"As the Eastside goes, so does Riverside."

More aftershocks have hit Lake Elsinore and other places in the Inland Empire. Seismologists have reassured the public that these things are normal and don't mean the "big one" as it's called is on its way.

The Press Enterprise also wrote about the below average temperatures in the Inland Empire at the moment. A bit of a contrast to all the recent coverage about the sizzling heat wave that shook(literally and otherwise) these parts.




Public Forum



Where: Caesar Chavez Community Center, Eastside

When: Thursday, Sept. 5 at 5:30 p.m.




"We're not the bad guys in the black hats."



---Chief Russ Leach, Riverside Police Department at a forum in the Eastside



"The university is expanding. The downtown is expanding. The Eastside is standing in the way."


---Community leader Cristina Duran




"Why now? Why us? What are the standards for this? This is what they're asking and I think they have the right to know."


----Riverside County Supervisor Bob Buster


"They need jobs. They need skills. They need an opportunity to work without being harassed."

---NAACP Riverside Chapter President Woodie Rucker-Hughes




"I don't feel safe when I walk through the neighborhood."


---Tanya



"Rod Pacheco should be the one here answering the questions."


---Mary Figueroa, Eastside Think Tank



"It's not fun for mothers to bury 12, 13-year-olds."


---Gloria Willis, activist and former Ward Two city council candidate



ESR XIV St.

Fuck 1200[crossed out]


--graffiti in the middle of the street in Eastside this morning



"As the Eastside goes, so does Riverside"

---says so on the tee-shirt




Over 70 people attended a forum set up to address the recent injunction filed against the Eastside Riva gang and many of them had questions and concerns for Riverside Police Department Chief Russ Leach about a process that even many of the community leaders felt was dropped on them without much notice. Even the Eastside Think Tank said they were pretty much left in the dark.


Attending the forum were Asst. Chief John DeLaRosa, Area Commander Lt. Larry Gonzalez and Riverside Police Officers’ Association President Ken Tutwiler along with County Supervisor Bob Buster who said that he was very concerned about what was going on.



Leach called it "an enforcement tool" to accompany all of the work done in the community.



"It doesn't mean we'll be hunting people down," Leach said, "Riverside isn't going to take rows and rows of police officers, line them up in riot gear and have them march down University."


He added, "we're not going to tolerate 13 year olds being shot to death."


About 114 names are currently listed on the injunction although the language makes it clear that it's open-ended. Leach said that "a few of them are in jail." Residents of the Eastside said that as many as half of those listed are either in prison or in jail, where several of them were served. Several had been in prison for years. Others have been out of the area for years. Why were they included on the list, residents asked.

The police chief said he could not discuss individual cases.

At the meeting, Leach mentioned that after the injunction was finalized by the courts perhaps as soon as Sept. 14, the department's officers would receive training on how it would be enforced. But there wasn't much mention of what that training would be, particularly involving newer officers or officers recently assigned to the Eastside in terms of how they would be able to differentiate between two or more members of Eastside Riva congregating and two or more Latinos who were not gang members especially since the injunction clearly includes a prohibition against social gatherings for Eastside Riva gang members.

Leach said there would be attempts to publicize the injunction in both English and Spanish in different venues. What the forum made clear was that this education should have been started before the injunction first appeared in court records.

Eddie who is with the Eastside Think Tank told the police department representatives how frustrated he was with the lack of response from the city in terms of providing resources for people in the Eastside. He reminded those in the audience of the peace marches through the community five years ago, during the summer when both Black and Latino families lost family members to gang violence including three Black 13-year-olds. Elderly Black men were also shot to death on their porch and children were injured by gunfire in their front yards, the assailants of the elderly man slipping past a cadre of police cars in the area, according to neighbors.

The marches returned in 2005 when there were more shootings including that of a Nigerian tourist who had stopped on University Avenue to purchase gas on his way to a conference addressing youth violence in another city. He most likely had never met or had even heard of the individual whose shooting had led to his own and while he lay in a coma, the next shooting occurred to answer for his own, also committed by those who probably never knew him. Back and forth it went for most of the summer.

The city officials sat up and took notice of the shooting of the tourist, mostly because they feared how it might make this city appear to the rest of the world. After all, this is a city that hangs its awards at City Hall, designating it an All-American City and one of the nation's most livable cities.

Many others were injured both summers. The community leaders got together and with the police department and other city departments worked hard to reclaim Patterson Park. Some of these leaders were insulted by the decision of Leach and District Attorney Rod Pacheco to hold their press conference about the injunction there to "take back the park" as they might call it. Only Patterson Park wasn't theirs to take back. The neighborhood had already reclaimed it and as it turns out, according to both city employees and community leaders, some of those who helped in that effort were themselves gang members. Something that the neighborhood takes great pride in is having one of its parks back through its hard efforts.

Eddie had mentioned when he challenged the police officers in his midst with the following statement.


"How do you expect us to buy into this injunction? Are you going to bring in the resources," he said.



Leach said he agreed that more needed to be done in this area, citing the rise and fall of Project Bridge, the city's only gang intervention program. That program has been trying to rise out of the ashes of several attempts to defund it by the city and a shortage of the grant money that used to fund its operations. Some say, however, that this program spent years being tossed back and forth in an endless game of hot potato between the police department and the parks and recreations department.



"We support and encourage program," Leach said, "Does the city spend enough money? No it doesn't."



The Eastside is a neighborhood where realtors had complained that it took days for the city to pick up abandoned furniture left on lots they were trying to sell, when in other areas where they also sold homes, the city's response would be much faster for the same service. Unlike other areas of the city, you will probably never see a street cleaner. Many of the schools are overcrowded, with students being bussed out of the Eastside to schools across town.

City leaders come out for candlelit vigils when someone under the age of 15 is shot down and then you never see them again.

Mayor Ron Loveridge who occasionally still teaches political science courses at UCR will tell his students to write about this neighborhood just north of Chicago Avenue and tell him what they see.

Which is ironic, considering the Eastside doesn't even exist in UCR's long-range development plans, except in pockets surrounded by development projects which cater more to a population of university students which hasn't arrived yet rather than to the Eastside's families some of which have lived there since the late 1800s. The city that was founded by abolitionists nearly elected a Ku Klux Klan mayor in the 1920s and held a premiere for the film, Birth of a Nation which glorified that racist organization.

Those who say that Eastside Riva is the oldest gang in Riverside don't know this city's history.

After all, racism created the Eastside. It was the only location where African-Americans who migrated to the city could own property. Latinos had few legal options in a city which was as racially segregated down to its public facilities as many Southern towns were until the late 1960s. The Eastside was also close to the orange groves which employed many Latinos as workers. Many stayed in the Eastside and also Casa Blanca even after the groves began to disappear.

The Klan's influence diminished after the 1920s before reemerging in the South during the 1950s onward. But racism and restrictions on where Black and Latino families could live or go to school continued for a while longer.

Many feel that gentrification which is defined by them as the displacement of one racial population, most often Black and/or Latino, by another, which is almost always White, as the form of racism which might some day render the Eastside into the city's history books.

Eastside Think Tank member, Rita Norton complained about a 200 page dossier which was publicly circulated that included profiles of those listed in the injunction. Others said, residents on the list who weren't still living in the neighborhood were told never to return. Minors, who Leach said couldn't be included in the injunction, were told to register as gang members through letters sent to them in the mail.



"How do you expect us to trust you guys if you are telling us something different than what you see," one individual said.



Norton said, her organization was not consulted. Department representatives first denied that these profiles had been circulated but others in the audience protested.



Leach responded by saying he would look into the role that his agency might be playing, but didn't think it had done anything.

The discussion went around in circles but always came back to a couple subjects including the following.


"We want to put our money into prevention," Leach said.

"When," people responded from the audience.


Nortan said that one person on the list was served at his job site and was subsequently fired as a result.


"There are already repercussions from this," she said.




NAACP Riverside Chapter President Woodie Rucker-Hughes spoke on the problems that Black and Brown people had relating to one another. She had some critical words for the injunction as well.


"I have a problem with an injunction for life," Rucker-Hughes said, "Where's the redemption?"



In related news, Chandler William Cardwell, 32 was arraigned in Riverside County Superior Court and plead not guilty to felony charges in relation to an advertisement he allegedly had published in the daily newspaper that threatened Pacheco, according to the Press Enterprise.

The Los Angeles Times also attended the arraignment and wrote about it here


Cardwell was also employed by the Press Enterprise in its classified advertising department and here, the publication explains the complexities and complications of covering a story which involves a publication's own employees.


(excerpt)


At most newspapers a "wall" traditionally separates the work of news reporters from that of the opinion pages and business departments to ensure objectivity and independence. In the Cardwell case, Press-Enterprise reporters found it meant that some questions to company officials about the employee and incident would go unanswered.

