entity worthy of being sued separately. Instead, the city argued that the CPRC was actually an agency of the city. The real reason the city made this distinction is critical, but a separate issue from this law suit and worthy of its own discussion down the line.

There were several allegations, the city did not initially deny, most significantly those in paragraphs that addressed the actions that Wilson engaged into up to and including the Lane shooting. The city's response was that these allegations were immaterial to this litigation and thus there is no need to respond to them. Then the city went and responded to the allegations anyway by denying all of them which is interesting, because all these "allegations" were directly related to Wilson's account of the Lane shooting. The unwillingness of the city's outside legal counsel to address this issue without a big caveat attached makes it clear that civil liability and its twin, risk management, not defending the CPRC's right to investigate officer-involved deaths, is what comes first in their minds. That may not be good news for the CPRC. It is not really good news for the RPOA either.

That is also why that even if it were necessary to do so to defend the CPRC's powers and responsibilities under the city's charter by bringing the issue to trial, that day would never happen. The city would never take that risk, not with pending litigation filed in the case against both Wilson and the city. Remember, the plaintiff and one of the defendants in this law suit are both defendants in another case being processed in the same courthouse, hence the quandary. Not to mention that the city that is opposing Wilson in his own law suit today will be paying for his defense in any wrongful death litigation tomorrow, because he is a city employee.

Of course, if this law suit mirrors the Caloca case, it could end up going to trial inside a courtroom and once the door has been opened on the shooting(by Wilson through his statement of facts), it may be difficult to shut it again or like trying to put a genie back in its bottle. Of course, a trial involving any part of the Lane shooting which would place Wilson on the witness stand under cross-examination is probably the last thing the city or the police department would want to face, if there were any way to avoid it. Why, because again, Wilson and the city are defendants in other pending litigation in connection with the Lane shooting taking place in the same courthouse. And as mentioned previously, all decisions regarding Wilson's defense in any wrongful death litigation will be made by his employer, the city.

The city completed its response by listing six affirmative defenses against the validity of Wilson's writ, and its lawyer signed off as a representative of both the city and the CPRC, which again, was erroneously sued, according to the city. The last thing the city also wants is for the CPRC to be viewed as and sued as a separate legal entity, for obvious reasons.

Wilson's attorney and the city's attorney from its outside firm of choice met inside a courtroom, on Oct. 11 in order to postpone their first hearing to a future date. Initial briefs were scheduled to be filed later this month.

In this final report to the city before the dissolution of the stipulated judgment, monitor Joe Brann had recommended that the CPRC be strengthened. The city leadership appeared to nod in agreement to that suggestion, as it nodded in agreement with many things in the eve of that judgment, like the 120 digital video recorders which have yet to be purchased using the $500,000 that was allotted from the general fund to pay for them. Currently, according to Hudson and his sidekick, Asst. City Manager, Tom DeSantis, the cameras are at the bottom of a growing shopping list. Unlike the CPRC, the cameras are still viewed as assets, not liabilities.

Now, seven months later, is the city still serious about honoring its promise regarding its only form of civilian oversight? Here sits the CPRC in the arena, facing two doors. What will the city decide today? What will it decide six months from now?

(excerpt, from Stockton)

Her decision had been indicated in an instant, but it had been made after days and nights of anguished deliberation. She had known she would be asked, she had decided what she would answer, and, without the slightest hesitation, she had moved her hand to the right.

The question of her decision is one not to be lightly considered, and it is not for me to presume to set myself up as the one person able to answer it. And so I leave it with all of you: Which came out of the opened door - the lady, or the tiger?

Which will it be?

Hiding in plain sight: An update

Second in a series

The Riverside Police Officers Association reached a tentative agreement in its negotiation talks with the city of Riverside, not long after one was reached by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

RPOA and city come to tentative agreement

RPOA president and vice-president, Ken Tutwiler and Brian Smith spoke before the city council with a dozen other police officers in attendance.

(excerpt)

Tutwiler expressed his gratitude to the City Council on Tuesday night.
"It has been a grueling experience," Tutwiler said, adding, "We're very pleased with the outcome."

The city council voted 7 to 0 in support of the agreement and one council member Frank Schiavone attributed the thawing in a long-lasting stalemate, to divine intervention. The sergeants of the RPOA still are negotiating as is the Riverside Police Administrators' Association. The tentative agreements are taken back to the unions' memberships for a vote.

This brings nearly to a conclusion, a summer of intense labor negotiations that most of the union heads called the worst in recent memory. The tally was one strike vote taken by the SEIU General Unit and two law suits filed by the RPOA and the RPAA, citing problems with the negotiations.

Members of the RPOA's negotiating unit have said that a better package will help in recruiting and retaining new officers including those from hard to attract groups, which will enhance the diversity of the department. These are commendable statements coming from the leadership of an organization that represents officers of all races, ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations.

After that, the police officers remained and sat with community members, city staff and the police department's leadership to listen to a presentation done by Police Chief Russ Leach on the status of the implementation of the Strategic Plan, six months after the city council voted to further reforms after the state attorney general's office dissolved its stipulated judgment in March.

The city council members participated in the process in a way they have not done so in years. Each asked good questions and several raised concerns. Let's hope they stay interested.

Other city officials like Councilman Steve Adams pontificated. A retired Riverside Police Department officer and a current businessman, Adams said that the police department did not hire officers on the basis of race, gender or even religion, but hired the best, most qualified officers who could make the grade. His speech was the only one made by a city official that was applauded by many of the White male officers in the audience. No female officers attended the meeting, nor were there any Black or Asian-American officers inside the chambers. A handful of male Latino officers from both the leadership and the rank and file did attend. They did not appear nearly as enthusiastic about Adams' words. There lies part of your ethnic, racial and gender divide.

To a White man like Adams, who has not faced institutional racism and/or sexism as a member of two privileged classes which when combined form the most privileged one, his words are just that, his affirmation that race and gender do not play a role in the RPD's hiring practices. Not when he was an officer in the 1980s and not in the present day. After all, he looks at the RPD and sees White men like himself and he sees no problem with that. There really is not a problem with that as long as people outside his race and gender can see themselves as integral parts of the department as well.

Several unidentified critics of prior commentaries here on race and gender have stated that I would not rest until Black officers had "taken over" the department(even though their percentage is currently around 7%) and that I advocated the police department kidnapping women off the street to force them to be police officers. Neither action has taken place, nor are they likely to take place in the near future.

After all, the RPD is still 73% White and 92% male in its composition, figures that have not changed greatly in the past 10 years. In fact, the percentage of female officers may have decreased, from its former high of 10%. The percentage of Latino officers has increased markedly in the past few years, in part due to aggressive recruiting efforts that obviously have gone beyond what Adams believes is acceptable or necessary and they have made some difference. However, the percentage of Latino officers still currently stands at 19%, which is less than half of the representation of Latinos in the city's population(which was 38.1% in its most recent census but has increased greatly since then).

The department should hire candidates who are qualified to do the job and it should go seek out and hire the "best of the best" candidates to become officers. However, Adams' perspective like that of everyone else is shaped by many different qualities including his race and gender. His perspective appears to be this, if the officers who are being hired constitute the only "best and the brightest" out there and if most of those being hired are currently White men, then those are two qualities among the rest that must help define what the "best and the brightest" means.

If this weren't true, then Adams would never have disagreed so strongly with the contention that if you can not adequately diversify your workforce by recruiting among a wealth of qualified candidates, then perhaps it is time to increase your efforts to widen the net that you cast when it comes to recruiting candidates to become officers in this department. He seems to think that if you fish from the same limited pools for qualified officers over and over and if what you catch is mostly White male officers, then that is the best that can be done. Adams should be the first to push for casting that net wider and broadening the search for better and fresher recruitment pools. The police department has made small strides in that direction, but it would have been helpful of Adams and other elected officials to take the lead and support increasing those search parameters even further.

