Riverside 2007: Labor and other pains

Ward One candidate, Michael Gardner responded to an inquiry about his position on Riverside Renaissance after being quoted in a Press Enterprise article as saying that the people he had talked to on the campaign trail about the project had no problem with it.

Inland Empire Craigslist, a good and useful source of information on city issues and some lively discussions on Election 2007 was the forum where Gardner explained his position further.


(excerpt, Inland Empire Craigslist)



I don't think most voters are opposed to the concept of the Renaissance. The concept is to try to make some significant improvements in a fairly short time. Many voters, myself included, do not like parts of the Renaissance. For example, I am opposed to spending $10 million redoing the downtown mall. I believe the Market Street frontage of Fairmount Park needs to be returned to the Parks Department. I do not support building a Parks Department office, or any office, in the Park.

I want to look at each piece of the Renaissance as it comes up. Some, like grade crossings are necessary projects, but we need to design them for the most benefit with the least negative impact. We should not be lumping things approved and funded long ago as part of the Renaissance.

My real point in the PE article was that people are tired of being bullied and ignored by Council. The Renaissance, I think, is an OK concept. Its parts need to be looked at individually. Some are good, some are bad.






I've had several discussions with candidates including Gardner and other community members on the issue of Riverside Renaissance and most of them have said that they support the concept of the program but are apprehensive about its application for a variety of reasons. Or they support some projects but not others and wish that the projects as Gardner stated weren't lumped together under one banner.

After waiting 10 minutes yesterday for the Union Pacific train that parks every Friday evening at Magnolia Avenue to clear the street, I was reminded of the necessity of grade separations at some of the railroad crossings. Perhaps the two men who were on the verge of turning their screaming match into a fist fight in the middle of the parking lot of Magnolia and Merrill might believe that too. Add in the people who were cheering them on and those climbing over the stalled freight train to get to the other side and maybe you'd have a group of people who think that the current system with the railroads isn't working.

So some of it is necessary, but if Riverside Renaissance runs aground, it may be with what are usually long-term projects like grade separations which require coordination with the railroad companies and federal agencies to complete successfully.

And the eminent domain or threatened eminent domain especially given that many of the business owners are Asian-American or Latino is troubling as well, especially in a city which prides itself in placing monuments to civil rights leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. a heart beat away from the building where these decisions are made.

The opinions on Riverside Renaissance given by some of the candidates have mirrored those in the community as well. But the city council didn't want to hear about it. Criticize any aspect of the Riverside Renaissance especially during its unveiling some months ago and you and your opinion were as welcome as a skunk at a Broadway premiere.


Now, some months later, three out of the three incumbents who ran for reelection found out that they'll have to face off with one challenger from each of their wards this autumn. One of them, Art Gage, said in a Press Enterprise article that maybe the thumping that they received was a sign that the city's residents were unhappy with the current council and how it conducted business. Part of that might be attributed to the increasingly arrogant attitude being expressed on the dais.



Another incumbent, Dom Betro, seemed to respond by saying, bite your tongue. Candidates driven by specific issues, read agendas, apparently split the vote. But oh wait, the vote was only split among those candidates who weren't sitting council members. As a whole, their supporters made up about 56% of the votes in Ward One and Ward Three. Who will these voters choose in November?










Inland Empire Weekly is a local newspaper and features some very interesting articles including one on code enforcement in the city of Riverside. This well-written story focuses on home owner Johnny Corina who was receiving a lot of visits and tickets from code compliance to the point where he felt his property was being specifically targeted by the city for other reasons.

Several city employees including "Matt" who would not release their names apparently agreed with him.


(excerpt)



According to Matt and two others—an active code enforcement officer who also asked to be anonymous, and a senior official of one of Riverside's largest labor unions—residents have become unwitting pawns in internal municipal politics, while city employees are victimized by unofficial, dangerous and possibly illegal policies.

According to Matt, a city code enforcement officer was ordered by Code Enforcement Manager Mark Salazar to tow Corina's pickup truck from his home. The officer arrived at the address and saw that the pickup had just eight hours earlier been tagged with a “72 move-or-be-towed” notice—meaning Corina still had about 64 hours before the pickup could be impounded. When the officer called dispatch and said he couldn't legally tow the vehicle, Salazar accused him of ignoring a direct order and insisted the truck be removed. When the officer still refused, Salazar dispatched two other code enforcement officers to tow Corina's vehicle onto his property, drop it in the driveway, and then tag it with a “10-day inoperable vehicle on private property” notice. The officers also refused, citing city law.

Both Matt and the anonymous code enforcement officer we interviewed say the Westridge Road episode was hardly an isolated case. Throughout the city, they say, residents are being handed code citations not because the alleged violations are so onerous, but because Salazar is intent on driving up his department's statistics in order to please the City Council. To accomplish this goal, they say, Salazar last year told code enforcement officers—during a meeting at which Matt was present—that they were each required to issue at least “one ticket-book's worth of tickets” (or 25 tickets) a day.

“One of my colleagues instructed his supervisor that a quota system was illegal,” Matt says. “That was passed on to Salazar, who repeated his order—25 tickets a day—or face termination. The officers were literally in fear for their jobs, so they were going out and writing tickets as fast as they could, working through their breaks and lunches.”





The code officers were also pressured to have no more than 20 cases open at a time so they closed out cases without the problems being resolved. Any attempt to challenge this system led to claims of insubordination against that employee.

It got bad enough, the officers said, that a group of code compliance officers were stationed in the Corporate Yard, a location most famous for being the setting of racism in the form of a hostile environment against Black public works employees that resulted in heated meetings with city management in the late 1980s and a major law suit filed in U.S. District Court in 1997.


(excerpt)


According to sources, the 72-Hour Abatement Team was an unofficial group of three senior code enforcement officers and their supervisor, Joe Estrada, each of whom were targeted for “removal” after running afoul of management. To accomplish this goal, city officials in March 2006 exiled the team to working out of an unheated, un-air-conditioned metal shack in the “Corporate Yard”—a Lincoln Avenue property where the city stores its trash trucks and buses. The shack had previously been used as a soil-testing laboratory, Matt says, and was filled with hazardous materials, including boxes labeled “Radioactive—Do Not Open.”

“The shack was basically a killing station for getting rid of unwanted officers,” Matt says. “The team members were all top code enforcement officers, as far as seniority. Management took away their laptop computers and gave them to officers with less seniority, so there was no computer access at all. All the fire extinguishers in the place were expired. There weren't enough chairs for everyone to sit down. The surfaces were covered with about an inch of soil—Joe Estrada had to clean the soil off with a push broom.”

If Matt's claim that officials posted the team to the metal shack in order to get rid of them is true, they succeeded. Within months, one officer resigned, another was fired, and a third wound up on long-term stress leave. Estrada took the job of code compliance manager for the city of Rancho Mirage. Reached for comment, he confirmed the existence of the team, but refused to discuss the matter further, saying the matter “was headed for court.”


Also included in the article is an interview with Gregory Hagans who is president of the SEIU Local 1997 who also was one of the plaintiffs on the racial discrimination, harassment and retaliation law suit filed in 1997. He explains how an SEIU steward in the code compliance division was the target of an attempt by City Manager Brad Hudson to remove him. Two other officers in that division faced retaliation as well for their union activities

It's no secret in the city employment ranks how Hudson feels about union representatives and those who are active in the city's labor unions including the SEIU but also others like the Riverside Police Officers' Association and the Riverside Police Administrators' Association. The article mentions the appearance of both unions at a city council meeting in late March to protest the creation of "at will" positions in the police department from the captains' pool.

Hagans' views on the situation existing between Hudson and the city's unions.


(excerpt)


“It took one year before the city manager even came and introduced himself to the troops,” Hagans added. “He's out there doing these firings and chopping heads off, and they didn't even know what he looked like. He's out of touch with the community and he's out of touch with his workers. You've got a city management that shows no dignity or respect for its employees. Now, we have a dignity-and-respect article in our contract, but they don't seem to care about that. To them, we are just fodder."




If you took a poll among the ranks of the city's workers, would they agree with this or disagree? What do you think?



Speaking of code compliance, it was quite busy sending officers out to take down election signs of certain candidates that the city deemed had posted them in violation of the city's ordinances. Some of those who were targets of this ahem, campaign were Letitia Pepper, a candidate in Ward One who posted her signs along with a notice of who to call if anyone witnessed these signs taken down by code compliance.



Ticketed by code compliance was the RPOA for some banners they displayed telling people to vote for Ward Five candidate, Donna Doty Michalka and Ward Seven candidate, Roy Saldanha. They received tickets to the tune of several hundred dollars. Were all parties treated equally under the law? The jury remains out on that one.












Let the LAPD investigate!



This is the message being sent by the Los Angeles Times to the city council in that city in response to news that this body planned to interview officers in the police department even if it meant issuing subpoenas to the department after Chief William Bratton said that some of those who supervised the melee are not available for comment.


(excerpt)


It's true that the council has power under the City Charter to subpoena witnesses. So do other city officials, such as the zoning administrator and the city treasurer. Those subpoenas, by the way, are to be issued by the Police Department. Just imagine the scene — an LAPD officer serves a subpoena on members of the LAPD command staff against the wishes of the LAPD chief, interfering with an LAPD investigation.

And it indeed would be interference. Many on the council appear to forget that Bratton's reports to them have been preliminary. Numerous investigations are going forward, including those that will produce an after-action report, use-of-force reports, an inspector general's report, a report on the lawsuits arising from the incident, perhaps an FBI report and, at some point, a full report to the Police Commission and the public. There is no evidence that the investigation processes are flawed, that they are designed to cover up what happened or that anything would be gained by the council beginning its own, competing probe.

The council wants answers and is entitled to get them. When it wants to ask Bratton questions, he should show up and answer them. But by announcing its intention to bring in lower-level sworn city employees for questioning — especially employees who have the right not to answer — the council is simply assuring that it will get more of the silent treatment.



Actually, the city council responded in frustration to a police chief who was saying one thing but doing another. Promising transparency in the investigation while circling the wagons around the department even further. As the newspaper noted in an earlier editorial, Bratton talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk when it comes to allowing scrutiny into his department.

What the Times will find out is that months will go by, the investigation will still be incomplete, the city council will still be frustrated and want answers and the employees involved will still be unavailable for comment. However, it's important to go through the process to get to that point first.



In the L.A. Weekly News, there's a comprehensive article on the May Day incident involving over 60 LAPD riot officers who stormed a park, striking people congregated peacefully with their batons and shooting less lethal bullets at them.

There's a lot of commentary on the decision by Bratton to demote Deputy Chief Cayler "Lee" Carter in response to the criticism of the community against the police department after this latest incident was broadcast around the world.