That wall also keeps reporters from accessing information gathered by the advertising, classified ads, circulation and other business departments.

On the business side, management balanced competing priorities of protecting an employee's privacy, complying with search warrants, and reassuring readers and advertisers that sensitive information is not misused.

"Very few other businesses hold themselves to the standard of transparency that we do," said Ronald R. Redfern, CEO and publisher of The Press-Enterprise Co. "We want to be as transparent as we can, but there are certain things that we can't share."




In Riverside, the Group held a successful meeting with over 30 people in attendance to greet new Community Police Review Commission Executive Manager Kevin Rogan. Rogan hails from Pomona Police Department where he worked as a captain until just recently.



A female Riverside resident writes here about her experiences trying to get the city to open several public pools during the recent heat wave.




In the Press Enterprise, there’s a story about Esme Castaneda, an undocumented immigrant living in Riverside who was the victim of domestic violence by her husband. She learned of a little known process that enables undocumented immigrants who are victims of violent crimes to obtain legal status in order to encourage them to report crimes to police.


(excerpt)


Until 1994, domestic-violence victims who were undocumented immigrants had no legal protection from deportation if they reported their abuse, said Karan Kler, executive director of Coachella Valley Immigration Service and Assistance, a nonprofit legal group based in Palm Springs.

That year, Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act, which protects victims of severe domestic violence who are married to a permanent U.S. resident or citizen.
In 2000, Congress passed another law -- the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act -- to help people such as Castañeda, who are not married to U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

Most undocumented women are unaware of either law, Kler said. Even many domestic-violence organizations, social workers and lawyers are not familiar with the 2000 law, he said.

That law created a "U visa" for victims of domestic violence and other crimes, including rape, sexual assault, incest, torture, kidnapping and involuntary servitude. Kler said as many as half of his organization's U-visa clients have been domestic-violence victims.

Yet, seven years later, federal officials still have not written the regulations for the U visa so the visa does not yet technically exist, said Sharon Rummery, a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
"A new regulation is expected soon," said Rummery, who declined to predict a specific date. "It's very complicated to write regulations."







A lot is going on in San Bernardino involving the San Bernardino Police Officers Association's relationships with elected officials.

Here, news broke that City Attorney Jim Penman has broken off his relationship with the labor union in a loud way, according to the San Bernardino Sun.


(excerpt)


Penman, who will face a challenger for the first time in more than a decade in November, lashed out at association President Rich Lawhead, accusing his former ally of attempting to extort political and legal favors in exchange for union support.

"Lawhead now believes that if he endorses a candidate for city attorney, that person must follow his/her direction on legal matters involving the Police Department," Penman wrote in a lengthy memo.

Lawhead denied Penman's accusations.

Among his charges, Penman said Lawhead routinely called his cellular phone to complain about Penman's lack of support for the union in their lawsuits against the city and Police Chief Michael Billdt. Penman further said Lawhead told him to not make disparaging comments about the union's case in the press and explicitly said the union would not endorse him unless he demonstrated "loyalty" to the union.

"(Lawhead) owes the people of San Bernardino an apology for attempting to pressure one of
their elected officials into pursuing an unethical and, in my opinion, a dishonest course of action in exchange for his endorsement," Penman wrote.


Not surprisingly, Lawhead had some pretty strong words in response.


(excerpt)


"Mr. Penman's suggestions are outright lies," Lawhead said. "When he attacks my integrity, I object to that, and I won't be afraid to speak out."

Lawhead said that on at least one occasion he told Penman he was displeased when the city attorney criticized union employees in the press over a lawsuit they had filed against the city and Billdt.

But that was all, Lawhead said.

"I've never asked for anything of Mr. Penman except to (publicly) support the employees of the organization that supports him," Lawhead said.

Lawhead added that he was miffed when Penman, citing his role as city attorney, declined public comment on a lawsuit against his political opponents last month, yet earlier publicly criticized the union for filing lawsuits against Billdt and the city.

"I'm not asking for favoritism, I'm asking for fairness," Lawhead said. "He won't talk when he gets his butt kicked in the lawsuit over (city attorney candidate) Marianne Milligan because he says he's an officer of the court, but in our case he's calling a guy who (campaigned) for him disgruntled."



Then Lawhead and the union sent shock waves through the political circles of the city through their endorsement of Save Our State member, Joe Turner to fill the city clerk spot.


(excerpt)


Lawhead said the union is with Turner.

"This is a guy who readily supports our ideals," Lawhead said of Turner, who sparked outrage among Latino leaders when he pushed a failed city ordinance that would have cracked down on illegal immigrants in 2005. "He is against illegal immigration - illegal being key - and that fits with what we stand for."
Lawhead said the union's political action committee has conducted interviews over recent weeks through Wednesday and made recommendations to the union's 15-member board.

Turner's interview was Wednesday, and the board decided soon after to endorse him.



I guess that means that if you are undocumented in San Bernardino and you are a victim of crime as many undocumented immigrants often are, you best not report it to that police department. Putting up roadblocks for people to report crimes has never lowered a city's crime rate. The last thing San Bernardino's police department should be doing is doing anything to discourage individuals who live there from reporting crimes.

Contrast that with the article above where an undocumented immigrant reported domestic violence to the Riverside Police Department who provided her with the same police services they would hopefully provide for other women in her situation. Also, the Riverside Police Officers' Association opposed tactics used by Ward Five candidate Chris MacArthur in the first round of Election 2007 earlier this year, in part because of his rhetoric and focus on undocumented immigrants which a representative of the union said was a federal issue, not a local one.









From CNN, comes this article about a Chandler Police Department sergeant who has been charged with animal cruelty for leaving his assigned canine locked in a police car for 12 hours in intense heat.

Tom Lovejoy was charged for the death of Bandit, a Belgian Malinois.


(excerpt)


The sheriff's investigation showed Bandit was in Lovejoy's patrol car from about 9 a.m. to shortly after 10 p.m. August 11. During that time, the investigation found, the officer ran errands, napped and ate out with his wife. Lovejoy later found the dog dead in the car.

"I am certain Sgt. Lovejoy has suffered greatly from leaving his police dog in a sweltering car," Sheriff Joe Arpaio said in a statement. "I do not relish the idea of compounding his sadness. However, Lovejoy must be treated like anyone else in similar circumstances."

Election 2007: The second half begins

Yes, there was an aftershock to last weekend's Lake Elsinore earthquake on Wednesday morning at around 8 a.m. It hit 3.4 on the scale and you can check its stats here and read more about the latest quake cluster here.

The death toll of the latest heat wave is still being tabulated both in the Inland Empire and the state. A disproportionate number of these individuals were elderly folks, who had difficulty accessing cooler conditions.




A federal grand jury has indicted former Riverside Police Department officer, Jose Luis Nazario with two counts of voluntary manslaughter in connection with the killings of two unarmed Iraqi people being detained in Fallujah during 2004, according to the Press Enterprise. The killings happened when he was a Marine with a unit from Camp Pendleton which included members involved in at least two dozen other killings that were under investigation.


(excerpt)


He is scheduled to return to federal court in Riverside on Wednesday to enter a plea. He remains out of custody on $50,000 bond. He has previously said he is innocent of the allegations.

Douglas Applegate, one of Nazario's attorneys, said he had not seen the indictment. He said the case would be interesting because a civilian court would be asked to rule on "what occurred in a combat firefight three years ago -- presumably without any physical evidence."

Last month, a Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent filed an affidavit and criminal complaint in federal court that included witnesses saying that Nazario either killed the insurgents or ordered their deaths. The witnesses' names were not released.

According to witness statements in federal court documents, Nazario's squad searched a home on Nov. 9, 2004, because people in the home had been shooting at Marines. They detained four insurgents and found AK-47 rifles and ammunition, according to the affidavit.

During a radio conversation with a superior, Nazario said the four insurgents were not dead. He was told to "make it happen," and all four detainees were shot to death, the documents stated.





Ken Stansbury, the man who was hit by a SLAPP suit by the city of Riverside had an important day in court this week.



Oral arguments for both sides were heard on Sept. 5 at the 4th District Court of Appeals at 1:30 p.m. The city sued to prevent the circulation of a petition to place a ballot initiative on the use of eminent domain for the voters to decide the role eminent domain would play in this city.

The city turned to its law firm of choice, Best, Best and Krieger and hit Stansbury and the Riversiders for Property Rights with a law suit to chill public participation. What makes it a SLAPP suit was the city's decision to press for the defendants to pay its own attorney's fees which currently are at least $150,000. This was done in an attempt to scare the organization off from its activism. However, at the same time the city was doing this, it was saying that it was doing this to help the organization clarify the issue before it tried to place it on the ballot.



