Riverside Councilman Frank Schiavone: "We are in a global meltdown"

The Friday Morning Club hosted Ward Four Councilman Frank Schiavone at the Goeske Center and the major focus of the discussion was the state of the economy, both locally and nationally.

He said the city was in excellent shape in comparison to other cities with a $44 million reserve and not as much impact to the city's labor force.



"To date, we've only laid off seven employees," Schiavone said.



Actually, it's at least nine employees who've been laid off but Schiavone's just citing what Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis and this article said.


(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

One way the city is cutting spending is by letting workers go. The city fired two contract workers in mid-November and at the same time gave 30 days notice to four full-time employees.

This week, the city gave 30 days notice to a civilian, non-safety employee in the Fire Department, Assistant City Manager Tom DeSantis said.

So add that all up and you get seven, and only one employee being mentioned as someone who was given a 30 day notice of termination for this week. The problem with that, is that both DeSantis and the newspaper failed to mention that at least three full-time city employees received such notices this past week including two not mentioned by DeSantis or in the news article.


The departments where employees and their positions were laid off are the following.



Riverside's most recent layoffs by the numbers:


Information Technology: 2

Museum: 1

Library: 1

Park and Recreation: 2 (Project Bridge outreach workers)

Mayor's Office: 1 (Community Relations Director)

Fire Department: 1 (unspecified civilian)

Police Department: 1 (civilian, police chief's office)





But that's not a complete picture, because there's more layoffs, including about 30 part-time positions in the library and the layoff of at least some of the city's contract employees.


The city of Corona was used as a comparison to Riverside to point out how much better the latter city is doing but a more accurate portrait of whether it is or it isn't won't be painted until late next year or the year after. This article outlines Corona's current situation.

The city is cutting about 13.3% of its entire workforce and the full-time positions cut comprise about 6.42% of its entire workforce. The article didn't present statistics reflecting the total number of full-time employees in the city's roster, only its total number of employees.



Corona's lay offs by the numbers:


(excerpt, Press Enterprise)


Total work force: 840

Total: 112


Full time employees laid off: 54


Full-time positions frozen: 33

Part-time employees laid off: 15

Part-time positions frozen: 10



But then you get into the messy situation of calculating percentile figures for frozen or eliminated positions and that's been done to boost the percentage rates to 20-25% of the workforce which is being laid off by Corona. One miscalculation had Corona laying off as many as 250 of its employees. But if you subtract the frozen positions out since they aren't actually laid off positions because they were vacant, the percentage for Corona according to these figure doesn't even reach 13.3%. The adjusted figure for full and part-time positions would be 8.21% and for only full-time positions, it would be 6.43%.

The higher figures are then used to paint the picture of how much better the Riverside city work force is doing. Except that Riverside's layoff figures aren't including layoffs for part-time positions and frozen positions. So you're comparing a standard that overemphasizes Corona's layoffs against one that underestimates Riverside's own layoff situation.



These are your calculations for the percentages of comparison being used by Riverside when comparing the layoff situation of city employees by percentages in Riverside vs what the picture shows in Corona.


Corona: total layoffs in Corona including frozen positions/total positions in Corona x 100


Riverside: only full-time layoffs in Riverside/total positions in Riverside x 100




Not the best of comparisons really and not the most honest depiction either.



This is not to under emphasize what Corona is facing but to put it in a perspective for proper comparison to Riverside if you're using numbers and percentages to do that.

As if employee positions haven't been frozen in Riverside but they aren't included in the calculation of its layoff percentages. If they were, Riverside's picture would look quite a bit different.


Were they eliminated? It's not clear how many have been permanently eliminated but many have them have likely been frozen until the economic picture clears up which in the Inland Empire could be as late as 2012 when the housing market creeps up from whatever "bottom" it falls to during its current plunge. The Inland Empire is one of the national epicenters for the current recession due to its dependency on the health and vigor of the housing market particularly that involving new home construction.

Let's use the police department as an example of how many positions have been "frozen". So far, possibly as many as 19 patrol positions (though eight attrition positions may have opened up), four sergeant positions, one lieutenant position, one deputy position and at least 24 civilian positions. Just in this department which is the highest recipient of general fund money of any city department, there are possibly as many as 49 frozen positions and it's likely to be even worse in divisions not involved with providing public safety. There were no layoffs of people involved as these were positions which were vacated for a variety of reasons and deliberately left unfilled.




Corona's City Hall emphasized that the decision to cut positions now was to avoid having to make that decision during the next fiscal year. Meaning that Corona is trying to take its dose of pain now and get it over with, hoping that there's not more of that to come.


(excerpt)

Officials said the drastic budget cut was partly an effort to be proactive. They hope to avoid ending the current fiscal year with a deficit, and in about two months they must start drawing up the 2009-2010 budget.

Asked whether there will be additional layoffs in the near future, City Manager Brad Robbins said, "Based on what we know today, no."

If the city can make such a large staff reduction with little to no impact on city services, Nolan admitted, perhaps not all those positions were necessary to begin with.

"That's a very good question -- and you know what, based on the economic climate right now, probably not," he said.

Corona General Employees Association President Karen Alexander could not be reached for comment. Employees leaving City Hall on Thursday declined to discuss the layoffs.

So Corona's laying off now instead of later and Riverside's laying off a few people and possibly more later as the economic crisis reaches its peak? It's not clear yet whether or not Corona will really save itself from future layoffs by doing them now.

But Riverside's already seen its projected annual budget slide from $226 million this year to $215 million and then $202 million due to declining revenues from property and sales taxes. The city's dependency on the auto center for the largest proportion of its sales tax revenue left it more vulnerable to being impacted by an economic downturn. Schiavone said that sales generated by the Auto Center had decreased by 46% and one of the biggest producers of revenue, a lumber sales company, could close its doors and is investing its money to prevent that.

So the news about Riverside's economic picture in terms of how it impacts its labor force might be just a tad bit rosier than it truly is and not as bleak in Corona as some people have painted it but there's so much which makes the future so difficult to predict, only that it will get worse before getting better. But Riverside residents need a much more accurate and even honest account of the city's current status than what they are getting.


Schiavone who's running for reelection next year said that he supported Greyhound's presence in Riverside.

Greyhound is scheduled to be evicted from its terminal in the heart of downtown on Jan. 31 to allegedly make way for the relocation of some of the police department's administrative divisions. A plan that might have been in the works for a while. After all, this was something the city had originally planned to do several years ago which remembering that, makes one look at this whole "Greyhound is bad" situation in a different light.

Shell game, anyone?

But the police department currently has its field operations and investigations divisions in buildings owned by the city and its administrative operations in buildings leased by the city. Both the Magnolia and Lincoln stations underwent extensive renovation to house some of the department's largest divisions.

The department's general investigations bureau (which was renamed the central investigations bureau) and special investigations division are located in these facilities. These had previously occupied leased office space on Spruce Street but were relocated to the other facilities.



The city no longer owns the Orange Street Station which among other divisions houses those under the chief's office but is leasing that building from Riverside County. The city's also leasing office space inside a commercial building near the Riverside Plaza to house its Internal Affairs Division, since it was relocated from the Orange Street Station several years ago to provide it some much needed physical separation from the rest of the police department.

It's possible that the city has decided to stop paying leases on the current spaces housing its police divisions to save money and is planning on moving some or all of them to the building that now houses the Greyhound Bus Lines and staffing from the city's fire department.

However, attempts to receive more information on whether or not the city is relocating police divisions to the downtown bus station and if so, exactly which divisions are on the list to be housed there haven't been fruitful so far. Which is kind of business as usual in Riverside.



Schiavone said that few of his constituents have called him on Greyhound but believed that many of his ward residents who hadn't were those who did not know how to access City Hall or attend meetings. If his support of is genuine, then that's a good thing and maybe that will help save Greyhound. If it's politically motivated, then those who pushed the issue are to be commended for turning it into a campaign issue and it's necessary to keep pushing that issue.


He also said he supported people coming to city council meetings and would rather have people "yelling and screaming" at the dais and not coming at all. They shouldn't serve popcorn at these events because it's a choking hazard to be eating it you are driven by the urge to start chuckling. This person who's a "racist" and has "no ethics" would really like to believe that Schiavone's sincere in his request to have more people come on down to the dais but it's actions that speak loudest, not words unless words are part of that action of course. Though it's a known effect that election seasons do tend to mellow out elected officials at least for a while.


If that's true, he might want to improve his body language at meetings. That might help him portray this facet of himself more clearly. It's not quite coming across. Colton hired an etiquette consultant to observe the body language given off by that city's elected officials at its meetings and it's worked wonders.


"The only time you hear about it is when they want to bitch," he said saying people weren't involved in the process.



But sometimes when people do get "involved in the process", people start to bitch about it, forgetting just who the city government belongs to and that's the residents of this city. At any rate, it was an interesting meeting and not a bad way to spend a morning in Riverside.

Election 2009, let the games begin!





The Community Police Review Commission will be having a meeting next week on Wednesday, Dec. 10 at 5:30 p.m. to discuss their work on the officer-involved death cases of Douglas Steven Cloud and Joseph Darnell Hill. They will also recognize one of their own, Jim Ward, the first recipient of the Bill Howe Police Accountability Award, which he received at the annual awards breakfast held by the Group.


How to file a complaint is a new brochure being designed to provide to the public which includes answers to questions about the process. It will be examined again during discussion of the commission's outreach activities which are currently nonexistent.