His clear hostility towards retention programs also puts proof to the pudding that the above contentions are true, but those statements came later in the program.

Unfortunately for Adams and others who share his belief system, the Strategic Plan has an objective that specifically addresses this issue. That is objective #1.5 which is located on page 11 in this document. This means that diversifying the department is not optional, but a mandated goal included in a plan that is currently filed in Riverside County Superior Court. The exact text of #1.5 is:

Create a workforce that better reflects the city of Riverside

Adams' contention also appears to be that if the department is hiring the "best of the best" and if they are not hiring very many men of color or women, then they just are not out there. Or there are no men of color or women who are good enough to be Riverside Police Department officers anywhere.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

There are qualified men of color and women out there who would like to pursue a career in law enforcement. There are other men of color and women who may be too young to be police officers, who would want to pursue a career in law enforcement. And there are individuals who are men of color and women who perhaps would consider law enforcement as a career option if there were more men of color and women in law enforcement who were more visible to them. As one lieutenant I spoke with recently said after laughing in a "I've heard this too many times before" manner at Adams' diatribe, the best recruitment tool is for men of color and women in law enforcement to be front and center in the recruitment process. An example is that a Latina police officer would be the best person to recruit other Latinas as police officers because they could look at her and think, if she can do it, so can I.

However, there are only four Latinas currently working as police officers in the RPD and that is a number that has remained unchanged for several years. The department has not had a net gain in either female officers or Latino officers, male or female, in at least nine months, according to an EEOC report filed in September. When I brought up this issue at the city council meeting, city officials and community leaders(of which only one even spoke) did not see these figures as a problem or they did not seem to think that the EEOC figures were correct. If the latter is true, then I would like to see the numbers that actually are correct and if those different numbers exist, I would then ask the city of Riverside why it is sending erroneous statistics on the department's racial and gender breakdown to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

One community leader told her story of referring a Latina to the police department and that this process was going well. And she's right, the progress towards producing a department that mirrors the communities it serves comes in baby steps like that. Still, there needs to be an examination of the larger picture.

The reality is also that officers of all different races and genders and backgrounds came to be in the police department following different paths. Some cases, through the more traditional recruiting methods. Others were recruited through the equivalent of searching for a needle in a haystack. How many were hired outside of the usual fishing holes? Probably quite a few, including male Latinos and women. There are some good stories out there and perhaps the personnel and training division should put some of them in a handbook and distribute it and the first recipient on the list should be Adams. At least to remind itself and people like him that good officers of all races and both genders come from many different places. You just have to be a good fisherman like what's-his-name.

One can only hope that none of these individuals who weren't hired through the traditional recruitment pool were sitting in the audience when Adams made his comments. But then it would be doubtful that it is the first time they would have heard this attitude while in Riverside.

Officer Cheryl Hayes, who is one of the hardest working recruiting officers in the department's recent history had an interesting story about her career path. She began her career as a dispatcher. Now, she talks to women who start out wanting to be dispatchers and tells them that they can be police officers like her. She is also the department's second most senior Black female officer, a visible presence that shows that Black women are working as police officers. Since she began working in this division, the department has hired only its third Black female officer and has employed one who is a cadet.

Adams should receive some slack for his comments, as the department that employed him in the 1980s has moved on. The practices that Adams believed were appropriate back in the day, are not viewed quite the same way today, one decade and one stipulated judgment later. When you look at Adams, you are looking at an era that hopefully, is on its way to going bye-bye. By the time the expenses from that era came up past-due, the total costs to the city's residents were $22 million and counting. Not that the department does not still have its work cut out for it in many ways but it is hopefully working towards finishing an era that it and the city can't afford(including financially) to repeat. Still, it remains very much a work in progress with many challenges lying ahead.

Adams also blasted mentorships which have proved effective at improving retention in other law enforcement agencies as "remedial training" for those who can not cut it and should be out of the department. However, mentoring programs for both female and male officers and their families have provided dividends for many law enforcement agencies which operate in the modern day world. Men of color and female officers have benefited greatly, but what Adams is showing through his statements deriding these programs is that these officers clearly are not as valued as their White male counterparts. Ironically, White male officers benefit from mentoring programs as well.

Then Police Chief Russ Leach stood up to respond to questions on this issue and appeared to compare mentoring and other strategies for retaining officers as a form of "scared straight" presentation to new candidates before they enter the peace officer academies, so they know what police work is all about. If they drop out at what Leach called the "pre-academy" level, it was better, because it would save the city a lot of money.

The problem is that even by Leach's own admission earlier this year, quite a few of the candidates who dropped out recently, as was the case in the past during this phase of training, have been women including women of color. The statistic presented earlier this year, was as many as eight women dropping out, at least half at the pre-academy level. Capt. Pete Esquival, who formerly headed the department's Personnel and Training division, said several months later, it was three women who had dropped out.

You can look at new officers of all races and genders as commodities, or considering the expenditure put out by the city even to bring them to the pre-academy level, as investments. Candidates drop out at all levels of the process, for different reasons. Some of them do so because they find that they really do not want to be police officers. Others do so because they still do, but not at the RPD. Others just get discouraged because they look around and do not see anyone there who looks like them or understands what it is to be a female officer in training or a person of color who is training to be an officer or both. White male officers do not have to look far to see plenty of officers, field training officers, sergeants, lieutenants and captains who share their racial and gender identities. They see so many of them, many of them do not give it a second thought, take it for granted and question why it is important for others to have those experiences as they do.

A possible investigative technique to determine why women and men have dropped out at the pre-academy phase could include exit interviews of the women and men who drop out(as opposed to "washed out" or "couldn't cut it", two red flag terms if there ever were any), interviews of the officers who interact with these candidates, and perhaps even audio or video taping these interactions between trainee and "tour guide" for training purposes. Any process that is "working" involving a governmental agency can stand up to periodic examination without protest.

If there are good candidates who drop out, there are also candidates who survive that process who may not be the best candidates to be employed by the RPD. During the past several years, several RPD officers have been arrested and/or fired for being child molesters, planting evidence on individuals, the off-duty evasion of police officers while driving and other administrative or criminal offenses. These candidates likely survived this "survival of the fittest" process without experiencing many problems. Those came later on when they could really do damage to the department and the public through their misconduct. So, this process is not fool-proof yet it is apparently serving primarily as a litmus test to see who can survive it rather than as a measure to improve retention, from the descriptions provided by people who talk about it.

After all, any process that is designed as a weeding out process, does not serve to improve retention, even if it is advertised that way.

Mentoring and other similar strategies may be four letter words in some Riverside circles, but elsewhere they have served as useful tools for retention implemented by law enforcement agencies tackling with these same issues.

Sgt. Wilma Purcell of Ann Arbor Police Department in Michigan conducted research on whether a mentoring program would increase the retention rates in her agency. She selected the Communications Unit to perform her study so she could evaluate the effects of the program before taking it department-wide. At the time, the communications unit had a poor retention rate and she was trying to find a solution that would increase it, while minimizing financial costs.

Mentoring for Retention

Her research had taught her that mentoring was proactive and good at honing skills like leadership ability, communication and networking skills. It boosted department morale and did not cost very much. One important point however became very clear:

Police chiefs, upper management and line officers needed to endorse the principles as valid and viable for a mentoring approach to succeed.

Purcell goes further in her report by stating that although it is more common for law enforcement officers to embrace mentoring as a strategy to improve retention and boost morale, there are still traditionalists who frown upon it, believing it is "soft" and doesn't belong in law enforcement. Obviously Purcell has met her share of people like Steve Adams. What is interesting about Adams' derogatory comments about mentoring and other retention strategies is that even in his day, mentoring of some sort was always taking place. The only difference is that as Purcell stated, it was a more "closed and covert" system involving only a few select individuals, rather than more open and up front and allowing all employees to participate and thus benefit.