But many of the members of RPR were intimidated by the threat of having to pay legal fees for the city that they could not afford so in that respect, the law suit had that intended effect but Stansbury kept fighting, David and Goliath style.

What's ironic is how lately several city council members who voted in favor of fighting this ballot initiative apparently all the way, have stood up and said before this city's residents how important it is to allow the public to decide through its voting rights on issues such as roosters and railroad trains blocking intersections. Anyone who criticizes their efforts is told that they are hindering the democratic way, that they are preventing the people from being allowed to decide these issues. That point is indeed taken and the point these elected officials raised is certainly a valid one.

However, it's the city council which is doing the same by preventing the public to decide on the issue of eminent domain. Perhaps because they don't trust the public to be able to decide on this issue or perhaps because they know all too well that they are capable of doing so.

The city's argument for doing this is that eminent domain is a state issue not a local one. However, other cities in this state have had similar initiatives put on the ballots for the voters to decide. The problem is, some of them passed which means that this probably has less to do with it allegedly being a state issue and more to do with the fact that there are at least 18 eminent domain cases being filed in court just in the downtown area of Riverside alone.





The final recommendations on exactly what to do with Tequesquite Park will be sprung soon, according to this article in the Press Enterprise.


(excerpt)


Two lighted baseball fields, a walking trail, trailhead connecting to the Santa Ana River Trail, large grass area, pavilion entrance with a Chinese garden, playground, open space and on-site parking are the committee's recommendations. Basketball courts and possibly a man-made stream making use of the above-ground watershed at the back of the park are also recommended, but might have to wait until a second phase because of an immediate lack of funding.



The future of the park was in jeopardy not too long ago, when it was set to be sold off by developers to generate at least $10 million to be used to renovate several other parks. A campaign of city residents led by Ward One candidate, Mike Gardner opposed this move and Dom Betro, who chaired the task force, went what Dan Bernstein called, "Retro Betro" and the park was saved from the developers. Although it makes his election bid more difficult, Gardner's campaign has been very effective at pushing his rival to do during an election year what he should have been doing all along.

Something to think about no matter who attracts the most votes at the polls in November.





More investigating being done in the wake of an arrest of a Press Enterprise employee who allegedly put out an advertisement to threaten Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco.

Caldwell has been charged with several criminal counts including making criminal threats against a public official by the State Attorney General's office which will be prosecuting the case due to the conflict of interest involving the District Attorney's office in this case.

There's a meeting to discuss the injunction being held by Councilman Andrew Melendrez's task force in the Eastside at Bobby Bonds Park this evening at 5:30 p.m. Attending will be Police Chief Russ Leach and area commander, Lt. Larry Gonzalez. Not attending will be any representatives from the District Attorney's office for what it calls, security reasons.

It's also not clear whether members of other city bodies including the Human Relations Commission including its community and police relations subcommittee will attend this meeting. But it should be sending representatives.




Kudos to Melendrez for also encouraging the allowance of public participation at the interviews for the Community Police Review Commission yesterday, alas to no avail. Unfortunately, at least one other elected official said that they had never allowed public participation in the past during this process which is not true at all and if what this individual said were true, there would have been violations of the Brown Act.

Melendrez was also the councilman who cast the no vote the last time the members of the BASS quartet wanted to take the city council meeting conduct code back to the Governmental Affairs Committee for further tinkering which in the past has resulted in the imposition of further restrictions for public participation. In July, 2005, the city council imposed some restrictions on public comment including the banning of the pulling of consent calendar items from the agenda. This motion was proposed by Councilman Dom Betro and seconded by Councilman Steve Adams. It passed 6-1 with Art Gage dissenting. Public comment was given in support and against this motion. Against it were Marjorie Von Pohle and other activists who often speak at city council meetings. Those speaking for its passage included members of the Downtown Area Neighborhood Alliance, who said that they were sick and tired of all the ranting and raving being done at the podium during city council meetings.

People ask me often for the minute record of this vote because there's often disagreement that their elected officials would actually support this type of measure and it's been blamed on the GASS quartet. However, the minute records indicate that this was actually one of the first actions taken by the BASS quartet.

Three out of four members of the former GASS quartet supported this measure with one voting in opposition. All four members of BASS voted in favor of it and two of its members raised and seconded the motion to put it to a vote. Three of its members served on the Governmental Affairs Committee which addressed changes to this policy before it returned to the city council for a vote.


Here it is.

July 12 city council meeting minute record on city council meeting format changes


You shouldn't have to congratulate a councilman for simply trying to allow an individual to exercise a right to public comment that they are allowed during every open meeting convened by the city council, but then again, this is River City and here you often do.





Eureka, California is calling out for civilian oversight of its police department, according to the Times-Standard. The small police force in that city has experienced quite a few officer-involved shootings including fatal incidents in a rather short period of time.

The shooting of Martin Cotton II last month was on the minds of many people who have spoken in favor of creating a civilian review board in the city of about 30,000 people nestled in the redwoods of Humboldt County.


(excerpt)


Police Chief Garr Nielsen watched quietly from the back of council chambers as many criticized his department and called for some form of citizen review or oversight.

”Although Martin was severely injured from the cruel and undeserving beating, EPD took him directly to jail to die, rather than immediately bringing him to the hospital,” an Arcata resident, who identified herself only as Sara, read from a flier prepared by Redwood Curtain Copwatch.

”Neither Nielsen nor any jail employee has indicated that Martin was seen by medical staff while in their custody, until he was dead,” Sara continued. “This is unacceptable and adds to the outrage that we feel.”

The subject of citizen oversight was first broached by Councilwoman Polly Endert, who, during council reports, asked city staff to give an update on the formation of an ad-hoc public safety committee. City Manager David Tyson said he would try to get the committee's co-chairs to attend the next council meeting and update the council on the progress in forming the committee.
Endert's sentiment would be echoed numerous times during the public comment period.

”This is happening on your watch, and I just want to voice extreme concern,” said Arcata resident Karen Diers, who said she works in Eureka, referring to a recent string of officer-involved deaths. Diers also called for citizen review.



Afterwards, at least one elected official expressed support for the proposal. It's not clear whether the other local politicians will join in. It remains to be seen whether civilian review comes to Eureka and if so, what form.



Conflicting eyewitness testimony to the Cotton incident are provided here by the Eureka Reporter.


Times-Standard articles on officer involved shootings involving the Eureka Police Department are below.

District Attorney review of Zachary Cooke shooting

Editorial: Why we ask questions

Cheryl Lyn Moore





In New York City, the New York Civil Liberties Union's report alleges that the NYPD is undermining civilian review according to this article in Newsday.



The report included some harsh language on the process of complaint handling by the Civilian Complaint Review Board.


(excerpt)


Of the nearly 7,000 civilian complaints filed against New York City police officers in 2006, close to 60 percent were dismissed without an investigation, according to the report titled "Mission Failure," which looked at police complaints since 1994.

On average, the Civilian Complaint Review Board found police at fault in just 5.2 percent of complaints - far below the 10 to 13 percent average found at similar boards across the United States, the report said.



The Civilian Complaint Review Board was added to the City of New York Charter in July 1993. The board was tasked with conducting thorough and impartial investigations.

"If thoroughness and impartiality is the standard - and public confidence, the test as to whether the standard is met - the CCRB is failing in its mission," the report said.




Not surprisingly, the heads of the NYPD found tremendous fault with the report, referring it to "cherry picking".


The New York Daily News weighed in on the issue here.


(excerpt)


The report says the review board saw a 60 percent increase in complaints between 2000 and 2005, to 6,796 from 4,251 - a volume that "indicates that police conduct is systemic."

Yet, the study says, the underfunded and undermanned board investigates less than half of the allegations and of those it does, it typically finds the complaints valid only about 5 percent of the time.

Of the most serious cases referred to the NYPD for disciplinary action between 2000 and 2004, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly rejected the board's recommendations in 63 percent of the cases.

"When discipline was imposed, it was strikingly lenient in light of the severity of the misconduct that has been documented by the CCRB," the report said.

The NYCLU recommends more stringent City Council oversight of the board along with increased funding for investigators and support staff.





The NYCLU report is here for individuals who wish to read it to find out what the fuss is about and why people are either nodding their heads or raising a fuss about it.

The New York Times hasn't written much on this NYCLU report but it started up a brand new blog page here.






More celebrating in Springfield, Massachusetts by The Republican over the creation and implementation of civilian review in that city.