(excerpt)



Bratton has been unusually brutal in describing Carter’s leadership at MacArthur Park. Before the City Council on May 30, Bratton blamed a “command-and-control breakdown.” Without any prompting, and with mounting indignation, he lashed out, saying, “Chief Carter for 19 minutes marched with that [Metropolitan Division] platoon, actually the three Metro platoons, across the field on 11 different occasions. He could’ve stopped it. To the best of our ability, and based on our understanding, he did nothing.”

“He did not what?” City Councilman Bill Rosendahl asked.

“He did nothing,” Bratton answered. “He went along for the ride.

“So that’s a command-and-control breakdown,” the chief continued, “from my perspective, when I have a two-star chief of police, who’s the senior person on the scene in charge of 600 police officers, who marches behind 100 officers using less-lethal weaponry and ammunition, moving a group of agitators into a larger crowd of 4,000 people.”

It was the most devastating attack by a Los Angeles police chief on one of his trusted brass in recent memory.

A few moments later, Bratton added, “When I talk about command-and-control failure, the two senior ranking members, who between them have over 70 years of experience in this department — and they did nothing! Well, basically, the action I took against them within 24 hours I think speaks to my state of mind relative to my lack of confidence in their ability to continue commanding in this department.”





But who picked them? Who promoted them to be his right-hand men? Who was the one who said that he had a quote from former president, Harry S. Truman on his desk stating that the buck stops here?





Towards the end of the rather descriptive article, the writer gets a bit cynical.





(excerpt)



Somehow, Bratton manages to dodge blame. Maybe it’s his incessant use of that crackerjack phrase “transparent and accountable” that saves him from scrutiny. Whatever it is, Los Angeles is witnessing the work of a political and public-relations genius. Residents just better hope that more old people, women and children at public rallies aren’t terrorized after the razzmatazz is over.



I know the feeling.





How to undermine civilian review has received response as people learned that some of the "suggestions" they could come up for nullifying the Community Police Review Commission if they wanted to do so and had that power have indeed come to pass and the roles that certain parties at City Hall and the police department have played in ensuring that the "hollowing out" of the CPRC is receiving a refreshing dose of clarity as well. The list of actions is growing longer for ideas, as I'm sure the list will be growing longer for what is in store in reality. Hudson and Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis have the time and energy to micromanage the CPRC while last year, they dropped the ball of even ensuring that the promises made by city council members regarding the implementation of the police department's Strategic Plan were anything but shuttled to the sidelines for months.

And per usual, the community members will be on the sidelines watching the city try to, as community members have said, nullify its form of civilian review. When Hudson etal decided to "change" or "fix" the CPRC, did they go to the community for input on what it felt needed to be done?

Of course not. After all the first thing the employees in the city manager's office did when they actually believed they might have to meet with community members was to apply to the police department for concealed weapons permits. Enough said.


And so it all began explained one of the probable origins for the beginning of what many have called the dismantling of an independent civilian oversight process in Riverside, courtesy of documents provided as part of the opening brief submitted by the attorney of Riverside Police Department Officer Ryan Wilson as part of his law suit to get the CPRC to either kick out its finding of excessive force against him or change it to "clear him" in the shooting of Summer Marie Lane in 2004.

Wilson apparently has the full support of his boss, Chief Russ Leach, who according to the brief was "furious" and "outraged" with its finding against his "fine" officer. Leach was also piqued at the "watch dog groups" and yours truly, for expressing opinions on the Summer Marie Lane shooting or mentioning Wilson's name too much, actions that took place a month before the CPRC released what most likely, will be its last controversial finding. He feared that said parties would make his life and that of Wilson's "a bit miserable" if he promoted Wilson to detective or apparently, allowed him to take a NBC reporter on a ride along.

Which is interesting because the police chief had no such qualms when he made the final decision to back his own officer nor did he express any such qualms. And that's as it should be in terms of how he makes his decision on his officers if indeed it was his decision to make at that point in the city's history. As it is part and parcel of a police culture to not be concerned about how the community feels about the decisions that a department makes and to regard any upset by the community as just a nuisance. But as a rationale for any decision not to promote Wilson, as they say, this dog don't hunt.

But why this reasoning was given should be clear at this point and will surely become even more clear as time goes by and both parties in this law suit continue to pencil whip each other through written documents. It's interesting what information is being given and how it's providing an unflattering view of how and why a civilian board has been the focus of a campaign by City Hall to undermine it during the past year.

And this is before the city has even filed its brief on this case, which no doubt will shed more light on its role.

The recent actions involving the city manager's action regarding the management positions in the department that drew crowds of police officers and others to City Hall make one wonder what kind of decisions Leach is still allowed to make.

There is always the sobering possibility that if Leach hadn't made that decision, he may not have remained as police chief. After all, not long after making that decision, he received the first five-year contract as a police chief in the city's recent history. Why was that action taken when it hadn't been taken when Leach was hired even though community members felt that it might be necessary to provide such a contract, given the revolving door policy with police chiefs during the previous decade?

The question is, should it have been his decision to make involving the Lane case in the first place? And was it really his decision?

And how did Leach make it? If he's so concerned about how community members including the parties who apparently irk him most would react to him promoting Wilson, then he must be even more concerned with how the police union would react if he took action against Wilson himself. After all, the community at most could make his life "a bit miserable". The police union can and certainly has in the past, "fired" police chiefs. Leach is smart enough to know which party is really of concern here.

But a declaration submitted by Leach's boss, Hudson suggests that perhaps Hudson did make the decision because basically what he's stating is that he did, but completely ignored the CPRC's contribution to the process except to say that its work product would not be included in Wilson's personnel file. What Hudson did say is that the city took action "in light of the finding by Internal Affairs" that the shooting was within policy.

A statement which could have been given by his predecessor John Holmes, the last city manager to work in a city that didn't have civilian oversight. Nothing's changed in terms of accountability to the community when it comes to the department's incustody deaths no matter what the charter states.

After the finding was issued, Leach began attending meetings at City Hall regarding the CPRC where in the past, he had kept his distance as most police chiefs do when it comes to civilian review. Not the public meetings, but more private conferences that took place involving the city manager's office, the city attorney's office and several commissioners beginning in January 2006, probably while the ink was still drying on the Wilson decision.

How many meetings were involved, is not clear but there were at least two or three, according to the commissioners who attended them and all that players attended a public safety committee meeting involving the CPRC last January. What is clear was that two commissioners reported back to their body on a meeting that took place last December with the same parties where as ex-chair, Les Davidson put it, we're not being asked what we think we should do, we're being told what will be done.

Those parties who delivered that message to the commissioners have made it clear through their actions if not their words that the community falls into that category as well.

It took a while for commissioners to begin resigning, in what would first be a trickle then a hemmorage of departures. Four resigned, two were thinking about it and another one is apparently trying to jump ship as well. Pedro Payne, the prior executive director, had been serving when the commission made the decision to sustain an excessive force allegation against Wilson. Obviously, he didn't make friends at City Hall when he did so, and maybe that's one of the reasons why he joined the exodus of Black and Latino management employees exiting City Hall since Hudson and DeSantis were hired.

To community members, Leach had said he supported the CPRC and actually came up with fairly good recommendations to help make it stronger and more independent. People were impressed with his vision.

However, the problem often is that police executives are more than happy to agree with a process until it disagrees with them or places them in a difficult position. And it's clear if what is presented in Wilson's brief is the truth, then Leach clearly has problems with his own "vision".

But chiefs are always between a rock and a hard place in many ways and have to be different things to different people, hence the confusion when on one day, they purport civilian oversight of their departments, then the next they are "furious" with them. It's the difficulty of the positions they hold and the fine line they walk across which is one reason why many police departments have had to address serious problems.

And so, the CPRC continues on, a ship seriously leaning on one side after having been hit on all sides. Just like its much weaker predecessor LEPAC did during the same decade where the police department started going into its downward spiral that ultimately led to its stipulated judgment with then State Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office.

Some old, entrenched patterns are very difficult to change despite strong efforts by those to institute reforms in order to break old patterns and create new ones. The faces have changed perhaps, but the path itself seems awfully familiar if you're a student of local history.

It remains to be seen whether this is one of them and whether this old adage is true. What is past is prologue.

Canary in the Mine: And so it all began

It's official, all four council races are heading towards runoffs in November, according to the Press Enterprise.



The incumbents, Dom Betro and Art Gage, responded differently when asked what they believed the reasons were for them having to run again in five months. Perhaps Councilman Steve Adams was too speechless to respond.



As it turns out, one politician's wake up call is another one's denial.


(excerpt)



With no incumbent receiving the simple majority of votes needed to avoid a runoff, some candidates and residents, including Gage, saw the results as a public expression of disapproval for the council.

"Obviously there's discontent with City Hall," Gage said.

Gardner, who is trying to unseat Betro, said the dissatisfaction among people he spoke with during the campaign was focused on the council's interaction with the public.

They are not upset, he said, with the Riverside Renaissance, a $1.2 billion program designed to carry out 30 years' worth of public improvements -- libraries, parks, landscaped medians and more -- in just five years.

Betro said he views the Ward 1 result as a function of four candidates on the ballot, each able to exploit an issue or two well enough to divide up the vote. "I don't see it as a rebuke," he said.



Of course not, because a rebuke would have been what took place if Betro had barely cleared the 50% of the voters plus one vote mark during the election. What happened instead was what might be called a backlash and that's why he's in the position as are Gage and Councilman Steve Adams of having to face off in the finals to determine who gets to serve on the city council.

But if one councilman is willing to examine what's in front of his face and the other wants to continue to blame the fact that he's facing a runoff on outside forces, then that's perfectly fine.

See you all in November and we'll see what the voters have to say.






Columnist Dan Bernstein at the Press Enterprise wrote about a conversation that he stated happened at a local watering hole after a very rough couple of days spent waiting for all the votes to be counted in Election 2007. It's hilarious even if it is a night to forget. In a newspaper that is looking more and more like an advertisement for the downtown tourist bureau, Dan is still the man.


(excerpt)



I don't get it."

"Me neither."

"I do."

"You do?"

"Voters are ingrates."

"They're such Middle Agers!"

"But we're middle agers."

"We're Renaissance men."

"We are the sons of Leonardo DiCaprio!"

"You mean the sons of Leonardo da Vinci."

"Not the sons of Mussolini!"

"Cultural slur!"

"Cocktail, sir?"

"To the Renaissance!"

"To the Reppaschlance!"

"To the Runoffplotz!"

"I thought I'd win going away."

"I thought I'd win and you'd go away."

"I thought we ruled the Domain!"







Writing about politics and city council elections has been interesting and fun, more so than I had anticipated when I started writing about Election 2007, round one. For the most part, I write about issues pertaining to the Riverside Police Department and so I've been catching up on doing that in the past couple of days.

