Hiding in Plain Sight: The sexual harassment law suit

Election 2007 preliminary results update:


By casting their votes, voters in four wards sent one very loud message to the candidates particularly the three incumbents, none of whom managed to win their elections outright. Council members Dom Betro, Art Gage and Steve Adams will all be heading into the final rounds for their respective wards in November.

Could it be that the voters sent the message "anyone but..." to all three of them? Supporters of the incumbents and the media including the Press Enterprise scoffed at that sentiment. However, the people who counted, the voters, did not. Collectively, they sent that message not through their voices or their words, but through their votes. Now will the sitting elected officials who essentially had their egos handed back to them on a plate listen to what people have been telling them the past few months about their concerns? It's time for them to park their egos and start listening and learning from the voters including those who postponed their reinstatement to the dais for at least six more months.


As a result of this very loud message, we'll be seeing a lot of these folks next November for runoffs in at least two to four wards. Some interesting results, but history doesn't tend to favor the candidates who win the preliminary rounds. To avoid a runoff the leading candidate has to cross the 50% line. At the moment, William "Rusty" Bailey who is pulling off an upset in Ward Three which probably has the BASS quartet excited is the closest to being declared a winner. With a possible quintet on the dais with Bailey, the affluent liberal population of Riverside will no doubt celebrate mightily as BASS strengthens its hold on Riverside politics.

In Ward Seven, former elected official Terry Frizzel is kicking some serious butt but mud-slinging Chris McArthur's tactics against his opponents have put him in the lead in Ward Five with Machalka running a distant second, the victim of some of the worst campaign tactics in recent memory. Will Harry Kurani have enough votes collected to join them in a runoff in November if it comes to that?

And the "anyone but Betro" slogan might have been ridiculed in the press but currently, it's swinging at 55% of the vote in Ward One. Does this mean a runoff between Betro and one of his opponents, Michael Gardner? We'll find out after the election results are final but the Press Enterprise has pretty much called it as it sees it here.



Ward One:

Dom Betro: 45%
Michael Gardner: 31.7%:
Letitia Pepper: 19.5%
Derek Thesier: 3.5%


Ward Three:

Rusty Bailey: 48.4%
Art Gage: 44.7%
Peter Olmos: 6.6%.


Ward Five:

Chris McArthur: 40.7%
Donna Doty-Michalka: 29.9%
Harry Karuni: 21.3%
Richard Rodriguez: 5.6%


Ward Seven:

Steve Adams: 34.5%
Terry Frizzel: 25.4%
Roy Saldanha: 19.3%
Art Garcia: 16.1%
Daniel Gressman: 3.9%






In 1996, Sgt. Christine Keers filed a sexual discrimination, harassment and retaliation law suit against the Riverside Police Department and several of its officers.



Nearly 10 years later, another female police officer in that department filed a sexual harassment law suit against the city of Riverside, the police department and four of its current or former employees including former commander, Richard Dana.



Kelsy Metzler stated in her law suit that she had entered into a training academy in 2005 after being hired by the Riverside Police Department.



In June 2005, she said she was sexually harassed by a cadet, Kevin Riberich and complained about it to her supervisor, Kelle Ammerman. But when she asked to receive a copy of the complaint, she stated that Ammerman had told her that she couldn't have one. She tried to check on the status on her complaint and was told it was none of her business.



In July 2005, Metzler's law suit stated, two Riverside Police Department officers, Russ Shubert and Dan Russell approached her and told her that the department was aware that she had filed a sexual harassment complaint and was not pleased about it or her. Her law suit didn't state why these two men had come to tell her this or what capacity they were operating under but neither officer was included in the law suit as a specific defendant.



Metzler then complained to the police department and asked that her complaint be sent to the Office of Civil Rights but stated that the department didn't do that but instead kept it inhouse.



Ammerman, her supervisor and the same employee who had been assigned to investigate her sexual harassment claim then wrote a poor evaluation, falsely stating information about her, Metzler stated in her complaint.



According to the law suit, Metzler graduated 21st out of 70 cadets in her academy class and passed all of her tests to become a police officer. However, when she reported to work at the Riverside Police Department for her first day onduty, she was led into a room with an Internal Affairs Division representative where she was told that she had been terminated from her employment. When she asked for a reason, the defendants said they didn't like her and didn't have to give her one.



She was then given a "clear your name" opportunity but because she was not told the reason for her termination, felt she couldn't defend herself or refute any allegations.



When she tried to apply for jobs in other law enforcement agencies in Southern California, she would pass the initial stages of the process until the background check was conducted and the Riverside Police Department was contacted by prospective employers. Then the agency would refuse to hire, a behavior Metzler's attorney referred to as "blackballing".



Metzler then filed a complaint with the State Fair Employment and Housing Board but withdrew it when she decided to file a law suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court with her attorney, Mary Ann P. Gallagher. That law suit was filed in November 2006 and later transferred to Riverside County Superior Court.



She also sued the defendants for defamation of character for statements that she alleged they had made. The statements listed in the law suit were that she was not fit or qualified to be a police officer and that she had slept with her instructors at the academy. What's interesting about this is that if these statements were made and reflected the truth, were these instructors then placed under investigation for conduct unbecoming of their positions in the academy. Are any of them also now unemployed? Or instead is this another case of "boys will be boys" and women have to pay the consequences for behavior that men who are their superiors participated in?


Perhaps it's still left to the female cadet to carry that burden alone having to leave an environment and a profession that is still male-dominated while it's indeed business as usual for her male counterparts even if they engaged in misconduct. Perhaps the boys club is still in place and figuratively speaking, still has a sign posted in its midst reading "He-man Women Haters' Club".

These questions only apply if these statements were actually made and represented accurately what had actually taken place between Metzler and her instructors.

If those statements were indeed made by these defendants and weren't the truth, then shame on their tactics for keeping another woman out of a profession that still doesn't appear to really want them around. When Keers had been subjected to sexual harassment years earlier by officers in the same department, she also was subjected to statements that she was having sex with other officers including her supervisors. How much have things really changed in the last 10 years and one consent decree later?

Speaking of which, the stipulated judgment imposed by former State Attorney General Bill Lockyer was in place when the incidents related in Metzler's law suit took place.

Is this law suit itself surprising? Not really. Other similar law suits have been filed by female cadets who have complained about sexual harassment in police academies across the country and have discovered that they are the ones who will be punished for it. What would be news is if law suits like this one were no longer filed and that women had truly integrated into the profession of law enforcement beginning at its entry level and at its police academies.

But the Riverside Police Department like most others still has a ways to go until it has enough women in its ranks to even meet the national average of 14% let alone until its numbers are truly representative of the communities it serves. In 2006, it hired a sizable group of women and lost all of them within six weeks, either in the academy or during the pre-academy training program which is sponsored by the department for its new hires before they start their basic training. Like most law enforcement agencies, the Riverside Police Department has a difficult time holding on to the ones it's got.

And the department has explained in many different ways how the reasons for this difficulty hinge on the women themselves and provided a variety of reasons why they believe this to be true. What it hasn't done yet is to admit that perhaps some of the problems exist inside its own operations. Maybe the city's risk management division discourages that kind of candor but if the department wanted to truly address its problems with retaining women, there are many resources available that it could turn to for assistance beginning with the communities in Riverside.

But when the issue of creating retention programs for both female and male officers was brought up last October, the department did not respond but Councilman Steve Adams, a former Riverside Police Department, did.

Adams said that retention programs were "remedial training for those who don't cut it". These and other comments he made were applauded by every White male officer in the audience. But perhaps Adams is just a bit sensitive. His brother, Ron Adams, was also a Riverside Police Department officer and was one of the defendants named in Keers' law suit.

To embrace change, the department has to admit that it has and definitely has had problems getting its own employees to accept women in their ranks. What kind of furor would that cause?

I remember hearing the story in the community about the Riverside Police Department field training officer who when asked why a female partner was no longer with him, said that she had been fired for being "too slow". He then espoused a bit on his feelings about women in the profession and said he didn't like them, they could never be as good as male officers and they shouldn't be allowed on the force. Au contraire, it's field training officers like this one who need to change their attitudes about women in the profession and that need to be told that behavior like that is unacceptable in this city's police department. But is this belief system unique in a training program where the vast majority of the officers assigned to train new hires and show them the ropes are male?

This law suit only presents one side of the story, but it raises some interesting and troubling issues. It also raises some questions and some of them have to do with the implementation of the sexual harassment policies used by both the police academy and the Riverside Police Department.

Metzler's law suit stated that her complaint was handled by her direct supervisor in the academy. Was that appropriate? Was it professional practice to have the person assigned to investigate the complaint also complete a professional evaluation of the complainant? Wouldn't it had made more sense to have an independent outside party at the academy conduct the investigation?

According to most harassment policies, the complainant is able to access a copy of the complaint as well as be able to be provided with updates on the investigation. In this case, Metzler apparently was denied under both provisions. In fact, if it's true that Ammerman told her it was none of her business, that should have been her first sign that the academy had circled its wagons around themselves against her and that the retaliation had begun.