In other CPRC related news, there's expected to be some sort of announcement from the city council of bringing the commission for discussion to the city council or more likely, one of its subcommittees.

The likely choice is alas, Governmental Affairs where Schiavone's rediscovered dedication to listening to people attending meetings will again be put to the test. Actually, at this meeting there won't be much to discuss, because the deck is pretty stacked against the CPRC, given that two of its members, Schiavone and Adams, wrote an op-ed piece for the Press Enterprise essentially redefining the commission as its predecessor, LEPAC and the other member, Rusty Bailey is so far, the "me too" member of this committee and with the CPRC. His staunch support of its independence of the panel during his political campaign, apparently a distant memory.

One thing is for sure, amid the bells and whistles, the CPRC will likely come out of Governmental Affairs with recommendations to weaken it and probably not just in its implementation of City Charter Section 810(d).

It would be something to be greatly worried about if you weren't a student of local history. Every single time that the city government has taken a body of civilian oversight, the community has demanded and eventually won a stronger model. That was the case with LEPAC and the birth of the CPRC. It's kind of interesting to see down the road what our next stronger model is going to look like. So yes, the Governmental Affairs and eventually the city council weakening the CPRC in the short term is bad but civilian oversight will not be down for long in this city if history is any indication.





It's war!

That's what several cities' redevelopment agencies are saying to the state and they might sue to prevent their money from being collected by the state's coffers.


(excerpt, Press Enterprise)



"It is not right that local governments can be fiscally responsible, yet we're forced to pay for the state's failure to budget responsibly," Moreno Valley Mayor Bill Batey said in a statement.

The Moreno Valley Redevelopment Agency joined the California Redevelopment Association, which represents nearly 400 agencies statewide, in filing the lawsuit in Sacramento.

In a spending plan approved by lawmakers and the governor in September, the state will take the $350 million away from redevelopment agencies and shift the money to K-12 education and community colleges in the current fiscal year.

Redevelopment agencies receive property-tax revenue and use it to pay bonds for improvements such as new roads, parks and sidewalks.

The 51 agencies in the Inland area stand to lose a combined $75 million this year, including $1.1 million from Moreno Valley. The agencies must pay the state by May 10, and local officials say the loss will halt or delay for years the start of much-needed improvements.





The Riverside County District Attorney's office said it won't be influenced by protesters to file animal cruelty charges against an Los Angeles County Fire Department assistant chief. If they file, that would be shocking indeed.


(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

"The DA may say they are not going to be influenced, but some question if they really are influenced by outrage and media coverage," Lonergan said.

Even with animal cruelty statutes, the law is based on "the everyman standard," or what the general public would consider reasonable or a crime, she said.

"Those screaming outside the DA's window are not honestly going to be something he takes into account. Hopefully a case will be judged on its merits," Lonergan said.

In recent weeks, animal-rights activists and the dog's owners have launched a campaign seeking criminal charges against Los Angeles County Assistant Fire Chief Glynn Johnson, of the Woodcrest area of Riverside. No charges have been filed.

Johnson severely beat the puppy, Karley, with a rock. He has said it was in self-defense after the dog latched onto his hand and nearly bit through his thumb, but owners Jeff and Shelley Toole say they believe the attack was premeditated and stemmed from a neighborhood dispute.

The case has been under review by the district attorney's office since Nov. 12, when Riverside County sheriff's deputies recommended animal cruelty charges be filed. Johnson has not been arrested.

In Dallas, 17 police officers violated the high-speed pursuit policy.


(Dallas Morning News)

None of the officers, including the one who was injured, were authorized to be involved in the 28-minute chase that began in Lake Highlands when a driver tried to run over several officers during a confrontation in an apartment parking lot.

Two pairs of officers also face discipline for having turned off their squad cars' in-car video cameras in violation of the department's policy, according to the report obtained through an open-records request.

What discipline the officers may face has not been determined. But the chase, along with an October incident in which a squad car fatally struck a 10-year-old child while racing at least 29 mph over the speed limit without sirens or lights on a darkened road, prompted the department to tighten its procedures on how officers respond to emergencies.

Senior Cpl. Glenn White, president of the Dallas Police Association, said he believed that much of the criticism aimed at officers has been unfair second-guessing.

"Officers are going out there trying to do the best they can. God forbid when something happens, because when it does, everybody's up for scrutiny and we're all criticized," Cpl. White said.

The New Haven Police Department says its internal affairs division is improving on how it handles complaints but city residents say, not quickly enough.



(excerpt New Haven Advocate)

Identifying officers like O'Connell who have multiple complaints may be easier next year when the NHPD plans to buy a $25,000 Internal Affairs software program. The software would help the department be pro-active in finding "at risk" officers. All the necessary information is currently available to identify those officers, but Assistant Chief Roy Brown, who oversees Internal Affairs, says he doesn't want to review past complaints.

"I'm not a past-looking guy. I'm looking to the future," he says. "We're looking at creating new policies and making sure the complaints get investigated."

If Brown did review O'Connell's complaints, here's what he'd find: O'Connell has nine closed complaints (and at least four ongoing investigations). Seven were never investigated — one was filed a year late and six were determined "non-pursuit" after investigators were unable to follow up with the complainants.

Of the two remaining, one was dismissed because of a discrepancy between the complainant and a witness: The complainant said he was beaten first and handcuffed later but the witness recalled the inverse.

In the most recent investigation — community activist Barbara Fair's nephew Dramese Fair says O'Connell did an anal probe of him — police concluded O'Connell did an illegal strip search but he was never disciplined.

Access to some divisions of the Eugene police department including its Internal Affairs Division has been returned to the city's police auditor.

Relations between the two entities had been somewhat stormy in months past.



(excerpt, Eugene Register-Guard)

The move to block the auditor’s access was particularly surprising because it came less than two weeks before Lehner left Eugene for a new job in California.

Reynolds said Kerns’ decision to reopen the door to her during regular business hours symbolizes a new spirit of cooperation that appears to be emerging between top police and civilian oversight officials.

“We work together so frequently, and this was a barrier” to that work, Reynolds said. “When we talk about wanting transparency (in the oversight system), Pete recognizes that as a value. It’s genuine.”

Kerns said both Reynolds and her assistant, interim Deputy Police Auditor Elizabeth Southworth, deserve easy access to areas of the police department where they often spend parts of their workdays.

“They interact so much with internal affairs that it made good business sense to provide them with this level of access,” Kerns said.

“This seemed like a simple solution to a really uncomplicated problem,” he said.

Riverside City Hall underreports employee layoffs

"People matter more than buildings"


---A city employee who's not been laid off...yet.




"Isn't it grand? Isn't it splendid?
Peace is at hand. Warfare is ended.
Are we not blest in this best of all possible worlds?
All's for the best in this best of all possible worlds."


---Candide




"Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive."


---Sr. Walter Scott




"Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it. "


---Lewis Carroll




"We've done extremely well, from a management level, when you look at what other jurisdictions are going through,"

---- Riverside City Councilman Frank Schiavone to the Press Enterprise






"Being bopped on the head with a thunder stick is hardly provocation for what occurred here.


Foreman David Williams to the Orange County Register on the jury's decision to convict one-time Riverside Police Department Officer David Hackman of felony battery.







Earlier this week, the Press Enterprise published this article about the city of Riverside tightening its belt in light of the budget crisis. Most of the people quoted including elected officials have praised the management of this city and said that Riverside was doing a lot better than other jurisdictions. The article mentioned the six employees who were laid off several weeks ago and then added to that list, one additional employee from the Fire Department who was laid off this week.

The article stated that Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis said that an additional employee, a civilian worker, had been laid off with a 30 day notice. And yes, that paints a better picture than what's faced by other cities like Hemet, Corona and Lake Elsinore.

The only problem, it wasn't true.

Riverside did not lay off just one employee this week. It laid off at least two other full-time employees and possibly more in what is being called merely the first wave of employee layoffs in this city. More waves of layoffs are to come and some think it will be quite a bit more employees laid off in upcoming weeks and months. The situation will be pretty serious this fiscal year with the worst yet to come, given that the city manager's office has underestimated the tax source revenue for the city by at least $12 million and that's just for this year. Since the majority of the money spent is on Human Resources, meaning employees, it's expected that it's employees that are going to be used to balance the city's budget.


Among those laid off this week but not mentioned in the article were Yvette Pierre, the Community Relations director who works under Mayor Ron Loveridge and a civilian employee in the Riverside Police Department whose identity hasn't been confirmed.

Pierre was given a 30 day notice on Monday, Dec. 1 that by the beginning of the new year and half-way through the current fiscal year, she would be out of a job. She had the option of working until January but instead is out trying to get another job as the community has rallied around an employee they care about very much because Pierre is about one of the nicest people you'll ever meet.


Pierre will be greatly missed as she made a large impact during the time she was employed by this city.

Among other duties, Pierre directed the Human Relations Commission which will be left without any real staff support, given that more layoffs are expected including from the Mayor's office during the next waves of pink slips in the months ahead. She brought a lot of energy, hard work and talent to the position and to the Human Relations Commission for the several years that she filled that position.

She began working for the city after the HRC was transferred out of the city manager's office and went under the umbrella of Mayor Ron Loveridge's office. That happened after City Manager Brad Hudson had transferred one full-time employee out of community relations and reduced another one to only working in that division part-time not long after receiving an uppity letter asking for employment statistics to that office, pertaining to the race of management level employees. Many community members believed that Loveridge took this step to preserve the HRC from losing its staff entirely.