And in what is often called kismet, I've found some interesting documents that were recently filed in civil court in relation to a fatal officer-involved shooting that took place several years ago. What was interesting about them was how they have ensured that the spotlight that's been on the city's recent handling of the Community Police Review Commission has just got a little bit brighter. Thanks, to Officer Ryan Wilson for filing this most interesting law suit and providing the mechanism from which many questions about the city and police department's intentions towards the CPRC and perhaps even the police department will be answered in the upcoming months.

Many people had believed that the shooting of Lee Deante Brown in April 2006 was the epicenter of the problems that the CPRC began experiencing, but a law suit filed against the CPRC and the city by Wilson clearly shows that in actuality, it might have been the Summer Marie Lane shooting that got the ball rolling at City Hall.


While perusing through court records at the Riverside County Superior Court, I caught up on the travels and travails of that litigation that was done by Wilson to push the CPRC to either throw out its own finding or change it to "clear him" of the Lane shooting.



In case you don't remember, the CPRC had voted unanimously in November 2005 that Wilson had violated the department's use of force policy when he had walked behind and up to the driver's side window of Lane's stationary vehicle and fired three shots inside it, killing her. The CPRC based its finding on its view that Wilson was not in immediate danger nor was anyone else when the shooting occurred. Earlier in the incident, several witnesses said that Lane had been trying to hit Wilson with her car while he was trying to arrest a male friend of hers.



The finding was forwarded to City Manager Brad Hudson's office and it met up with a finding released by the police department which had exonerated Wilson of that shooting. Hudson had a decision to make only he didn't and a declaration he filed as part of the city's response in the law suit, Ryan Wilson v the City of Riverside explained that further. According to it, Hudson stated the following.





(excerpt)



"In light of the finding by Internal Affairs that the shooting by Officer Wilson on Dec. 6, 2004 did not violate the department's use of force policy, the city has not and will never consider the commission's Nov. 2, 2005 report in connection with any personnel decision regarding Officer Wilson, including, evaluations, discipline and/or promotion. Moreover, the Nov. 2, 2005 report is not maintained in any personnel file regarding Officer Wilson."



What's interesting is that Hudson keeps referring to the Nov. 2 public report released by the CPRC, not the actual Nov. 9 finding issued by the CPRC against Wilson. Why this distinction is critical is an item for future discussion. But what Hudson is essentially saying is that the city opts to abide by the Internal Affairs Division's findings and disregards those provided by the CPRC.


As to Hudson's explanation for his actions or more accurately inaction surrounding the Lane case, that is stated in his declaration including the excerpt above. Monday's explanation might be different than what you hear on Tuesday.



This latest explanation is a bit different than what Hudson told the community when explaining why he acted or failed to act the way he did. When he wrote in his declaration that he did essentially act.

It's kind of like the situation where people ask him whether or not he supports independent counsel for the CPRC and half of them will say, yes he told me he does and the other half will say, no he told me he doesn't because the planning commission doesn't have its own independent attorney. Then you need another person to come forward with his or her version of the answer to the same question to break the stalemate and figure out what is the real answer.

On this particular topic involving the Lane case, Hudson had initially said that he was brand new when the decision was being made and so opted out of it. He said that if the same circumstances presented themselves again, he would act differently in a case like the Lane shooting. Though he did say at a meeting of the public safety committee in November that Chief Russ Leach didn't wait until the CPRC issued its finding to act if something "egregious" occurred. Apparently, the first sustained finding by the CPRC on an officer-involved death in its seven years didn't fall in that category, but then in most police cultures, it wouldn't cause any effect at all except to make a department upset about a decision made by people who it most definitely sees as outsiders.

And that's what happened here. An outside body issued a finding on a shooting that essentially was ignored but it still incited fury within the department's management, if how the brief accounts the situation is accurate. That's an unfortunate dynamic but as the brief states, it's now there for all to see.

That same dynamic was also clear in some of the machinations involving the Los Angeles Police Department surrounding some decisions made by the department's management under current chief, William Bratton to batten down the hatches on some of its accountability mechanisms while tossing words like "open" and "transparency" around to the city government and the public like shuttlecocks in a badminton game.

And in L.A. neither the city council nor the community members are buying that as evidenced by the city council's recent decision to have officers in the LAPD appear before that body for questioning on the May Day incident.

The city of Riverside and its police department share that same quality of talking about transparency, something the process surrounding the CPRC has seen very little of from either entity during the past year. How could it, given that it spent most of it in the midst of resignations involving its former executive director, Pedro Payne and five going on six commissioners in response to actions taken by Hudson's office involving the CPRC.

What is both so fascinating and so important about this law suit and the responses of all the involved parties included in it is how it has provided and will continue to provide an interesting look at how members of a police culture circle their wagons against outsiders. The "vanishing police culture" is as much a myth in this department as it is in the one in Los Angeles and this law suit now as it will continue to do so until its conclusion bears witness to that. It's the rosetta stone of the police culture within the Riverside Police Department, a tribute to other similar well-worded portraits about how what goes on behind closed doors can be a far different reality than what you see in public.

Apparently what Leach found egregious about the whole affair of the Lane shooting besides the finding of course, was what the members of the community including those belonging to "watch dog" groups were saying about his officer. If the brief authored by Wilson's attorney is an accurate portrayal of the deposition Leach gave in February, then a lot of questions about the difficulties faced by the CPRC are perhaps on their way towards being answered, not through what stories the city officials and police representatives have told the community about their plans for the CPRC, but through what lies in the public record of this case.

Here is one example of what was revealed about the dynamics involving the CPRC, the department and Leach.

(excerpt)

"Chief Leach fully supports petitioner[Wilson] and is clearly furious and outraged with CPRC as evidenced in his deposition testimony. Although he personally has no doubt of petitioner's qualification as a "fine officer", he is fully aware his name has been tainted."



So now are Wilson and Leach facing off against the law suit's defendants including the city and the beleaguered CPRC? A window has just been opened into a complex series of events that transpired since this finding was released in late 2005 and the fuzziness around the dynamics of the various players involved in the "hollowing out" of the CPRC is clearing. With more paperwork anticipated to be filed in this case including volumes by the city's legal team, that clarity will probably increase in upcoming months as the storyline to what led to the current state of the CPRC is available for all to see and read.

This initial brief is probably just a taste of what lies ahead waiting to be revealed through upcoming declarations, motions and briefs filed by both parties who may be on opposite sides here with a police chief being pushed to choose sides, but ultimately share one thing in common, animosity towards and fear of a truly independent CPRC.

Leach apparently said that promoting Wilson would be a difficult task because doing so, "they would make his life and the officer's life a bit miserable.'" Just finding Wilson an assignment after the CPRC issued its finding wasn't easy given that there was one incident when a NBC reporter wanted to ride along with officers and Wilson and his partner were not chosen because of the Lane shooting and how that would look if anyone got wind of it.

Leach and the other members of the command staff had to apparently consider their next placement of Wilson carefully after the controversy that was stirred. But the most interesting detail not included in the law suit is that interest in this shooting didn't begin when the CPRC released its finding but before that.

How is that known? Because the shooting began receiving attention in late September long before the CPRC reached its finding, not just from the public but the department as well.

People didn't start protesting, questioning or even writing about the Lane shooting simply because the CPRC issued a sustained finding against Wilson. People began talking about it in the communities and speaking out on it after the CPRC's investigator Norm Wight delivered a briefing on his investigation of the shooting at the end of September 2005 and it might have happened sooner if the public had known the truth about the final seconds before the shooting took place. As it was, commissioners and community members' jaws dropped in shock when Wight provided a version of the shooting that was much different than what had been related before.

On Dec. 22, 2004, the department had given an initial briefing to the CPRC and the public which turned out to have included erroneous facts. The department's representative had said that Wilson had shot Lane through her car's back window while he was down on the ground and it was backing towards him. This version was related to the CPRC despite the fact that the department knew the true version of events at that point, according to departmental memos circulated the day after the shooting and several days before the CPRC briefing took place. The department clearly knew what had happened at the point the briefing took place and blamed the "minor" errors resulting from miscommunication within the General Investigations Bureau.

When the community heard the truth, not from the department as it should have but from the CPRC investigator, that's when the concerns about this shooting in the communities began.

And it wasn't just those in the community that started becoming involved in following the process.

The police department itself began sending representatives from its Internal Affairs Division including Commander Richard Dana to meetings that took place after Wight's briefing, an action which was unprecedented but has been repeated since with the shooting of Lee Deante Brown. Why did the police department send representatives from the department to these meetings if they believed that the problem with the shooting was truly the finding that could come later from the CPRC? Did they already realize there were problems which necessitated them keeping tabs on the discussion being conducted by the CPRC as it prepared to draft its public report? After all, the department's representatives attended CPRC meetings in October 2005 and the finding against Wilson wasn't issued until weeks later on Nov. 9.

At no time in the preceding five years have representatives from the Officer Involved Death Team and/or the Internal Affairs Division attended a CPRC meeting addressing an incustody death unless it was either the initial briefing on that death or a training session on how either conducted their investigations or administrative reviews. Why did that protocol change with Summer Marie Lane's case at least one month before that commission sustained a finding against Wilson?

According to the brief, Leach also fretted about the "watch dog groups" and one reporter, yours truly, who was of "particular concern" apparently for mentioning Wilson's name continually on this blog. Leach also mentioned the "health and welfare" issues with people labeling Wilson a "killer" or an "executioner". Him mentioning me in particular didn't surprise me. I know I'm not one of his favorite persons and never have been. Seeing it in writing doesn't add anything to that nor does it change anything. Part and parcel of being concerned about police oversight and reform means you're not going to make many if any friends in uniform. That's just the way it works and you accept it if you believe in the importance of the process or you go home.

Few people operate under the illusion in any city that employees of a police agency from top to bottom tolerate let alone support civilian oversight of their departments. Those who do live in a dream world and those who believe it when law enforcement officers say they do, live there as well. They will speak positively about it in public forums until it comes back with a decision on a case that they don't like or disagree with. Then the negative comments and outright "fury" as described in this brief is what results, albeit behind the closed doors of a deposition when they are questioned after taking an oath of honesty to tell the truth and nothing but the truth.

But the true test in whether or not a police department at any level supports or welcomes civilian oversight is how willing they are to consider the input of those commissions when it disagrees with its own. And that's the stumbling block for most police departments when it comes to the implementation of civilian oversight in their midst. They can pretend to like it until it upsets them through its actions or its decisions and then they want their marbles back.

So what is the public to think when confronted with the reality months later that their police departments don't really like civilian review? It's interesting how much more upfront the police unions are about how repulsive they find civilian oversight with the Riverside Police Officers' Association being no exception to that rule, yet those in higher positions often talk and nod their heads about how useful it is for them again, until it comes back with a finding that contradicts their own on something as public as an incustody death and the truth emerges in a way that's not pretty, but necessary. Why is it that police unions can openly attack civilian review legally or politically yet the management can't do anything but make it appear as if they are embracing it?