Why Metzler was approached by the Riverside Police Department officers who according to her account, were unhappy with her filing a sexual harassment complaint is unknown. Did they work at the academy and hear about it on the grapevine? Was that their way of notifying her through some form of official capacity that the department had been contacted about her complaint? Why did they think the complaint was any business of theirs or that it mattered or not that they were upset about it? Their personal or professional opinions of the situation are irrelevant or at least they should be.


If it's true that Metzler graduated in the top third of her academy class and had graduated, why was she fired by the police department on her first day of work? Was it based solely on the evaluation given by Ammerman, who had also been entrusted to investigate her sexual harassment complaint? Did the police department seek out other information to help them make an informed decision on the status of Metzler?



Since Metzler technically may have been a probational officer, the department has the right to fire her without listing a cause. However, how then can an officer refute allegations as a means of "clearing their names" if they don't even know what those allegations are? If it's true that the officers told her it was because they didn't like her, then what actually was included in the reasons provided to other law enforcement agencies?



And it would be very troubling indeed if there were officers, whether they were the defendants or not, who told an officer they were being fired because they didn't like him or her in the presence of a representative from the department's Internal Affairs Division. If that were true, then what would that say about the integrity of that division?



Was it true that other women had been sexually harassed by the same male cadet? Did their silence on the issue make the difference in terms of them being able to enter into careers in law enforcement or not? Did Metzler's refusal to be silent about how she said she was treated end her own career in the profession before it even began?





Those are some questions just to start with, aimed both in the direction of the training academy and the Riverside Police Department.




Actions have been taken in other cities regarding what was called rampant sexual harassment at police academies including a letter written by the Women's Justice Center to the head of the Santa Rosa Junior College's own academy in 2001. Not surprisingly that letter also stated that the working environment at Santa Rosa's Police Department which hired many of the cadets graduating from the academy was also horrible and hostile to women especially women of color.


(excerpt)



As we understand it, the situation at the academy last year is that there was a male cadet in the year 2000 evening police academy who was sexually harassing females in the class for months until the women left around midterm. The sexual harassment at times escalated to criminal sexual offenses and criminal threats. A number of the cadets, female and male, reported and confirmed the ongoing harassment to the evening Academy Director Peter Hardy. Instead of acting on the evidence presented to him, Director Hardy allowed the harassment to continue even as female cadets were leaving the class one after the other.

In May 2000, just before midterm of the one year evening academy, there were a total of 25 cadets in the class. There were 8 females (2 of whom were minority race females) and there were 17 males. The primary victim of the harassment was a minority race female.

At graduation time in December, 2000, there were a total of 18 graduating students, only 3 of whom were females and 15 of whom were males. 5 of the females had been lost to the class including the 2 minority females. One of the 2 males who left the program was also a victim of sexual harassment by the perpetrator cadet. This male victim had also reported the harassment to Hardy, and then later tried to report to Hardy again when the perpetrator cadet retaliated against him for reporting in the first place. According to this cadet, when he tried to tell Hardy about the retaliation, Hardy said he didn't want to hear it. The other male who was lost to the class was one of the three minority males.

The perpetrator cadet was graduated with Deputy Hardy's full knowledge of his offenses, as confirmed, witnessed, and reported to him by a number of cadets. From the statements made to us by a number of the cadets, Director Hardy was well within his rights and obligation to have terminated the perpetrator cadet and saved the other cadets' careers.




A woman who became a police officer for the Detroit Police Department described the emotional and sexual harassment she received as a result beginning when she entered into the training academy.


(excerpt)


Gomez-Preston became a good cop, a tough cop - she was one of the first female officers assigned to work the streets - and for five glorious years she was a member in good standing of the Detroit police-force family. But then her "family" turned on her. And before long her living nightmare began.

In 1984, Cheryl Gomez-Preston filed a lawsuit against the Detroit Police Department for sexual harassment: She now describes the experience she went through as emotional rape. In April 1987, a jury initially awarded her $675,000, delivering one of the largest sexual-harassment verdicts in favor of a law-enforcement officer up to that time. After all the legal procedures are exhausted, she hopes to receive at least $500,000.



Former Portland Police Bureau Chief Penny Harrington gave a speech to the United States Commission on Civil Rights in 1996 about problems in the Los Angeles Police Department involving sexism and sexual harassment, problems which are reflected in most law enforcement agencies in this country. No one works and has worked harder for female officers' rights and access to equal opportunities than Harrington.


More information on how to handle sexual harassment in law enforcement from the National Center for Women and Policing, an organization founded by Harrington. It sounds good on paper but is the reality instead that if you dare file a complaint against sexual harassment that you're basically throwing away any future career you may have as a police officer?

U.S. Airman Elio Carrion was cross-examined by former San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department deputy, Ivory J. Webb during his stint on the stand testifying in Webb's trial on attempted voluntary manslaughter charges, according to the Press Enterprise.

Michael Schwartz questioned Carrion about the events leading up to the shooting.


(excerpt)


Schwartz also zeroed in on Carrion's behavior before the shooting, which contrasted with Carrion's training as a military policeman in dealing with traffic stops.

Schwartz stressed how Carrion got out of the car and argued with Webb in an apparent attempt to defuse the confrontation despite knowing he should have stayed in the Corvette and kept his mouth shut.

"I can't remember what I was thinking," Carrion testified. "In my mind, I was not trying to pose a threat."

Carrion's civil attorney wasn't impressed.


(excerpt)


Outside the courtroom, Carrion's civil suit attorney, Luis Carrillo, said Schwartz is "beating around the bush" if he focuses on his client's memory lapses. Carrillo said Schwartz is badgering and arguing with his client.

"The defense has not chipped away at the fact Elio was ordered to get up," Carrillo said.

More on Carrion's testimony is available at the San Bernardino Sun's Web site and also at the Los Angeles Times.






Announcement from the ACLU Southern California office:





WHAT: CITY COUNCIL VOTE TO ENDORSE SB 1019 RESOLUTION



WHEN: Tuesday, June 5th (between 10am and 12pm)



WHERE: 200 North Spring Street, Room 340, Los Angeles, CA 90012



I will be following up with you via phone. If you have any questions or suggestions, please email or call me at 213-977-5205.



SB 1019 just passed on the Senate floor vote and is moving now to the Assembly which will be an even tougher fight.



SB 1019 would allow local jurisdictions and state agencies to provide greater transparency around police complaints. As we know, an open disciplinary process is a crucial ingredient for community-police trust. We hope we can count on your participation and support!



Thank you,Elvia MezaField ManagerACLU/SC



213-977-5205 - office



213-507-1803 - mobile

The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board stated that the city council should be supported in this effort in the face of what's expected to be a heated battle in the state assembly as the state's law enforcement unions put pressure on elected officials to shut the door on it. They'll probably win this round, but a window has been open at least a little bit and Goliath might be a strong guy, but even he can't shut it again.

(Excerpt)



Even before Copley, a decision by city officials sealed police use-of-force records. The result: Here in Los Angeles — where police abuse sparked two riots in a generation but the LAPD at least struck impressive gains for openness — the public no longer has the right to know the names of officers who beat or fire at a suspect.

Pressure from police unions compelled Romero to delete the portion of her bill that would have restored access to many of those records. Now the officers' lobbyists are throwing their weight around to block the restoration of open hearings. To hear them talk, you would think the Legislature is entertaining some sweeping and unprecedented violation of privacy. But the bill would simply undo, partly, the giant backward step into darkness the state took last year.



The Times also wrote about the State Senate's passage of a similar bill.

"It feels like I was fighting to stay awake..."

There's one more day to cast your vote by mail in ballot for the ongoing city council election if you live in an odd-numbered ward in the city of Riverside. If you haven't mailed it in yet, you can still drop it off at locations listed at the city's Web site. Just click the link on the front page under Elections that reads "Ballot Drop-Off Locations". Your vote is your voice. Exercise it.



The city council meeting this Tuesday will be abbreviated in deference to the election deadline. This means that the session will be held in the afternoon and it will follow the structure of the evening meetings but it will be briefer than usual and will end early. In case you haven't figured it out, campaigns and elections supersede all of the city's business, not that there's much of it that's not on the consent calendar.

Still, this leaves plenty of time to hit those post-election parties that are sure to be cropping up all over town as the ballots are being counted. It's not likely that any definitive results will be given that night, but any excuse to party shouldn't be dismissed.

Everyone will be waiting for the ballots to be counted to see if there will be a second round of elections for some or all of the candidates or if any of them will win their seats outright. Which is good news for people interested in checking out the election night parties both Tuesday night and next November. This new voting format approved by voters last year provides potentially double the parties, double the fun in comparison to the old way of doing business!