However, people are also asking questions about why City Hall is being so circumspect when it comes to talking about laying off its employees while pointing fingers at other cities' layoffs as if they're not in the same category. Instead of talking candidly about personnel cuts, Riverside's city council and city manager's office are acting like there's a contest among cities in the Inland Empire as to who has it best or worst.

And yes, there are more employees being laid off than those being mentioned by DeSantis. Unless he's unaware that other employees are being laid off. By not including them, he's essentially rendering them invisible as if there aren't city employees forced to empty out their desks and take their things home in front of everyone in their working environment. Being watched by people who probably are very sympathetic but are also hoping that it's not catching. This is while city officials are claiming that the city's doing so much better than the rest, that there is a "healthy" reserve and that they've done "extremely well" even as employees are getting pink slips, packing up and the people around them know that there's more to come.

Maybe to the city council members who get to keep their full salaries and their legislative aides, it looks much rosier than it does to an employee who's got to face the holiday season with the fear of not being able to find another job. Not one city official was quoted saying, we're really sorry about what our laid off employees are going through, we're going to do what we can to personally ensure that the experience is a little less horrible especially in a holiday season. That's what should have done as well as telling the truth about the fact that the city's not just laying off one employee but others as well. If the city manager's office isn't presenting an accurate picture, then the elected officials should be doing so.


There's a serious problem when people who brought the best of what they could offer to their jobs are laid off and that should be admitted up front. It's unlikely that given the current economic crisis that layoffs are unavoidable but the way that these ones are being handled is just patently dishonest. And treating it this way doesn't inspire confidence among the public that their city is being honest and even handling the difficult situation well if it's muddling the facts about the city's financial picture.

City Hall is trying to sell this portrait that it's not cutting positions, well except those that are inconsequential. That it's not eliminating its programs and providing all its services even as it passed a resolution yesterday that will force businesses to pay for police services if they receive too many calls for service. One person I spoke with today read about it in the newspaper for the first time and asked, if they are going to have to do that, then they'll just stop calling and someone will get killed because of it.


I've been asked why I don't participate in promoting the image of the city, the police department or whatever but that's not the public's job. The city's hired people to do that for it. But promoting the city's image is the city's job and really, the best way to do that is to create a reality that's worth promoting. But what the city's trying to sell is that the impact to the city by the economy has had minimal impact on labor (amid layoffs of contract and city employees and freezes in many city departments) and less than minimal impact on city services (yet saying that the city has to charge for police services due to the "strain" on public safety). Just because other cities may be laying off more people now than later or might just be more forthcoming about their layoffs than Riverside doesn't negate the impact of the current situation.

Each time the city parades out one layoff when in actuality it's laid off more employees than one, it renders these employees that aren't included on that list as not really being there, like they don't and never have existed at all, let alone put in months or years of hard work.

Maybe they believe keeping their employee force in the dark (when they're really not) by under reporting layoffs will promote morale but it doesn't usually work out that way. Painting rosy pictures that don't exist like Pangloss in his garden doesn't really serve much except to make politicians look and feel good, like they're doing something when the city is in trouble around them. And if you read some of the quotes in the newspapers lately, it was about elected officials praising their own actions as successfully leading Riverside through a much more benign recession than surrounding smaller cities and towns (which often are hit harder anyway) when they should be saying what type of leadership they're going to show and how they're going to help their employees who are laid off.

They should be more honest with the public whose money they're spending and who they were elected to represent. Tough times like these demand honesty, more than reassuring words that don't ring true.

But what the city's doing is putting out on information that is misleading and in the long run, could erode the trust that the city residents have that in difficult times, their city government is at least being honest with them with how rough it's getting and will get. If the city continuously paints a rosy picture of only one layoff this week when there are more of them or a few layoffs when there may be more of them, then how can it be relied upon for the truth about what the current crisis is and how it will be addressed? If the city government tells the public something when times are really tough, how will the public know that it's believable or just a case of being told the Emperor has clothing.


It's interesting how cities like Hemet say that it's laying off up to 20% of its police officers and other cities like Corona, Norco and Lake Elsinore are talking layoffs. Meanwhile, Riverside's leadership was claiming months ago that those stories would not be part of its reality. Layoffs would be minimal, the services would still be provided because of what was called the "healthy reserve". The reserve fund that's been invoked a lot in speeches but never seen.

Councilman Chris MacArthur invoked the word in a recent comment made to the Press Enterprise.


(excerpt)


"I think the reason we have a rainy-day fund is for times like this," he said.




There's a bit of discussion on whether there should be a betting pool (cookies, not monetary of course) whether or not there's actually a "reserve" fund and if so, how much it is. Whoever is the closest should get a jar of cookies.

And please don't say it's the sewer fund, the non-official credit card of the city.

To be continued because yes, unfortunately they'll be more layoffs and we'll only hear about a few of them but they're all people and people matter more than buildings.








A former Riverside Police Department officer who made racist remarks at the scene of where Tyisha Miller was shot to death by four police officers was convicted of felony assault in connection with an assault and battery at a baseball park in Orange County.

David Hackman had worked for the San Benito County Sheriff's Department but had medically retired from that agency not long after the county paid out in a civil rights lawsuit filed involving him. He had also worked for Hollister Police Department and the Los Angeles Police Department.


(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

After the playoff game between the Angels and the Boston Red Sox, Hackman, who was off duty from his job as a deputy for the San Benito County Sheriff's Department, pushed the man, who suffered skull and vertebrae injuries, Schroeder said.

Years before, Hackman was suspended from the Riverside Police Department for making inappropriate comments after Tyisha Miller was fatally shot in 1998. He eventually resigned from the force.

Attempts late Wednesday to reach Hackman's attorney, Ron Brower, were not successful. In a previous interview, Brower said the victim, Daniel Slama, was drunk and attacked Hackman because he wore a Red Sox cap. Slama fell after Hackman touched his shoulder, Brower had said.

The prosecution argued that the victim's brother tapped Hackman on the head with an inflatable toy noisemaker called a "thunder stick." Hackman believed Daniel Slama was responsible, Schroeder said. Hackman followed Slama up some stairs, grabbed him by the shirt with one hand and the throat with his other hand and threw him backward down the cement steps, Schroeder said.

While working in Riverside, Hackman had appeared at the 76 gas station on the corner of Central and Brockton after Miller was killed. While at the scene, he engaged in making racist comments there and later in a locker room at the police station.

At the scene, he allegedly made a comment, "NHI brother" in response to comments made by former Sgt. Gregory Preece who was fired over the shooting incident. "NHI" for those who don't know stands for "No Human Involved" and is a term often reserved for men or women of color who have killed by police officers.

Hackman also made the following comment while in the station's locker room. He caricatured to another officer the grieving of Miller's grandmother, Joan and called her tears, "the Watts Death Wails". His comments along with racist comments made by other officers were reported by former Officer Rene Rodriguez and he received a suspension before he ultimately resigned from the department in May 2000.





(press release)


The Riverside Coalition for Police Accountability has recognized Mr. Jim Ward with the William (Bill) Howe Award for Police Accountability.

This first-ever conferral of the annual Bill Howe Award took place at the ‘Celebrating Community Wards Breakfast’ organized by The Group. The award was created by the Riverside Coalition for Police Accountability to recognize a community member for promoting police accountability work and for their commitment to the principles and implementation of police oversight.

Mr. Ward is currently in his second term on commission and has served since 2002. In their remarks, Co-Chairs, Deborah Wong and Michael Dunn said, “The RCPA recognizes Jim Ward for his principled long-term work on the Community Police Review Commission. As a member of the CPRC, Mr. Ward has consistently offered a much-needed community perspective. He has sometimes—or perhaps we should say often—been a minority voice but has neither given up nor stepped back from the table.”

One of the nominators for the award noted Mr. Ward’s “consistent courage” in his work for the Commission. RCPA Co-Chair Deborah Wong noted that he “has fearlessly represented community concerns at times when it was lonely work.”

Mr. Ward has lived in Riverside for 47 years. He worked for the State of California Department of Corrections as a corrections officer for 23 years. During that time, Jim was promoted to several positions including correctional officer, counselor, lieutenant, and captain. His duties and responsibilities were diverse and included personnel training officer, program administration and review of personnel training programs, staff supervision and training, conflict mediation and resolution, and designing, implementing, and assessment of departmental policies and procedures. Since retiring in 1985, Mr. Ward has devoted his time to his family and church, community service, and personal property investment and management.

RCPA Co-Chair Michael Dunn said, “Mr. Ward models the principles of accountability and oversight that this award represents. We are honored to have this opportunity to recognize Mr. Jim Ward for his outstanding work on the Community Police Review Commission.”





The Group also awarded three community service awards to Mary Humboldt, Damon Castillo and Woodie Rucker-Hughes, three individuals who work hard in the city to make it a better place.

Humboldt couldn't attend the breakfast as she was busy rocking at a Planning Commission meeting at City Hall but told Secretary Katie Greene she was very humbled and honored to receive the award.

Castillo, who worked in the Alvord Unified School District and Rucker-Hughes who works in the Riverside Unified School District and is the president of the Riverside chapter of the NAACP were very thankful for their awards.

The breakfast was attended by many people including Councilmen Andrew Melendrez and Chris MacArthur, Riverside County Sheriff Stan Sniff, Riverside Fire Chief Tedd Laycock and Riverside Community College District Trustee Janet Greene.