Facing this dichotomy both between the rank and file unions and their management as well as the members of management and themselves is a very educational experience though it doesn't leave much illusions that law enforcement has really changed as much locally, let alone in general, as many people believe that it has.

Community members look to civilian review for accountability. Police departments top to bottom see it as anything from a nuisance to a nightmare. City officials look at it, and think immediately, civil liability exposure and the CPRC might have fallen victim to that line of thinking given that litigation has been filed involving at least four of the last six incustody deaths involving Riverside Police Department officers.

People who speak about police accountability and push for it or are "watch dogs" as Leach referred to them, are complimented by police management personnel in public, but it's obvious through law suits like these that once closed-door depositions come to light, what they may really believe and say is often far different. What's the truth and what is not? Only they know, the community is left guessing, like it is with many similar issues and trust is a word that gets tossed around a lot but few people amid the relationships between law enforcement and communities actually hold onto it.

That reality is what makes partnerships between police departments and community members so difficult and it offers proof to what many experts say, in that it takes at least 20 years to change a culture inside a police department. And that's if enough people in the departments even want it to be changed. Does the RPD really want to change? Do the unpleasant truths which are emerging and no doubt will continue to emerge during this litigative process courtesy of a police officer who wants to erase history in a department that tried that and failed, change that process?

The truth as they say will become history and the upcoming chapters haven't been written yet. At least not this time around.

In San Bernardino, the trial continues involving a former San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department deputy, Ivory J. Webb who faces attempted voluntary manslaughter and other related charges stemming from the onduty shooting of Elio Carrion in 2006.

Other accounts of the shooting provided by Webb to others are coming to light in the ongoing testimony.


(excerpt)



The first backup officer to arrive that night, Chino police Detective Brian Cauble, testified Thursday he came upon the scene to find the deputy, Ivory J. Webb Jr., standing above a wounded Elio Carrion with his gun drawn.

Cauble said he immediately asked Webb what was going on.

"He told me the subject had tried to attack him," Cauble said.

Richard Swigart, a San Bernardino County sheriff's sergeant who also went to the scene, testified Webb told him a similar story.

"He said the guy lunged at him and he shot three times," Swigart testified.

Webb's statements from that night were the central issue Thursday as his trial continued in San Bernardino Superior Court.

Prosecutors contend the statements are contradicted by a videotape of the shooting that appears to show Webb shoot Carrion just after ordering him to get up.

They also claim that after the video of the shooting surfaced, Webb changed his story to say he shot Carrion because he believed Carrion reached into his jacket for a weapon.

Election 2007: Where thou, Art?

Councilman Art Gage is heading off to the runoff election this autumn to face off against his rival, William "Rusty" Bailey who in a squeaker of an election narrowly missed winning the Ward Three seat outright. Both will head off to the final round this November along with the two top finishers in the three other wards. May the best men or women win but more importantly, may the voters win.



The addition of 3,000 tallied ballots changed the percentages each candidate received a little bit but did not alter the outcome in any of the races. That was the one where the city's voters living in the odd-numbered wards sending a loud message to the incumbents who ran for reelection that there will be no easy victories, free lunches or waltzes in the park for them this time around.

No incumbents winning by a landslide, then deciding next year to jump into the mayoral race. The two incumbents who were prominently featured in a recent edition of Inland Empire magazine talking about their mayoral aspirations for next year will now be fighting to stay on the dais this year. And that is exactly as it should be.

People are elected by the voters to serve as their elected representatives. No one is entitled to have that job but must earn it, and what's been permeating from the dais this past year is this feeling that the council members were not public servants accountable to the voters but that the city residents are accountable to them.

As repayment, the majority of the voters in three wards cast votes for candidates running against the incumbents including 56% of the voters in Ward One, 56% of the voters in Ward Three and about a whopping 66% of the voters in Ward Seven.

Hopefully, the incumbents who are running as well as those sitting on the dais heard the voters loud and clear. The newly polished, less accessible, leave-us-alone form of city government which recently turned its secretarial pool and cubicles in for legislative aides and spacious offices may have to reinvent itself once again. And it only has five scant months to do so. So they should like, start tomorrow?



Gage and Bailey probably spent most of today awaiting the final results in this nail biter of a race which pushed Bailey another fraction of a percentage ahead of Gage and narrowed the gap between Councilman Dom Betro and challenger Mike Gardner in the Ward One race. Also finishing strongly was Ward Seven candidate and former mayor, Terry Frizzel who will go up against barely-there incumbent Steve Adams in November as well.



Both Gardner and Frizzel ran on grass-roots campaigns spending far less than their rivals who broke the bank trying to win seats that pays about half annually as what they spent during their campaigns.

People anxiously waited most of the day for the final returns on Election 2007 to be posted by the county's voters' registrar. Now what lies ahead is an even longer wait, as the candidates will probably meet with their campaign teams, cut back on their vacation time and begin raising money in earnest to pay for all that advertising that will be flooding the mail boxes of city residents closer to the election and all the signs that will be popping up like mushrooms advertising the various candidates.

In the meantime, the saga of River City still continues.







"Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you're talking about... they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn't think so. People were human beings to him. But to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they're cattle. Well, in my book he died a much richer man than you'll ever be."




---George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart), It's a Wonderful Life




Salvador Santana's newsletter, The Truth is out in print and features a story on how he, Theresa Andrawis, a downtown business owner and Ward One candidate Letitia Pepper took a certain local gorilla out to the Mission Inn perhaps to sit and chill out over a banana daiquiri. They were met by security guards who wanted to apprehend said gorilla who allegedly was wanted by the Riverside Police Department for visiting local businesses with a sign that read "Don't monkey around! Anyone but Betro!"


This caused such a stir in the normally pedestrian downtown shopping mall, with several business owners receiving visits from said gorilla, who on one occasion performed a strip tease. The business owners were supporters of incumbent Dom Betro, having his campaign signs in their windows and were at a loss of what to do and who to call to deliver them from the dancing simian so they apparently phoned the Riverside Police Department to well, pick the hairy perpetrator up.

The mood downtown has been fairly somber lately, what with business owners having to worry about Smart Park's impact on their sales and the impact of Riverside Renaissance on their futures. So for most people, the presence of the gorilla in their midst probably perked things up for a little while.

Other candidates running for Ward One said that they had asked businesses to display their signs. Several business owners on the downtown strip said they would really like to do so but they feared the repercussions they might face if they did. These are sad times we live in if this is our reality.


Why are people so leery, including small business owners in the downtown area? Perhaps, because they are looking around them and seeing business owners like themselves being pushed out of their businesses by the threat of eminent domain. Perhaps they wonder if they are next in line on the chopping block.


The most recent example was the Kawa Market, owned by an Asian-American family in the Wood Streets neighborhood for nearly 20 years. The small market has been in business much longer than that, having a rich history behind it going back to World War II. This business was targeted by the city for eminent domain and make no bones about it, that's exactly what would have happened if the Guans hadn't taken the money offered to them by the city. That's how it begins, with the city offering a business owner with a price that might have been paid for their property up to five years ago. Then even as real estate is skyrocketing everywhere surrounding that parcel of land, the city will do another assessment and insist that the value of the property is actually dropping. So the amount of money offered to its owners will start dropping as well before the city lowers the boom.


Having seen up close the process which ultimately leads to what the Guans and other business owners were forced to do, I can understand why they took the money and didn't fight it. It's a battle that can't be won in the current climate and what happens is that you spend more of your money fighting to get less from the city. There really is no other way to go except to support the efforts of those who are trying to put a ballot initiative to the voters on imposing restrictions on the use of eminent domain for the benefit of private developers. At least then, the voters in this city would have the choice, yes or no.

But the actions taken by the city showed that it knew what the answer overwhelmingly would have been to that question.

Alas, that organization was hit by what is called a SLAPP suit by the city attorney's office. A SLAPP suit is filed by a local government against an individual or an organization usually based on allegations of defamation of character or as was the case here, because the city felt that it needed to "assist" the organization. Only the organization was engaging in the collection of signatures as part of a democratic process, not violating any laws or statutes and the only assistance it needed from the city was to honor the process that is currently in place for putting an initiative on the ballot.

What stamped this litigation filed at taxpayers' expense as a classic SLAPP suit was that it asked for the organization to pay the city's attorney's fees which currently are set at about $150,000. Cities and counties take that step to intimidate or chill the individual or organization's free expression or participation in a democratic process. So the decision that was to have been left to the voters will have to wait while the city's legal division directed by the city council killed it with kindness.



The Guans and the Kawa Market put a face on the side of the Riverside Renaissance that the city didn't want anyone to see. When the city council held its ceremony at the Riverside Municipal Auditorium where the mayor and council members sat on a stage and unveiled the Riverside Renaissance, they didn't talk about families like the Guans. They didn't talk about the owners of the businesses lining Market Avenue who had steadily paid business taxes to the Riverside Downtown Partnership for improvements they would never see. In fact, the lack of renovations done in their area would later be used against them. It's called "blight" you know, when the city neglects to improve an area where businesses exist. And so, now those businesses won't.





There was no discussion while twin lines of members of the Greater Chamber of Commerce approached the podiums to give their unwavering support of the proposal, about the comments that city council members made to the previous owners of the Fox Theater, which was seized through eminent domain several years ago. One council member stood up and said, enough talking, let's just take the property now. And take it they did, as the young children of the family that owned it stood sobbing in front of a reporter covering the story from the Los Angeles Times. The city gained a building that will cost it millions to renovate and maintain and it's unlikely that most of that money will be earned back if the only use it has is to host plays that few people will be able to afford to attend on a regular basis at current ticket prices.


Now, those who represented the first and third wards where these businesses resided on the city council are now themselves having to fight to keep their jobs five months from now. And it wouldn't be hard to guess that perhaps what happened to Kawa Market is one reason why.


Now that city residents are seeing the personal toll that Riverside Renaissance has taken on the dreams of some families, they are looking at it again. They're looking also at the future in a world where the economy ebbs and flows and that everything that goes up, eventually comes back down again. They're looking at the impact that fulfilling every item on a 20-year long wish list will have on its abilities to update its infrastructure and provide city services to the residents including those who are expected to join it through a series of annexations.

All the city council members see is Brad Hudson in the role of the fairy godmother promising to grant them their every wish with the icing on the cake being, huge signs popping up all over town with their names in the marquee. Signs that advertise a particular production starring [insert ward council member(s)] and co-starring in smaller roles(and font) [insert mayor and remaining council members]. Then the heads begin to swell and the dais gets even more crowded.