Will BASS build upon its base on the dais as GASS continues to deflate? Or will there truly be new blood on the city council? Will there be fundraisers held to both recoup on campaign costs and pay off hefty tickets from the city's code compliance division? For those who received fines or had your signs removed, next time promote a candidate who actually is already sitting on the dais and see if you are treated the same way. After all, remember who code compliance works for right now, if not after the election results are final and they're doing what someone more powerful than them tells them what to do.


Stay tuned for further bulletins.

Elio Carrion testified in the trial of the former San Bernardino County Sheriff Department deputy who shot him in January 2006. Press Enterprise reporter Gregor McGavin and other reporters have been blogging about the trial in increments throughout each day.

It's day four in the first criminal trial involving a law enforcement officer who shot an individual while onduty in San Bernardino County history.

McGavin does a pretty good job of sharing his experiences inside the courtroom with his readers.

According to McGavin's accounts, Carrion testified this morning on direct under the careful questioning of San Bernardino County District Attorney's office prosecutor Lewis Cope.

Carrion testified that he had been partying with his buddies before returning to active duty. He had wound up in a car with one of his friends who had begun driving crazily.

(excerpt)

"I told him to stop, pull over, slow down," Carrion says.

"I know what I'm doing," he says his friend replied.

The car crashed and Deputy Ivory J. Webb was present at the scene after being involved in the pursuit apparently without every notifying the dispatch unit. Carrion testified that he got down on the ground immediately after leaving the car. Webb approached him with a flashlight and yelled at him to get on the ground.


(excerpt)


Carrion says Webb was shouting profanities at him and Escobedo.

"I tell the officer I'm in the military, we mean no harm, my friend did something stupid," Carrion says.

"The officer says "Get up, get up!" and I repeat that I'm going to get up," Carrion says. "As I started to get up, he shot me three times."

Carrion lay on the ground waiting for medical assistance after being shot. He described to the jury how that felt.

(excerpt)


"How painful was it to be shot?" the prosecutor asks Carrion.

"You can't describe it," Carrion responds. "It feels just like fighting to stay awake. I remember I was going in and out of consciousness. I was trying to stay awake, trying to talk."

Cope asks him why he was fighting to remain conscious. Carrion says because "If I go out and I see black, i might not wake up next time."

"Did you believe that you were going to die?" Cope asks.

"Yes, from all the pain," Carrion says.



Here is the latest installment from this afternoon.

(excerpt)

Carrion says he thought he was doing what he was told the night of the shooting.

Under questioning from Cope, Carrion says he did not point at Webb or put his hand inside his jacket. It was hard for him to see Webb clearly, however.

"I put my hand to block the light from my eyes," he says.

"Did you ever, as you were getting up, make any movements towards the officer?" asks Cope.

"No," Carrion replies.

Cope walks to the side of the witness stand and asks Carrion if he is as far away as Webb was from him that night. He estimates the distance at about two or three feet. Defense attorney Schwartz says it looks more like four feet from where he's sitting. Cope grabs a nearby yard stick to solve the dispute.

"Thirty-six inches," he states.

Judge Smith says the record will reflect a distance of "approximately three feet."



Background information on Carrion's testimony is located here.

The Los Angeles Times also covered Carrion's testimony. The article details what played a role in leading District Attorney Michael Ramos to file charges in this case. One of the people he had consulted with before filing charges was then Riverside County District Attorney Grover Trask who had never filed charges against a law enforcement officer for an onduty shooting during his lengthy tenure in that office.

The only law enforcement officer to be so charged in Riverside County was D.A. investigator Daniel Riter who was actually indicted on murder charges by a criminal grand jury and prosecuted by the State Attorney General's office.


(excerpt)


Dist. Atty. Michael Ramos said last year that he and other prosecutors had listened to the tape several times and that all of them heard Webb order Carrion to get up twice before shooting him.

Webb has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and his lead lawyer has said Webb believed he saw Carrion reach for a weapon when he fired.

Carrion, who joined the Air Force after high school and became a military police officer, is home for the trial on temporary leave from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, where he returned to desk duty last year.

The airman spent 3 ½ months recovering from wounds to his chest, shoulder and left femur, which was shattered. He has been unable to resume his duties on patrol because of his injuries, and his civil attorney says Carrion is unsure whether the military will allow him to continue his career in the military.





The Los Angeles Times' Editorial Board is inspecting the chief in terms of whether or not William Bratton who heads the city's police department should receive appointment to a second term or not.

It urged the police commission to take careful consideration of his entire tenure at the position so far. The May Day incident pretty much put discussion of Bratton and any future he or any other candidate would have leading the LAPD to a halt for the time being.



(excerpt)


Meanwhile, Bratton talks a good game on openness and accountability, but he has seen his department become more closed to public review than at any time in its recent history. This is largely because of court rulings and other decisions beyond his control, but Bratton bears some blame as well. He has, for instance, done little to discourage efforts to thwart public access to records in police shooting cases, and he has rebuffed council attempts to examine his management. If Bratton is reappointed, he should use his stature as chief to press harder and more publicly for greater openness. Indeed, the commission itself needs to strengthen its commitment in this area, setting policies that expand police accountability and insisting that Bratton advance them.

It is not likely that the continuing MacArthur Park inquiry will suggest that Bratton had a hand in any wrongdoing. In fact, his actions in the wake of the incident have been exemplary. But he cited command failures, and he is the chief, responsible for command. Was his oversight of the event planning appropriate, and was it typical? The commission cannot wait for a final report, which will take months. But before it acts, it must know exactly where the breakdown was, what Bratton's responsibilities were and what he can do to ensure that something similar will not happen again. Once the commission has answered those questions to the satisfaction of itself and the public, it should move swiftly to conclude its evaluation of the chief.



It's likely the commission and city council minus Bernard Parks' vote will reappoint Bratton to serve as police chief. It's just as likely that Bratton will throw words like "accountability" and "transparency" around while continuing to batten down the hatches. In fact, the more he uses those words in mixed company, the more one can be certain that behind the scenes, there's much going on that Bratton would rather no one knew about.


At the LAPD's blog, Black leaders in the city supported Bratton's reappointment.



(excerpt)



Los Angeles Urban League Police Roundtable leader Earl Ofari Hutchinson said, "We support Chief Bratton's reappointment. We stand behind him. He's done a number of things that we are certainly proud of in this community."

The Youth Advocacy Coalition's Lita Herron remarked, "We see the ethnic makeup of the police force changing to be more representative of our international city. We are very pleased with Chief Bratton's work."

Listed below is full list of community leaders in attendance who voiced their support of a second Term for Chief Bratton:

•Earl Ofari Hutchinson, President, Los Angeles Urban League
•Cecil "Chip" Murray, Retired Senior Pastor, First AME Church
•Eddie Jones, President, Los Angeles Civil Rights Association
•Ed Scott, PHD, Educator
•Ingrid Spasser, Educator, Entrepreneur
•The Reverend Dr. Frederick O. Murph, Senior Pastor, Brookins Community AME Church
•Lita Herron, Youth Advocacy Coalition
•Lawrence Tolliver, Jr., Businessman
•Skip Townsend, Gang Intervention Specialist

What's interesting about this announcement is that when polls have been conducted not amidst community leaders, but community residents, Bratton doesn't fare nearly as well. In fact, the only racial group that gives him a fairly high approval rating are Whites. African-Americans, Latinos and Korean-Americans all score him considerably lower. Also, it's much more likely that the residents of these three communities in Los Angeles will encounter the police officers in the field, instead of in private or public meetings with members of the department's command staff including Bratton.

Bratton's not the first police chief to try to formulate good relationships with community leaders and he won't be the last. Politically, it makes sense to do this, even though it's clear that there's a bit of a bridge that needs to be built between some of these community leaders and their communities given the disparity in approval ratings both have given Bratton.

Odds and ends here and there

Dan Bernstein wrote a nice column about Yolanda Hernandez's eclectic record store on Magnolia Avenue in Riverside. It puts one of the city's businesses in the spotlight for a brief period of time. Unfortunately, that might not be the best place for it, given the current climate coming from the dais at City Hall.

Someone on the city council or city manager's office might read the column and notice that her business attracts a lot of young people including teenagers and decide that a congregation of young customers constitutes "blight" and decide to put this record store on the list of businesses to be ousted off the city's map as part of the "Riverside Renaissance".

Bernstein gets this and wrote the following.


(excerpt)


This is the kind of shop that oozes unpredictability and surprise, much like the antique stores evicted from downtown Riverside to make room for "Renaissance" retail, whatever that may turn out to be.



Having a Latino surname doesn't exactly help ensure her business's survival unless she has a restaurant that sells Mexican food. Otherwise, like other Latinos along with Asian-Americans she could find the business she's spent her life building on the city's shopping list for parcels to purchase under eminent domain or what precedes it, which isn't much nicer.

And it's not like teenagers are wanted in the downtown, given that the city has done just about everything to show that they're not welcome downtown. Not all teenagers behave badly and everyone's been one, and many that do probably need something to do or businesses to frequent that are attractive to them. So do younger children and one of the downtown places which was great for children was the children's museum in the downtown pedestrian mall which included among its services after-school programs. Unfortunately, the city didn't know a diamond when it had one in its palm so it lost that museum to its sister city, Hemet several years ago.