(excerpt)


Mayor Charles V. Ryan said during a press conference last Thursday
that the city would have established the review board absent the
complaint, adding that the board fills a vacuum "artfully and
intelligently. "

Ryan said he intends to appoint nine members to the review board by
Sept. 15. Precautions should be taken so that the review board cannot
be politicized.

We trust that the mayor will appoint a diverse board of members whose
integrity and credentials will serve the city well.


Amen to that!




You might not be able to wear white after Labor Day but you can talk about the upcoming final rounds of Election 2007. Here are some political notes of upcoming events.


(excerpt)



The public is invited to a coffee to meet Ward 1 City Council candidate Mike Gardner at the home of Bobbi Beecher in Riverside at 9:30 a.m. Saturday. Information: 951-686-2737.

The Betro for Council Campaign announces the beginning of its activities at 10 a.m. Saturday at Trilussa Restaurant, 3737 Main St., Riverside. Volunteer opportunities to walk, phone or mail for the campaign are available. Information or reservations: 951-684-4873.



In other news, it looks like Betro and Ward Seven candidate, Terry Frizzel have picked up endorsements from the SEIU's local chapter representing many of the city's workers, for the second half of Election 2007, which will be coming to the polls nearest you the first Tuesday in November.

Replacements and reviews

Mother Nature brought a cooler day to Riverside, with most of the humidity brushed aside to the east and the thermometer inching downwards. Unfortunately, at least a dozen individuals have died from heat-related illnesses and thousands have been without electrical power in both Corona and Murrieta since late last week.

So, now that the temperatures are out of the stratosphere(for now, as summer lasts until November in these parts) and the weather is closer to normal for this time of year, the city can get back to its normal activities more or less.



Inside Riverside, a blog about the business of Riverside County in general and the Riverside County Sheriff's Department in particular has returned from its prolonged sabbatical with several postings here and here about the recent announcement that Sheriff Bob Doyle would be stepping down to take a job with the state's parole board.

Speaking of Doyle, he's departing on Oct. 12 and the Riverside County Board of Supervisors have until Friday to come up with a potential list of replacements, according to the Press Enterprise.

There will be a special workshop on Sept. 17 to address this issue. Prospective candidates and members of the public are invited to provide input in the process.


(excerpt)


Supervisor John Tavaglione, chairman of the board, said Tuesday he would have preferred to hold a special election for sheriff instead of selecting an appointee to complete Doyle's term, which runs through 2010. But the law requires that a special election coincide with the next gubernatorial election, which is not scheduled again until 2010.

With the decision in the hands of the board, Tavaglione has said he would like to see supervisors in unanimous agreement on who the county's next sheriff should be.

However, that unanimity may be hard to come by.

Supervisors Bob Buster and Roy Wilson have been vocal in their desire to see Undersheriff Neil Lingle replace Doyle, while supervisors Ashley and Jeff Stone have said they want to consider a number of applicants, including former Assistant Sheriff Stan Sniff, whom Doyle fired last year.

Retired Assistant Sheriff John Boyd said last week he would be seeking the appointment.


This is going to be very interesting to follow in the days and weeks to come.




Not too fond of Doyle, the "Inside Riverside" blogger relates the turmoil between Doyle's management and the leadership of the Riverside Sheriffs' Association which was under investigation by both the county and FBI although no criminal charges were filed.




Rumors exist that the Riverside County Sheriff's Department is under investigation by the federal or state agencies not to mention the ACLU, but nothing has turned up to sustain them. Then again, rumors have continuously circulated that there are multiple federal probes involving the city of Riverside, but those haven't been sustained either. With all of the rumors floating around, you would think the federal agencies were all housed in the basement at City Hall. Oh wait, that's only for private corporations only.




Former Human Relations Commissioner and active campaign supporter for Councilman Dom Betro, Chani Beeman was appointed to the Community Police Review Commission, by a vote of 5-2. Dissenting votes were cast by Councilmen Art Gage and Steve Adams. As had been said, this was a done deal for several months now.

Betro was heard saying to some unknown party, possibly Gage, that this process had righted a wrong, though it's not clear which "wrong" that Betro was referring to when he made that statement. Did the "wrong" involve the appointment of former political candidate, Linda Soubirous several months ago that Betro didn't contest even knowing her background of running for political office backed largely by campaign donations from law enforcement unions including the Riverside Police Officers' Association? Or was the "wrong", the votes cast in favor of appointing Steve Simpson last March? Was that "wrong" righted by the appointment of Beeman or by the ouster of Simpson several weeks ago? Sometimes it's hard to keep up with all the intrigue, unless you are an insider at City Hall which most of us aren't as it's by invitation only. It's very educational and enlightening just to watch it. Much more of an education than could be provided in any political science curriculum at a college or university and at least it's free.

It wouldn't be at all surprising if Simpson's days began to be numbered after Soubirous' appointment but it would be disappointing.

And by the way, when did the political appointment process for this very important commission turn into a chess match? But Betro just does what most politicians do when they are in office. He rewards his supporters who put him there. That hardly makes him unique as there's always a bit of that behavior seen in every elected official. That's the way politics works now as it always has worked and the system might just come to a grinding halt without it. It's such an accepted practice that no one really gives it much thought.

There's plenty to actually be happy about with Beeman on the commission, certainly among those in her circle. She's very intelligent, dedicated and has certainly shown how much she wants to serve on the commission. In fact, she's certainly worked harder and done more to ensure that she does get seated than any other candidate in the panel's history.

Perhaps it is good news, but the appointment process that put her on it was fraught with problems, and one casualty, a commissioner whose only problem was that he got in the way of a political process larger than one person. That tempers any good that she can and most likely will do in the eyes of anyone who truly values the importance of accountability and transparency in a process. There is no such thing, at this point and time which shouldn't be surprising considering the restrictions placed on public participation at City Hall including at city council meetings by the current city government. Changes which began as Marjorie Von Pohle often put it, July 2005. Changes that were proposed by the same elected officials people had elected, hoping that these individuals would balance out what would become the GASS quartet.

Simpson, if you remember, was the commissioner who resigned amidst turmoil originating from "concerns" raised by several city council members that he may have been mentally incompetent. So much so, one council member stopped me on the street at the end of June to ask me about it. He mentioned the name of one other councilman and maybe one other individual who had expressed these concerns in discussions with him. The funny thing is that with at least two individuals, they didn't spend much time talking or listening to Simpson on the CPRC, let alone evaluating him or his alleged mental state. Yet, they were trying to make a diagnosis that even a trained mental health expert would have difficulty making and not providing enough of an argument why it was necessary to do so.

I've gotten use to Schiavone, the councilman who made the impromptu stop, changing his mind on a dime on some issues, sometimes out of genuine concern and principles and admission that he might have erred but sometimes also clearly for other reasons. On a good day, he can go on a righteous crusade better than anyone on the dais. Those are good qualities for an elected official to have on a good day and Schiavone definitely has had his good days.

But this was not to be one of those days.

His concern for Simpson's mental competency was probably no more real than his enthusiasm for Beeman's appointment. But it provides an eye's view of the reality of serving as an elected official in a system where bartering and trading is its form of currency.

What was troubling about this episode is how many different reasons were given to justify Simpson's departure or possible eviction from the commission. It seems no one could find just one rationale and stick to that for any meaningful period of time.

First, there were concerns of his mental competency by the trio. Then the problem was that he needed to tone down his rhetoric or face being ousted. This was an allegation raised by Simpson at the last CPRC meeting regarding an alleged meeting he had with CPRC Chair Brian Pearcy. Then another "concern" floating around in some circles was that he came on the CPRC with an agenda. This one is a source of humor given that everyone at City Hall has an agenda and given the politicization of the board and commission selection process due to the passage of Measure GG as well as other reasons, it's hard to find someone who doesn't have one. It's also quite possible that those who were concerned about Simpson's agenda had one or more of their own.

Most of what makes up civic politics is about agendas. What goes down in River City on a daily basis is no exception to that rule. In fact, this is another reason why this city is an interesting case study for any political scientist.


These situations like that involving Simpson are inevitable when an appointment process is politicized to the point where it's essentially meaningless. If it takes working on a political campaign or planning to run for an office against a current council member to get appointed, then that puts about 99.999999% people out of luck. Most definitely, those individuals from communities where most of the complaints as well as contacts with police officers, both positive and negative, come from. Communities essentially unrepresented on the CPRC, which is mostly a body of White middle-class or wealthier individuals making decisions about a process that disproportionately impacts people of color who are poor.

In related news, Mayor Ron Loveridge is most definitely likely to run for that seat again. You can take that one to the bank and back again. No doubt his campaign chest will be quite impressive before the time comes to file campaign papers next year. Why, will be the topic of a future posting here.