Canyon Lake elects its first mayor and city council. Whoo Hoo!







The Coffee Court which got written up is a cool place. Great food and nice people. "The Works" breakfast sandwich featured in this article might harden some arteries but is very tasty. It's up there with the Kiwi Breakfast burger which has one all-beef patty, onions, hash browns, lettuce, fried eggs, slabs of bacon and some nice sugar beet slices. That and a raspberry cola plus some nice Kiwi company will get you through a morning down under. Quite a nice brekkie.

The Works sandwich is of course about 6,000 miles than the Kiwi version and doesn't come with Kiwi (bloke or sheila, take your choice) company. Fair Dinkum.

Election 2009: "Working collectively for change" in Ward Four

****UPDATE****

Riverside continues first round of employee layoffs. This week, the city of Riverside laid off more employees including those working in positions in the Police Department and the Mayor's Office. And some say, the layoffs have just begun.

Why is Riverside underscoring the number of layoffs while cities like Hemet and Corona are telling their residents the truth?

More information to come...






"I'm a single person. I can't do anything without citizens behind me working collectively to make a change."


----Paul Davis, Ward Four resident who plans to run for that seat during Election 2009







In Riverside, a new policy was put into place that businesses that have too many calls for police services will be charged for them.



(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Councilman Frank Schiavone, who recommended the ordinance, said businesses that won't invest in security to prevent such incidents should no longer be able to rely on free police help when they occur, especially at a time of declining government revenues.

"It just puts a tremendous strain on public resources," Schiavone said.

A business will have to pay the costs when three or more police officers and a supervisor respond to a single emergency, or to a second emergency within a 30-day period, or to a third emergency within a 90-day period.

The ordinance does not apply when the business owners or tenants are victims of a crime.

The measure is meant mainly to push businesses to take measures to prevent situations that require police assistance, city officials said.

Police Chief Russ Leach said the Police Department is trying to work with bars and nightclubs to make them understand the importance of having enough properly trained security guards or bouncers.

Certain types of entertainment at the venues, such as hip-hop music groups, tend to need extra security, Leach said.

The Police Department also is trying to discourage bartenders from serving alcohol to customers who have already had a lot to drink, he said.

"Free police help".

I guess that's one way of putting a job performed by employees who work for the city. But police assistance and services aren't exactly free and in this case, it's not clear where the reimbursement for services performed would even be spent. Perhaps to reimburse the costs of collecting the money from these businesses that are being charged? It's more likely to be spent on that than say, towards unfreezing an officer position or being able to promote a supervisor. It's much more likely to be spent on attorneys trying to collect the money, possibly to the point where this "collection" or ouster of the offensive establishment for failure to pay costs more than the original price for these police services. Then the city may have to contract out to a company to do "collections" because during these times of "declining governmental revenue" it's probably would be contracted out to save money.

Once who will engage in collections is ironed out, there's still the issue that the city is talking about going from "free police help" to what, "paid police help"? Talk about a potentially slippery slope. Especially when you consider the history of policing in this country and particularly the relationship between policing and governmental entities. "Paid police help" (which is the opposite of course of "free police help") takes on a whole new meaning then.

Besides if half the stories floating around about cutting over-time are true, there might already be detectives not being paid overtime to handle cases outside of the homicide division. Hopefully, of course this isn't the case but with this city even in times when its finances are flush, you can never really be all that sure. And this is a city where even those in management go to meetings and provide statistics but when asked if there are records available to show them, they respond, no there are not but there are documents for my own records.

If the city council wants to support public safety and the police department, perhaps rather than throwing around terms like "free police services", they can address some of these other issues rather than ignoring them. Like concerns about staffing levels raised by a consultant it hired to audit the department for two years which were blown off first by Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis through statements he made and then later apparently at least in public forums by the majority of the city council. Like concerns raised by a lot of people about taking longer for police officers to arrive.

Like the police officer who apologized to a security guard at one of the city's buildings just last week that the police couldn't respond to his call for help after a man threatened to beat him up with a chiar because it was probably a busy night with too many calls to repond to so some received no response. Getting "reimbursed" if that happens by establishments with a lot of calls for service isn't going to impact that issue. It's called a band-aid especially since more time and energy (and money) will be spent collecting all this money. And it also makes you wonder if their shift staffing levels are really what they used to be to talk about how "declining government revenues" are necessitating having to turn police officers into rent-a-cops.

Which is interesting because why is there this talk of charging out for police services due to "declining governmental revenue" when just several months ago DeSantis made a statement that the department was "fully staffed" to counter a consultant's audit finding and recommendations on addressing staffing issues. And not one single elected official challenged DeSantis' assertion that day or for all the public knows, since then.


I am on different emailing lists that provide the links for many of the articles posted on this site and more than a few have detailed serious problems stemming from the concept of "paid police help" vs "free police help" and not always with the police departments, but with the governmental agencies who fund and oversee them. Hopefully, some serious thought about that went into this decision making in this situation. I guess we all shall see how it turns out.

The intentions may be very benign and perhaps beneficial but in practice, what will actually happen? And how is it determined and based on what guidelines on whether the business is the problem or the "victim"? The line between the two may be blurred. Will it impact how often businesses may call the police for response to a problem, say a bar fight which is what many of the problems have been throughout time. Is the establishment owner viewed as the "victim" in these cases or a "perpetrator"? The city by approving this ordinance obviously has picked the latter.

This ordinance sounds like an attempt to deal with a frustrating situation but seems reminiscent of the days when the city tried to crack down on false burglar alarms by refusing to respond to alarms that went off from subscribers who hadn't paid city permit fees. One day, a woman was beaten, raped and tied up in her own garage and set off her alarm. The police were never dispatched because of a $25 alarm permit fee that wasn't paid.

Sometimes the best intentions need some real thinking before being implemented because what often happens is that they wind up getting repealed or undone by the same governmental bodies.




And then came news that the city's tax revenue base will be about $12 million less than anticipated. At least one more layoff in the fire department has been announced by City Hall to join the other six people who've been fired so far. It's likely more lie ahead with some departments like Park and Recreation more likely being vulnerable than others.



Elected officials did put a positive spin on the situation. They still collect their salaries after all, as do their $40,000/year legislative aides.



(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

While declining revenues are not good news, Councilman Frank Schiavone said he was glad the council has been conservative in its spending over the years and in preserving a healthy reserve.

"We've done extremely well, from a management level, when you look at what other jurisdictions are going through," he said, referring to cities with large numbers of layoffs.

Schiavone, Sundeen and Councilman Chris Mac Arthur, chairman of the council's Finance Committee, said the great unknown is whether the state will take money away from cities to help plug its own shortfall, estimated at more than $11 billion for this fiscal year and $28 billion by 2010.

Mac Arthur said the city needs to remain cautious about its spending but has the reserve to tap if needed.

"I think the reason we have a rainy-day fund is for times like this," he said.

Ward Four City Council candidate, Paul Davis speaks out on his upcoming political campaign next year against incumbent, Frank Schiavone.


(excerpt, RTOHQ.org)




"They're going to be my biggest campaigners," Davis said of his family. "We've always tried to educate the kids about the political process. It helps them in their growth and education. It's one thing to hear the word 'Congressman', it's another to see government in action."

And the Davis family is already hot on the campaign trail.

Tyler joined Dad yesterday in walking Ward 4 -- the city's largest -- shaking hands and making contact with constituents while Davis' wife, May, prints up campaign posters and flyers. May Davis handles all print advertisement for her company's two stores -- one in Riverside and the other in Moreno Valley -- and her work would put any high dollar ad firm to the test, Paul said.

All in all, he's in good hands.

And his grassroots message of responsive government is sinking in, he said.

"This campaign's not about one specific thing," Davis said. "It's about the need for fiscal responsibility and ethics in government. There's a lack of transparency and a lack of involvement. The incumbent is not involved on a day to day basis in what goes on in Ward 4 unless it has to do with a big campaign donor."




It's true that City Hall and many of its departments are not as transparent as they used to be. Attempts to get a copy of the preliminary operational line-item budget for the Community Police Review Commission for the current fiscal year from the city manager's office which is the holder of the purse strings for the city since the consolidation of that division with Finance. However, City Manager Brad Hudson and his stalwart assistant, Tom DeSantis were unable to respond to this request and their unofficial public information officer, City Attorney Gregory Priamos responded in their stead, presenting simply a link to the online annual budgets including this years. The official reason why he responded instead of the Hudson/DeSantis duo, was because all information requests now apparently go directly through the city's "legal department".

Alas, Priamos clearly hadn't read the document in question closely and didn't read it to make sure it actually contained the information requested under state law because there was no line item budget provided in it for the CPRC. In fact, there wasn't any such thing for any division in the city manager's office. Further requests for this information led to an indirect respond that the information had to be provided by Administrative Analyst (and one-time interim executive manager of the CPRC) Mario Lara. Lara apparently provided a date in which this information would be publicly available online at the city's Web site which was six weeks in the future.

Imagine a city with a city attorney who claims to be so well versed in the CPRA that it's actually viewed as acceptable to have to over a month for information about the city's preliminary budget. Fortunately, a copy of that line item budget existed in the CPRC office which had permission to hand it out and Executive Manager Kevin Rogan made it available before the rough date given by Lara.