Councilman Frank Schiavone has gone on one of his campaigns again and this time he's taking on Union Pacific Railroad, according to the Press Enterprise. If you've ever been driving through Riverside, then you've probably seen incidents where trains from this freight delivery company have been parked across intersections, most notably Jurupa, Magnolia and Third Streets. It's a necessary job to speak out on this issue and someone's got to take a stand on a problem which has turned Riverside's streets into parking lots and delayed the passage of emergency vehicles for up to six hours each day. That's the amount of time that Union Pacific and Burlington North Santa Fe trains spend crossing Riverside's streets daily.

About a year ago, a deal was struck between the city and Union Pacific to reduce the amount of time it spent blocking the streets. It came about when the incident arose that was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back when Magnolia Avenue near Merrill was shut down for seven hours because of a train blocking the intersection.


The deal is as follows.


(excerpt)


As a result of the episode and subsequent meetings with city officials, Union Pacific:

Issued a standing order to its Inland dispatch center not to send any eastbound train past Jurupa Avenue until BNSF accepts the Union Pacific train onto its rail line.

Agreed not to send trains through Riverside unless the operating crew has at least 90 minutes to two hours remaining on its shift. This part of the agreement is meant to avoid a time-consuming crew switch when a train stops in Riverside near the end of a shift.

Provided Riverside City Hall with phone numbers for the Inland Union Pacific dispatch center to get information on train blockages.



The average time the trains spend blocking the city's streets has dropped down to a little over three minutes per train, which the city says is a sizable improvement but it hasn't impacted the safety issue which occurs when emergency vehicles can't get through to get where they are going.

And trains still stop and block the streets as happened last week on Olivewood when a Union Pacific train stopped for five minutes. Or several incidents involving Magnolia Avenue where trains were stopped for at least 10 minutes, including one incident where fire trucks and ambulances had to find alternate routes to get around a shut-down street.

If you see a train shut down a street for at least five minutes by stopping on it, here are some local phone numbers to call to report this incident to the city.



(951) 826-5991 (city council)

(951) 826-5311 (information and assistance)




Apparently there is some furor over a campaign letter sent out by Councilman Steve Adams bashing the Riverside Police Officers' Association. Perhaps Adams should read the fable written by Aesop where he dealt with the adage about biting the hands that feed you.

Four years ago, Adams was a virtual unknown who apparently decided he wanted to seek political office. He was a retired Riverside Police Department officer collecting a disability retirement either for being injured in the line of duty or in an intramural football game played off duty, depending on who you ask. He had made a name for himself as a financial consultant of some sort since retiring from law enforcement in the 1980s.

He first tried to gather signatures in Ward Three where current councilman Art Gage was running for office. Alas, Adams had difficulty even gathering the signatures needed to put him in the ballot, which means he would have had even more difficulty gathering the votes to win in Ward Three.

That didn't thwart his efforts one bit. Adams did what a lot of city council candidates do. He packed up his efforts and perhaps his household in Ward Three if he had one there and he set off for what he thought would be greener pastures in Ward Seven. Rumors traveled around the city that he was actually recruited by unknown parties from out of state to run for office in Riverside. The RPOA's members along with members of the Riverside Fire Fighters Association campaigned heavily for him in Ward Seven and in a squeaker of a run-off election, he prevailed and became a councilman.

But Adams' biggest problem was that he was essentially viewed by many as someone who merely came into the ward to get a seat on the dais and thus he had no roots in the La Sierra area. He had a difficult time coming up with residents in his ward to represent it on the city's boards and commissions. He nominated Frank Arreola for a seat on the Community Police Review Commission and Arreola lasted on the panel for about a year before leaving in an apparent huff. Soon after, Adams hired him to be his legislative aide even though many in Ward Seven questioned Arreola's qualifications for the job. Even more serious, were allegations by some Ward Seven residents that Arreola's hiring was Adams way of rewarding Arreola for work he had done for him while he was serving on the CPRC. Whether or not this was indeed true, it caused some degree of bad feeling in the city.

After Arreola's departure, Adams pulled John Brandriff off his seat on the Human Relations Commission and had him fill in for Arreola. It appeared that Adams was unable to come up with a candidate to fill the opening on the CPRC without using someone he had already tapped to serve some place else.

While on the dais, Adams seemed to be more concerned about carrying out a city-wide agenda, rather than a ward-specific agenda and supported high-density housing projects that were opposed by many in his ward and projects that violated several growth-control laws passed by the city's voters. And Adams had a wandering eye, as before his term was even over, he would run off to join the circus that surrounded the state assembly elections.

Despite major backing by many law enforcement associations, Adams didn't even make it past the first round and decided that at least for now, he really, really wanted to be a councilman so he focused his efforts towards his reelection in Ward Seven. One problem as some saw it, was that while Adams was off running for another office, his ward had received the smallest slice of the billion dollar pie called Riverside Renaissance.

Not surprisingly his actions led to other people filing papers to run against him and he faced off with them in what is expected to be the first round of elections in Ward Seven.

But what was different this time, is that the RPOA didn't choose to back the candidate it had fronted four years ago. It, along with the Riverside Police Administrators' Association, opted to support veterinarian Roy Saldanha who it felt better represented their views on civic issues.

No doubt, that ticked Adams off. But interestingly enough, he still circulated old campaign brochures and posted old signs that said police officers backed him. That ticked the RPOA off, as it stated in a Press Enterprise article not too long ago.


(excerpt)


"This is the kind of thing we don't appreciate," Riverside Police Officers Association President Ken Tutwiler said, clutching one of the campaign brochures. "This is wrong."



Soon after, Adams disavowed himself of an organization that he had once belonged to while he worked as a police officer in the city's police department, saying he had to consider the city's interests not those of "special interest groups". But only four years ago, this same "special interest group" was instrumental in putting him on the dais although that's not what he called it back then. Without the RPOA's efforts, it's doubtful that Adams would have been elected to serve in a ward where few if any people even knew who he was at the time.

But in the four years since just like everyone else sitting on the dais, Adams has been engaged in a love affair with development firms especially since the city council voted to hire City Manager Brad Hudson in 2005. Frankly, that just doesn't give them much time for anything or anybody else. And since Hudson's been in place, there's been much turmoil in the city's workplace as was seen last summer and just several months ago and much turmoil among city residents who support Riverside Renaissance as a concept but are apprehensive about its administration in a city that's been spending money on projects like it's dipping into a bottomless coffer. The problem is, some at City Hall say it's nearing its bottom.

This time around, the RPOA has opted to endorse another candidate which is its prerogative as it is with all the city's labor unions who are involved in the endorsement process. Perhaps its members should remember that Adams is the councilman who calls city residents, liars from the dais and at candidate forums, which are two examples of venues where usually elected officials are on their best behaviors. Its members should also remember that Adams often makes comments that are inflammatory in order to provoke a response, which is the favored tool of several council members as of late. Bait the public, it responds then try to push the police officers to eject them from meetings. Adams himself has participated in these actions along with others on the BASS quartet. With these incidents in mind whenever you hear his words, you have to consider the source.

His words at best, are to be taken with a grain of salt. As has been said, whoever said silence was golden hadn't met Adams. His sound bytes are surely ones for the ages, to look back upon if anyone's bold enough to do a retrospective of Election 2007, the GASS quartet, the BASS quartet and the council career of Adams.




Also, regarding the city manager's office, word is that Hudson discovered the difference between an appointed position and an elected one when he allegedly tried to lean on a particular individual for criticizing him. That list has apparently been growing.






The number one critic of Los Angeles Police Department Chief William Bratton appears to be his predecessor Bernard Parks who now holds a city council seat. The Los Angeles Times published a commentary written by Parks where he criticizes the newspapers for playing nice with Bratton and castigating former LAPD chiefs, namely him.

His article details a series of articles including those written on the May Day incident where he alleged reporters praised Bratton for initiating investigations and disciplining officers while holding him and his predecessor, Darryl Gates to more stringent standards.



(excerpt)


During my years as chief of the LAPD, from 1997 to 2002, I fired more than 130 problem officers, more than the previous two chiefs and the current one combined. The newspaper never applauded my administration's uncovering of the Rampart incident despite the fact that its news story of Aug. 26, 1998, announcing the arrest of one of the scandal's central figures, reported that it had come following a six-month internal investigation initiated by me.

When Bratton, in one of his first acts, relaxed the department's disciplinary system, no news analysis or editorial questioned the wisdom of the move in a city with a history of troubled relations between the LAPD and minority communities. When this paper reported last year that of the roughly 6,400 complaints filed by residents against LAPD officers in 2005, only about 400 officers were disciplined, no follow-up news analyses or editorials criticized or questioned Bratton's commitment to officer discipline or his stewardship of departmental reform mandated by the consent decree.