The council members become more prone to sighing, looking at their palm pilots, leaving the room, talking with one another especially Councilwoman Nancy Hart who chats up Adams and Hudson who appears to have one single ongoing conversation with City Attorney Gregory Priamos which appears to defy the stories that the two men don't get along. In the midst of this commotion, people come up one by one to have their three minutes at the podium.

Not that the public has much opportunity to speak out on Riverside Renaissance because the vast majority of money approved to be spent on these projects is approved through items placed on the consent calendar. And if you recall, no member of the public has been able to pull an item from the consent calendar since July 2005 when the city council backed by several city residents sitting in the audience who spoke on its behalf, voted 6-1 to pass a motion to implement new restrictions on public participation at city council meetings.

Then elderly women found themselves on a list of personas non gratis at city council meetings beginning last year when Mayor Pro Tem Ed Adkison barked at police officers to remove an elderly woman from the podium who had exceeded the three-minute speaking rule. That woman had appeared before the body seeking assistance and perhaps, a sympathetic ear because a city-owned pipe had burst and flooded her property.

One very embarrassed police officer found himself in the position of having to gently escort her away from the podium.

Then the next year, there were several more who faced a similar fate from the same city council, actually one or more of the four who currently make up the BASS quartet.

One of those who nearly was ejected from the chambers by police officers was Marjorie Von Pohle, who is 90 and has been going up to the podium weekly to call the city council on its actions of restricting public comment. Von Pohle who rarely misses a meeting just looked up at the two police officers from her seat with an engraved plaque bearing her name on the back of it and told them they would have to carry her out. Wisely, the city council decided to allow her to remain.


Instead of the Queen of Hearts yelling out, off with their heads to whoever displeased her, Riverside has Mayor Pro Tem Ed Adkison banging his gavel and barking, "point of order" usually with another councilman or two chiming in agreement in the background. That happened again several weeks ago, when a man who was upset because of crime and the shortage of police officers in his neighborhood found himself being escorted from the chambers by two police officers for exceeding the three-minute rule. One of the officers spoke softly to him, patted him on the back and led him out.


It's a tribute to two deputy chiefs and the officers under their command that no one has been arrested so far at the meetings. Several police officers came to a community meeting and complained about the actions of the city council on those occasions, about being caught in between a rock and a hard place. One of those deputy chiefs who intervened apparently found himself between a rock and a hard place as well, having earned the ire of Hudson's office and community members were unhappy about that.



The police department's officers have themselves congregated at City Hall twice during the past six months to protest against actions done to them either by the office of City Manager Brad Hudson and the city council. Their rallies followed those conducted by both the SEIU and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, both unions which also represent city workers. The long, hot summer of contract negotiations among the city's six labor unions led to three law suits, one strike vote and numerous rallies at City Hall before the contracts were finally signed.

The work force has never appeared more frightened or unhappy as it has been since the city hired Hudson and Hudson brought along his cohort, Asst. City Manager Tom De Santis and the micromanaging apparently began. The city lost hard-working employees particularly men and women of color to resignations and terminations and apparently saw a record number of terminations being appealed last year.

But back to the gorilla, who was about to find itself on the wrong side of the law while it was socializing with friends at the Mission Inn. The Riverside Police Department was notified and with Pepper's assistance set the record straight and the gorilla was allowed to take its breather from the campaign trail in peace.

And what's fitting about the saga of the gorilla, is that in real life, it's played by a female senior citizen, the favorite demographic group of choice to be expelled from city council meetings by those currently sitting on the dais.

Sometimes life is just so, ironic.








In Los Angeles, the police department is continuing to investigate a complaint filed about the alleged assault of a Black mentally ill woman that took place last weekend, according to the Los Angeles Times.

If you want to read a good example of how biased complaint investigations can be in the LAPD, just read the following statement provided by recently promoted Capt. Andy Smith. A statement he made to a newspaper reporter working on a story about the incident as an officer representing a department currently under federal consent decree. The expression of a department's "vanishing police culture" doesn't get much more bolder than that.


(excerpt)



"I'm hoping a video will surface," Smith said. "We'd love to see a video of this because we think it'd indicate exactly what our officers did" was exaggerated by witnesses.




Which kind of tells you that this investigation is probably over before it even began. But it's statements like this that might further compel the city's residents to push for a civilian review board of its own to be implemented in addition to the Los Angeles Police Commission which already exists. Smith and others like him will probably be shaking their heads in puzzlement as to why community members don't come forward to provide eyewitness accounts to police either of crimes that take place or incidents involving police misconduct. Because they're all liars of course.

The sensible thing for Smith to have said was that the investigation into the troubling incident is currently ongoing and being taken seriously and treated in a professional matter. But statements like these are free advertising for the importance of civilian oversight and review so if this is the way the department is going to conduct itself, by all means keep these statements coming.


Smith might be busy circling the wagons around the department but the city council in Los Angeles has asked for three officers involved in the controversial May Day incident to appear before the body to speak on and to answer its questions about the incident, according to another article in the Los Angeles Times.

This the incident that took place in MacArthur Park when over 60 riot police officers charged into there where hundreds of people were peacefully assembled. The officers were videotaped hitting people including media representatives with their batons and shooting less lethal bullets at them.

At least four investigations were launched in response and one deputy chief was demoted and is in the process of retiring from the force. Three other officers still remain off of street duty pending further investigation into their conduct.

Chief William Bratton had presented a report on the progress of his investigation first to the Police Commission then the city council. Neither appeared pleased with what he had to say and pressed him for more information and answers to their questions.


(excerpt)



After grilling the chief for the second time in two weeks, several council members said they were frustrated and dissatisfied by the answers provided so far about the fracas that injured 42 people, including seven officers.

Bratton said he doubted the deputy chief and commander whom he had reassigned after the incident, and a captain on the scene, would testify before the council. That is because they may be subject to a personnel investigation of their roles overseeing the police response at the immigrants' rights rally.

"I sincerely doubt that any of them will appear," Bratton told the council.

Council President Eric Garcetti responded by noting that the council has subpoena power to compel the appearance of LAPD managers. Garcetti and Councilman Dennis Zine said they would consider using that power, although both said it may not be the best approach and they were hoping the command officers would cooperate.

"I'm not ruling out anything," Zine said.

Zine noted that Bratton did not appear at the scene of the May Day rally until after the confrontation was over and officers had used batons and foam rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. Police said they acted after some in the crowd began pelting them with rocks and bottles.

"If we want to be transparent and open about this, we need to find out the state of mind of those in command," Zine told the chief.

Councilwoman Janice Hahn said the chief's explanation to the council has been a "bureaucratic attempt to defend what had happened" and has not addressed all of her concerns.

"Many of our questions were not answered last week, and I know none of my questions were answered last week," Hahn said.



Any of these council members interested in running for office out in Riverside? The even-numbered seats are up for grabs in two years.

Election 2007: Waiting is always the hardest part

A ballot count update for Election 2007 provided this afternoon shows that William "Rusty" Bailey was so close, but yet so far in terms of winning the Ward Three seat outright.



Ward One:

Dom Betro: 44.7%

Michael Gardner: 32.3

Letitia Pepper: 19.7

Derek Thesier: 3.3


Ward Three:

William "Rusty" Bailey: 49.1%

Art Gage: 44.2

Peter Olmos: 6.7



Ward Five:

Chris McArthur: 41.0%

Donna Doty Machalka: 30.2

Harry Kurani: 21.1

Robert Rodriguez: 5.4



Ward Seven:

Steve Adams: 34.0%

Terry Frizzel: 25.9

Roy Saldanha: 19.1

Art Garcia: 17.1

Daniel Gressman: 3.9



Oh, and this is definitely true in the camps of Councilman Art Gage and his challenger, William "Rusty" Bailey who are anxiously awaiting until the last ballot is counted in the Ward Three election, according to the Press Enterprise.

Ballot counting resumes today of the nearly 3,000 that remain plus another several hundred which still need to be verified because they experienced some form of problem. The wait may be a short or longer one as no one knows for sure.


(excerpt)


Final semiofficial results in all four Riverside City Council races will be posted no later than 5 p.m. today, Riverside County Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore said.

Gage, Ward 1 Councilman Dom Betro and Ward 7 Councilman Steve Adams are seeking second terms. Four candidates sought the Ward 5 seat. It's open because Councilman Ed Adkison didn't seek a third term.

Of the four races, only the Bailey-Gage contest really has a chance -- a slim one -- of avoiding a November runoff.

Bailey said he was a little frustrated that all the votes weren't counted Tuesday. "I'm ready for it to be over," he said.

"It's stressful, obviously," Gage said. "I'd like to know for sure."


Last night, there was a gathering at the Templo Del Sol restaurant near the University of California, Riverside that was thrown by Letitia Pepper who had run for the city council seat in Ward One.

Pepper garnered about 20% of the votes and played a pivotal role in pushing that contest towards what is expected to be a runoff election next November between incumbent Dom Betro and grass-roots challenger, Michael Gardner. Pepper didn't win the seat herself but she still felt like celebrating and so did the several dozen people who showed up to join her and she offered her congratulations to Gardner who attended her event as well.

Gardner said that although he realized that he had a lot of hard work ahead of him, he felt confident that he would win the election if indeed what just took place was only the preliminary round.

He has every reason to feel elated at his accomplishment given how far he's come in the past four years and the process of electing a Ward One representative could come full circle if this autumn, the winner was yet again an individual who was heavily outspent by his rival who apparently this time had to dip into two different campaign war chests to try and win this election outright. It won't be known until some time today whether Betro and Gardner will actually face off in five months but it's likely that they will do so.

The grass-roots candidates taking on the establishment in Riverside. It's not like that's never been done. History often repeats itself especially since most of the time few of us learn from it. But for a change in this case, it might not be such a bad thing.

Often Ward One, especially the downtown area is treated like the center of Riverside's universe and the city hopes that some day it will be the center of the Inland Empire, the jewel of the region. But despite all the money that flows into the downtown from the city's coffer to build it up and some say, modernize it, a lot of success during the election process comes through more modestly run grass-roots campaigns.

The problem which lies in politics involving this part of Riverside that surrounds the walls of City Hall is that this time around, you had an incumbent in Betro who had risen up through one of the most successful grass-roots campaigns in the city's history yet had become the opposite of the candidate that he and his supporters had marketed the first time around. He became the Goliath that when he played the role of David, he had promised not to be.

Perhaps among other things, he started thinking that he's King Midas. He gets a huge ego, a foul temper that he vents towards his critics or even those who look at him wrong and the more power he obtains, the more he wants. Far from taking him aside to help him deal with this problem, his backers either close their eyes to it or run interference for him, casting the blame on those who are directly in his flight path. Or when all else fails, they try to paint their critics as outside agitators who do not work or play well with others.