And that's just trying to get information about how the city is spending people's tax dollars. It's so ridiculous that it had to take so much effort to receive information about how the city's spending its money that it gets from city residents through sales and property taxes. That information should be handed out freely, not substituted with some convoluted maze that if you happen to find the public information, it's through sheer luck.

Davis is also correct that city council meetings have been less accessible in terms of what the city residents can choose to discuss, since the formerly powerful BASS quartet led the vote to ban city residents from pulling items from the consent calendar in July 2005. His campaign appears to be grass-roots rather than big bucks donors but it's already picking up some steam in Ward Four even though several months remain before the official filing date.

The fourth ward is the city's largest and will remain so at least until the city's ward lines are redrawn after the national census in 2010. In it, are lots of people frustrated with how the city's handled such debacles as DHL-Gate which will be ending at the end of January with DHL Express moving its planes out of the area to offset huge budgetary deficits with its domestic operations.

You can't really blame them, of the parties involved including the March Joint Powers Commission, the GlobalPort Management and the company, they seemed to be trying to avoid getting sued by the Riverside City Council for breach of contract when if anyone was breaching a contract anywhere, it was Riverside, because remember, the MJAP and its Riverside governmental representatives who served on it knew that they were most likely bringing early morning flight noise to the neighborhoods of Orangecrest, Canyon Crest, Mission Grove, Alessandro Heights and others, because after all, freight companies are known to fly shipments out from their hubs at night and into the wee hours of the morning. The so-called "crazy" residents, party poopers and "gad flies" were right about DHL and they were right from day one.

Pity, it took several years (and an upcoming county seat election) for their voices to be truly heard.

It's hard not to be cynical but then again, so are many Ward Four residents. This will be an election where there will be plenty of comparative shopping among whoever decides to run for the privilege not the entitlement or right to represent this ward's residents. And it will be nice if a candidate wins who will truly put this ward at the top of the list of priorities and not second or lower. Hopefully, Davis' candidacy will at least encourage those dialogues to take place and rousing discussions and debates on the issues pertaining to the city's largest and most participatory ward.





As for Schiavone, he'll be appearing at the Friday Morning Club to give a talk on Dec. 5, 2008 at 10 a.m. He will be talking about his plans for Ward Four and the city.





Corona's city council has selected its mayor.




Here come the judges! Six retired judges will be hearing civil trials beginning in the middle of this month. Included on the roster that will be working for free, are some powerhouse judges.


(excerpt, Belo Blog)



The judges all have agreed to work for free, fitting cases to their availability, Riverside County Superior Court Presiding Judge Richard Fields said.

All of the retired judges have served on the bench in Riverside County Superior Court. They include judges Victor Miceli, Charles Field, E. Michael Kaiser, Dallas Holmes, Stephen Cunnison and retired 4th District Court of Appeal Justice James Ward.


However, one commenter did ask the question of the hour.



(excerpt)



"How long until Rod Pacheco demands these judges try criminal cases?"




Give him a couple of months.




One of the final results of Election 2008 came in from Perris where Joanne Evans beat out Christopher Sandoval for a seat on the city council by only 12 votes. Hopefully, Riverside's own election squeaker, Ward Seven City Councilman Steve Adams will call her and congratulate her given that he too narrowly won his reelection bid by just over a dozen votes.


Also selecting its mayor is Norco.

Ten years later: Different faces, same behavior at City Hall?

"He's the Godfather with connections and a type writer."


---- Dennis Holt, — Chairman and CEO Western International Media Corporation about the founder of Sitrick, a public relations firm.



"Martin Luther King was a great man. But naming this school for him would be a mistake. Everybody will think we have a Black school out there."


---Dale Dunn, to the New York Times, 1998





"This is my son, Kyle. He's only 8 months old, but I brought him here tonight because it's important for him to learn, even at this age, that racism is not dead."


---Victor Patton, at a Riverside Unified School Board meeting in January 1998









"They never saw her face,"

---Black Voice News editorial, 1999





An individual spoke about the planned extravaganza being published by the Press Enterprise commemorating the 10th anniversary of the fatal officer-involved shooting of Tyisha Miller which takes place on Dec. 28.

I'm not sure whether I'll read the coverage or not as I lived through it and like most people who did, don't need a mainstream publication to tell me what happened or what to think about it all. It was pretty apparent early on that the newspaper is being very selective in its depiction of what to commemorate which shows that how the newspaper examined that event probably hasn't changed much in the past 10 years except now it's owned by a huge corporation in Texas and is blood letting many of its long-time employees, including nearly all of the reporters who wrote most of the coverage on Tyisha Miller for that publication.

I noticed that most African-Americans who participated heavily in the movement that arose from Miller didn't even know an article was being written whereas most Whites and to a lesser extent, members of other racial groups I know who were active to varying degrees had actually been called for an interview by the reporters. Have any police officers been interviewed who lived through it as well besides those in management? Have any other city employees?

Hopefully the coverage proves to be much more broad and community-expansive than it appears. It's always nice to be pleasantly surprised.

At any rate, someone made a comment that the newspaper had tried to interview current members of the city council to gain their perspective on Tyisha Miller and the past 10 years. Apparently, the city council has decided not to be interviewed by the reporters. Their collective reason appears to be that this incident (of course it can only be viewed as one discrete incident) took place before their time and they have nothing to say about anything. Hopefully, the city government has had second thoughts and decided to participate after all, realizing that yes, they do have things to say and it's their role as governmental leaders to say them.

Given the leadership that's come off the dais in the past year (actually a bit longer than that), this nonresponse is not surprising even as it's very disappointing. In fact, it's what is to be expected. Why? Because it's symptomatic of a disconnect stemming from city government involving the police department that continues even after $22 million and a five-year consent decree were spent reforming it. It's a problem they should already know about given that former State Attorney General Bill Lockyer warned the city about it as his office initiated legal action against the city because of problems within its police department back in 2001.

It's not like they would ever turn down an opportunity to comment on Riverside Renaissance or the construction of a new office building or the development taking place downtown including the Fox Theater project. Is a life so much cheaper than buildings? While the $22 million spent reforming the police department might look like chump change next to the $2 billion and climbing Riverside Renaissance, it's still worth commenting on in terms of whether the investment in the police department's future was worthwhile or not and exactly what it means.

If it's indeed true they won't participate, then they really should all be embarrassed. They should remember three things, who they are, why they ran for office and that in fact, they are elected leaders and representatives entrusted with representing their constituents even in difficult situations. Hopefully, at least Mayor Ron Loveridge, the only elected official from that era still on the dais did have something to say about it but every person who was elected to office should have something to say about it because they make the decisions that will determine whether or not the Miller tragedy remains in the past or is revisited again in the future. They should have something to say about it because they don't just represent themselves or their own interests but the people of this city.

And not just the White people with money and powerful ties either who can get elected officials places. It's not a temporal disconnect that is stopping these elected officials from commenting. Perhaps some of them simply identify most closely to those demographics which the Tyisha Miller incident and its rather lengthy aftermath had the least impact on. But then if you've watched how many small businesses downtown were threatened with Eminent Domain to hand their properties off to private developers including many owned by Asian-American and Latino business owners (as several Black-owned businesses were already ousted in early land "purchases" except for Gram's Barbecue which nearly was but was relocated after much public protest) to fuel the Riverside Renaissance, that's not hard to understand.

For years, the city was more than happy to let them keep their businesses downtown when it didn't want to invest the time and money into a vision of downtown. Besides, their business taxes were needed to help fill the coffers of the Riverside Downtown Partnership to finance the (first, not the latest) rehaul of the Main Street pedestrian mall. These businesses gave tax dollars for years that never were spent on improvements on their own blocks, a factor used against them to justify the Eminent Domain on these "blighted" areas, a move supported publicly by the Partnership, whose leadership incidentally is largely White.

Once it did want to remake downtown, these businesses were faced with Eminent Domain and their land is handed off to development firms owned by Whites. Some of those projects haven't been started or are half-finished because to the shock of a few people, the housing market (especially the construction industry) bit the dust in late 2007. Mention the recession which became official just yesterday, right now and it's serious business but city residents who told the city government to be cautious in its development spending and warned of the collapse of the housing market and the economic downturn during the Riverside Renaissance bonanza held at the Riverside Municipal Auditorium and were treated like skunks who invaded a garden party.

Witness the fate of the historic business in the Wood Streets, Kawa Market which was written about by blogger, Inland Emperor. A Chinese-American owned business that attracted a large crowd of poorer African-Americans living in apartment complexes several blocks away who had to walk through a predominantly White, middle-class neighborhood to get to Kawa Market. Clearly, the market had to go. And go it did, literally being demolished to the ground so the city could transport houses there which it believed were more fitting in the neighborhood.


Witness the fate of Chinatown, the historical landmark site sold off to a developer who contributes to political campaigns of elected officials past and present, while those interested in preserving it and the artifacts tried to negotiate with the Riverside County Office of Education which owned the land and broke a promise that it had made.


(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

The group believes the board is ignoring its own 1990 minute order that states that in considering future uses of the site, the "cultural, historical and archaeological, values of the site will be preserved."

But then promises even treaties historically made to people of color have often been broken, or made in words only.



Then there's the history of protests after naming a local high school after Martin Luther King, jr. Not to mention schools being set on fire and burned during the 1960s after Riverside's school district tried to be the first in the nation to voluntarily desegregate its schools.