Yet when he disciplined the two top-ranking officers in the MacArthur Park incident, the chief won praise for his swift action. No editorial or news analysis pointed out how clearly inconsistent this decision was with the day-to-day administration and application of discipline in the LAPD.


One memory of Parks is him talking to reporters about the Democratic National Convention as his riot officers were shooting less lethal munitions at demonstrators and media representatives as they had for several days. Two of the reporters shot were from the Press Enterprise with one being shot in the back of the knee and the other in the stomach.



Joe Domanick's commentary on the past six police chiefs in the LAPD followed Parks' article and provided an interesting perspective on their performances and the impact they made or did not make in the department's progression. Domanick wrote a comprehensive history on the LAPD, titled To Protect and To Serve.



Here's his view of Parks performance as police chief from 1997-2002.





(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)







Riordan's handpicked successor to Williams, the LAPD veteran wanted to impose tough discipline and accountability on the department. But his imperious attitude offended much of the rank and file, and his contempt for the media and some politicians cost him civilian allies. His old-line managerial style of shunning compromise hurt him as well. When the Rampart scandal came to light in 1999, and the city and department were forced into a humiliating federal consent decree, he reacted defensively and wasn't rehired.


A New York City Police Department officer who contracted sarcoidosis after the 9-11 terrorist attacks sued the city, police department and current police commissioner for denying him medical benefits according to the New York Daily News.

Officer Christopher Hynes worked over 100 hours at the location where the World Trade Center had once stood without a face mask.


(excerpt)


"I never smoked in my life," said Christopher Hynes, 36, who suffers from sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease that causes scarring of the lungs and other organs. "I never had a breathing problem in my life."

Now the 13-year veteran cop, who patrolled the perimeter of Ground Zero beginning three days after the terror attacks, can barely walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded.

"I feel like I'm not getting treated properly," said Hynes, who is suing for more than $1,600 in medical costs and for the line-of-duty designation for his ailment, which would make the city responsible for his medical bills.

"It's the culture, silly. What culture?"

Still no word on the status of the ethics complaint filed by community activist Kevin Dawson against Councilman Dom Betro or when it will be heard in front of the Mayor's Nomination and Screening Committee.

As reported here, Mayor Ron Loveridge apparently was asked about the status of the complaint at the Mayor's Night Out event held last week at Hyatt Elementary. Apparently he was surprised at the news that Dawson had not been notified by City Attorney Gregory Priamos by letter of the status of the complaint.

Now it's quite possible that the city council has just been very busy. I mean, three of the current members are still campaigning to keep their seats, which keeps them very busy. And summer's approaching and who wants to sit down and listen to an ethics complaint during that season? And wait, there might be runoff elections so will the hearing on the latest ethics complaint be delayed until after they are completed?

It's an interesting contrast to the rush to address the very first ethics complaint filed against a councilman since the implementation of an ethics code was adopted after a public vote in 2004. That elected official, Steve Adams, had his complaint handled so quickly, it was done before there was even an official process on how to handle complaints in place! In his case, the Mayor's Nomination and Screening Committee just adopted a rule against third-party complaints without ever actually meeting and discussing it in public and tossed it out.

Ethics complaint number two, which was Betro's first also was processed at lightning speed compared to this latest complaint against Betro. The first complaint was heard at the very first Screening Committee after it was filed and dispatched in less than 20 minutes.

Few people are keeping track of the process, most likely because Betro has been the recipient of most of the ethics complaints filed so far and no one wants to put pressure on their guy until the votes are officially counted. If it were Councilman Art Gage or even Adams receiving the complaints now, there probably would be a push to urge this now poky process along led by the Press Enterprise Editorial Board no doubt.

Not that the process is worth all that much.

What the committee showed the first time around is that it's very good at looking out for its own. Even though it's possible even likely that an independent panel might have achieved the same outcome on the last ethics complaint filed, it's more likely that the process would have had more integrity, more objectivity and been more user-friendly for the public. When it comes to addressing the city's ethic complaints, the process does matter as much as the final decision made during that process. And the process needs a lot of work along with an injection of well, ethics.

It's also quite possible that Priamos was quite busy dealing with what the Press Enterprise called in its article the illegal placement of signs by Ward One candidate Letitia Pepper. Pepper criticized the actions of the city through a letter written to the city attorney's office. Some have said that she has been singled out for this selective treatment by the city.



And there are signs from her campaign posted at a lot near the corner of Magnolia and 14th Streets in the downtown area, along with a sign that states that the placement of the signs is legal and if anyone witnesses anyone taking them down, to call a listed number and report it.


Those signs managed to remain in place the entire day. Maybe they'll at least finish out the weekend as well.






And just what the Los Angeles Police Department needed right now is not what it got. Instead, another one of its officers is being investigated by the department and the Garden Grove Police Department for inappropriate photographs he took of young girls including a five-year-old while offduty at a local festival, according to the Los Angeles Times. That girl's father tackled Officer Ralph C. Lakin to the ground.





(excerpt)



Spokesman Sgt. Lee Sands said the officer continues to work at Parker Center. The department rejected a request to interview Lakin.

Dornan, a brawny, 6-foot-plus man, tackled Lakin and wrestled away the camera after someone told him that a man was taking photos of his daughter. Dornan said he followed Lakin and saw him photographing under a young girl's light-blue dress. He said that when he tackled Lakin, he put his hand on the officer's weapon, which was concealed under his shirt. "The odd thing was when I took him down he never said a word," Dornan said.

Garden Grove police took the gun. Lakin was questioned and released. Police eventually took the camera.





In the midst of news involving the latest LAPD officer to be investigated for potential criminal conduct, Chief William Bratton continued to reorganize his department in the wake of the May Day incident and the multitude of investigations it set in motion.




The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board also asks the question about racism in the Los Angeles Police Department. Is the LAPD still dealing with intrinsic racism or are its current problems including those that led to what the Times called the "May 1 meltdown" coming from elsewhere?

The editorial seemed to blame the department's troubles on a breakdown at the management level and a rush to use force against individuals, the same people those officers were entrusted to protect. That's what the preliminary report on the department's investigations presented by Bratton appeared to show.

The editorial also speaks about a quickly vanishing police culture when it really should know better. If the culture of the LAPD is truly going the way of the dinosaur, then what of the problems that have impacted the department and the neighborhoods it polices in ways beyond just what most of the public and the rest of the world sees occasionally through the lens of a bystander's camcorder?

Sandwiched in between the bungled handling of demonstrations in 2000 and now, 2007 are incidents which have virtually kept the department under the harsh glare of the spotlight even as it crawls its way through a five-year consent decree imposed by federal law enforcement agencies, a reform mandate now going into its seventh year. And it's the department's culture which will keep them happening both in public and in private.

Each time something happens, a new scandal or high-profile excessive force incident happens, investigations are conducted and special panels including at least one blue-ribbon panel are convened. And what happens? The answer is nearly always the same, and that is that the LAPD's culture either hasn't changed a bit or has changed very little and that it's the culture which is still entrenched is in many cases beginning at the top, keeping these investigations from even being successfully completed. Why is this? Because the police culture of the LAPD like that of other agencies frowns on outside investigations and likes to keep its business inhouse which speaks to the isolation and insulation found inside most if not all police departments. It's part and parcel of a police culture to not trust outsiders and to circle the wagons against them when you feel threatened which appears to be nearly all the time.

The latest example of this behavior was documented in a public report issued by the blue-ribbon committee set up to oversee the investigation of the Rampart Division scandal which led to the consent decree being imposed in the first place. That report stated that the factual information it needed to make a decision was being blocked by the police department and that it had appeared that not much had changed at all.

The Times article treats the breakdown of the LAPD on May Day as if it were a separate situation apart from the department's police culture. As if it were the "aberration" that Bratton claimed it to be. Others including a federal monitor assigned to oversee departmental reforms have stated that it could indicate much deeper and pervasive issues inside the agency.

A case could be made that these procedural problems in the police department which had spent five years under a consent decree are symptomatic of a police culture that's probably not much different than it was five years ago and as stated is still alive and well at the management level. Consent decrees by their nature address problems like police cultures through mechanisms addressed at changing and often rewriting a department's policies and procedures in the hopes of instituting major change. But what is crucial to that process being successful is whether or not those changes are embraced or rejected.

That's why the department can spend five years on fixing procedural problems, or even 10 years and still experience a litany of mishaps and larger problems because even while those changes have been made and implemented to varying degrees, there still exists a resistance towards consistently and uniformly making those changes stick until they become acceptable, routine practice.

If there are problems getting the department to fully embrace change, then it's clear that the breakdown in management in the department is an ongoing problem and not just manifested by incidents involving public demonstrations. If this is the case, then the culture particularly at the management level is still resistant to the reforms it's been pushed to accept. The changes only work if they are embraced completely by the entire department with the management level setting the standard that the other officers will follow.