In his book, Brotherhood of Corruption, former Chicago Police Department narcotics detective Juan Antonio Juarez and other officers called their mentors, who were higher ranking officers, "The China men". These officers in management were instrumental to getting Juarez and others assigned to the department's narcotics unit, he wrote in his book. So informal mentoring of officers by other officers existed long before official programs were created.

Brotherhood of Corruption site

One of the reasons why Purcell stated that she chose the Communications unit, other than because it was a small manageable starting point for the process, was that she was hoping that positive feedback from its beneficiaries would reach sworn officers in the rest of the department and that they would have incentive to volunteer for the process rather than feel they were either pushed to sign up at its beginning or that they were excluded from the process.

Another useful tool, which was cost-effective to use in addressing retention, was the exit interview for employees who had left the agency. Purcell added that it was important to wait at least six months after the employee's departure to give that person a chance to recover from the experience, in order to answer the questions.

The United States Department of Justice in 2001 through its Office of Justice Programs division , published a guide for the recruitment and retention of female officers. The benefits of hiring more female officers were many, according to research conducted on the issue.

(excerpt)

Research conducted both in the United States and internationally clearly demonstrated that women police officers use a style of policing that relies less on physical force. They are better at defusing and de-escalating potentially violent confrontations with citizens and are less likely to become involved in incidents of excessive force. Additionally,women officers often possess better communication skills than their male counterparts and are better able to facilitate the cooperation and trust required to implement a community policing model.

In 2001, only 14.1% of law enforcement officers in the United States were women. That figure has not changed very much in the last five years. The percentage of women in the RPD is lower still, currently nearly 9%. Women of color make up less than 25% of all female officers and less than 2% of total officers in the police department.

Interestingly for all the talk that female applicants are dropping out of the RPD during the pre-academy phase because they can't cut it after seeing first-hand what policing in Riverside is like, there are actually higher percentages of women working as police officers in larger agencies in cities with "tougher" streets than those in Riverside.

In the Los Angeles Police Department for example, female officers comprise 18.9% of all officers according to these figures from 2002. The percentages of women of color including Black, Latina and Asian-American officers are much higher than in the RPD. In 2004, women accounted for 17% of all sworn officer positions in the New York Police Department, a figure noted in this speech by Deborah J. Daniels, the assistant attorney general, in charge of the Office of Justice Programs in the D.O.J. So what is really at work here?

That office published the following report.

Recruiting and retaining women

This manual addresses the problem of recruiting and retaining qualified women to be police officers and included various strategies to address each issue. The major suggestion for enhancing the recruitment of female candidates was to widen the pool from which a department selects its candidates.

For retention, the manual also suggested that mentoring be used to increase retention. Many female officers often felt isolated and feel there is no one to talk to regarding advice and support. Mentoring helps fill this gap.

(excerpt)

The goal of creating such programs is to cultivate one-to-one partnerships between new and veteran officers that will encourage employees to reach their fullest potential as law enforcement professionals.

Other strategies for improving the retention of women involved a zero-tolerance of sexual discrimination, racial discrimination, harassment and retaliation(for filing complaints) in the workplace. Updating the evaluation process to accommodate a community policing philosophy and providing positive feedback and awards for efforts and successes made in implementing community policing.

The National Center of Women and Policing has dedicated itself to the efforts of recruitment and retention in the workplace. It provides the following services to law enforcement agencies who are serious about improving their records in this area.

Assistance Available to Law Enforcement Agencies:

To assist law enforcement agencies that wish to increase the number of women employees in their workforce, the National Center for Women & Policing offers the following services:

o A regional training seminar on recruiting and retaining women. This 2-day seminar helps law enforcement agencies develop effective recruiting programs to increase the number of female employees.

o Online updates to the self-assessment guide. New programs in law enforcement agencies across the country are described on the Web site and readers can gain access to the latest research about women in policing and other critical issues (www.feminist.org/police/ncwp.asp).

o Onsite consulting by a team of professional law enforcement experts to help agencies identify and remove obstacles to recruiting and retaining women.

For additional information on these services, contact the National Center for Women & Policing at 323-651-2532 or via e-mail atwomencops@feminist.org.


The International Association of Police Chiefs also addressed the challenges of hiring female officers and tried to come up with an action plan to help law enforcement officers grappling with these issues. The association created an ad-hoc committee to deal with these issues, but mirroring a problem in law enforcement, it staffed the committee with female law enforcement management personnel and placed a man in charge. A survey of IAPC's members was conducted, with 97% of those being male and only 3%, female.

The future of women in policing

The fact that so few women were interviewed on issues that pertain to them and other women in their profession did impact the study, because the observations of male executives in management about female law enforcement officers including those in their own agencies would obviously differ greatly from responses given by women holding those positions. Since the basis of the entire report rested on the responses by its surveyed officers, it did provide a masculine slant on the issue. However, the results were very interesting.

The study did show that law enforcement agencies that were committed to recruiting and retaining women did have strategies in place to assist in that effort including mentorships and strong sexual discrimination and harassment policies, complete with enforcement of those policies. Virtually all medium and large law enforcement agencies did have these policies in place but differed in how effectively they were enforced.

Mentoring programs did not fare as well. Only 13% of all agencies surveyed had mentoring programs for women, with the percentage being between 20-25% at the larger sized agencies. The IACP report cited this as an area of great concern, citing how mentoring programs greatly benefited retention in the agencies that did provide them to women.

The IACP report made a series of recommendations in terms of increasing the recruitment and retention of women in law enforcement. Many are similar to those brought up in other investigations.

1) Educate local agencies on the importance of gender diversity

2) Design a comprehensive approach: Turning intentions into action

3) Advertise and recruit: Attract qualified women

4) Screen and hire: Bring on the best candidates

5) Train on sexual harassment: A zero tolerance approach

6) Train on gender discrimination: Recognition and reduction

7) Avoid actionable behavior: Understand litigation issues

8) Establish policies: Improve the role of women in policing

9) Mentor women officers: Strengthen the potential for longevity

10) Improve promotional strategies: More women in leadership roles

11) Evaluate agency action: Understand progress towards diversity

12) Expand research initiatives: Increase understanding of the issues

These recommendations seem like an excellent place to start in terms of addressing the issue of the recruitment and retention of women in the police department. However, they exclude the role that barriers based on racial discrimination in addition to those based on gender discrimination play in terms of affecting women of color who enter into law enforcement. Women of color in law enforcement often face both institutional racism and sexism inside their agencies and both impact their retention. Addressing barriers to women as a gender in law enforcement is only a partial solution to increasing the hiring and retention of women of color. Consequently, addressing racism must be part and parcel to addressing problems recruiting and retaining women of color in law enforcement or the strategies used to address sexism will not be effective.

The city council meeting did not provide me with great confidence in the department's commitment to fulfilling objective #1.5 of the Strategic Plan, dealing with ethnic, racial and gender diversity in the police department. It is likely that the percentage of women officers will continue to drop in the upcoming months.

In fact, I was surprised at some of the comments that were made(though not as much by Adams) and the response that they received. They just serve as a reminder that if you look behind you on the path towards reform, you can see that a great distance has been traveled but if you look ahead, the horizon still appears to be off in the distance and like any horizon, still elusive.

The evolution of an officer-involved shooting

The Riverside Police Department has provided more information on the fatal officer-involved shooting of Douglas Steven Cloud on Oct. 8, 2006 at approximately 4 p.m. on Indiana Avenue.

Police: Shooting victim ignores orders

The headline of the article itself is certain to create some controversy. The news editor(who comes up with headlines for articles, not the reporter for those readers who wish to complain about either headline) referred to Cloud as a "shooting victim" in this headline. That is in contrast to the headline of the story the newspaper printed the day after the shooting, on Oct. 9, which referred to Cloud as a "robbery suspect", a development which also elicited some phone calls here.