This all began early on in his first term on the dais, when the first who became alienated from him were those who had been among his closest political allies on the campaign trail. Those who were alienated the most were the hard-core grass-roots activists who believed in what they were fighting and voting for, whereas those who had other plans were more willing to stay for the long haul to hopefully reap some dividends.


That was the most interesting thing of the Betro campaign and the dynamics of the Ward One election was when this splintering began. That being, how many people who had worked hard alongside Betro in his initial campaign were now either running against him or working for other candidates running against him this time around. Or they are sending the message that there needs to be an alternative to the Betro of 2007 which was manifested throughout this election with the slogan, "Anyone but Betro".


The local newspaper which backed Betro's goals for the downtown area and had endorsed him, then took that ball and ran with it, in terms of ridiculing that slogan and those who repeated it every chance it got. It also looked out for him whenever he had problems with his campaign. Betro gets a paper cut and the media including the Press Enterprise editorial board rushes to the rescue.

Other candidates like Donna Doty Michalka and especially Letitia Pepper get eviscerated on the campaign trail by other candidates in their respective wards and the same publication is noticeably silent. The newspaper never mention comments made by the Betro campaign team that a vote for Gardner was really a vote for the "crazy lady". The newspaper also ignored comments by that same team when it began hitting up campaign contributors for needed funds that if these donors didn't cough up more dough, they would force Betro into a runoff with the "crazy lady" who wanted to ruin the city.

Of course, they also ignored the fact that Betro appeared to have difficulty remaining at a candidate forum without either storming off in a huff or accusing other candidates of planting their supporters in the audience while he never was very far from his own. Apparently, that was also the fault of his rivals, according to the Press Enterprise including its editorial board.


Unfortunately for Betro's team, if they need to hit people up for even more money during the long, hot summer, they'll have to come up with another scare tactic besides the "crazy lady" who apparently brought in enough votes to keep them at work campaigning for a bit longer.

The individuals who were the activists have stayed true to their grass-roots efforts. They didn't begin as grassroots activists and use that process and that title as stepping stones to get some place else. They didn't bring themselves up the ladder while ensuring that those who worked alongside them were left behind or even stepped on during this upward trajectory. Far from being the activists who came out of nowhere or the agitators who didn't attend the appropriate community meetings where people apparently go to get introduced to proper society, they still have roots in activism through other neighborhood organizations outside the downtown area. I guess it's only the folks in the downtown that think that every other neighborhood orbits around them.

These activists brought that with them to the election process and related the message that would later be reiterated by the voters in this city. That being, that there needs to be a change of the guard on the dais even if at this point most of these voters couldn't agree who the new guard should be.

You can like them or dislike them. You can agree with them or disagree with them and then you can go and look at the tallies for Election 2007.

What we're seeing in Riverside in recent years is time, effort and tons of money spent building up voting blocs on the city council. What we're seeing soon after is those same blocs get torn down in future election cycles by voters fed up with city council members who are no longer independent. It happened to GASS. It remains to be seen whether its successor, BASS will suffer a similar fate.

The GASS quartet which was painted as the villains behind the ouster of former City Manager George Carvalho in 2004 didn't last much longer than he did and soon began to deflate after as one person who attended a city council meeting said, it began eating its own beginning with Councilman Art Gage. Then came BASS, which settled in and began grooming Gage's proposed replacement, a young neophyte who worked as a teacher at Riverside Poly High School. Before William "Rusty" Bailey even filed his papers, he was endorsed by four sitting city council members and Mayor Ron Loveridge.

They endorsed Bailey because they called him a "team player". Ironically, the student outshone one of his mentors in Election 2007 garnering the highest percentage of votes received during the preliminary round of any of the candidates. Still, the only people who tend to view elected officials endorsing each other or a challenger as something appealing are probably those sitting on the dais and their supporters. To others, it resembles cronyism too much and if there's one thing that the voters have shown this week is that they want elected officials who are responsive to their constituents and think for themselves.

BASS is seen by many, as simply a more egocentric, ruder version of its predecessor. Whereas GASS members used to roll their eyes and sigh loudly at city residents who addressed them from the podium, BASS took it a step further and began calling their constituents liars and ordering the police officers to remove people from the podium including elderly women. This quartet also dispatched City Attorney Gregory Priamos to send city residents who spoke at city council meetings letters threatening them with arrest if they "disrupted" future meetings.

Whereas GASS was initially voted in office in a futile attempt to eliminate the Community Police Review Commission and micromanage Carvalho, BASS is more heavily slanted towards the interests of development, redevelopment and eminent domain, not necessarily in that order. Instead of micromanaging the city manager, they have apparently given him and his minions their blessing to micromanage various departments in the city.

And BASS managed to pretty much nullify the CPRC much more effectively than GASS ever could, simply by allowing the city manager to run it into the ground.


So what of Election 2007?


The final ballots in the preliminary round of Election 2007 in Riverside are having their signatures verified by the city clerk's office and they will be counted on Thursday before the final results are announced for the election.

Waiting to be counted are several hundred ballots from the four different wards that were dropped off earlier this week before the deadline. However, supporters of the candidates who placed in the top two spots in each ward are already gearing down for the finals to be held at a polling site near you in November.

Supporters of Betro and Ward Three candidate, William "Rusty" Bailey are still hoping that they will collect enough votes by the time the last ballot is tabulated to squeak into office. That appears to be a very real possibility for Bailey, but a tougher road for Betro who will need to capture about 80% of the remaining votes to be counted to avoid a runoff with Michael Gardner.

The contests in Ward Five and Ward Seven also are expected to hold runoff elections between the top two vote-getting candidates in each ward.

Expect fundraising to begin in earnest beginning this summer given how much money was spent by some candidates in this race. One councilman running for office apparently went through his funds that he had put aside for his planned mayoral race, along with those he had raised to try to hold onto his seat. After his performance in this election, perhaps he should put those ambitions on hold for the next four years.

The mayoral race is a popularity contest, given that the position doesn't really hold much power in a city that runs on a city council/city manager model of government. But you do need a lot of money to win it.

Campaign coffee mixers may be replaced by campaign barbecues or whatever it takes to bring the money into the coffers to the tune of thousands of more dollars particularly for the incumbents who will be fighting to retain their seats. Don't be at all surprised if you see some serious fundraising taking place among their rivals as well, especially by Bailey and Michalka in Ward Five.

Announcements are expected to be made from various organizations on who they will endorse in the upcoming races. Grass roots activists from several organizations will be holding events tonight to reflect on the past few months and what lies ahead.


Precinct walking will also resume in earnest. What happens in the next five months will probably go a long way in deciding who will be elected.

Some of the incumbents who thought they might sail right in on the heels of Riverside Renaissance might be scratching their heads right now. Perhaps they are meeting with their high-priced political consultants and most devoted campaign volunteers to figure out where they fell short and what to do during the next six months.



They really shouldn't be so confused about the loud message sent to them by the voters in Riverside but it remains to be seen how much if anything they have learned. Hopefully enough to park their egos for a while and start listening to all their constituents, not just the ones who make them feel good.






Things are broiling in Los Angeles as numerous concerns have been raised about the Los Angeles Police Department. The latest involves complaints by its Black officers against a recent promotion, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The promotion of Capt. Richard Webb to oversee the Professional Standards Bureau, which oversees the department's internal misconduct case investigations has angered members of a union of Black LAPD officers because Webb had once been sued for using racial slurs and displaying a picture of a hangman's noose in his office. What's interesting about that is that it wasn't long ago that a Black LAPD officer who had worked in the department's 77th Division filed a complaint about seeing a picture of a noose hanging at the station.

He nearly paid for that complaint with his career, after the department's version of the Internal Affairs Division reopened an old insubordination investigation against him and put him in the limbo of being unofficially suspended without pay for nearly two years. The Board of Rights ultimately cleared him of all the allegations and he collected back pay and headed back to work but not at the 77th.

It's not clear what happened to the officer or officers who were hanging the nooses. Maybe they got promoted too. Maybe that's part of an interior decorating program at the LAPD.

The city settled the law suit involving the department's new internal affairs director for $155,000.

About the controversy of his upcoming promotion, Webb had this to say.


(excerpt)


"I am proud of my 28 years of service to the city and to the LAPD and am proud of accurately reporting what suspects say in the field," said Webb, who is slated to rise to the rank of commander effective July 1.

"Unfortunately, some people I have dealt with over the years say things that decent people don't like. I still have to report things that are distasteful. Except for course and scope of duty such as reporting hate incidents or conducting administrative investigations, I have never used derogatory terms in my professional career."


Well, that's what Webb is saying now, but that's not what he said when he was questioned abut the matter in a deposition in relation to the law suit. During that process, Webb had admitted to using a racial slur repeatedly since he was a child.

He had been sued for among other things, treating a White female officer badly because she dated an African-American man and treating Black and White employees differently while disciplining them. Allegations that sound fairly familiar. They should because the last time they were played out inside a courtroom, they came with a hefty price tag attached.


The head of the Oscar Joel Bryant Foundation wasn't moved by Webb's litany.


(excerpt)



In a letter to Bratton, Sgt. Ronnie Cato, president of the Oscar Joel Bryant Foundation, said many African American officers who are members of the group were shocked and disappointed at Webb's appointment because of what Cato said was his past use of the term.

The organization "cannot and will not stand by and allow managers like Capt. Webb to continue their discriminatory treatment of minorities," Cato wrote. "Because of Capt. Webb's negative history toward African Americans — which appears to be a part of his upbringing — we are asking you as the general manager of this department to reevaluate the decision to promote Capt. Webb or at the very least, reconsider his assignment to the sensitive position at Professional Standards Bureau."

Lt. Mark Tappan, vice president of the organization, said Cato was speaking for the foundation board and many other members in raising concerns about Webb.




Chief William Bratton responded to this latest crisis as chiefs often do, through their spokesmen and by saying that he would never promote someone who was not qualified, which apparently is supposed to imply that he would never promote a racist. But did he? Or perhaps using racist slurs is one way of showing how one is qualified to hold a management position in the LAPD.

It didn't take the LAPD very long to provide one good reason for the Los Angeles Times rethink the editorial it published several days ago about the "now vanishing police culture" in that department.

Not long at all.




In the Los Angeles Times, there was also an article about how the number of complaints filed against employees of the Los Angeles Police Department has increased by 3% this past year. The number of officers and civilian employees who were the subjects of those complaints and left the department either through termination or resignations has increased as well.


The department sustained 21% of all complaints received which is higher than the national average of 15%.

Activists in Los Angeles who are playing close attention to the LAPD especially in the wake of the May Day incident are still very concerned.


(excerpt)


The report comes a month after the department was accused of using excessive force to break up an immigrants' rights rally in MacArthur Park.