When people think of police culture, they think of racism, homophobia, sexism, White supremacism, patriarchal structures and a general sense of insulation and isolation which manifests itself through an "us vs them" mentality. Then there's the "macho" versus "wuss" categories that are often manifested by a culture that favors "being physical" over other methods of dealing with situations in the field and problems in the department. Officers in the first group are often held up even by management as the success stories while officers in the second group are often ignored or even sissified or ostracized. These behaviors are very difficult to root out and even more difficult to change.

These parts of the overall culture arose from years of what was known as watchman style policing, where police officers came from the outside, lived on the outside and came into communities periodically as occupation forces rather than policing from within through partnerships with the communities.

But even as people argue that racism, sexism, machismo and homophobia are part and parcel of the culture, they are not all of it. And if the culture is slowly changing, then these problems are not suddenly vanishing like the Times editorial seems to believe. It's hard work to address racism, sexism, machismo and homophobia, let alone eliminate them from a policing model that is built on them. Departments spend years denying that these problem exist until they are forced by an outside agency to at least think about it.

And purging a department either through rapid turnover or other methods of its "old guard" officers doesn't mean that the culture is leaving with them because often those who remain behind are moving up in the ranks to management positions because among other reasons, they may be what's left of the senior level of officers after the consent decree generated exodus. It can start anew when new blood is brought into the mix and take hold and impact officers who may have no idea what they are walking into when they are hired by the agency. And that's part of the problem, is that these newer officers aren't told anything about the past sins of the department that now employs them and of the turbulent relationships between that department and the surrounding communities. And if you don't know the history around you, then you're often fated to repeat it without even knowing that is what you are doing.

Hiring more male officers of color and women doesn't eradicate the old culture either, if it remains entrenched at the highest levels, while being flushed out at the lower. It will simply remain in place and in order to integrate or fit in, these officers who are not White and/or male will have a choice to make. Will they embrace this culture themselves or will they complain against it and risk ostracism and worse? The easier and saner choice appears to be to lie low, develop a thick skin and don't make waves, just go with a program that puts your kind on a lower level than others.

After all, how many officers in the LAPD or the Riverside Police Department ever filed litigation involving racism or sexism including harassment and found themselves subjected to having a department's internal affairs division initiate new investigations against them or reopen old ones after they have done so?

That's a department's culture putting them back in their places and trying to resist even individual efforts to challenge its culture and this practice appears universal in many law enforcement agencies.

Police cultures don't just vanish like a mountain in the mist, they slowly change over a period that is decades, not years in duration. Cultural change is generational and even rebuilding a department from the bottom doesn't change that because the officers at the top are still the same and changing the model to one that works with the public rather than apart or against it takes years as well.

Many officers see that themselves, most often as stated when pushed to do so by outside agencies but sometimes on their own as well. And addressing issues like racism, sexism and homophobia in your ranks and inside yourself takes work and it takes courage, a different kind of courage than is often needed in police work. It entails taking risks with the way that you see things and see people, even at their most vulnerable. It puts you at risk of ostracism from those around you that fear that same change from what they've learned to work with and how to do their jobs. But the officers who do this are the ones that are on community members' lips when they express the issue of police officers that they feel make a difference in their communities. A finished polished product isn't what's necessary but the effort to change is important.


Racism exists. Sexism exists. Homophobia exists. They exist outside law enforcement. There's no reason why they wouldn't exist or even be amplified inside it.

A Black LAPD officer said to a woman the other day and said no matter what they tell you, the LAPD is still a racist organization. Then there's the story I heard in the community not long ago about an unidentified Black officer closer to home who feels that he has to look out for his own because the officers of other races do so. If the perceptions of the first officer are true, and the existence of the second officer is real and not an urban legend, then what do either of these things say about the cultures in these two agencies? Meaning where they are today and not yesterday or five years ago?

However, even if racism, sexism and homophobia were disappearing and thus so was the police culture of the LAPD and other law enforcement agencies, poof all gone, there's a fallacy to that argument of the quickly vanishing culture that lies elsewhere and it's in this line.



With state-of-the-art communications technology, why was it so hard for command staff and officers to communicate? With such a strong focus over the last five years on policy and procedure, why were there so many procedural failures?



Because communication isn't just about technology used to facilitate its process, ultimately it comes down to whether those who are doing the communicating even understand each other, let alone trust each other. There are limits to what the best technology including police radios can do if the people manning both ends aren't on good speaking terms or communicating at all. And often it seems in police agencies as if that's the case between police officers who wear uniforms on the street and those who are in management who often do not.

What does a police officer see when he or she is looking at the area commander, or the division captain or the deputy chief? What do those in higher ranking positions see when they are looking at their officers?

Do they see friend or foe? Do they see authoritative figure or teacher? Do those in charge see recalcitrant children or students? Someone looking after them or someone looking over their shoulder?

And as the paramilitary hierarchy gives way slowly to a more customer-service driven business-like culture, do these titles and their relationships change or remain the same? How do those in management embrace change imposed during and in the aftermath of a program of mandated reforms? Do they uniformly embrace it, or in piecemeal? How does management's embrace of change impact those that they manage or supervise in terms of how they embrace or reject change?

What if you're an officer who's been working for years under one system and then that system changes each day to something else? What do you do? Do you bend in favor of what's new or resist in favor of what's familiar? Do you see those you work with bend or resist around you? At some juncture in the reform process, that's a decision that has to be made for everyone.


In recent audits involving the LAPD and the Riverside Police Department, both showed that there wasn't a uniform forward movement at the management level. Meaning that some at the top of the command structure embraced change and others didn't. In the case of the LAPD, the monitor believed that the problems involved in the May Day incident may have stemmed from the problems with management's inability to uniformly implement changes in how it conducted the business of supervising and training its officers. In Riverside, there was no single critical incident, more like a series of missteps that took place some time after the dissolution of the stipulated judgment last year with some personnel in management working the program and some apparently not.

Riverside got back on track so to speak in part because once again, it was subjected to outside scrutiny, albeit of a different sort than it received from 2001-2006. It remains to be seen and it must be watched closely to see if it can internally drive its own forward movement, which it will need to do so to become a successfully reformed agency. That critical test lies ahead.

Some argue that even a police culture is not a monolith but is divided into subsections.

The police culture itself is actually split in half, not by numbers but by dynamics. Management in police departments has its own subculture that is separate from that of the other, as surely as the chasm between the two exists between those who manage, those who supervise and those who are managed and supervised. And most reform processes enforced on law enforcement agencies try to focus on changing the culture of the management level in hopes of thus changing the cultures at the rank and file level, almost through a trickle down mechanism. But both subcultures are part of a larger culture as well because all of them arose from the rank and file level and share characteristics. Is that kind of process ultimately effective? Do the changes made at the management level reach those who are being managed by these individuals? Because as shown, rewriting the bottom levels of the chain of command don't necessarily institute cultural change on their own.

Given that few consent decrees and other mandated reform programs have been completed, the jury is probably still out on that one. But it seems clear that if you have some members of management embracing change and others resistant to it, not only does that negatively impact forward movement of a law enforcement agency among those individuals but everyone around them because everyone is interdependent on one another. Not to mention the mixed message that management sends to others who may wonder why they have to do something if management isn't willing to do it.


In this portion of its editorial, the Times Board explains its position.


(excerpt)



THE LAPD'S PRELIMINARY report on what went wrong May 1 in MacArthur Park reinforces deep concern about the culture and capability of the department. Despite the emphasis placed on "agitators" who police say attacked them with rocks and bottles, this week's presentations to the Police Commission and the City Council underscored a shocking breakdown in managing and protecting the crowd of about 6,000 people gathered in the park for an immigration rights rally. With state-of-the-art communications technology, why was it so hard for command staff and officers to communicate? With such a strong focus over the last five years on policy and procedure, why were there so many procedural failures?

There is plenty of room for constructive debate about how best to keep the LAPD on the road toward reforming its culture and improving its service. But the criticism leveled at the department over the last month — allegations of racist cops, contempt toward the news media — may be part of a dated critique, targeting a now-vanishing police culture while tragically missing the persistent problems that plague today's department.



But what the editorial board should have realized is that separating these "persistent problems" from the so-called "now-vanishing police culture" shows that it is also tragically missing the point.

As has been stated for both the LAPD and Riverside's own police department, the true test lies ahead and unfortunately, it's pass or fail.

Back up and running

Today was the day that "Five Before Midnight" was flagged as being a spam blog by Blogger and locked so that it couldn't be updated until Google, which owns Blogger reviewed the blog and determined whether or not it constituted spam. They did that this afternoon and reinstated it soon after.

Problems with the autosave function likely triggered the erroneous flagging.

What happens is that Blogger provides a form for bloggers to fill out and send in which is to be processed within two business days but in many cases takes longer than that.

Fortunately for this blog, it only took several hours and Blogger in its wisdom determined that this blog is not spam and unlocked the blog. So after a fallow period accented by a scheduled maintenance period at 4 p.m., "Five Before Midnight" is up and running again.