The police department's contention is that Cloud was an "attempted robbery suspect". It provided an initial account of what it had called, a robbery in process soon after the shooting. According to that account, the following events took place at the Home Depot on Indiana and Madison.

Customers intervened when Cloud tried to steal merchandise from the Home Depot at Indiana Avenue and Madison Street. There was a struggle at his car, but Cloud managed to escape, driving away from the parking lot at high speed. Cloud lost control and crashed just a few blocks from the store.

Officers responding to a "robbery in progress" at Home Depot spotted the crash and recognized Cloud as the suspect.

That version was provided by Sgt. Leon Phillips to the Press Enterprise, in its third article. An earlier article with this title, Riverside Police shoot, kill robbery suspect provided this account of the incident in Home Depot also by Phillips.

Sgt. Leon Phillips, of the Riverside Police Department, said the man tried to steal a large piece of equipment from the Home Depot at Indiana Avenue and Madison Street and some people at the store intervened. There was a struggle over the item and the man sped away in an older Toyota Celica, Phillips said.

In this later version of the events, there is no specifics provided in terms of whether the individuals who tried to stop Cloud from stealing equipment from the Home Depot were customers or employees. Whether it was employees trying to prevent the theft of their merchandise or customers acting as good Samaritans who intervened in the commission of a petty or grand theft from the store, that has not been clarified at this point. Further information about the struggle over the stolen item in the parking lot has shed some light but more information needs to be known.

The Los Angeles Times referred to Cloud in its own article,Officer had basis to shoot shoplifting suspect as a "fleeing shoplifter", apparently basing its decision to do so on the fact that to date, no gun or other weapon has been uncovered.

(excerpt)

Police say the pursuit began after Cloud left the checkout line at the Home Depot without paying for the carpet cleaner. As he walked toward his 1984 Toyota Celica, which was waiting in the parking lot with its rear hatch open, customers and employees chased him and tried to keep him from getting into the car. Witnesses told police Cloud pushed through the customers in the parking lot, shoving one man to the ground, and sped from store so quickly that several bystanders had to be yanked out of his path. He lost control of the car a short distance away after destroying a small palm tree and skidding into a pickup truck.

Hopefully, in the weeks and months ahead, the police department's and Community Police Review Commission's investigations will be able to get to the bottom of this issue through examining all the available evidence and eyewitness statements of what actually took place at the Home Depot store and what information about that incident was actually dispatched to the four police officers who responded to the incident. Because it is fairly clear that given their initial response at the scene of the car accident, they were likely responding to a "robbery in process" call. Robbery in layman terms is the seizure of property from the possession of someone else by force or threat of force or harm to that person and other people with him. When most people hear the term "robbery", many people associate the term with a weapon, though that might not necessarily be the case.

Was it truly a robbery in progress or was it an interrupted petty or grand theft? If the property was seized off a store shelf or display area and not from a person through violence or threat of violence, is that still a robbery? Can a store shelf or display area be robbed? These questions and others will have to be answered through further investigation by the police department and the Community Police Review Commission, which dispatched its investigator Butch Warnberg out to the scene today.

But if the police officers were called to respond to a robbery in progress whether that was the case or not, then that's the mindset they likely brought to the scene of the smashed car by the palm tree, with Cloud sitting inside. After all, they had been driving to the store to respond to the "robbery in process" and had come across what had apparently been described to them as the getaway car. And sitting inside the car, dazed or not, was the "robber".

For reference purposes, the definition of "robbery" is the following, according to the state's penal code at the following Web site:

California State Code


211. Robbery is the felonious taking of personal property in the possession of another, from his person or immediate presence, and against his will, accomplished by means of force or fear.

212. The fear mentioned in Section 211 may be either:

1. The fear of an unlawful injury to the person or property of the person robbed, or of any relative of his or member of his family; or,

2. The fear of an immediate and unlawful injury to the person or property of anyone in the company of the person robbed at the time of the robbery.

No weapon was found in the car, according to the department's public information officer, Steven Frasher and so far, that part of the story has remained constant. He did state that the entire car still needed to be searched, two days after the shooting occurred.

Further in the latest Press Enterprise article, the department explained why at least one officer and possibly more fired their weapons at Cloud while he was sitting in his vehicle, which had just collided at high speed near a used car dealer shop. His hand was reaching to the central console, he was trying to "flee" the scene and he was in earlier versions, "ignoring" and in later versions, "refusing" to respond to orders by the police officers. The two words used have different meanings.

Witnesses to the shooting in the Press Enterprise articles said that Cloud did not appear responsive even when one of them ran up to the driver's side of the smashed vehicle to render him assistance. Witness Ted Brown stated in the initial news article that the four officers had approached the vehicle, with guns drawn. They then appeared to reach in the car as if to pull Cloud out. One officer fired his gun. The four of them jumped backwards, before three more shots were fired, possibly by the same police officer.

Witnesses at the scene said Cloud seemed to be dazed from the high-speed crash, which demolished the car. They said four officers approached the car with guns drawn and reached inside as if they were trying to pull the man out. Moments later, they said, police opened fire.

In the Los Angeles Times article, from Oct. 11, the department released its latest update on the shooting through its public information office.

Three officers, who had matched the crashed vehicle with the description from witnesses at the Home Depot, said Cloud refused to respond to orders as they walked toward the vehicle with their guns drawn. When Cloud refused to get out of the car, one of the three officers tried to pull him out of the window, police said. After being partly pulled out of the car, police say, Cloud jerked himself free and hit the accelerator while turning the steering wheel side to side in what police believed was an attempt to get away.

Steven Frasher, a police spokesman, said one of the officers shot Cloud four times after seeing him reach continually for the front-seat center console. A second officer shot Cloud once.

"The officers' statements were that he kept reaching for that console with such insistence that they were worried that there could be a weapon there that he was reaching for," Frasher said. He added that the officers said they feared he would run over at least one of them if his car gained traction.

Initial reports from the witnesses had stated that there were four police officers onscene at the shooting, yet in Frasher's statement, only three of them are mentioned as having provided information for this version. Was there actually a fourth officer onscene and what was his or her statement, if he or she did indeed provide one?

One of the witnesses cited by the Times was a car dealership owner named Curtis Neal who had seen the shooting from 150 feet away. Although sunlight reflecting off the vehicle prevented him from seeing Cloud, Neal believed the shooting was justified, because he felt the officers would not have shot Cloud unless they saw something that scared them. The officer who had apparently been the first to shoot Cloud had held his gun on him for over a minute, Neal said, while the other officers were pulling him out of the car.

The police department has also decided not to release the name of the officers nor their number of years in the department who were involved in the shooting, citing the Copeley Press vs San Diego Superior Court decision found here. The city had been presented with the ruling by the Riverside Police Officers Association and was taking it under review. Community members merely shrugged at the news, which was not really news. Many people view the RPD and tranparency as being two separate things anyway. Several people wondered why the department did not just state that the officers were not involved in prior shootings instead of being vague in its response. To answer that would require a long explanation on what city department inside City Hall is actually micromanaging the department, while allowing the RPOA to believe it's in control of its charges' privacy.

Officers' names not released

The Press Enterprise conducted a survey here on the shooting. Many people left written responses expressing their opinions of the shooting.

Some individuals criticized it, calling it excessive force.

Her name was Tyisha Miller, though that was thought to be a 'racial act' it still has yet to be seen that the Riverside PD has made any improvements to thier task force. Riverside police officers carry tiny digital devices to record every encounter, and have a cache of nonlethal weapons at their disposal and can tap veteran commanders at any time to guide them though volatile situations. Why was a 'non-lethal' weapon not used, there is more justice in punishment of the crime then murdering the offender. It is still unbelieveable to me that Riverside PD has yet to do ANYTHING to better their tactics and gain the trust of their community. After all what the hell am I paying all these taxes for ($16.1 million just on outside legal council for the Tyisha Miller trial).