Hopefully, there won't be any more resignations from the CPRC. There's now an opening for a partial term on the Human Relations Commission. It's too bad that this commission has seen two of its members jump ship for the CPRC in the past nine months, but if you are interested in applying for the spot, hopefully at least on this one, it's truly open city-wide and that all people who apply have an equal opportunity. It deserves to have people who can stick out the terms that they have committed themselves to serving. Anyone interested in seeing what the process is, give City Clerk Colleen Nichols a call at City Hall.





Bad news around for anyone interested in developing the infamous Ag Park, according to the latest installment on the drama surrounding what began as a land swap, according to the Press Enterprise.

Friends of Riverside's Hills has kept Chuck Cox, his employer Ed Adkison(who also sits on the dais) and the rest of the city council on its toes when it comes to the placement of high-density housing on this land. This group of activists has filed a law suit against this project.


(excerpt)


In particular, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Craig Riemer ruled that the city needed further study on whether 167 houses belong on the 59-acre site given the proximity to the airport. Cox would have to pay for that report.

At the time the council gave planning approvals for the 167 houses, the Riverside County Airport Land Use Commission had determined that the houses would be inconsistent with the commission's plan for the Riverside airport.

The Airport Land Use Commission approves plans for each airport in the county to make sure people and buildings are not concentrated in areas susceptible to aircraft accidents and to make sure no structures or activities adversely affect the use of airspace.

The council overrode the commission's finding in its planning approvals for the houses.

But Riemer ruled that, since the 167 houses don't fit in with the commission's plan for the Riverside airport, the city needs to analyze the issue further, Supervising Deputy City Attorney Kristi Smith said.

Riemer also ruled that the council should have held two public hearings on its proposal to override the commission's finding. Only one hearing was held.




Oops. Looks like there needs to be better care when it comes to ensuring that the public is properly notified and given ample opportunities to provide its input on important projects, public or private, within its midst. Unfortunately, the current regime at City Hall still needs to work on its public outreach a little bit. Maybe next time they'll do it before a judge admonishes them to do so. Practice makes perfect.







Bad news for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department came in the form of a law suit filed in the 1990s alleging that there were elite gangs of rogue police officers, one of which was called the Vikings.

Now, in 2007, another law suit has been filed alleging that a new gang, the Regulators, is picking up where its alleged predecessors left off, according to the Los Angeles Times.


(excerpt)


They call themselves the Regulators.

They wear tattoos of a skull-faced man holding a shotgun, fire screaming from its barrels. They refuse to testify against their buddies. They've been accused of extorting and intimidating those outside their ranks.

No, they're not members of a street gang. They're Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies at the Century station in Lynwood. And their "club" is part of a culture that's dogged the nation's largest sheriff's department for years.

A decade after the county paid $9 million to resolve a series of brutality lawsuits involving a different group of Lynwood deputies known as the Vikings, the Regulators are the focus of litigation alleging racism in the department and involving accusations that a group of deputies is behaving like a gang.


However, the plaintiff in the latest law suit who is a deputy claims that there is no such gang but members of this elite group have been unfairly accused of being a police gang by police management. However, other deputies who sent anonymous letters which claimed that this gang preyed on other deputies.

It's bad news for the LASD at any rate, given that at least $10 million in settlements was paid out in law suits tied to allegations that the Lynwood Vikings and other alleged gangs in the department had been involved in police misconduct and excessive force incidents.

Still, there seems to be some secrecy in who's a member of the Regulators and who is not.


(excerpt)


But many of the group's activities and members remain cloaked in secrecy. Deputy James Grubb, a longtime member of the Regulators, refused under questioning from Los Angeles County attorneys to confirm whether some deputies were members of the group.

"You want me to talk to you about somebody else that may not want their business known. I can't do that for you," Grubb said while under oath in a deposition for Jaimes' lawsuit. "It's not up to me to bring somebody else out."


Grubb would not answer many questions from Christy L. O'Donnell, a lawyer representing the county in the lawsuit:

"Are you the leader of the Regulators?"

"There's no such thing as the leader," Grubb replied.

"How do decisions get made, then, by the Regulators?"

"I won't discuss that. It's not something that's public knowledge," Grubb said.

"You do understand, though, that when you refuse to answer questions . . . it has the negative inference of the code of silence?"

"As does a lot of things in general life," Grubb said.



Ex-United States Attorney and current head of the division which oversees the Sheriff's Department's internal investigations, Michael Gennaco, didn't sound too thrilled with news that yet another police gang was alleged to be in the mix. He did say in the article that it would hurt the morale of the department. You think?

For one thing, having a group of police officers running around with a shared tattoo can sure be expensive, as the litigation paid out by Los Angeles County which holds the purse strings for the Sheriff's Department has shown.




Getting assigned to a desk job will be Columbus(OH)Police Department officer,who created and circulated racist videos disparaging African-Americans, Cubans, Jews and others, according to the Associated Press.

Susan Purtee and her sister posted their videos on a YouTube site.


(excerpt)


The videos refer to blacks, Jews, Cubans and illegal immigrants as "filthy" and "scumbags" and accuse Jews of abusing their positions at the top of the nation's media and entertainment industries, including Disney, Viacom Inc. and The Associated Press.Mayor Michael Coleman called the videos offensive, and the police division started an internal investigation.

Purtee, a 15-year veteran, wears civilian clothes in the videos and never mentions her job. A description of the videos on the sisters' Web site says she is a law enforcement officer.





Corruption has eroded the performance and public confidence in the Elbert County Sheriff's Department in Colorado, according to the Rocky Mountain News. A deputy who had been fired made allegations that male deputies searched female inmates while making derogatory comments and there was drinking on the job.


(excerpt)


Sherman, 38, claims he was fired because he notified his supervisors of the misconduct he saw and he refused to go along with it.

"Basically, they just told me, 'Deal with it,' " Sherman, 38, said of the reaction he go when he complained about the behavior of his co-workers.

Frangis on Wednesday denied Sherman's claims, saying, "I consider them all to be ridiculous, absolutely false. I would like to further comment, but because of the pending litigation, I really can't."

During his two years in the sheriff's office, Sherman said, he saw Sgt. Don Heald wait outside a bar for people to leave and then arrest them.

"That has not happened," Heald said Wednesday night when asked about the allegation.





A civilian review mechanism will be coming to Springfield, Massachusetts, according to the Republican. The nine-member board will be appointed by Sept. 15.

The creation of this board was a long time coming for this city, which has struggled since the dissolution of a prior review mechanism several years ago.

Congratulations are due the city of Springfield and its residents. May you keep your review process on a straight course and free of politicization.





The conflict between San Bernardino's mayor, Patrick Morris and City Attorney Jim Penman has reached the letters page of the Press Enterprise with Penman's peeps supporting him 2 to 0 so far.





Visitors to this site this week included the following.


The City of Riverside

The County of Riverside

The State of California

Pepperdine University

The Press Enterprise

AAPT Limited(Australia)

Earlham College

University of California, Riverside



Search terms:

(excerpt)



Five Before Midnight

Olmo Paper

Brian Gossh

derogatory emails

Bill Lockyer



Coming soon:

The Neophyte's Guide to River City

River City Hall: Adventures in ethics

"It's like running your car 100 miles per hour seven days a week. Eventually something is going to give out,"


---Southern California Edison spokeswoman Vanessa McGrady, to the Los Angeles Times.



"I want to make it real,"

---HRC Chair Omar Zaki, about Riverside's inclusive community statement.


"Do you want to hear an African-American joke?"

--one city employee to another, in 2007.





Labor Day was another hot, humid day, but at least in Riverside, the heat was broken by a brief rain shower in the afternoon which brought some relief to those who have sweltered during the past week for at least 20 minutes. Yesterday's temperature was 112 degrees in Riverside, which meant that the city without intending to had provided free sauna facilities for anyone within its boundaries.

In Los Angeles County, over 23,000 customers lost electric power, according to the Los Angeles Times. All of them are Southern California Edison customers from Long Beach to Lake Elsinore. Temperatures are expected to decrease markedly during the next couple of days, until they reach a more seasonal level, which means they will only hit the high 90s.






Love it, or hate it, here's your place to talk about SmartPark. As you know, the controversial program regulating parking downtown is undergoing some changes as of late. That's typical of plans and programs that were approved under one form last year, and then changed this year when the city residents protested their implementation during an election year. Hopefully, these changes will provide some relief to the small business owners downtown and their customers at least for a few months.


More interesting letters on the problems of litter and utility prices in Riverside. Keep those letters coming. The contact email address is letters@pe.com.


The Press Enterprise editorial board supports Riverside's most recent move 9-11 phone calls made by cellular phones to a dispatch center within the city's limits rather than have the calls sent out to the CHP in San Bernardino County. This should ease some of the delays that people encounter when they use their cell phones to call for emergency assistance.