Being interviewed were leaders in the police department, monitor and consultant Joe Brann and even then State Attorney General (and current State Treasurer) Bill Lockyer. They all provide their perspectives on the situation which is important but if they can find time and words to comment on the situation, then why can't this city's elected officials? Lockyer, a state politician has enough time to comment on what happened in Riverside but this city's politicians do not?

But it's not like the city council hasn't gone down this road before, looking back at its history. This is exactly what they did beginning when dawn settled over Riverside on Dec. 28, 1998 only hours after four Riverside Police Department officers had surrounded Miller's disabled car and shot her at least 24 times, hitting her body 12 times. The city had changed forever but they didn't know it.


That day, the silence from the halls of power began and lasted for at least two months.


Loveridge and the city council with the exception of only Ameal Moore, who was only the second Black councilman in city history, remained silent on the issue even as residents from all different racial groups, economic status and ages took to the streets to march and surrounded City Hall. National civil rights leaders and elected representatives descended on Riverside and still the city government had very little to say about anything. Loveridge did ultimately create the Use of Force panel which proved to be a pivotal player in the future reform process of the department but as for the rest of them, silence.

Even when Jesse Jackson and other civil rights leaders led hundreds of marchers from the epicenter, the 76 gas station where Miller died, down the tree-lined Magnolia Street to the front of City Hall, there was silence from the seventh floor. Throngs of city employees including police officers watched from the balconies above the demonstration but no one from the city government spoke. Finally City Hall broke that silence in a manner of speaking but who or what did that speaking? Or more accurately, who was pulling the strings on the elected officials instructing them on what to say on a situation spiraling out of their control? It would take a public information request filed from a local newspaper to find out.

When that had been done, it came to light that the city had hired another entity to teach it how to speak to the city's residents. A private out-of-town corporation.

And who did the city council choose to speak for it? Sitrick and Company, a public relations firm that offers services to those including cities with elected politicians whose mouths freeze during a civic crisis. And if you want to find the city of Riverside listed as one of its clients, it's right here. The city paid over $300,000 to this public relations firm to speak for it, money that could have been better spent beginning the job of fixing the police department.


Here is a mention of Riverside as one of Sitrick's clients. The article's focus is on just how costly "crisis management" by Sitrick can be.



(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)



Sitrick’s clients have ranged from government officials in Riverside County after the police slaying of black motorist Tyisha Miller to Universal Studios, which was accused of glossing over negative aspects of Nobel laureate John Nash’s life in the film “A Beautiful Mind.”


When the Press Enterprise got wind of it and wrote about the public documents detailing the contract between the city and Sitrick, there was a lot of criticism unleashed. As there should have been.

An important part of being a civic leader elected in your district or citywide is that not only do you represent all of your residents, but that it's the difficult times that often define your leadership abilities and moral character. And unfortunately with the exception of Moore and on occasion Loveridge, that leadership was very much lacking for most of 1999, one of the most tumultuous periods in the city's history. The news about the city's relationship with Sitrick broadcast in front of the nation and the world. Lockyer and his staff of deputy attorney generals who would have a hold on the city for five years watched and weren't impressed with what unfolded. After all the city residents had elected the city council members and Loveridge to their positions in government, not the Sitrick firm.

The city government eventually recovered and even though several elected officials had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the state consent decree to fix the long-neglected police department, it eventually got on some sort of program and stuck with it. Some elected officials even proved in the long run to be effective leaders in terms of the evolution of both the city and its police department. Some of them put their own political futures at risk to make difficult decisions which brought this city the Community Police Review Commission.

And one thing that the city government provided then that doesn't exist now is a venue where people could come week after week and talk about the impact of the Miller shooting on their lives, communities and cities. Back then, city council members weren't snapping their fingers, yelling "point of order" or "out of order" and getting police officers to escort elderly women away from the dais, nor did they order the city attorney to mail letters scolding people for being too boisterous at city council meetings while carbon copying the letter to the police chief. They actually sat and listened to people even if they didn't agree or particularly like what they were saying. And not once did the city council ever order police officers to remove people from meetings. They didn't order police officers to kick out other police officers the day that they came by 300 strong to interrupt a city council meeting.

On some level, they understood that often the most important and the most difficult job an elected leader can ever do is sit back and listen to frustrated residents, sometimes for an hour or longer. They didn't think of the next insulting thing they could say about a particular speaker when they should have been listening. They didn't always believe that they had to editorialize after someone spoke about how wrong that person was. They didn't call speakers liars or roll their eyes, sign, ruffle papers or show any signs of being anything but interested in what they were hearing. They cared enough about their positions in government to believe that it was important for the constituents to know they were interested in what was being said. They respected themselves enough to care about how their constituents viewed them.

Some of them admitted years later just how difficult it had been to do that. But how they were very glad that they did, how it was one of the most important things they ever did while in government.

For all their faults in the beginning, they learned from their mistakes and moved forward. And doing that in a climate much different than today's did make a difference in how history unfolded in Riverside.

If the same chain of events happened today with this current city government, the city attorney's printing machine would probably conk out in sheer exhaustion from printing out letters to mail to hundreds of people's houses. Several city council members would run out of insults to assign to speakers or names to call people by mid-year. After watching some of the antics on the dais the past year or so, it's difficult to believe that this is a city council which could truly step to the plate in a crisis of that magnitude. The ones who held minority opinions would be too reluctant to express them because they equate not having enough votes to not having a voice at all. The ones with more dominant personalities would be looking at their watches and arguing with one speaker after another trying to ensure they wouldn't come back to future meetings.

It's easy to believe that the current city government would do what the first city council did and hire a public relations firm to speak for it. As for direct employees like City Manager Brad Hudson, Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis (who as a former public information officer stumbled over Riverside County's handling of the Gloria Ramirez situation) and even Priamos, they would be as lost in a situation like this as their predecessors, John Holmes and Stan Yamamoto appeared to be. And it's not clear that this current government would or even could learn from the mistakes it made and change its course, because it's not clear that it's even learned from its predecessors' mistakes.

And if the city's elected officials can't handle being interviewed over the Miller tragedy and its aftermath, then that doesn't exactly inspire confidence that they could handle a similar situation themselves. The sad thing, is that there isn't anyone on the dais who's incapable of rising to that occasion as everyone has talents to bring to the process. It would be a matter of choice just as the decision to disconnect from the police department's continued development is a choice as well.

Not that there are a shortage of issues that they should care about, any less than there was a shortage back then.


The past year, the police department for example has been impacted by having its staffing positions frozen. Although last year had seen a temporary freeze of some civilian positions, this year saw long-term freezes of positions in both the civilian and sworn divisions of the department. Also impacted were 4-5 sergeant positions and at least one lieutenant position (with several others being impacted through more temporary vacancies from leaves), which caused people to be concerned that the officer to supervisory ratios would be adversely impacted in a department with a very high percentage of officers with only 1-3 years experience. With the budget crisis worsening, this situation likely will worsen particularly in the next year.

It parallels the situation in the late 1990s when there were protests and layoffs and several decades where the police department saw little growth in terms of what was needed to staff its community policing programs. The management and the police union are in disagreement of what the exact numbers are in terms of officers on each work shift and officer/supervisor ratios and there's no written documentation that's been made available to the public from anyone so far. Information that was accessible to the public during the stipulated judgment is no longer accessible since the entire public information process has been handed off to the city's legal department.




Another problem that's been a serious one for quite some time is the extensive time it's taken to process and investigate citizen complaints by the police department. While it's absolutely critical that thorough and impartial investigations are done, if they can't adhere to statutory limits imposed by state laws, then they are of little use if there is determined to be misconduct. Governmental Code 3304 (d) sets the standards for the time limits imposed on administrative investigations and although it includes exceptions which could impact a number of complaints, others could be negatively impacted. If you're a complainant and an officer has received a sustained allegation, he or she can't be disciplined if it's outside the statute of limitations and no exception can be claimed under that governmental code.

The Internal Affairs Division processes complaints and farms the majority of them (including nearly all of the minor ones) to field supervisors. It handles administrative reviews of officer-involved deaths, shootings and other use of force incidents where a possibility of misconduct is raised as well as internally generated investigations. In recent years, complaints have averaged well over 100 or even 200 days between the time they are filed and are received by the CPRC. In July for example, there were five complaints disposed and the average for category one complaints was 290 days and for category two, 158 days according to this report.

Policy #4.12 which governs the handling of citizen complaints states that the guidelines for category one complaints is 60 days and for category two complaints, 30 days.


Not too long ago, the police department apparently assigned another lieutenant to work in the Internal Affairs Division to work on decreasing the backlog of investigations. The Riverside Police Officers' Association President Chris Lanzillo told the Group that litigation might be initiated against the city addressing the timeliness of investigations including citizen complaints.



The decentralization of the community services division during a time period of staffing challenges has people concerned about whether community policing will be enhanced or detrimentally impacted by this decentralization as it's been called. A planned forum in the Neighborhood Policing Center-East for November at the Orangecrest Community Center was canceled after fairly successful events in both the western and central NPCs.



These are some issues that need further examination and frankly, some interest from the city government which so far has been incredibly lacking at least in a public meeting. Especially since some of these problems were older ones or similar to those that existed in the 1990s preceding the Miller shooting.




On an interesting note, the Human Resources Board announced at its most recent meeting on Monday, Dec. 1, that it was interesting on hearing from the police department regarding its retention rates for female police officers. It's planning to invite a representative from the police department to provide them with a presentation as soon as possible. It's also announced its interesting in being notified by the city when grievances or lawsuits are filed by city employees so it can determine whether or not there's any pattern of behavior that they can examine to help prevent it from happening again. They also agreed to be notified if there's any exit interviews by separated employees that indicate problems.