The Riverside PD has never admit to any wrong doing (but why did they fire all four officers involved after the fact?) and I don't expect them to do so in this case. I just hope this case is smeared all over the media to shine the light (yet again) on those who are there to 'serve and protect' our community. So much for living up to that slogan.

I cannot understand why we don't have Police Officers who can use more restraint against excessive force. The man they shot is someones brother, son or father. What if that was our son or brother? How would we feel? Didn't this suspect deserve to have his right to life? He committed a petty theft and crashed his car. He was not responsive to the Car Dealer Manager who came to his aid. And yet he was a treat to four armed officers? The car was not in a condition to be driven off from the scene. The Dealer Manager said the driver was slumped over the wheel. His foot had the unfortune to be placed on the accelerator as the driver slumped over unresponsive. I hope I don't get in a car accident, be unresponsive and have been shot by a Police Officer. I wonder how the Officer can sleep at night. I am sure the other three officers were upset with the officer who killed the suspect. However, they have to back him up. It's their job. And that places them in the same position as the officer who did pull the trigger. Appalled in Riverside

According to the newspaper story 10-9-06, eye witnesses at the scene said he had just crashed his car (see photo of totalled car) and was dazed and unable to do anything. They saw him slumped over the steering wheel. When police arrived four officers surrounded the car attempting to get him out and one of them shot the man--four times. Other witnesses said he was just sitting there and they shot him. They did not find a gun in his car. He likely ignored the police orders due to the massive brain injuries he sustained upon impact with the palm tree shown fallen over in the photo. It takes great force to knock a palm tree down. This young man attempted to steal something, and sounds like he was not a good thief, got scared and ran away. I'm not condoning what he did but surely he did not deserve to die. Jail time yes- death, no way! Clearly, excessive force was used against him and the officer needs to be punished for killing a 27 year old!

Others wrote that it was wrong to second-guess the decisions made by the officers in a split-second. Or they thought it was worth it to get a hardcore criminal off the streets.

There is not enough facts put out. The only thing I know is that the police officers are alive and by killing this suspect probobly saved them. Police officers put their lives on the line everyday. I'd do the same to save my own. A weopan could be anything: a piece of string, broken glass. Maybe he had AIDS and had a syringe. The suspect should have thought "is this worth my life". Quit blaming law enforcement. What could have the suspect do or not do to save his life. If you run from the police you will get shot. If you ram into the police you will get shot. If you grab or reach for something you will get shot. Hello dont blame the police for the suspects stupidity and choices. One less bad guy off the street, hey how many lives have been saved by doing that. Well our streets are safer to me a life is worth that.

Absolutely not. In the game of life and death, which police officers must confront every day, day after day, it is not up to we-the-public to second guess the actions and reactions of any officer. What they see in those terrifying tenths of seconds, when faced with the specter of death looming over their heads, is not up to we, the armchair quaterbacks of Riverside, or any other city, to second guess. I was not there. You were not there. What those officers saw was obviously terrifying enough to push them across that most dreaded of all lines, and pull the trigger and potentially end some one's life. That is not an action they want to make any more than you or I want to. The fact is, an officer was confronted with something he knew, in that instant of time, was going to end his life or the lives of others. In a split of a second, a decision had to be made. If any one used excessive force in this whole sad affair, it was the robber in the vehicle. After fighting with the Home Depot employees who were just trying to do thier jobs, then driving like a bat out of hell to get away, he indangered who knows how many people with his actions in order to save himself from going to jail. If he had struck and killed some one in the resulting crash, would we be asking the same question of "excessive force" in regards to him?

Someone was either being sarcastic or believed that the shooting was the apparent solution to the "war on drugs".

Shooting a meth-head after shoplifting is always justified!!!!!!!!!!!!

Another individual who claimed to have been near the scene appeared to take issue with it but decided that the ends justified the means.

I WAS A COUPLE DEALERS DOWN WHEN IT HAPPENED I DID NOT SEE EVERY THING THAT HAPPENED BUT I COULD TELL BY THE WAY THE POLICE WERE ACTING THAT THEY DID SOMETHING WRONG. BUT THEN AGAIN YOU GOTTA DO WHAT YOU GOTTA DO. THE GUY WAS NOT A INNOCENT BYSTANDER. THEY TOOK SOME ***** OFF THE STREETS THAT COULD HAVE DONE HARM. GOOD JOB RSPD. [...] BEATS THE COURT SYSTEM RIGHT!

I'm not sure what to even say about people who back the police officers by saying "Good job, RPD" or thank you for getting rid of a thief, shoplifter or a robber as if they were cheering a touchdown at a football game and that the actions of "last resort" taken have no consequences on everyone involved.

That line of thinking kind of reminds me of the "one less n-----" flier that was posted throughout the downtown pedestrian mall after the Tyisha Miller shooting. On that flier, were the words, "Keep up the good work RPD".

Another cloud on the horizon?

On the eve of the Riverside Police Department's first quarterly report on its implementation of the Strategic Plan to the city council, a fatal officer-involved shooting took place near Indiana and Detroit Streets.

Riverside police shoot, kill robbery suspect

The police department's version(subject to change):

The suspect, Douglas Steven Cloud, who was White and 27 years old, had gone to Home Depot at the intersection of Madison and Indiana Streets and had grabbed items on the shelves of the store. Several customers saw him and tried to stop him, which resulted in a struggle between them and him. Cloud fled the store, got into a silver Toyota Celica and drove off. At 4 p.m., he had struck a parked car and a palm tree at high speed, and around that time, police officers drove by in response to the original incident at Home Depot and saw the crashed vehicle. They recognized it as the one reported in connection with the incident and stopped.

After that, the description of events becomes more sparse. A "confrontation" took place between Cloud and the officers and "shots were fired", according to the department.

The original incident was handled as a robbery in progress, according to the department.


Witness accounts:

(excerpts, Press Enterprise, 8/8/06)

Ted Brown: He was in the office when the accident occurred. His boss ran to the car to render assistance to Cloud, after the car had crashed into a truck and palm tree at high speed.

"He was kind of dazed. You could tell. This guy was not physically able to do anything,"

Brown told a Press Enterprise reporter that he saw four officers approach the vehicle and then reach inside the driver's side window as if appearing to pull him out of the car, then one of them fired a shot. All four officers jumped back and then the same officer appeared to fire three more shots. He then put his gun back in his holster and looked around.

"He looked pretty pale after it all went down. I think he was kind of in shock, too."

Brown said he did not want to criticize the shooting but that it didn't appear "right" to him based on what he had witnessed. He appeared to wonder out loud if the officers could not have used different tactics, such as restraining him since four of them were present.

"I didn't see a gun. But I want to find out if there was a gun,"


Manny Dominguez: He was inside his Acura car dealership when he and his coworker heard a crash. They ran out to help and saw the events unfold.

"We ran over to the middle of the street and the cop cars showed up. They got out with their guns drawn. They told us to get back.
They told him to 'Get out of the car! Get out of the car!'
We didn't see him do anything. He was just kind of sitting there."

Sgt. Leon Phillips, currently serving on the department's Audit and Compliance Panel said in the Press Enterprise article that the department did not know if there was a weapon present or whether one or more officers fired their guns at Cloud and why.

As with all officer-involved shootings, the department has initiated a criminal inquiry conducted by detectives from its Crimes Against Persons unit which will eventually be forwarded to the Riverside County District Attorney's office. That office will determine whether or not criminal charges will be filed. The department's Internal Affairs Division will also conduct its own administrative review of the critical incident and will issue a finding on whether or not one or more officers violated departmental policy during the shooting.