(excerpt)



Cell phones can be life savers in cases of emergency, but not if callers have long waits just to connect with the right agency. So more cities and counties should directly answer cellular 911 calls, to speed emergency responses and improve public safety.

Wireless callers dialing 911 in Riverside will now reach city dispatchers instead of a regional California Highway Patrol center. The city on Aug. 13 finished upgrading its emergency communications center to accept the rerouted wireless calls, with the help of a $525,000 state grant.






The City Council will be interviewing four applicants for the Community Police Review Commission, but it's merely a formality as has the interview process in earlier selection processes for the respective appointments. Chani Beeman is expected to be appointed to become the third representative of Ward One and the second appointment spearheaded by Councilman Dom Betro and now, Councilman Frank Schiavone who's as much an adamant supporter of her appointment now as he was against it several months ago. This is an appointment that's been in the works for a while, some say.


If appointed, Beeman will depart the Human Relations Commission where current chair, Omar Zaki was published in this article in the Press Enterprise which provides an interesting look at his philosophy on the issues faced by the commission he heads.


(excerpt)


"There was such a gap" in understanding between the non-Muslim community in the United States and the Muslim community, Zaki said.

Islam has more than 1 billion adherents worldwide but it's the extremists who have spoken for them in recent years, he said.

The Sept. 11 attackers are not representative of the majority of Muslims, Zaki said.

"Most Muslims, including myself, look at what they did as sinful," he said.


Now as Human Relations Commission chairman, he is working to increase understanding among all racial, ethnic and religious groups in the city.




If you ever have time in your schedule, check out an HRC meeting. Zaki's a very nice guy, who appears to be a good leader of a body that hasn't gotten as much respect as it deserves. They meet on one Thursday a month and also hold meetings of various subcommittees, unfortunately often when few people can attend them. That's unfortunately a problem with most of the business done by the city's boards and commissions.



Zaki wants to make the city's inclusive community statement, "real" and he's to be admired for trying to do so. It would be great if the city of Riverside could eliminate the racism and sexism in its workplace with at least one city department in the midst of an investigation done by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and another that is in the midst of an inhouse investigation which was marred by alleged threats that were mailed out to former employees of that department several months ago that the jobs of current parks employees would be privatized among other things. Several years ago, this department had already lost a Black male employee who was fired by the city several days after filing a grievance alleging a hostile work environment which included the use of a racist slur.

Yet another city department has allegedly lost another Black employee several weeks ago, not long after this person filed a complaint with a supervisor regarding, you guessed it a hostile racial environment.

Hopefully, now that the HRC is under the umbrella of the mayor's office, Zaki and other commissioners will reexamine these issues. Perhaps, the Human Resources Board will do so as well.






Community activist and publisher of The Truth, Salvador Santana is filing a grievance through the ethics code against Councilman Ed Adkison. According to Santana and other witnesses, Adkison made comments at a city council meeting on Aug. 14 that Santana had been evicted from his residence in the past in response to comments Santana made about a proposed initiative to be put on November's ballot on the ownership of roosters.





If this took place, what was Adkison thinking? Or was he? Santana and others have said that what Adkison said was untrue. It's puzzling as to why Adkison would do this given that he and Santana appeared to have cordial relations. But at the very least, it appears to be inappropriate behavior by a city official.





On Aug. 28, Santana spoke at the city council meeting alleging that Adkison had violated the ordinance pertaining to appropriate conduct by an elected official. At the same meeting during its afternoon session, Police Officer Putman was searching through the cart which contained Santana's publications and said there might be a bomb in it. Before this, several security guards were attempting to move the cart to outside of City Hall. This is the first time in many times that Santana has brought his cart to City Hall that it was subjected to this treatment. Other people who attended the meeting said that neither they nor their properties were subject to the same kind of scrutiny through searches by police officers or security guards at city council meetings. It's hard not to see this action as being directed by Adkison, who in the past has ordered the city's police officers to either remove speakers or do other things from the dais during meetings.





I do not know Officer Putman. I've seen him at several meetings and he's been polite and professional to people as many of the officers assigned to the meetings have been. I do not believe it was his choice to search Santana's cart. If it's the elected officials or city staff members who are suddenly ordering police officers to do so, there needs to be some examination of this issue.





Several police officers bravely came forward at a meeting of the Group last year and spoke about what had happened surrounding the attempted eviction of several city residents from a city council meeting last February and the actions of Deputy Chief Dave Dominguez to address it without arresting people, an action that may have had repercussions for him politically. This included the attempted eviction of Marjorie Von Pohle who was 89 at the time and said she would have to be carried out.





Santana plans to take his grievance through the ethics committee process, but he's wasting his time even as the city appears desperate to resolve this matter. First of all, there's a good chance that his complaint would be tossed out on a technicality courtesy of the city attorney's office after a period of time spent contemplating it. After all, who employs the city attorney? The city council including Adkison.





If it does survive that far through the process, it will go to the Mayor's Nomination and Screening Committee which is looking more and more like an exercise in good theater anyway. What will happen is that another council member will substitute for Adkison who will be forced to recuse himself just as fellow committee member, Betro did when he received a complaint. The committee will spend most of its time talking about how restrained Adkison was and what a bad person Santana and it will determine that Santana's complaint is unfounded. Even if Adkison did slander Santana on Charter Communications television, it doesn't matter. The process is set up by the council members in a way that protects their interests, not those of the city's residents, because the council members are left to policing their own conduct and what happens if there is potential misconduct.

That's why there should be an independent committee comprised of city residents to review ethnics complaints involving elected officials. When this suggestion was made during a recent evaluation of the ethics code and complaint process at a Governmental Affairs Committee meeting, it was not surprisingly, vetoed by the city council members on that body.




Three out of four of the members(all of whom are from the BASS quartet) of the Mayor's Nomination and Screening Committee have garnered most of the complaints about how they treat members of the public. Several have ordered very embarrassed police officers to remove elderly women from the meeting.




The sensible thing for Adkison to do if the allegations are true is to apologize to Santana both personally and on television. After all, they use the fact that the meetings are televised to present their agendas, one of them can use it to apologize for misconduct. Adkison is certainly capable of doing so, as he's probably the person on the dais who's more akin to apologize than most of his colleagues. I know that from personal experience and he can be gracious in doing so.





Often, I think that elected officials upon getting elected forget who put them there. Who put them in those positions were those who cast votes in their respective wards, not those including out of town development firms who put money in their campaign coffers then knock their office doors down the rest of the time. It is up to city residents to remain engaged in the process through their votes and through expressing their views on the various issues that come before the city council.




Will the Springboks meet up with the All-Blacks in the finals? Stay tuned! Hopefully, if so, this time the All-Blacks team won't all come down with food poisoning before the final round.


Trivia: What world champion Rugby team played a non-test match against the United States team in Riverside? Who won?

Heat Wave Watch: When will there be relief?

Shake and bake, has officially come to the Inland Empire, with temperatures expected to reach 112 or higher during the next couple of days and with the earth shaking the seismographs at 4.7, according to the United States Geological Survey. Did you feel it? If so, go here and report it.

The earthquake's epicenter was in the El Cerrito area near Lake Elsinore at 10:29 a.m. At first it sounded like a whole fleet of DHL DC-9 planes taking off and then the ground started shaking. But earthquakes are a fact of life in Riverside. Remember the duo quakes in Landers and Big Bear in 1992? There's nothing like standing in a doorway and your head is hitting the top of it, hoping that your home doesn't fall apart around you. Then watching as everyone runs off to the nearest supermarket to buy up all the bottled water.

The smaller earthquakes serve as a reminder about the importance of preparing for the larger ones. There are steps that you can take which can save you and your family members from death or serious harm in the event of a major earthquake. Seismologists say that a major quake in the Inland Empire is inevitable and in fact, long overdue. The two largest, most dangerous faults which are the San Andreas and the San Jacinto are both in close proximity to many cities in the Inland Empire.

In the event of a major earthquake, it's likely that you will not have access to clean drinking water, electricity or phone service for up to a week or longer. The Northridge earthquake which hit in 1994 caused major disruptions in these services to many residents in Los Angeles and surrounding areas.


Red Cross resources including training classes in disaster preparedness can be very helpful in the wake of a disaster as well. Many of them are free or at low-cost. Hopefully, the city does or will offer programs and incentives for people in all neighborhoods to take these courses including offering scholarships to low-income residents.


The Big Bear earthquake which hit three hours after the Landers one hit a bunch of us when we were out running ironically enough, on a street called San Andreas(after the largest fault line in the state) and it knocked some of us off of our feet. But it was the middle of a 16 mile run so you just keep going. Fortunately, Riverside received very little damage from either quake and few injuries.