One board member asked if they could compare the percentages and retention rates with those for women in other agencies. But another said, it wouldn't work with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department because his conversations with the Riverside Police Department indicated that more women were hired and remained with the Sheriff's Department because they were attracted to working in the jails and not out in patrol cars. That conversation sounds familiar. They probably spoke with the same representatives that I have.

Statistics for both the Riverside and San Bernardino County Sheriff's Departments do show a higher representation of women in corrections as opposed to sworn positions. However, they also showed a few years ago, a much higher representation of African-American men in corrections as opposed to sworn positions so perhaps more than just a preference associated with gender plays a role in these differential percentages.

Human Resources Director Rhonda Strout and her assistant, Administrative Analyst Jeremy Hammond who attended the meeting seemed a bit taken aback by the discussion but gamely agreed to look into getting some information.

The poor retention rates of female officers has been a concern for a while. The percentages had increased last year due to more aggressive recruitment and hiring of women but then they declined again, to below 9% of all sworn officers. Why? I think that it will take a much more depth investigation than an audit to figure out why but an audit is a beginning.





While every department in Riverside County including the Sheriff's Department is facing hiring freezes, Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco hired 23 new prosecutors.



(excerpt, Press Enterprise)



"They were positions that we had been in the process of hiring," said district attorney spokesman Ryan Hightower. He said Pacheco had promised the recruits jobs months before the county's hiring restrictions. "This was just a funny little loophole we got caught in."

The attorneys, sworn in Nov. 26, will help make residents safer, Pacheco said in a news release.

He also thanked county supervisors for granting him the new hires.

In fact, it was County Executive Officer Bill Luna who agreed to make the exception to the hiring cap.

That decision followed a Nov. 18 meeting in which Luna and supervisors advised Pacheco to clamp down on spending. After Pacheco made a lengthy argument for hiring the recruits and asked for an additional $700,000 to do so, supervisors referred the decision to Luna.

Supervisors also voted that public safety departments, including the district attorney's office, should not be exempt from planned budget cuts.

"There are other departments in similar situations," Luna said Nov. 18 of Pacheco's request to hire. "The key for the future to us is how to bring costs in line with our expectations. We have declining revenues. We have to spread the pain now."






An interesting note is that Pacheco's hiring decision was defended by Assistant County Executive Officer Jay Orr, who may or may not be the same person who once held a high-ranking position in the District Attorney's office under Pacheco's predecessor, Grover Trask.


In other news, a Riverside program that provides mentorship to parolees may have to close its doors.





The presiding judge in the federal corruption trial of Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona has severed the trials of Carona and his mistress.



(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)



U.S. District Judge Andrew J. Guilford ruled outside the presence of the jury that Debra Hoffman should be tried separately and at a later time. Guilford said that, among other things, he was concerned about potentially incriminating statements that Carona made about her during a series of secretly recorded conversations that have been played for jurors throughout the trial.

Last week, Hoffman argued that unless Carona took the stand, she would not be able to question him about statements he made during the conversations that were secretly recorded by Newport Beach millionaire Don Haidl, a former assistant sheriff and now a key government witness.

"At this point, I need to tell you that Ms. Hoffman will no longer be in this particular trial," Guilford told jurors when they returned from the lunch break, reminding them they should not draw any implications or inferences by her absence.

"She's not here. Don't hold that against either side," Guilford said. "You should not worry yourselves about why Ms. Hoffman is no longer here. You could perhaps find that out at the conclusion, after you've reached your verdict."

Hoffman, who left the courtroom shortly after Guilford reached his decision, returned about 15 minutes later and took a seat in the front row of the gallery.

Jose Nazario, not currently employed by the RPD

"That actually did happen, to be honest."


----U.S. Marine Ryan Weemer during a polygraph exam while applying to the Secret Service. He was asked the question, had he ever taken part in an unjustified killing.




Former Riverside Police Department officer Jose Luis Nazario hasn't been rehired by the police department that fired him last year after he was arrested at the Orange Street Station by agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Soon after, a federal grand jury indicted him on manslaughter charges in connection with the fatal shootings of Iraqi detainees in Fallujah several years ago before he joined the police department.

Nazario was acquitted during his trial in U.S. District Court in downtown Riverside and immediately after, walked to the same station where he'd been arrested to reapply for a position in the department. Because Nazario was on probation at the time of his separation and thus could be fired "without cause", he couldn't appeal his firing through the state's labor arbitration system. This was his only option to regain his employment and apparently he applied to be rehired.

So what's happened since? Here's the response from both Nazario's attorney and the police department.




(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

"Riverside Police Department has not come through" for Jose Luis Nazario Jr., attorney Kevin McDermott said.

Police Chief Russ Leach said he couldn't comment on a personnel matter and department spokesman Steven Frasher would only say Nazario is not on the force.

The police chief is very limited in what he can say on these issues in public which puts him at a quite a bit of a disadvantage. And Nazario's not the only officer Chief Russ Leach has fired that's petitioned in a matter of speaking to return on the force. In July, former Officer Vincent Thomas won his appeal at the last venue of recourse which was the State Court of Appeals which left the city with two options, either for him to be rehired by the department or paid off by a retirement. Thomas had been fired by Leach about six years ago after being arrested and charged with molesting a teenaged girl he had guardianship over.

After having a child porn possession charge dropped early on, Thomas went to trial twice in San Bernardino County Superior Court on child molestation charges and received hung juries. The District Attorney's office nixed a third trial and dropped the charges. Thomas hasn't been a law enforcement officer in six years and if he returns, coming back with him will be a lot of questions and suspicion about whether or not he committed the crimes he was charged with, given that he wasn't acquitted by a jury. Thomas' situation is even more murky than Nazario's but because he's got more years in the profession and with the department under his belt, his path back into law enforcement and potentially the Riverside Police Department is lined with fewer obstacles.

It makes some people ask, what does firing officers mean in the state of California these days? What powers of firing does a chief (who in some agencies like this one is given the power and responsibility of terminating employees) really have? How do police departments address situations where officers they have terminated after sustaining serious allegations against them come back to work with their records washed clean by an outside party? How does the arbitration process impact relationships between management and employees? How are police chiefs impacted when their decisions to fire are overturned by city governmental bodies including city councils? How will these issues impact the future evolution of law enforcement agencies?

It's hard to examine this and not wonder why people continue to be so mystified by the train wreck which is Maywood Police Department where prior management representatives boasted about hiring officers who were fired, failed to make probation and were even arrested and charged with criminal offenses while working at other law enforcement agencies. Even two interim police chiefs before State Deputy Attorney General Lou Verdugo stepped in and said enough is enough and threatened to sue Maywood if they didn't oust their second choice who was the chief who not only was convicted of a crime but fired from two jobs including his prior stint at the police department he would be leading. After all, where did Maywood begin? Did it begin with the decision to become a "second chance" agency, or before that? Will it end up in the same place that Riverside did with a state consent decree?

But Riverside's not Maywood. Riverside's a city which has taken back several fired officers who've been reinstated back into its fold in the past two years. Two officers returned last year after receiving their final reinstatement from the city council and possibly at least one this year, through the same process. Another officer who appealed a firing last year was not reinstated with the police department and remained fired.

A previous employee who had been fired, Det. Al Kennedy was reinstated by the arbitrator and Riverside County Superior Court. While his case awaited a ruling at the State Court of Appeals, the city issued Kennedy a retirement package. He had been fired by Leach in 2001 after allegedly having sex with a rape victim on a case he was investigating as a detective in the department's Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Unit.

Even with these cases, Riverside has nearly 400 police officers, most of whom are not going to be fired, who aren't going to be prosecuted and who aren't going to provide any reason to do either of these things.

But Nazario's case follows a different path from the start due to his probational status.

What complicates the issue even further in his case was the publication of this article in the Wall Street Journal which details the situation surrounding Nazario's upcoming trial in a civilian court on criminal charges stemming from alleged crimes of war.

At one point, one of his fellow U.S. Marine sergeants, Jermaine Nelson had called him just to talk or so Nazario believed, not knowing that the same sergeant who would later go to jail to avoid testifying against him was working with NCIS agents to get him to incriminate himself. During a phone conversation, Nazario made a series of comments including about his then current stint at the Riverside Police Department that were surreptitiously recorded by the NCIS.



(excerpt)

During his time in Riverside, Navy investigators arranged a surreptitiously taped phone call between Mr. Nelson and Mr. Nazario, during which Mr. Nazario described his work. Saying his job was much like the television show "Cops," he told Mr. Nelson that he regularly would "beat the s- out of" a criminal, finding "a reason to take him to jail" later, according to a transcript of the conversation.

In court filings, prosecutors say the conversation shows the two men discussing the killings in Fallujah. "Who gave us the orders though?" asks Mr. Nelson. Mr. Nazario replies: "I did." But Mr. Nazario then says the order to kill the men came via radio from someone higher up.

On Aug. 7, 2007, Mr. Nazario was finishing night patrol in Riverside, when ordered to return to headquarters. NCIS personnel were there and told him he was under arrest.

Asked in an interview about the statements that led to his arrest, Mr. Nazario says he didn't understand that Mr. Nelson was referring to a particular incident in Fallujah and that he wasn't acknowledging any crime. He defends his record at the Riverside Police Department, and says he may have been drinking during the call; he describes the conversation as "two guys" who were "talking tough" about "untrue stories."