"The average citizen should be concerned that complaints against the police are up because it signals that something is wrong," said Pete White of the Los Angeles Community Action Network.

His group filed a complaint Tuesday alleging that officers used excessive force on a woman in the skid row area.

LAPD officials said the increase in complaints can be explained, in part, by the fact that the police force has grown in size and that the department has taken steps to ensure that citizens are not discouraged from filing allegations against employees.

"We investigate, we pursue, every complaint that comes in," said Sgt. Lee Sands, a department spokesman.

However, police commissioners said they were somewhat concerned about the increase as well as how the department was handling many allegations.

Commission President John Mack asked the department to report back with more information on the handling of complaints of "discourtesy," saying that only 2.7% of the 2,822 complaints for that category last year were sustained.



Most of the complaints that are sustained fall in the "neglect of duty" category which had a 16.3% sustain rate.




As if the beleaguered LAPD doesn't have enough scandals on its plate, KNX radio released a story about a homeless mentally ill woman who allegedly was assaulted by four police officers several blocks away from the department's headquarters.

The woman was pepper sprayed, punched, kicked and then hogtied before being carried off to a squad car. A complaint was filed by Peter White of the Community Action Network about the incident that took place last weekend.


(excerpt)


Sgt. James Canales of the Central Station confirmed that an incident occurred that was being investigated, but he would not provide details. ''An arrest investigation is being conducted, an administrative investigation is being conducted,'' he said.

White said the officers pounced on the African American woman who weighed less than 90 pounds and beat her with billy clubs then doused her in pepper spray. They then hog-tied her, kicked and punched her, before carrying her by the hands and feet to a police car, White said.

''The officers could have easily restrained her and moved her on, but that's not what happened,'' White said. White did not know the woman's name.



It's not Margaret Mitchell, the name of another petite Black mentally ill woman who was shot to death by a LAPD officer in 1999. But eight years later, it still appears that the LAPD is having serious issues when dealing with mentally ill people of color.

The Los Angeles Times also picked up on this emerging story of Faith Hernandez who was approached last Saturday afternoon by police officers because she was living in an "illegal cardboard structure" in downtown Los Angeles.

The police department offered the following version of events.


(excerpt)


"One of our officers approached her, told her she was being detained for that investigation, and she immediately took off running," Smith said. "She punched one bicycle officer in the head as he was trying to detain her, and then she kicked several officers. She also spit on several officers, and she attempted to stab the officers that were trying to detain her, with an ink pen."

The officers responded by hitting her on the legs with a small police baton, kicking her once and using pepper spray, Smith said. Four officers — three men and a woman — were involved, he said.



Witnesses to the incident which they said lasted at least eight minutes offered accounts that differed greatly from that released by the department.


(excerpt)


O.C. Hasson, 60, who lives on 6th Street, said that from his bathroom window he saw the woman running away.

"They threw her down, she tried to get back up, and they threw her back down. And when she tried to get back up again ... they started hitting her," Hasson said. "They allowed her to get up after that, and let her go almost across the street, as if they knew she couldn't get away. And then one of the officers took his foot and tripped her on the ground, and they dragged her a little bit, and they were still beating her."

Hasson said he had seen police harass downtown homeless people in recent months, but nothing like this.

"It's the worst thing that I've experienced," he said, "the worst thing I've ever seen."





In San Bernardino, the trial continued involving a former San Bernardino County Sheriff Department deputy who is facing attempted voluntary manslaughter and related charges.

In January 2006, Deputy Ivory J. Webb shot Elio Carrion while Carrion was complying with orders to get off the ground.

On Tuesday, the man who shot the footage that was seen around the world took to the witness stand, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Jose Luis Valdez testified that he had heard Webb issue the order for Carrion to rise off the ground. His testimony was quickly challenged by Webb's attorney, Michael Schwartz in cross-examination.


(excerpt)


Valdes, a used-car salesman who lived across the street from where the Corvette crashed, testified that he watched Webb and Carrion argue for three minutes before he began filming. Carrion was sprawled on the ground outside the car.

Valdes testified that he ran inside to grab his camcorder after watching the officer shouting curse words and "throwing … many kicks" at Carrion or in his direction.

Valdes, who spoke through a Spanish translator in the San Bernardino courtroom, told prosecutor R. Lewis Cope that the night was so clear that he could see Carrion's hands as the airman followed the deputy's command to "get up."

He said he never saw the airman move his hands toward the officer.

But during a brisk cross-examination, Webb's lead attorney, Michael Schwartz, read back Valdes' initial statements to police when he said it was so dark he doubted the officer could see into the Corvette, where the driver was still sitting.

Schwartz also noted that Valdes initially told detectives he ran to get his camera when he saw Carrion getting out of the car.

"It was a confusing night," Valdes responded.

Schwartz questioned why Valdes had never told police about the exchange between Webb and Carrion, or the alleged kicks by Webb, that he said he witnessed before recording the incident.

Valdes retorted: "Have you ever seen a police officer shoot someone without a reason? Anyone would get nervous."




The latest news about the email scandal that was uncovered in the Port of Seattle Police Department mentioned a review that was conducted and showed that the department botched its own investigation, according to the Seattle Post Intelligencer.


(excerpt)


At least 32 port officers -- nearly one-third of the department's force -- sent, received, viewed or knew about dozens of inappropriate e-mails spreading derogatory and stereotyping comments, photographs and video images aimed at blacks, Asians, Arabs, Hispanics and women. The Seattle P-I first reported the matter in January.

By letting police conduct their own investigation, the port's executives turned over the query to a department that would in the process violate port policy and past practice by cutting the port's labor relations and human resources staff out of discussions and disciplinary decisions, according to the review.

"The Police Department appeared determined to keep the process internal and to minimize the scope and impact of the investigation and was given too much leeway to operate in this matter," the report stated.



This news is simply shocking. No really, it is shocking to probably a diminishing number of individuals that a department both wanted to keep its investigation completely outside the cope of outside scrutiny and that it failed to conduct an objective, thorough investigation.

But the investigation done by an outside agency at the request of the Port of Seattle Commission did mention that the police chief was "weak and fearful" and that the department lacked the resources to do an investigation that it lacked the expertise to handle proficiently.




Update in the civil trial involving the officer-involved shooting death of Malcolm Ferguson in New York City.


(excerpt)



Late this afternoon in the Bronx Supreme Court, the jury of six decided in favor of Juanita Young in the civil suit against New York City in the killing of her son Malcolm Ferguson from seven years ago. After the week and a half trial, the jury deliberated late afternoon yesterday and for almost four hours today, returning with a verdict that supported Juanita's claims of excessive force by police officer Louis Rivera. The jury awarded Juanita more than what was asked for (her attorney Seth Harris asked for $7.5 million - the jury awarded her $10.5 million. They increased the punitive damage amount from $5m to $7m), a clear message that Rivera was in the wrong!

More to come - thanks to everyone who have been so wonderfully supportive of Juanita and her family!

Press conference tomorrow morning, 10am, in front of the Bronx Supreme Court (Grand Concourse entrance).


Statement from the family of Malcolm Ferguson:

Seven years is a long time to wait for justice. But in a society where the poor and disenfranchised live and die in obscurity, we are thankful for our day in court. We are grateful for the chance to bear silent witness for our beloved Malcolm, a true victim of the social parasite that is police brutality.

But as we've said all along, this case is bigger than Malcolm Ferguson, it's reach beyond Louis Rivera and the officers who stormed 1045 Boynton Avenue on March 1, 2000.

This case is about every person who has ever been demoralized and brutalized by police, and every police officer who wrongly believes they are not answerable to the people they serve. The law applies to everyone. And today, this jury of six men and women sent a strong message that a badge is not a pass to commit murder.

The conscience of the community has spoken, and the answer is a resounding, "No more".

The family of Malcolm Ferguson wish to thank the jurors for their thoughtful deliberation and service. And we thank those here and across the nation who have cried, prayed or stood in solidarity with us in the fight against police brutality. The struggle is far from over.

Election '07: Incumbents, see you in November

Election 2007 is turning out to be one of the most interesting cycles in recent memory, with the results being released from its preliminary round which took place through the mail system during the past month. The city's turnout was an impressive 30%, higher than it had been in previous civic elections.

All three incumbents who ran to retain their seats appeared to have failed to receive even half of the votes in their respective wards. All three of them would then be going into the finals in November. All three of them have no one to blame but themselves in case any of them are crying in their buffet tables right now.

A lot of people will analyze the results of Election 2007 Part One but what it came down to was that, "anyone but..." was the slogan that appeared to carry the day and the vote. This message that the voters sent to their elected officials was that okay, maybe we'll give you a second chance but we're going to make you work damned hard for the privilege of representing us for another four years. You're going to have to put the voters first, yourselves second if you want to continue to collect a paycheck representing us.

It remains to be seen whether Councilmen Dom Betro, Art Gage and Steve Adams can park their egos long enough to listen, pay attention and learn from their constituents. Gage took the hardest blow, not even winning the first round over political neophyte William "Rusty" Bailey who apparently narrowly missed winning the seat in this round. Of the three, he has the most potential to learn from his experience. Being kicked out of a quartet of egos by its other members on the dais tends to do that for you.

One lesson they should all take home with them and their supporters should as well is that the "anyone but..." crowd will probably ultimately decide who sits in the dais the next four years. In those groups which exist in each respective ward, lies the hearts and minds that the incumbents will have to win over if they hope to win second terms.

After all, the developers may knock down your office doors at City Hall, but they don't vote. Those who do may be the ones who no longer visit their council members or call them up on the phone because they believe that their elected officials no longer care about people, just buildings. Either to tear them down, take them through eminent domain or threat of it or to pack more of them closer together even on the city's few remaining hillsides. When it comes to people, either city residents or city employees, they are a distant second to development firms.


After Riverside's year-long song and dance over its Riverside Renaissance project which was supposed to ensure the reelection of the incumbents, the voters in three of the odd-numbered wards sent a loud message back.

No dice. Oh, and by the way, see you in November.

Remember that special meeting held in a special place, the Riverside Municipal Auditorium where the city government met beforehand with the Greater Chamber of Commerce and arranged to have key members from its roster line up to speak at the podium in full support of the project? They were followed by key members of the various political campaigns involving the incumbents who did the same thing. Then came the dozens of kids dragging their parents who just wanted a place to call home and play soccer in a city that still is below the state average for park land set aside to be provided for residents to enjoy in major cities.

Then came concerns about the costs to be incurred by those children when they grew up, and the futures of the city's parks,affordable housing, city services and streets. Those speakers were pretty much ignored by their elected officials and they were chided as raining on the parade that the city council was putting on.