But even after little earthquakes, you can hear the sirens soon after of ambulances responding most likely to calls from people suffering chest pains or heart attacks in response to even smaller tremors.



The intense heat is expected to continue for at least two more days but might be broke up by afternoon thunderstorms.

If you need to find the location of a nearby cooling center, look here.






A man who worked for the Press Enterprise's advertising division was arrested by the Riverside Police Department's SWAT team for allegedly placing the advertisement threatening District Attorney Ron Pacheco, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Chandler William Cardwell, 32, was taken into custody at his home in Perris. According to Chief Russ Leach, he had been a member of Eastside Riva for six years.


(excerpt)


The Aug. 25 Press-Enterprise ad was for a "Big Blowout" yard sale that listed Pacheco's cellphone number and home address. Proceeds from the sale, the ad said, would "benefit [the] Rod Pacheco memorial fund."

Leach said detectives served warrants for phone records at the newspaper and the phone company last week and determined that Cardwell called in the ad from his cellphone. Cardwell gave a bogus checking account number as payment, Leach said.

The ad was purchased around 4 p.m. on Aug. 24, according to officials. Earlier that afternoon, Pacheco and Riverside police announced at a news conference that they were seeking a permanent injunction against East Side Riva members to prevent them from congregating, showing gang signs, violating curfew or publicly consuming alcohol in a specified area.




More information available on the arrest and further investigation here.

City Councilman Andrew Melendrez who represents the Eastside will be calling for a community meeting this week to discuss the injunction. The police department will be represented. The Riverside County District Attorney's office which filed the injunction stated that it will not send a representative out of security concerns.






One of the hottest trends to hit the cities of the Inland Empire is how to incorporate ethics codes or ethics training into local governments. The latest to jump onto that band wagon is Murrieta! Welcome aboard!


It seems that Murrieta's city government has some history of improprieties involving its elected officials and some of its employees and this past has led to a present where local residents want some accountability in their government. It turns out there are people on the city council who have concerns as well.

Most of the proposed rules address how city government and city employees will handle development firms and proposed development projects.


(excerpt, Press Enterprise)



The latest workshop was triggered by questions from members of the City Council and the Planning Commission about how they should act when invited to talk to residents upset because of a project, developers and other city officials.

Planning Commission Chairman Randon Lane asked the new city attorney to clarify the guidelines for commissioners and council members.

"We have had some people where the questions came up whether it was OK to talk with developers and residents," he said. "We wanted to make sure we have some clarification so people could feel fine doing it."



This workshop will take place this Tuesday, at 5 p.m. at Murrieta's City Hall.



Riverside had its own foray into the ethics process by opting to adopt an ethics code and complaint process. Not so much because it wanted to do so, but because voters overwhelmingly supported the creation of such a process and its inclusion in the city's charter during the autumn election in 2004.

Of course, what was spawned out of that process has very little to do with accountability and ethics and everything to do with a dog and pony show that's not even useful to watch in terms of seeing responsible government in action, let alone experience it in action. Part of the problem was that the first time a complaint came in, which incidentally involved Councilman Steve Adams, there wasn't even a written process in place.

If you have a serious ethics or malfeasance complaint against an elected official, skip the whole ethics process and take it to the county grand jury. After all, this is what that process was set up to handle. Elected officials can't even appropriately govern each others' conduct on the dais when one of them is acting out, how can they handle the process of holding each other accountable during an ethics process?

One good idea that came out of concerned community residents is that there should be a committee comprised of city residents to hear ethics complaints. That would be an improvement to the system currently in place.

Like the Community Police Review Commission, the reality of the ethics complaint process is much more than our city government can handle at this point in time. They are currently a step behind what the public wishes for when it comes to mechanisms of independent oversight over allegations of misconduct. Even when the public through its exercise of the vote makes it clear that these things are highly valued in what they expect to see at City Hall, the city government remains behind the curve. One councilman seemed miffed and had interrupted me when he believed I was going to remind him for the umpteenth time that the city residents had voted the CPRC into the city's charter at a recent meeting, even though I hadn't even made that statement.

Maybe they just don't like being reminded of what the public wants when it runs counter to their own vision of how things should be.

That's why we don't have an effective process in place involving either right now. Both began as mechanisms of accountability and transparency demanded by the city's residents, approved reluctantly by those at City Hall and both have been made pretty much in the image to reflect the current state of that power structure. And unfortunately, the people who may have to actually utilize either process haven't had much to say about it except through their actions at the voting polls.

Needless to say, if you aren't registered to vote, you need to do so. More information on that process here.



Perhaps that is why the complaints filed in the Eastside involving police officers are apparently going through different channels than the ones set up to handle and track complaints which are in place. Complaints in that neighborhood dropped down to zero last year.








Speaking of holding people accountable in government, San Bernardino Mayor Patrick J. Morris is trying to do like with City Attorney Jim Penman, according to an opinion piece he penned for the Press Enterprise. Penman has long been a thorn in the side of city politics in San Bernardino, but since he's elected and the voters there keep putting him in office, he's stayed in power for quite some time vexing everyone while he's put together his little fiefdom.


(excerpt)


The one area where our city has failed to make progress during my first 18 months is the same area that has ultimately held back our city for the last two decades, a failure of collaboration among city leadership. Does collaboration mean there is no room for disagreement? Absolutely not -- political disagreement among elected policymakers is a fundamental underpinning of our democratic system of governance.

Collaboration, however, does require that a city's impartial legal adviser cannot maintain or foster special political relationships with certain factions of the council or employee organizations, cannot take actions or draft memorandums that attack employees or undermine department heads, and cannot attempt to push his own political agendas that set elected policymakers against each other.

Unfortunately, San Bernardino's current city attorney, Jim Penman, has done all of the above. He has fostered a bloc of council members who regularly do his political bidding, he has attempted to politically silence or undermine department heads or employees with whom he disagrees, and he has attempted to hijack the mayor and council's legislative process by interjecting either his own policy proposals or by throwing "sand in the gas tank" of policy initiatives that he believes do not further his own political agenda. Over the past two decades former mayors regularly experienced this behavior, and I have continued to receive the brunt of this conduct during my brief tenure as mayor.





In Riverside, this political strategy should actually seem fairly familiar though it's not being used by the city's attorney in this case. It should be fairly clear what corner it comes from. Here, there's no questioning of it unlike the case in San Bernardino's seat of power.



Morris, who's probably one of the most interesting mayors outside of Tom Potter up in Portland, Oregon has moved on from his stint as a county judicial officer into city government while trying to implement an ambitious plan to improve the situation in several neighborhoods there which have been plagued with violence.

Penman had his say here in the same publication where he blamed all of the problems on Morris who he admitted he agreed with 92% of the time on city issues.


(excerpt)


Several people have told me a series of attacks will be initiated against me, and complaints will be filed against me with other government agencies and regulatory bodies, during the upcoming municipal election campaign. In fact, a personal attack was made on me during a televised City Council meeting this month.

Such personal attacks are usually made against me whenever I run for office. Those false allegations raised during past political campaigns have been officially investigated and proven to be untrue.

Rather than retaliate with a personal attack, I feel that simply explaining the facts and refusing to be drawn into a combative, verbal pingpong game is a wiser option. The reason: The biggest challenge for San Bernardino leaders today is to avoid permitting election year politics to interfere with the civility that has returned to City Hall and with the progress that has been made in addressing this city's problems.



It's interesting to see them take their feud outside San Bernardino's halls of power and onto the pages of a newspaper based in the next county. It kind of makes those of us in the other county of the Inland Empire feel included as an audience in one of the mightiest power struggles to take place in San Berdoo in years.

Penman has been involved in all kinds of strange antics since being elected city attorney. Morris seems to be trying to make positive changes in the city. One major obstacle to progress in San Bernardino remains the politics playing out among those at City Hall. Enough conflicts and interesting dynamics that would have kept playwright, William Shakesphere quite happy for a while.

Still, all city attorneys are elected officials. Whether it's by the majority of seven votes as is the case in Riverside or the majority of the votes of a city, it's in a sense, an elected position. Unlike Riverside, the mayor in San Bernardino welds more obvious power on the front lines rather than just behind the scenes.






The Board of Supervisors of Riverside County need to stop fiddling with the mess involved with Eagle Mountain which will not solve the overcrowding issues impacting the county's jail facilities, according to this editorial in the Press Enterprise.

The editorial board makes a good argument that the board of supervisors shouldn't ignore the study that was conducted which advised against using the facility to house inmates.