A police spokesman said state law prevents him from commenting on Mr. Nazario's personnel record, but that he was aware of no criminal charges against Mr. Nazario during his time on the force.

The Wall Street Journal article and later a Press Enterprise article which also mentioned Nazario's comments in a slightly different context elicited some pretty concerned responses in the community early on. The comments which expressed concern about his remarks about being a police officer were laced by a resigned certainty that the department would surely hire him back not giving a whit about what was said between Nazario, Nelson and an invisible third party. But that didn't happen and it's likely that concern was paid to what Nazario said by those encharged with determining his future as a police officer in Riverside.


Even after he was acquitted at trial, his comments about the Riverside Police Department (which were never heard by the jury) returned into the forefront. If there's any reason why he's having a rocky journey back into his old position, it's probably his "bravado" or not description of what kind of police officer he was while working in Riverside and policing its communities. When asked to describe his experiences protecting and serving city residents, these were the words he chose to use when detailing his job to Nelson on the telephone.

What did he mean when he said he "beat the shit" out of people and then found a reason to take them to jail? How are those comments going to be read by others, from a community perspective? How are these comments going to be read from a risk management perspective? Because if Nazario came back to work and the city was sued in relation to allegations of excessive force, lethal force, lying in police reports, perjury or other forms of serious misconduct or potentially criminal conduct, how much will his comments he made to Nelson (and to the NCIS) impact that litigation? Enough to give City Attorney Gregory Priamos more than a little apprehension?

Would the department hold a press conference and discuss these comments if it hired him back? No, in fact most people would never know Nazario was even rehired and back in the field unless they saw him in uniform. While firings may or may not become public depending on the circumstances, forced rehirings of fired officers who have their histories expunged by judges (and they do the majority of the time, 85% in California according to figures several years back), stay very private.

But it still remains to be seen what will happen with Nazario whose lawyer told the Press Enterprise that he's applied to other law enforcement agencies including the Riverside County Sheriff's Department if the situation doesn't work out for him in Riverside.

Is it possible that Nazario's comments already came to haunt him? If his criminal charges had rudely interrupted his career in Riverside at one point, they had been replaced by something else. After all, if the department rehired an officer who "drinking" or not made comments about using excessive force and lying about it after the fact, what message would that send? What message would it send for a department that was released from a state consent decree only two years ago? When community members complain about abuses involving police officers using excessive force and/or lying on the job, what can the department really say about it to them if it reinstates someone who made similar comments? What kind of ground would it be standing on if it said it condemned these actions by its officers and took any allegations of that conduct seriously?

Those are questions that probably have been asked by quite a few people. Some who will admit it and many who will not. Some say that protests from the department on Nazario's behalf have been minimal if they've been present at all. In public, it's certainly been quiet, but police departments are often like icebergs. What you see is only the tip of what's actually going on behind the lines that police departments carefully draw around themselves and everyone else is on the outside of those lines. As an officer said once, we're experts in isolation.



An individual offers a different perspective at another Web site that if the department didn't hire Nazario back, the police and other organizations would rain down on City Hall. That hasn't happened at least not so far but the year's not over yet. The discussion takes place is rather interesting and offers some perspective of a different sort in the intricacies of traveling over uncharted ground given that Nazario's the first of his kind, a police officer prosecuted on war crimes charges while a civilian. The sheer logistics of the matter have left more than a few people scratching their heads on what's going to happen next. There's also this implication that officers are automatically loyal to fellow officers, an assumption which in some cases, proves to be premature.

This same individual whose style of prose seems vaguely familiar (and it's admittedly hard to quite forget a commenter who waxed about your "Jesse Jackson" style of dressing and your "tweakish features" on this very site and constantly wrote, I'll pray for you) mentioned that the city manager had changed his mind about rehiring Nazario saying that a new position couldn't be created for him and that earlier, Nazario had been nicely received by two higher-ranking officers at the Orange Street Station and told his hiring process would be expedited including his background check. If so, why the reversal of that process?



But then according to this individual, at some point the tide seemed to turn which elicited from him and possibly others, a visceral reaction. Was it frustration over the situation or from being told one thing then shown another? The world may never know.


(excerpt)


Hmmmm...Intelligence information is suggesting Riverside's City Manager is backsliding on a decision to re-hire. I hope it's not the case. If so,,,,there's going to be some heat comming down on this dump!!!



O-kay. That's one way to put it I guess.


Discussions about the Nazario case including the trial have taken place in different corners of the internet.



The Press Enterprise article also includes commentary, as there were a half dozen comments put up not long after the article was posted. Amazing that a crowd showed up at one time and they contributed to the discussion there in a manner of speaking.

Okay, maybe one of them's arguing that Nazario's better than the RPD because he wasn't hired by it?


(excerpts)



Let this man do his job, just like he did while serving THIS country! Riverside PD you ALL need to be ashamed of your actions!!! Mr. Nazario, in my opinion you should hold your head high & forget about RPD, you are TOO DAMN GOOD FOR THIS DEPARTMENT - they don't deserve you!! RPD you are a dept of SCUMBAGS!!!


That's indeed pretty strong language. With friends like this...




Nazario, if you read this, forget the RPD. They're about as small town podunky as they come. They canned you as soon as you got a little hot. That's extremely cowardly behavior.

Apply to places like Anaheim PD, Newport Beach PD, Huntington Beach PD. As much as it pains me to say it, stay away from my beloved LAPD or the LASO. Both departments are controlled by politically correct social worker sissies.

You'll get back into the police profession. You just need the right break. Thank you for your service in combat to protect this country's interests.

You got balls to the wall. I know people at Anaheim and Newport Beach. Post here that you need some help and I'll make sure I find you.



Chief William Bratton a "politically correct social worker sissy"? That's a first.




Forget RPD. Move on to bigger and better things. The reputation of this organization is not suited for a man of your skin color.

Best of luck in your future career!!!






At antipolygraph.org, the discussion focused attention on a different issue, which was the polygraph given to Nazario's fellow Marine sergeant, Ryan Weemer when he was undergoing testing on the device while applying to be an agent with the Secret Service. Weemer was asked what's the worst criminal conduct he'd ever committed or witnessed and for whatever reason, Weemer's account of the alleged killings in Iraq by Nazario spilled out. Later on, Weemer would join Nelson behind a wall of silence governed by a code every bit as strong in the military as it is in a police department and choose to go to jail rather than testify against another soldier.

But the polygraph comments also apply to that given to Nazario when he was undergoing the hiring process at the Riverside Police Department. He passed the test even when asked the same question which undid Weemer and was hired as a probational officer. The question remains and was asked at this site as it was at others when it comes to using this equipment for obtaining background information. There's reasons why it's not admissible in court in most circumstances.

Did the polygraph catch Nazario in a truth or a lie?



(excerpts)




I have not branded José Nazario as guilty. Had I served on his jury, based on the evidence admitted at trial, I might have agreed with the other jurors that his guilt had not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. That said, it appears to me that there is reason to doubt his actual innocence.)





As a matter of law, Nazario was innocent before he went to trial and his trial failed to overcome argument to the contrary. There is nothing left to assume. Why don't you write the jurors and tell THEM that their conclusions are unreasonable. I think it is implicative that his squadmates still refused to testify after being granted immunity for everything except perjury.

I'm sorry Dr. Maschke while you are certainly entitled to your opinion, whether supported by information or fantasy, as to whether or not he committed the crimes with which he was charged; branding him guilty solely to support your opinion regarding is polygraph is improper argument and you know it. The court's finding clearly supports the results of his polygraph. What do you have to support your claims about yours?




More discussion to come as this situation with Nazario continues to play out in Riverside.




The Riverside City Council is meeting again!


Remember the Kawa Market that was bulldozed to be replaced by "affordable housing"? The family who owned and operated the landmark market in the Wood Streets neighborhood were forced by the city to sell their market and a nearby home. The city council will be voting on this item where else but on the consent calendar. It authorizes the relocation of a home on University Avenue to the tract of land where the Kawa Market once stood. Over a year after the market was demolished.





Another Riverside Police Department officer will be having a workman's compensation complaint discussed in closed session. Officer Steve Lee joins at least three other officers who've had similar claims discussed by the city council this year.




An interesting article Inland Empire Weekly written by former Press Enterprise reporter, Roberto Hernandez about the the reductions in enrollment spaces.

This news is hardly surprising given the state budget crisis and when it comes to cutting it, education is always the first thing to go.







The mistress of former Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona wants a separate trial as the current one nears the halfway mark.



(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)



Last week, a solid month into testimony, Hoffman's attorney asked for a separate trial, arguing that her client could not get a fair shake in the ongoing criminal trial. If Carona decides not to take the stand, Hoffman's public defender argued, she will not be able to question him about damaging statements he may have made on secretly recorded tapes that were played for jurors. The tapes, which chronicle three rambling and profane conversations between the sheriff and an assistant, are key to the prosecution.

U.S. Dist. Judge Andrew J. Guilford has talked in open court about the possibility of splitting the trials but has yet to rule on the request, even though the trial has reached the halfway point.

Hoffman and her attorney, federal Public Defender Sylvia Torres-Guillen, sit in a corner of the courtroom. They are partially obstructed from the view of the judge, the jury box and witness stand by the long defense table in front of them, where Carona sits with two and sometimes three attorneys from the prestigious Jones Day law firm, which is representing him free of charge.