The Community Police Review Commission will also likely begin its own investigation of the shooting, sending one of its investigators from the Baker Street Group to interview witnesses of the shooting within the next couple of days. The CPRC will also hear a briefing on the incident from the police department in the next couple of weeks. During this briefing, a departmental representative will provide a narrative on the shooting as far as it is known but will not receive or answer any questions from commissioners or members of the public. This change in procedure stems from complaints that the police department erred in its presentation of the Summer Lane shooting to the CPRC on Dec. 22, 2004.

The CPRC is still conducting its own investigation of the Lee Deante Brown shooting which occurred last April. Its investigator is still waiting for the department to provide a copy of its casebook but it has refused to do, even though it has said that its investigation was to be completed. The reason given for the delay is that the Riverside County District Attorney's office has elected to conduct its own separate probe of that shooting for the first time in its history. The FBI has apparently launched an inquiry into that shooting as well.

There is also a survey being conducted on the shooting here where readers can answer the question of whether or not they believe the shooting was excessive force or not and also submit comments.

Upon reading the witness accounts, particularly that by Brown, there are several things about this particular shooting that seem familiar.

The four officers approaching the vehicle, the reaching inside the vehicle, the shot fired, the four officers jumping back startled, then more shots fired and so forth. The officer, pale with shock, putting his gun back in his holster and looking around.

While it is true that Brown's account is one of perhaps many including those by the four involved officers, this shooting has caused phone calls this holiday morning already, with several callers seeing disturbing parallels to a shooting that at times seems so long ago, and at other times feels just like yesterday.

The "red" menace

Another day, another California Public Records Request issued to the police department for information about the composition and operation of its Audit and Compliance Panel, which exists to directly oversee the day to day implementation of various objectives of the Strategic Plan. This panel, formerly known as the Attorney General Task Force, consists of one lieutenant, two sergeants and several administrative assistants.

It had apparently been in the shop undergoing "reorganization" for a period of time but is up and running, having given a presentation at the last Chief's Advisory Board meeting.

The police department will also be presenting its first "quarterly" report on its progress in implementing the Strategic Plan. Councilman Dom Betro said that the process passed through a 7 to 0 motion by the city council last March 28, had experienced a "delay".

No, actually the process had come to a grinding halt after the city council developed a form of collective amnesia and moved on to its favorite topic, redevelopment and using its favorite toy, Eminent Domain on the downtown area to prepare it for gentrification. What happened is what Attorney General Bill Lockyer warned could happen time after time, even though the city officials reassured him that it would not, and in fact promised him that it would not happen again last March. Well, it did. The bottom line is that the invested parties simply failed to step to the plate and if pressure had not been put on them, they probably never would have given the Strategic Plan a second thought at least for a while. Which just goes to show that the faces may change but some built in dynamics just do not change overnight or even within five years.

Many community members approached or contacted me after I had been speaking on this issue at city council, in confusion because they had assumed that the city council had followed through on its action plan passed last March. They had no idea that nothing much had happened at all, on the city's side of the equation.

The pressure placed on city officials has had a rebounding effect.

Betro obviously was not a very happy man earlier this week. He showed up at a public meeting and lectured people, demanding to know why they were not down at city council protesting the law suit filed against the CPRC and the city government by the RPOA. That was immediately after venting his wrath at those who had spoken at the city council meeting on Oct. 6 when the RPOA showed up. I was the only such person in the room.

I was not treated like this through an indirect attack by elected officials when I spoke in support of the SEIU for the right to the same bargaining process. Nor was I treated like this when I spoke in support of any other city employees including those who have experienced racial discrimination, harassment and retaliation in the workplace that some Black employees had referred to as a "plantation". In the past, I had spoken in support of refuse workers who were worried about losing jobs which were in danger of being reduced when the city increased the use of its automatic garbage collection trucks. I've also supported the members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in the past, and have had discussions with them after they spoke on the downside of deregulating public utilities.

But they aren't "those people".

What set off his pique were apparently statements I had made at the meeting that showed my doubt that the city council had gotten all the components of its promises from the workshop back on track. But rather than really addressing people's concerns with factual information and not information that I already know is probably not true, he chose instead to use a diversionary tactic that coming from him, surprised me.

Suddenly, I was a blind supporter of "those" people who were suing the CPRC, meaning the RPOA, simply because I had defended a process that I feel was not held to the high standard it should have been in labor negotiations involving all the city's unions. It was akin to "red baiting" and frankly, funny given my history with "those" people. The allegiances of this city's elected officials to its law enforcement officers twist and turn so much it is difficult to keep up with whether those officers are "friends" or "foes" to which elected officials at any given time. Which definition is in place usually depends on the season, especially in an election year and this behavior just adds a layer to the dysfunctional interactions in Riverside that contributed to the conditions leading up to the stipulated judgment in 2001.

I call it the "greatest officers" vs "those people" dynamic meaning that depending on the situation, these officers were lauded and at other times, labeled as "those people" by elected officials including times when the department was suffering from the neglect by the city which led to it eventually being found to have violated both the state's constitution and state law.

But this is the present and this dynamic still exists.

After all, it's highly unlikely that Betro would air his grievances against "those people" at a meeting with the Chamber of Commerce or the Downtown Partnership, or the lunch crowd at the Mission Inn. He would never demand them to do something he himself would never do. That is reserved for people in a different crowd, preferably one where the majority are people of color. In fact at these other gatherings that he or other elected officials attend, perhaps "those people" might be in attendance as the "finest police officers in the country."

But, fast forward to when Betro wants the homeless population pushed out of downtown or Fairmont Park again, who do you think he's going to go to, to do this work? Especially with the accelerated "Renaissance" on the horizon and as the Rev. Clarke Prescott said so well at the last city council meeting, no room in it for homeless people?

"Those people" but they won't be called that I'm sure.

What if another city council member wants his picture taken with a police officer while giving him or her an award, then again, "those people" become "the finest police officers in the country." A few hours later, he could be on the phone complaining to the police chief about "those people". It is enough to make one's head spin. How do these elected officials and some of their followers keep this straight in their heads?

Given that after the honeymoon period of the stipulated judgment's dissolution, the "finest officers in the country" became "those people" during the summer's labor pains at the negotiation tables. Given that during this same difficult period, the city stalled its actions to follow the guidelines of its implementation of the Strategic Plan. One might ask if these two processes were related, and if the city was so upset at "those people" that it no longer believed it had to prioritize the continued reform process of the police department.

Tit for tat.

If so, then there really is no difference between this city council and that in former years. In past years, the city and "those people" had waged battles, with the police chief either a participant or caught in the middle, like the police chief is now. By the time these battles had ended, neither side had won. The communities who were supposed to be served by both paid the costs as the department slid into a decline, only a threatened law suit by the state's highest law enforcement agency could halt.

I might be critical enough to be labeled "anti-police" a few times a week, which is as much a given as the sun coming up in the morning, and I have actually been criticized by some of the same people for criticizing "those people" when they are currently labeled "the finest police officers in the country" too much including by elected officials. But their flip-flop attitude towards them is just nuts.

What do you make of a person who hugs police officers in support of their contact negotiations at one meeting and then tsk tsks in agreement to criticism of them for those actions the next, when in a different crowd? What about someone who runs for office claiming to be "pro-law enforcement" but then dictates that "the best officers in the country" should be paid as much as "the best officers in the Inland Empire" knowing very little about the reality of recruiting and hiring law enforcement officers in the very competitive Southern California market? After all, neither the "best officers in the world" or "those people" will be spending the majority of the time in their communities.

But let's get back to "those people" in their role as the "red" menace, which is a very strange dynamic especially for the "police hater".