Thank you Blogger and I really mean that.

How to undermine civilian review and other lessons

There's been a lot of discussion about what is necessary to create an independent and viable form of civilian oversight but lately there's been discussions about how to dismantle a civilian review board in light of the recent chain of events impacting the city's police commission. However, the interesting thing about this discussion process was that after individuals listed all the steps they would take to do this, they experienced what is called a "click" moment. They realized that the lists they compiled appeared to closely match the actions taken against what used to be known as the Community Police Review Commission during the past year.



It began on Nov. 9, 2005 when the CPRC voted unanimously that Officer Ryan Wilson had violated the department's use of force policy when he shot and killed Summer Marie Lane in December 2004. That finding was forwarded to City Manager Brad Hudson's office where it met up with the finding from the Riverside Police Department which had exonerated Wilson. Back in those days, the community believed that the CPRC's finding would get an equal chance to be heard as that given to the police department. Of course as everyone knows now, that didn't happen. Hudson simply handed off the responsibility to someone else, blaming his own recent hiring by the city for that action. Of course, he hadn't exactly been new as he had been employed by the city council for six months at this point.





The final decision was given to Chief Russ Leach just as it would have been if the CPRC had never come into being and he did what any police chief would do which is to back his own investigation a second time. After all, he had done just that before delivering the department's finding to Hudson's office. The decision had been handed off to an employee who had essentially already made that decision without any information from the CPRC.



There was an issue with the year-long time line given to discipline officers after an administrative investigation and the interpretation of what constituted that time line would change greatly in the year to come.

After that decision by Leach, the city government closed for the holidays apparently free of secret meetings and civic intrigue involving the CPRC. That would have to wait a year but plenty would happen before what's been called, the December Surprise.

The chair and vice-chair of the CPRC met for the very first time with representatives from Hudson's office, the city attorney's office and the police department in January 2006 to hash over the CPRC's sustained finding and the resultant decision. What was so interesting was that the city attorney's office had for years ignored the CPRC and in fact, had refused to participate in a public workshop with the body in 2004 citing confidentiality issues. Well, whatever those confidentiality issues were, they magically vanished in 2006 after the latest round of officer-involved shootings happened, because then Asst. City Attorney Susan Wilson began attending meetings addressing the drafting of the public report in the 2005 incustody death of Terry Rabb.





Of course, when Lee Deante Brown's shooting came up for public discussion, City Attorney Gregory Priamos began appearing at CPRC meetings, joined by Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis. Curiously enough, something else happened at around that time. DeSantis began to take a deeper interest in the operations of the police department not long after the Brown shooting and that interest appeared to intensify after the autumn shootings of Douglas Steven Cloud and Joseph Darnell Hill.

Civil litigation was filed in these deaths as it had been in Brown's case and also in the cases of Rabb and Lane. Five law suits involving four deaths in two years. Okay, maybe six if litigation is initiated or has been in the Hill case.

This increased involvement or what some called interference incensed the labor unions which represented the employees of the police department and confused community members who looked or read about it all and thought, okay there's already leadership in the department so why is the city taking over that role in certain areas? Why isn't the city manager's office allowing them to just lead if the concerns about DeSantis' actions involving the Riverside Police Department are valid?

Why not indeed?


The community just assumed that DeSantis was so interested in the police department either because he secretly wished he were in law enforcement himself or he thought there were problems there and his boss, Hudson, wanted him to play close attention to its operations to minimize the expenditures the city paid out in civil litigation costs, given that the law suits involving wrongful deaths were increasing and the larger law firms from outside the county were beginning to circle the city and its department. The name, Terry Rabb, drove at least one firm into a frenzy and at least two law firms filed litigation in that case with a third expressing interest and wondering out loud if Rabb had any more family members willing to sue the city.

Apparently, the Brown and Cloud shootings were picked up quickly by law firms and also resulted in civil litigation being filed. Five law suits involving wrongful death allegations is probably enough to keep any city attorney and risk management division up at night. But if they indeed were kept up late, apparently there was some thinking going on.


And the community was thinking as well, after witnessing one year worth of behaviors involving the CPRC which intensified after the trio of shootings by the police department's officers that took place last year.



Here are some of the suggestions offered up by individuals on how to undermine the operation of the CPRC. Whether they actually do undermine the process or not either collectively or individually is subject to interpretation by different people with varying opinions who offered them. Whether these actions or changes have taken place or not is much more clear and in most cases, objectively measured.



Others are just guesses. Whether or not they've happened may never be known.







Ignore a sustained finding from the CPRC on an officer-involved death and then tell the community you will decide differently next time a similar case comes to your office.



Explain your inability to make a decision on a technicality. Then rewrite whatever's needed to support that line of reasoning.





Refuse to keep or deny that your office keeps a statistical record of how many times the CPRC and the police department reach different findings and the percentage of times the city manager's office decides in favor of each agency or offers a compromise involving the final dispositions of citizen complaints.





Forbid the CPRC's staff members from maintaining statistical records involving the differential findings.





Change your interpretation of state law seemingly on whim, i.e. G.C. 3304(d), meaning one day, it's the criteria which determines when the timeline begins that's important. No wait, now it's actually the waivers included in the law's text that matter more.


Begin holding meetings among select members of the commission which keep the rest of them in the dark.



Cut off your executive director from the community by banning him from doing outreach.


Make the executive director "at will" then restrict his abilities to carry out his job responsibilities so he resigns to "seek out better career opportunities". Replace him or her with an interim who has no training whatsoever to fulfill the written job responsibilities of the position.





Create conditions so chaotic that the majority of the commission's current membership resigns or decides not to accept a reappointment. Foster an environment that discourages commissioners from community-oriented backgrounds from remaining. Replace them with commissioners from law-enforcement backgrounds.





Politicize the appointment process by allowing only or mainly candidates with ties to City Hall through prior board and commission experience to be selected for interviews. Allow the city government to use the commission process to pay and repay political favors to one another, i.e. I won't vote against your candidate if you put someone I want on next time.





Allowing commissioners to be appointed or choosing to appoint those who are in potential "conflict of interest" situations including having received campaign contributions from police unions or are actively involved in labor relationships with the city or the police department.



At the screening level for appointments, keep the pool of candidates to be interviewed small. Keep them mostly limited to candidates who address the mayor and/or city council members on a first-name basis during the interview process.





Reduce the racial and gender diversity of the commission's membership, encouraging a status quo of mainly White male commissioners. Ensure that you have commissioners who actually believe a black object is rendered invisible in a Black person's hand.



Have new commissioners chair committees and try to change meeting format rules when they are still asking questions about CPRC operations, i.e. does the commission have subpoena power.


Place a police officer in public or closed sessions when commissioners deliberate on complaints. One past time appears to be counting how many times commissioners look at the police officer sitting in the room during open discussions on the Brown shooting case whenever any of them says something.





Have a city attorney present at the meetings and not also provide the commission the option of independent counsel without ties to City Hall.


Equate concern and outreach to communities with bias against the police department.


Discourage commissioners from asking hard and critical questions. Marginalize those who do.





Provide a location for the CPRC which is hard to find or inaccessible to the public. Its current location is a small cubicle on the Sixth floor of City Hall blocked with a cordon and next to a sign reading "Police Review Commission"[sic] that points in the wrong direction.





Halt the progress or delay the issuance of the annual report, both in terms of the written product and the presentation to the city council.





Hold secret elections involving the chair and vice-chair outside of a public meeting and make the election process so confusing neither the commissioners, staff or the public understand it.





Allow the subcommittees to go fallow due to lack of quorum or other reasons. Schedule them when few commissioners let alone community members can come to them.





Schedule the general meeting before 6 p.m. when few people can attend.





Meet with community leaders, assure them you're concerned about it and then fail to hold followup meetings on the "progress".



Institute a process to examine or make changes needed to the CPRC that either lacks community input or is heavily weighted towards actions or recommendations by City Hall. Don't ask the executive director, commissioners and least of all the community what each think you should do. Tell them what you are going to do, preferably after you've done it.





Fail to adequately research officer-involved death cases either due to lack of ability to commit the time or lack of interest. Allow new commissioners to deliberate cases without training them.





Do not keep their training up to date. Do not ensure training of newer commissioners. Make sure your executive manager is the least qualified and least trained person in the process during the time period one of the department's most contentious shooting investigation and review processes is taking place.


Do not adequately inform new commissioners of the time commitment or underestimate the hours per month needed to do the job.

Tell everyone the annual budget of the CPRC is equitable to previous years and adjusted for inflation when in reality, its starting budget is $20,000 less than it received only several years ago.




Have commissioners chair or participate in meetings before they receive training on the Brown Act and parliamentarian procedures.



Try to deemphasize the powers that the CPRC has. Start throwing buzzwords like "advisory" around regularly.





Do not do outreach or greatly reduce the outreach to the community. Ensure that the acting executive manager is never seen by the community. Segregate said manager from the rest of his staff, ensuring that physically he's closer to his direct boss than his support staff.