Remember one of the champions of the city's parks? Michael Gardner, a candidate who ran four years earlier and barely garnered any votes is now in a runoff with the man who himself won in a runoff election back then before forgetting how precariously his victory had been. Now, Gardner's off to the final round against Betro to determine who will represent Ward One.

What a difference four years makes.

Four years ago, Betro was the ultimate grass-roots campaign success story and his narrow win over Paul Fick was celebrated throughout Ward One. Betro should have swept his reelection round easily and he would have, if he had been the same Betro he was in 2003. He might have still made it except for what has been referred to derisively in his camp as the "Pepper factor". Letitia Pepper, another champion of the city's parks swept enough votes to help ensure that Betro would have to work to win the seat that he apparently thought was owed him.

Betro garnered 45% of the votes, but the problem with Betro is that the news that he now faces a runoff is not good news, because the "anyone but..." sentiment is strongest in Ward One. As much as it may irk him, Betro will have to work to win some of these voters over to win reelection. Even people that he and his affluent campaign backers think are beneath them or derided by them as the new kids on the block. One wonders if they're up to the task or how badly they want their candidate to stay in office.

Gage faces a similar battle in his ward, given that he's going to have to eke out a come from behind win, which is what is seen most often in runoffs anyway so that's not necessarily bad. Bailey and his backers will have to work harder to get him on the dais, which means that many of his key supporters will be splitting their attention and time spent campaigning for him and trying to ensure Betro's election.

BASS wasn't built in a day and consolidating its power base won't come easily either.

But Adams who barely made off with 1/3 of the vote in his ward faces a really tough challenger in former city councilwoman and mayor, Terry Frizzel and his victory here is very deceptive. These two were neck and neck last time around and Frizzel has a much better chance of upsetting him this time because although the voters in Ward Seven were niche voters in the preliminaries, the "anyone but..." sentiment is very strong here as well. Roy Saldanha's poor showing was a bit of a surprise but it's possible that his name didn't resonate as much to voters as the two that finished ahead of him.


The real bad news was in Ward Five where development interests superseded the tasteless mudslinging tactics exercised by election leader Chris McArthur who will face off against one of his rivals, Donna Doty Michalka in November.

It's likely if there were parties, they stopped in several camps when the votes began to be tabulated. The celebration will have to wait, as will the news about who will be celebrating until November, six months from now.






Ethics, what ethics?



"One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. 'Which road do I take?' she asked. 'Where do you want to go?' was his response. 'I don't know,' Alice answered. 'Then', said the cat, 'it doesn't matter.'"


----Lewis Carroll




Setting: The jewel of the Inland Empire's version of Wonderland, downtown Riverside

Time: Election 2007, the morning after.




It seems that local activist Kevin Dawson finally heard a peep from the city in regards to the ethics complaint he had filed against Riverside Councilman Dom Betro at a city council meeting nearly a month ago.

But the news for him wasn't good because he had received a letter that was written on the eve of the election deadline stating that his complaint was being tossed out on what City Attorney Gregory Priamos stated was essentially a technicality.

Dawson was upset and who can blame him? He had to wait a month just to receive a letter from a city employee whose performance gets evaluated on an annual basis from his eight bosses, one of whom happened to be the subject of the ethics complaint.

That's after having had to come to a city council meeting on May 8 to relate his account of an encounter he and his teenaged daughter had with Betro across the street from the Fox Theater where a gala was taking place. Dawson and others were protesting there against eminent domain because the Fox Theater itself had been taken by the city from its previous owners through eminent domain. The only case of the use of that power that the city will recognize because it's the only time that the threat of eminent domain alone didn't clear the path for it to acquire a business from either the downtown area or the Wood Streets neighborhood.

Anyway, Dawson had a sign that read "Anyone but Betro" in Betro's ward and according to his complaint, Betro came charging over towards him and shouted that Dawson had better hope that he doesn't get elected. Another activist said that Betro had approached him, took a leaflet, crumpled it in a ball and threw it in his face. Dawson's daughter also tried to give a leaflet to some people in a car and Dawson said Betro tried to cut her off.

Dawson said in his complaint and to the city council that he felt that Betro's statements were threatening and that if Betro were elected, he would use his power to make things difficult for him and his family who live in Ward One.


But who said there were ethics in Wonderland, I mean Riverside?


And Dawson is correct. There is apparently no consistently applied process for handling ethics complaints in this city as this letter clearly states if not in writing, then indeed between the lines. In fact, after reading it, it's not difficult to wonder if there are indeed any ethics at all.

The truly depressing thing is that this incident will be a blip on the radar of many of the insiders at City Hall and the community leaders in this city. Why? Because most of them may have believed strongly in the importance of an ethics code and a complaint process, but they believe in their candidate Betro and what he can deliver even more. That's one reason why an ethics process can be installed in this city that's basically a sham but no one complains about it. That will likely be the case until a city council member with a lower "Q" rating among this crowd receives a complaint including someone like Councilman Art Gage. When it appears that if Betro is a liberal, so is former President Ronald Reagan.

But while Dawson may be unhappy about the outcome of his complaint and rightfully upset about a process that is no more than a paper tiger, he should consider himself luckier than his predecessor, Letitia Pepper who also filed a complaint against Betro several months ago. The Mayor's Nomination and Screening Committee put on a show that was worthy of the Queen of Heart's judicial process in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.





(excerpt)


White Rabbit: Your Majesty, members of the jury, loyal subjects... and the King... the prisoner at the bar stands accused of enticing Her Majesty, the Queen of Hearts, into a game of croquet, thereby and with malice of forethought, molesting, tormenting, and otherwise annoying our beloved...

Queen of Hearts: Never mind all that! Get to the part where I lose my temper.

White Rabbit: ...thereby causing the Queen to lose her temper.

Below is the city's written response printed on its official stationary paid for by the sales tax generated by those who shop in Riverside, which apparently according to City Manager Brad Hudson was fewer people spending less money than in previous years.




Dated June 4, 2007

Dear Mr. Dawson:


After review and consideration of the complaint which you presented to the City on May 8, 2007, it has been determined that the allegations of the complaint do not fall within the scope of the City's Code of Ethics and Conduct. Mr. Betro's comments were not made in the capacity or in the discharge of his duties as a member of the city council.

I am sorry that we cannot advise you more favorably,


Gregory Priamos, City Attorney who signed the letter.


CC: City Manager Brad Hudson, City Council and City Clerk Colleen Nichols



So basically, Dawson's ethics complaint has been tossed aside before it could receive due process. As for whether or not Betro was operating in his capacity as a city council member at the time, was he attending the gala at the Fox Theater as Betro, the city resident or Betro, the elected representative from Ward One. A city council member's work schedule isn't necessarily nine to five, but can include functions that he or she attends at night if they are representing their elected position at the function.

Also, the allegations involved statements that Betro allegedly made to Dawson which included one where he said that Dawson should hope that he doesn't get elected. Betro didn't deny making the statement, calling the incident an "insignificant campaign interaction" according to a brief published in the Press Enterprise. Having been on the receiving end of Betro's bad temper, I'm not surprised he would consider any one exercise of it "insignificant".

It's like someone told me over the weekend, Betro has a temper and provided another example of when he had seen Betro exercise it at a community meeting.





But back to the alleged statements Betro made to Dawson near the Fox Theater.

A person making that kind of statement who already holds the elected position that he is running for may be acting as an elected official and whether or not he actually was can't be determined without allowing the complaint its due process in front of an objective committee. That decision can't be left up to an employee who serves at the will of elected officials including the individual receiving the complaint. Like City Manager Brad Hudson, Priamos knows how to count to four. Only for now like Hudson, the count is probably seven.





The Mayor's Nomination and Screening Committee doesn't exactly fall in the category of an independent judiciary body especially given its behavior during the last complaint hearing, where the knave of hearts, otherwise known as Letitia Pepper, was essentially put on trial. What was a worse example of biased behavior, the actual proceedings or the trash talking several committee members did afterward to defend their decision? That's a tough one to call.



An independent panel of city residents might have reached the same conclusion as the Mayor's Nomination and Screening Committee had but even so, it's more likely they could have done so without putting her on trial.





Unless the city residents push for a more fair, just process for handling ethics complaints involving elected officials, it's all that there will be. But if it comes about, it will be from elsewhere, not the Betro camp which will probably be hard at work trying to get him reelected in November.





Being a governmental watchdog and endorsing political candidates is not a marriage made in heaven but some place else a little bit hotter. The two don't mix any better than oil and water do.

On the bright side, as most people know, there's already a mechanism in place to hold elected officials in government positions accountable or to at least try. It's called the county civil grand jury.









The city of Columbia, Missouri's residents are moving closer to establishing a civilian review board, with the Minority Men Network proposing the creation of one to the city council, according to the Columbia Missourian.


(excerpt)


Charles Nilon, president of the network, said the purpose of the resolution is to bring the review board issue forward.

“We want the City Council and the mayor to start addressing questions about a citizen review board in a very serious way,” he said.

The establishment of a citizen review board has been an ongoing issue in Columbia.

Last year, the Douglass Coalition, a group of residents concerned with police misconduct, proposed a similar review board to the City Council. City Manager Bill Watkins dismissed it.

Watkins said the proposed ordinance would give the citizen board too much authority.

In January, a consulting agency, hired by the city to audit the internal review policies of the Columbia Police Department, suggested some of the department’s policies were outdated but made no mention of a citizen review board.

Police Chief Randy Boehm said he did not think such a review board was necessary, adding that the community as a whole is supportive of the police department.

“I think we do a good job of policing ourselves,” Boehm said.



How many times times have those words been said by police chiefs before something embarrassing and/or tragic happens in their agencies that either leads them to be investigated by outside agencies and/or implementing some form of civilian oversight. Give Columbia time, and it will probably find itself in the same position unfortunately. Better to institute civilian review now before that happens. Learn from the mistakes made by other cities and counties.


The latest news might have been published in the Columbian Tribune which stated that Mayor Darwin Hindman will install a committee to research civilian review and whether or not it's necessary over the Columbia Police Department.


(excerpt)


Hindman asked the Columbia City Council last night to allow him to appoint a study committee and said the high level of recent interest had prompted the move. He made clear, though, that the panel would study a number of options, not just the creation of a civilian review board.

"I think there is a sufficient amount of concern in the community that we need to act," Hindman said. "I’m not saying, ‘Let’s have a commission to look at civilian review.’ I’m looking at having a committee to look at oversight."

In recent months, calls for a civilian review board have come from local attorney David Tyson Smith, the Frederick Douglass Coalition and the Minority Men’s Network, which asked council members again yesterday to consider creating such a panel. The local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People also favors the move.

A 128-page report released in March from consultants hired to review the police department’s internal affairs process said many of the city’s policies on reviewing charges of misconduct against officers are secretive and unfairly biased against residents, especially minorities.