You support the organization of "those people" on one issue and disagree with them on about 999,999 others, and you are still a blind supporter of the menace of "those people" when that support conflicts with an elected official's political agenda(given that Betro's up for election next year). Of all the dysfunctional dynamics governing interactions between the vested parties in the Strategic Plan process, this is the one that I least understand. The city's feud with the RPOA that has spilled outside the negotiation room, and has resulted in everyone who's not on with the city or in support of City Manager Brad Hudson's negotiation tactics being painted with the "red" brush.

In the meantime, I'm going to prepare my testimony for my appearance before the city's Committee on Un-Riverside Activities, until I'm called and keep my local history manuals close to my side for reference.


No one had read the law suit in question yet, because it could not be found, but that situation has been remedied. The law suit, Ryan Wilson v the City of Riverside, Riverside[sic]Community Review Commission (RIC456429) which has hit the shelves of the Riverside County Superior Court. A review of this new publication will be coming up shortly including an explanation of why this law suit could wind up fighting some of the battles for the CPRC on different issues including a very important one.

The city filed a motion not to stipulate to the assignment of Commissioner Joan Burgess to hear the case. For those of you with good memories, Burgess was the presiding judge in the trial involving Officer Roger Sutton's racial discrimination, harassment and retaliation. Obviously, the city still feels the sting of that loss and has given her the boot.

One suggestion, all the parties should immediately stipulate that the Summer Lane shooting happened on Dec. 6, 2004, not Sept. 6, 2004.

Go here and follow the instructions to get to the civil court then enter in the case number.

Here is the CPRA letter:


10/5/2006


Public Records Act Request
Oct. 5, 2006


Dear Chief Leach,

Pursuant to my rights under the California Public Records Act (Government Code Section 6250 et seq.), I ask to obtain a copy of the following, which I understand to be held by your agency:

Information from the Personnel and Training Division which shall include the following:

1) All new training programs implemented since March 28, 2006

2) Composition of the Audit and Compliance Panel since its "reorganization" this spring.

3) Job responsibilities of each member, sworn and civilian on the Audit and Compliance Panel

4) Schedule of presentations by the Audit and Compliance Panel since March 28, 2006 both inside and outside of the department.

5) Goals and objectives of the Audit and Compliance Panel in terms of implementing the Strategic Plan and the required components of the Stipulated Judgment.
a) six month goals
b) 12 month goals
c) 18 months goals

6) Qualifications and process for assigning officers to the Audit and Compliance Panel

This point of inquiry arose from comments allegedly made by one of the assigned sergeants at a recent meeting about having to choose between being on the Audit and Compliance Panel and working as a graveyard supervisor which struck my interest in this process.

I ask for a determination on this request within 10 days of your receipt of it, and an even prompter reply if you can make that determination without having to review the record[s] in question. If you determine that any or all or the information qualifies for an exemption from disclosure, I ask you to note whether, as is normally the case under the Act, the exemption is discretionary, and if so whether it is necessary in this case to exercise your discretion to withhold the information. If you determine that some but not all of the information is exempt from disclosure and that you intend to withhold it, I ask that you redact it for the time being and make the rest available as requested. In any event, please provide a signed notification citing the legal authorities on which you rely if you determine that any or all of the information is exempt and will not be disclosed.

If I can provide any clarification that will help expedite your attention to my request, please contact m. I ask that you notify me of any duplication costs exceeding $0 before you duplicate the records so that I may decide which records I want copied.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.

Sincerely,


CC: City Manager Brad Hudson
City Council and Mayor Ron Loveridge

Time received by Riverside Police Department: Oct. 5, 2006 at 3:09 p.m.

CPRA Request Watch

On Wednesday, Oct. 4, the following letters were delivered to Riverside City Hall and the Riverside Police Department's Orange St. Administrative headquarters, asking for information pursuant to the California Public Records Act.

CPRA template

The letter is addressed to Chief Russ Leach and has been CCed to Capt. Michael Blakely, who is currently assigned to the Personnel and Training office and to City Manager Brad Hudson, Mayor Ron Loveridge and members of the city council. Given the city's performance in several arenas pertaining to the police department in recent months, it has become clear that the memories of our elected representatives and Hudson are rather short regarding promises they had made before the city council voted 7 to 0 to approve an action plan to ensure that the implementation of the Strategic Plan with accountability mechanisms attached was carried out.

Either that, or the city council members have not been paying enough attention to what Hudson's been doing lately when it comes to carrying out the mandate from the city council as any properly trained city manager is required to do according to his job description. Has Hudson and his sidekick Tom DeSantis delivered on their labor contracts involving the city's police officers? Has he delivered on any of the promises made at the Strategic Plan workshop last March? The best he can do in this area is to attract large crowds of city employees to city council meetings to argue for fair negotiation practices and to (maybe) release a quarterly report on the police department, three months late.

There will be more CPRA requests going out to both Leach and the city government representatives including one on how the staffing needs of a city that is growing both in area and population will be met in the next few years, including the creation of more sworn and civilian positions in the police department. This is a requirement included in the Strategic Plan as well so it's not a voluntary exercise.

According to the writ of mandamus filed by Attorney General Bill Lockyer in 2001, there were numerous allegations of serious problems related directly to the shortage of police officers in the department.



10/4/2006

Chief Russ Leach
Riverside Police Department
4102 Orange St.
Riverside, CA 92501

RE: Public Records Act Request

Dear Chief Leach,

Pursuant to my rights under the California Public Records Act (Government Code Section 6250 et seq.), I ask to obtain a copy of the following, which I understand to be held by your agency:

Information from the Personnel and Training Division which shall include the following:

1) Statistics pertaining to the racial and gender breakdown of officers hired since January 1, 2006

2) Statistics pertaining to the racial and gender breakdown of officers who ceased being employed or left the agency by the police department since January 1, 2006.

3) Statistics pertaining to the officers hired by the department in terms of percentage that have graduated from local peace officer academies vs officers who lateral from other law enforcement agencies

4) Number of field training officers and breakdown by race and gender

5) Mean age and experience level(years in law enforcement) of the following:

a) total sworn officers
b) patrol division
c) field training officers division
d) SWAT/Metro teams
e) sergeants
f) lieutenants
g) captains and deputy chiefs

6) Percentage of lateral officers in the following divisions:
a) field training officers division
b) SWAT/Metro Teams

7) Information pertaining to the recruitment goals of the police department and how those goals would be met.
a) six month goals
b) 12 month goals

8) Information pertaining to goals to improve retention of officers hired in the department, i.e. mentoring programs.
a) pertaining to all officers
b) pertaining to female officers of all ethnic and racial groups
c) pertaining to Hispanic officers, male and female
d) pertaining to Black officers, male and female

9) Information pertaining to the department's commitment to meet objective #1.5 of the Strategic Plan, which is defined as the following, create a workforce that better reflects the diversity in Riverside.

10) Information pertaining to the implementation of objective #3.7 which is defined as the following, Improve outreach efforts to educate members of the community about their roles of co-producers of public safety."

I ask for a determination on this request within 10 days of your receipt of it, and an even prompter reply if you can make that determination without having to review the record[s] question. If you determine that any or all or the information qualifies for an exemption from disclosure, I ask you to note whether, as is normally the case under the Act, the exemption is discretionary, and if so whether it is necessary in this case to exercise your discretion to withhold the information. If you determine that some but not all of the information is exempt from disclosure and that you intend to withhold it, I ask that you redact it for the time being and make the rest available requested. In any event, please provide a signed notification citing the legal authorities on which you rely if you determine that any or all of the information is exempt and will not be disclosed.

I ask that you notify me of any duplication costs exceeding $0 before you duplicate the records so that I may decide which records I want copied.
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Mary Shelton


Cc: Capt. Michael Blakely
City Manager Brad Hudson
City Council and Mayor Ron Loveridge

Time stamps: Date and time received:

Riverside City Clerk's office: Oct. 4, 2006

Riverside Police Department,
Orange St. Administration Headquarters: Oct. 4, 2006 at 10:48am

Facts and Faxes?