(excerpt)


Residents also have a huge stake in the county's decisions about public safety. The county needs to spend up to $1.6 billion in the next decade to accommodate the growing jail inmate population. In recent years the county has had to grant early release to about 3,000 inmates annually for lack of sufficient jail space. Some county officials see Eagle Mountain, an abandoned state prison, as a way to ease the jail crowding.

But the report affirms that buying Eagle Mountain would be a foolish move. Supervisor Jeff Stone says the county could buy the facility and convert it to a county jail for about $10.8 million. But the study says the cost would be several times that amount. The former minimum-security facility east of Palm Springs is too remote to be cost-effective, the report adds. And as Sheriff Bob Doyle noted in 2005, the prison's dormitory-style housing cannot safely contain the county's violent inmates.

Supervisors and the sheriff rightly agree that adding jail space is the county's No. 1 priority. But Eagle Mountain is not a smart option. Residents of the fastest-growing county in the state need a candid discussion about viable plans to secure the public's safety, not closed-door meetings and hidden reports.

Injuctions and indices

The heat wave continues in the Inland Empire. Two pools are going to be opened during the holiday weekend by the city of Riverside. These are Sippy Woodhead Pool at the Bobby Bonds Park in the Eastside and Arlington Park Pool. The hours will between 1 to 5 pm all three days.


(excerpt, Belo Blog)


“Most of the lifeguards are college students and they go back to school,” Nuñez said.

But because of the heat, the city rounded up enough lifeguards to staff the pool through the weekend, Nuñez said.

“We are anticipating it will be very hot and we want to try and accommodate as many residents as we can,” he said.



More about the heat wave here. Yesterday, Riverside hit a record high of 109 degrees and short but intense thunderstorms that were more like hurricanes hit Lake Elsinore. Included in this link is a survey asking readers how they are coping with the heat.

The humidity from the monsoon conditions makes what is called a heat index, much higher than the actual temperature. If the actual temperature is 105 degrees but it's humid, the index may be around 110 degrees and that's how it actually feels.







The Eastside neighborhood in Riverside responds to the news about the Riverside County District Attorney’s office filing an injunction against the Eastside Riva gang, according to Press Enterprise.

Residents of the primarily Black and Latino neighborhood have asked why the Eastside was the target of the injunction given the more recent gang violence in areas of the city like the Hillside and La Sierra neighborhoods. Other residents said it’s ironic that D.A. Rod Pacheco and Chief Russ Leach of the Riverside Police Department gave their speech at Patterson Park which had been reclaimed by neighborhood residents with the help of city departments and even some gang members.

Community leaders were also left in the dark by the action, several said at a recent city council meeting.


(excerpt)


Residents say the worst of the gang members are either dead or incarcerated. Community and police efforts have made Patterson Park, which is in the center of the Eastside neighborhood, graffiti-free for several months. Residents say they can now walk through the area without fear. The last known East Side Riva-related homicide was in March 2006, police said.

Reports of violent crime in the neighborhood for the first six months of this year were down 11 percent from the same period in 2006, according to police statistics. Those statistics also cover some streets that lie outside the Eastside neighborhood.

"He's trying to stop the violence that has already been stopped," Francine Barbarin, an 18-year-old Riverside City College student, said of Pacheco. Her father's name is on the DA's list.

The district attorney's office worked with the Riverside Police Department on the injunction for more than a year, said Ingrid Wyatt, spokeswoman for the district attorney's office.

"East Side Riva is the oldest and most violent gang in Riverside. The district attorney's office and the Riverside Police Department intend to rid the Eastside of this gang and make the community a safer place for the honest men, women and children who live there," Wyatt said. "That's the all-encompassing reason why we filed this gang injunction."

Experts said that the community members are right to be asking some questions about the injunction.


(excerpt)


A study of gang-enforcement tactics released this summer questions the need for the injunctions, which are used primarily in California. Criminal-justice policy analyst Judy Green of New York-based Justice Strategies worked on the study, which was produced for the Justice Policy Institute, a think tank that believes society puts too many people in prison.

There is little evidence that injunctions reduce crime, but publicizing a gang problem can help law-enforcement agencies acquire federal funds or increase officers, Green said.

When an injunction is issued for an area where crime is going down, that should be cause for suspicion, she said.

"You've got to scratch your head and wonder what's going on," Green said.




People who took their concerns about it to City Hall questioned its enforcement given that at least half of those listed are in prison or jail facilities. The enforcement of the injunction will be left to the police department’s patrol officers who may or may not be familiar with those individuals on the injunction who are not in jail, the fact that so many of them are in custody and which Latinos in the Eastside belong to this gang and which ones do not. If they see two or three Latinos gathered together in one place, it's doubtful that police officers will know on sight whether or not they are Eastside Riva gang members especially if those officers have just been assigned to that area.

Court documents don't reveal much about how the injunction will be enforced. No information on whether a similar injunction will be filed against the Eastside Riva's rival gang, the 1200 Bloc Crips, another fairly old gang that has had a history of violent crimes including homicides but it's clear that some community leaders like NAACP President Woodie Rucker-Hughes(who is a "she" not a "he") have already expressed that concern and how such an action would impact Black Eastside residents.

Some people who live in the Eastside fear this will lead to racial profiling stops to determine whether or not any individuals gathered in one place, which is forbidden for Eastside Riva members under the injunction.


At least one meeting will be held by community residents to address this issue. The police department will attend including Lt. Larry Gonzalez who’s the area commander. However, no one from the District Attorney’s office will be attending due to security concerns, its office said.

The decision by that office kind of gives you an idea of what its representatives think of the entire neighborhood. Even though the vast majority of the Eastside’s residents are not gang members, those who are truly concerned about what’s happening in its midst can’t have a face to face session with Pacheco or anyone else to discuss their concerns because these individuals either think everyone in the Eastside is dangerous, they don't want to talk to people who are questioning the injunction, including those "innocent" people they say they are advocating for or they have little or no faith in the police department to keep them safe at a public meeting.

People in the Eastside deal with threats against them and their lives every day. They don't let it stop them. They attend public meetings on these issues at restaurants then walk out and see that customers' tires have been slashed on their cars. They may even be threatened by gang members because they report crimes committed by them. The police department and District Attorney's office always tell Eastsiders to report crimes to them even when they face death threats, because it's important to do so.

Yet, when the District Attorney's office gets threatened allegedly by a gang member or gang members, it allows that to prevent it and its representatives from meeting in a community where residents live with danger about something that impacts their lives. That sends the message loud and clear that even though we tell you to risk your safety, your lives, your family's safety to report gang crimes to us, we didn't really mean it because if we did, we'd live by the terms we set for others. We'll hide behind our walls, but you can't hide behind yours. And who has the greater ability to protect themselves, the community or the District Attorney's office?

If the District Attorney's office is truly restricted in terms of which neighborhoods it can go into, then isn't that also its way of telling everyone who really appears to be in control?

The Riverside County District Attorney's office and Riverside Police Department hasn't talked to the Eastside, it has talked at it from Patterson Park. They both should be entering into a dialogue with this community members if not in the Eastside, then some place else. After all, even community leaders in the Eastside complain that no one talked to them about what was going on. For the police department, that's called being co-partners in addressing problems that impact both the community and the department. It's part of that thing called the Strategic Plan.

But the residents of the Eastside deserve to be able to engage with the police department and the District Attorney's office on this issue that's in their midst. The police department has agreed to send representatives to the community meetings and that's a good start. What is the District Attorney's office going to do?

Just like all other county residents, Eastsiders pay the salaries of those in the District Attorney's office too.







Speaking of the issue of racial profiling and pretext traffic stops, here is some information that came out recently about one of the formerly mandated reforms of the stipulated judgment that existed for five years between the city of Riverside and the State Attorney General's office.


Traffic Pretext Stop Study


This study which was done annually while the department was under the stipulated judgment will be resumed, with the next report coming out in March 2008. It will cover data collected on traffic stops conducted during 2006 and 2007.

Money was allocated to do a traffic stop study during 2006 after City Manager Brad Hudson's office allocated $25,000 to conduct the study. That money was still in the department's budget for that project in August 2006 according to a CPRA request sent to the department during that time.

The department conducted a study using 2005 data but this study was not officially released to the public in 2006. The department's reasoning for not releasing the study was the data was "indistinguishable" from that used in studies done during earlier years.

Although Dr. Larry Gaines, a former law enforcement officer, had been providing analysis for the department on its statistics, Chief Russ Leach said that he was going to try to find another expert to provide that function for the next public report. He is even considering Dr. Robert Nash Parker at the University of California, Riverside. Parker did a similar study using traffic citations for the Press Enterprise newspaper eight years ago.



Studies done on Riverside Police Department:


Traffic Stop Study, March 2003



Press Enterprise: Racial Profiling Study Doubted