Do not limit your actions of micromanagement to the CPRC. Include and increase them in the police department, which should be easier to do given the support you will win from its employees for actions taken involving the CPRC.


Do all of the above or any combination thereof to show the community in many different ways how scared the city is of its own police department six years after a process instituting wide-sweeping reforms was instituted. That's puzzling because on the surface, the department appears to have done nothing to warrant that lack of confidence by the city and had made some positive strides.

Weakening the CPRC is the same as issuing a "no confidence" vote against the Riverside Police Department. An unwillingness to increase its staffing to meet the needs of a growing populace and an expanding city and keeping it properly equipped and trained also sends that message.

A city and a police department that is fully confident in its abilities does not fear strong, independent civilian oversight. It welcomes it. Do either in Riverside truly welcome it?

Hire a skywriter to advertise that "no confidence" vote in the police department. Bill it under Riverside Renaissance.



Those were just a few of the suggestions that were offered up during these discussions. More will be posted later on, in part two of "How to undermine civilian review and other lessons" as they come in.








Kristina Chew has a blog, Autism Vox, that includes a post on the recent case involving an autistic man who died in the custody of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department. It's part of a series of articles that she's written on the death of Raymond Lee Mitchell last July from what law enforcement officers labeled "Autism induced excited delirium disorder".

There's an interesting discussion in the comments section as well.



There was an article in the Albuquerque Journal that's no longer available online but it addressed the hiring of new officers who weren't so new by that city's police department.

The city hired 15 new officers, but seven of them brought baggage to their new job in the form of having been charged with criminal offenses in the past or having faced civil litigation. One of them was even investigated by the FBI.





The police chief in Albuquerque reassured everyone that he would hold these officers as he does his others to high professional standards. That would almost be believable if his agency and the city which runs it applied that standard during the hiring process. Perhaps Chief Ray Schultz should include Maywood Police Department in his studies of how other agencies handle the hiring process. Maywood Police Department, if you remember, is currently under investigation by the State Attorney General's office, several federal agencies and the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office.







(excerpt, Albuquerque Journal)




In its investigation, the Journal found that:

* Two of the transferred officers have been arrested on DWI charges.




One was convicted of aggravated DWI in 1996. That same officer was also convicted of criminal trespass in 1989. Since his troubles with the law, APD officials said, this officer enlisted in the military, turned his life around and is a "decorated war hero."




The other officer had his DWI charge dismissed in 2001 when prosecutors failed to comply with the six-month rule to bring the case to trial. This officer also pleaded guilty in 2000 to a charge of a minor being in a liquor establishment, false evidence of age or ID and improper use of an ID card.

* One officer was arrested in 2004 on charges of evading, eluding or obstructing law enforcement and charges of disorderly conduct. His charges were dismissed by the prosecutor.

* One officer was demoted from his former agency and was investigated by the FBI on accusations that he stole from the department's evidence room. The District Attorney's Office declined to prosecute, saying there was not enough evidence.







The officer was also involved in the domestic incident, and, after he punched holes in the wall, his wife filed for a protection order "from domestic abuse." It was granted by a District Court judge. The officer also had his wages garnisheed for not paying child support.

* One officer cost his former employer "a five-figure settlement," according to plaintiff's counsel. He and other officers were sued in federal court in 2003 for going into someone's home without a warrant and making a false arrest.

* A New Mexico State Police officer left his agency while he was under investigation for being paid twice while on the job. State Police officials said last month that, had he stayed, he would have been fired.




* Two officers are co-defendants in a pending District Court lawsuit in which they have been accused of repeatedly failing to arrest or seek charges against a man on numerous domestic violence violations. The man has been accused of killing his former father-in-law and brother-in-law, and seriously injuring his ex-wife. The civil case has been sent to a judge for a ruling.




For years, APD has accepted officers from other agencies. Unlike new cadets, the experienced officers go through an abbreviated training academy.




The new officers are on a one-year probation.




Castro said that APD will continue to check into the officers' backgrounds and that, if APD finds something that they did not reveal during the hiring process, they could be terminated.














Hiring laterals from other law enforcement agencies offers some benefits. More bang for the buck in terms of injecting more on-the-job experience into the officer ranks especially in police departments whose average level of experience isn't very high. And in a sense, they are a proven entity in that they have worked years in law enforcement before switching jobs.





However, they also carry risks with them, in that often, police officers don't leave law enforcement agencies to go some place but to leave where they are at. Often, the agencies that employ them are only too happy to get rid of them, so much so that they might overemphasize their positive attributes and underplay their negative ones to get them off of their hands.





Even Riverside's police department has experienced its own struggles, having hired a lateral in 1997 who was on the Warren Commission's list of officers who were disproportionately represented in both shootings and misconduct allegations. That officer was retired out in 2000 leaving behind one officer-involved shooting and numerous internal investigations including one in relation to the Tyisha Miller shooting in 1998.





Another lateral hired from the Rampart Division in the LAPD in the spring of 1999 retired 3 1/2 years later with at least two law suits filed against him for allegations of police misconduct.





A third lateral hired from the LAPD was also investigated for racist comments he made after the Miller shooting. He resigned from the department in 2000, lateraled to two other law enforcement agencies in central California and is currently being prosecuted for felony assault and battery charges in Orange County stemming from an incident at a baseball stadium several years ago.





Where did these officers come from? And what kind of reviews and recommendations did their former employers give them that brought them to Albuquerque? Hopefully, by this time tomorrow the answers to one of those questions in one case will be answered as this article appears to be part of a series.



In Los Angeles, Chief William Bratton has appointed Deputy Chief Michael Hillman to head the Critical Incident Management Bureau.

The city council appeared unimpressed and said after his latest presentation on the May Day incident, more questions needed answers.




(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)



Some council members suggested that a long-term problem with Los Angeles Police Department culture was involved. Councilman Bernard C. Parks showed a video from community members suggesting that the melee was the latest in a series of excessive-force incidents during Bratton's nearly five-year tenure.

"We need to hold those accountable across the line for use of excessive force, regardless of rank, regardless of position," Councilman Ed Reyes said. "There is real evidence that individuals did not treat the community as human beings, with dignity or respect. We anticipate that the real accountability will come with time."




As for Parks, what have you done as police chief to address the police culture in your department that you complain about now that was there all the years that you spent working in it? How many times did you block or impede the investigations involving the Rampart Scandal and the implementation of the federal consent decree that was imposed as a result? What were your officers doing at demonstrations that took place at that time?

Because your constituents can just as easily show videos about the LAPD's handling of several demonstrations in 2000 and the images would pretty much look the same.



Dana Parsons of the Los Angeles Times wrote an opinion piece on police commissions in Los Angeles County and had some recommendations.


(excerpt)



I hear that, but a review board with credible and courageous members wouldn't be impotent. If its only contribution were that of "conscience of the community," the panel would still be serving a purpose.

Of course, the sheriff and D.A. would like nothing better than a commission that couldn't do anything. And, yes, it may be difficult to recruit members who felt they had no real authority.

But, like I said, there's no perception that law enforcement is running amok. What's needed is a stalwart commission unafraid to challenge or criticize law enforcement when necessary. It should focus on brutality or harassment allegations or, as in the case that spurred the current discussion, the death of an inmate in Sheriff Department custody.

If the commission's only "power" would be to point fingers or express outrage, there's nothing wrong with that. After all, the D.A. and the sheriff both are elected and react to public critique.

The way things stand now, the departments typically investigate themselves. We know how that works.

Give me a commission with heavyweights, give them access to police reports and turn them loose.

The sheriff and D.A. should have nothing to worry about. I'll repeat what I wrote in 1991 when I first trotted out the idea: In the best-case scenario, we'd have a civilian commission that never had to meet.





That's something that no city that has implemented civilian oversight has seen yet. Rumors are coming out of the LAPD that Deputy Chief Cayler "Lee" Carter was made a scapegoat for the May Day incident because he's African-American. Apparently, according to one account that's been going around, he was actually in an office listening to the radio when the LAPD Metro officers charged MacArthur Park.









The trial of former San Bernardino County Sheriff Department deputy, Ivory J. Webb continued as other deputies testified on the stand about Webb's state of mind after he fired three shots at U.S. airman Elio Carrion. It was Press Enterprise reporter John Berry's turn to blog about the trial.


(excerpt)


Charles Carter, the first of two deputies to pursue Corvette driver Luis Escobedo and passenger Elio Carrion on Jan. 29, 2006, said he spoke with Webb moments after Webb shot Carrion in the chest, shoulder and leg.

"I asked Webb if he was OK," Carter testified. "He said, 'No.'"



A time line of the shooting and the investigation is here. More information on Carter's testimony is here.



An update on the Koufax Blog Awards stated that "Five Before Midnight" has been nominated for four awards. They are for best single issue blog, best blog covering local/state issues, best blog deserving of greater recognition and best commentary.