It's been raining faxes at the Riverside County Sheriff's Department.

All anonymous and with showers peaking in February, July and most recently, late September. No, these periods of electronic activity do not appear to have anything to do with the return of the El Nino scheduled for later this year, but precipitation is expected to continue as long as this episode remains part of the forecast of Riverside's "other" law enforcement agency.

Not many rain drops fell from the sky last February, but apparently faxes did, and so it began. Representatives from several federal agencies soon came to town to take a gander but left their umbrellas at home.

The FBI and Department of Labor both paid visits to the Riverside Sheriff's Association earlier this week, after launching an investigation of the labor organization after a flurry of anonymous faxes were sent to the sheriff's department alleging misconduct. Agents were sent to the office to serve a warrant to search the premises. They left a while later, carrying several boxes apparently containing legal documents.

FBI raids sheriff association office

FBI raids deputy unions office

The investigation began after a series of anonymous faxes were sent to the sheriff's department alleging serious misconduct last February and July. The faxes named the RSA's president, Pat McNamara and were descriptively titled, "Corruption within the Sheriffs' Association". McNamara later filed a defamation of character law suit against former Scott Teutscher, who had served as the legal operations manager until he was fired in September 2005. Teutscher denied that he had been responsible for the faxes. He later countersued McNamara and the RSA, alleging that money had also been taken from the union's 11-99 Widow and Orphans' fund.

The RSA has released a statement through its attorneys that it has cooperated with and will continue to cooperate with the investigation and that it expects to be fully vindicated by its end.

According to this Press Enterprise article, the FBI began a probe into allegations that over $100,000 of union fees were misused by members of the association to finance the legal expenses of former sheriff deputy Duane Evan Winchell. The previously mentioned unsigned faxes that appeared at several branches of the sheriff's department alleged that the expenditures were inappropriate because the funds were being used to pay for Winchell's criminal defense even though the alleged crimes occurred while he was off-duty. Winchell was charged with misdemeanors counts of trespassing and vandalism stemming from an incident involving his girlfriend and the destruction of some property including trees. He plead guilty, received two years probation and the case was later dismissed.

The U.S. Attorney's office filed a motion this summer to halt discovery in McNamara's law suit, a motion that was supposed to have been sealed. Naturally, it instead wound up posted on the Riverside County Superior Court's Web site where it was discovered by the Press Enterprise. The U.S. Attorney's office had filed the motion, explaining that both the FBI and the Department of Labor were conducting a criminal inquiry concerning allegations of misconduct involving the RSA. The court had granted that motion. That inquiry became a raid in late September.

More mysterious faxes appeared after the story broke about the FBI's raid according to this Press Enterprise article. Apparently, these faxes centered on requests to remove the leadership from the association and not allow them to have access to the union's legal funds until the completion of the criminal investigation. That appears fair enough to not allow them to have access to the union's finances if their actions are in question. It's important that the integrity of the union's dues be protected until it is determined whether or not any of them were misspent from any fund, for any purpose by anyone. Whether or not the leadership remains at the helm, that's up to the union's members. They need to make that decision collectively, not by conducting the process via the fax machine.

Court cases filed in Riverside County Superior Court:

McNamara v Teutscher (RIC438168)

Teutscher v RSA (RIC456858)




The Riverside Police Officers Association still has no new contract signed with the city, but they are on the agenda to meet with its representatives at the city council. The union's members opted not to accept Brad Hudson's contract that he had his sidekick, Tom DeSantis present through power point last week. Here's hoping that during this past week, Mr. Hudson and his sidekick have learned how to properly conduct contract negotiations, because their record so far is not very good. In fact, it's pretty poor, certainly when it comes to getting contracts signed and people leaving happy.

This state of affairs does not look good for the city especially not with the semiannual performance evaluation coming up for the city manager not to mention city elections next year, which may be one reason among others why we have this.

For more information on the upcoming "Riverside Renaissance" go here to read this. In this once proposed 20-year plan to revitalize our city that's now been shrunk down to five years, is a wish list of everything this city has truly needed for the past 20 years, from new parks to better looking, if not wider streets, to new police and fire facilities, including a new 911 dispatch center, which is hopefully earthquake-proof.

What is there to say no to, or argue against?

Well, the fact that the city is pushing the idea that it's going to be largely funded through raising property taxes $20-30 for the next several decades even though it's clear that a lot more money will have to be moved from quite a few column As to fit Columns B, C, D and so forth. With these grand proposals, of course questions always arise. Will the city have to borrow a lot of money? What will that do the city's line of credit and bond rating? Who will take over the helm of the process that Hudson may fully intend to initiate but may not complete if he decides to move on(or up?) from being employed by the city of Riverside in the near future.

Then there are the projects.

The grade separations for Columbia, Magnolia and Third alone will cost quite a bit of money, and the original completion dates for these were pushed into the future for different reasons, including issues with the federal government regarding expenditure. They clearly need to be completed, but what will it take to get all three done in five years, given that nothing has been done to initiate these projects to date? Other projects have also stalled in terms of being implemented in the past. The only difference is that there seems to be more hot air in the room this time around.

Missing from this proposal is language on the state of Riverside's main thoroughfares, many of which are overcrowded particularly during rush hour periods. This problem will only worsen if it is not adequately addressed soon. The problem is, that when ever there are projects like "Riverside Renaissance" and the "villages"(part of the 20 year plan), there is never any similar commitment into ensuring that city residents(which currently number 290,000) will be able to travel to and from these different places on streets that do not resemble parking lots.

Also missing from the report is the state of affairs involving the city's labor force, which is still undergoing its worst contract negotiations in years. After all, the city will only be able to contract certain components of the project out to businesses from Orange County and other places including those out of state. A lot of its success will depend on city employees from all the various departments and they will be the ones who will be charged to complete Hudson's project in the time frame. Hudson clearly expects the city employees to get it done, but aren't these the same city employees who have had to hold strike votes and file law suits to negotiate new contracts? Maybe that's why the city was shooting for all the unions to sign four year contracts rather than the usual two year ones. With all the work that the city employees will be doing in the first two years(while Hudson's still here) of these contracts, which ones will have the energy to reopen negotiations in the hot summer months of 2008?

Also, what will happen to the competitive bidding process in this city when it comes to contracting(there's that word again) companies to do the work needed with this project? Attracting bids, considering them and making the decision on which to work with and so forth, these things take a lot of time, and there's only so many days during a five-year period for all these bidding processes to take place simultaneously. I mean, this is the same city which had difficulty launching simultaneous bids for mobile data terminals and digital video recorders for the police department, so how are they going to handle probably dozens if not hundreds of bids involving multiple city departments?

Will the bidding process suffer? Has it suffered already in this city? Maybe that should be left up to the nine to answer.

These projects are all so necessary. Many people have wanted them for years. Others have fought for each one of them, only to be told it could not be done for one reason or another. That history makes it easy to embrace the projects in the present, but what is really going on here?

Is this renaissance real or are these projects simply tantalizing carrots being dangled in front of a populace hungry for growth in Riverside? Is this city biting off more than it can chew? And what will be the price paid and by whom?

The problem is that if you argue against anything or more likely address any concerns with the projects, you will likely be told by the city council that you are blocking the benefits of progress in this city. However, the city residents' responses to this project appear to be mixed and many explain their positions.

Press Enterprise Survey

Many of those who responded to the survey proposed taking a project of this magnitude to a public vote in the form of a ballot initiative. That might not be a bad idea. To do all these wonderful things in only five years at this point sounds more like a feather that city officials might want to include in their hats, rather than a viable, realistic plan that the city's residents need a voice in.