Schiavone takes on choo-choo trains and other tales

This blog is rated PG-13 here.




Riverside Councilman Frank Schiavone is off on his crusade against Union Pacific freight trains again and will unveil his plan to place an initiative on the ballot to fine trains for stopping and parking in the city's intersections jamming up traffic. This event will take place at the Governmental Affairs Committee meeting today at City Hall. Representatives from at least one train company will be in attendance.

Schiavone says in the article that his breaking point finally came when he was stuck for over 20 minutes in the Brockton parking lot. What was political for so long had become highly personal or otherwise, Schiavone had what was called a "click" moment. So he's off to do well, something.


(excerpt)


"It gives the people of Riverside ownership" in this issue, Schiavone said Friday.

"It's their way of telling the railroads 'We've had enough.'"

Union Pacific Railway spokesman James Barnes said a company official would attend Monday's meeting.

"We need to go and listen to what the city has to say" to understand officials' concerns, he said.

BNSF Railway spokeswoman Lena Kent said she was unaware of stopped trains being a problem on BNSF tracks in Riverside but said her company would prefer to work with city officials rather than see a measure go on the ballot.



It's a serious problem in this city when emergency vehicles trying to navigate their ways through Riverside's already congested streets have to contend with a never-ending traffic jam caused when freight trains stop to allow other trains to pass, change work crews or even stop for a lunch break.

During one stoppage at the always popular Magnolia and Merrill juncture, two ambulances passed each other at the Brockton intersection where a parked train was located scant inches away from the crossing. The ambulances were unable to drive down Magnolia which was blocked for 10 minutes that time.

The city officials say things have improved since an informal agreement was brokered with Union Pacific last year, but in actuality, the average times trains spent blocking intersections has increased and the impact on the response times of emergency vehicles has increased as well. This lead to the decision to impose more drastic measures, including the installation of cameras at key rail crossings to provide evidence to counter Union Pacific's claims that there's no train near Riverside when in actuality, it's there and it's blocking traffic.


Schiavone's "click" moment


(excerpt)


Just last month he was stuck for 22 minutes on Brockton Avenue at the Union Pacific crossing because of a stopped train.

But what galled him as much, if not more, than the wait, he said, was that railroad officials contacted by Assistant City Manager Michael Beck at the time denied they had a train stopped in Riverside.

"I said, 'That's it!' " Schiavone said. "That prompted me to make an effort to take it to the voters."



Hopefully, this is a sincere effort on Schiavone's part and not a ploy to catapult himself in the race for county supervisor next year. Some more light should be shed at the meeting this afternoon.





Are you glad about the renovations being made at City Hall? Respond here at the Press Enterprise's poll on the subject.




WPXI in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania brings the splendid news that three police officers in that city have been promoted into higher positions despite being charged with criminal conduct.

Read all about it here.




Two of the three officers promoted had histories of being charged with domestic violence crimes including assaults against wives and daughters. These charges don't seem to have hindered their trajectory up through the ranks one bit. Ironic, in a profession that is intended to address crime not reward those within its ranks who wind up on the wrong side of the law.

But domestic violence in particular is more prevalent in law enforcement than it is among the public at large according to at least one study.



Not surprisingly, the promotions have elicited concerns in at least some corners.


(excerpt)


City Council President Doug Shields said, “I am concerned about that, and I’d like to talk to the mayor."

Shields said he doesn't know the officers, and he said they may have distinguished themselves. But, he said, that may not matter.

Earlier this week, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl defended the promotion of Trosky.

“This decision was based on a 30-year analysis … not one or two bad things, and as a result I made the decision to support the chief,” said Ravenstahl.



One or two bad things? Denial isn't just a river in Egypt as that saying goes.




The problems continue in Pittsburgh as an article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette details allegations of abuse by police officers against immigrants.


Over 40 people crowded the city hall trying to get a meeting to discuss this issue. Some had been trying to get a meeting for six months.

Several individuals told their stories about their experiences with Pittsburgh Police Department officers.



(excerpt)


Alfonso Barquera, a 35-year-old Beechview resident of Mexican descent, said he was in a vehicle with two women and three children on Wednesday and was stopped by city police. He said the occupants were asked for "documents," cursed at, and held for an hour in the car -- the kind of encounter PIIN organizers said has become too frequent in recent months.

Police Chief Nate Harper said he did not believe people were being pulled over and asked for documents because of their ethnicity. If they were sworn at or treated discourteously, they should file a complaint with the city's Office of Municipal Investigations or the Citizen Police Review Board, he said.

He added that he wants immigrants rights groups to participate in police sensitivity training in the future.




Pittsburgh is well known as the first city to have been placed under consent decree by the Department of Justice through legislation passed by the U.S. Congress in the mid-1990s authorizing pattern and practice investigations of law enforcement agencies.

Two studies on Pittsburgh's consent decree and its aftermath can be found here at the Vera Institute Web site.

That decree was bifurcated five years after it began and was dissolved several years ago.





Four female detectives in Portsmouth are speaking out against the handling of an incident involving a lieutenant who groped the breast of one from their ranks according to this article in the Seacoastonline.


Lt. Rodney McQuate was suspended after the incident, which sparked outrage inside and outside the department which hasn't even begun to abate.


(excerpt)


We would like to express our dissatisfaction in not only McQuate’s behavior but also the manner in which the Portsmouth Police Department chose to handle the situation,” reads the memo. “This behavior was deliberate and absolutely unbecoming of an officer, let alone a lieutenant of the Portsmouth Police Department. This behavior and the disciplinary choice set forth would lead one to believe that respecting women in this department might not be a priority.”

Magnant said McQuate was first suspended with pay for an unspecified period “pending the outcome of the investigation.” The chief called the paid suspension “customary in serious internal investigation.”

An unpaid suspension followed, according to the chief, who said the Herald’s prior report that it was a 3-day unpaid suspension is incorrect, though he declined the opportunity to correct the record.

“I’m informed that I am not allowed to release information contained in personnel files,” he said.

Suggesting a union “fight” might have ensued “if a more aggressive stance was taken” with regard to McQuate’s behavior, the four female police employees wrote to the chief that they “hope that the administration and police commission would have readily stood up and chosen to take on the fight to ensure that women in law enforcement are treated respectfully.”

“This is not only important to women, but also to the men in law enforcement who wear the badge every day with honor and integrity.”



This incident reminds me of the story I heard once in the neighborhood some years back about several male Riverside Police Department officers who once pestered a woman to ask another woman who had breast implants if they could feel her up because they had never felt implants before. I heard this story and thought it was definitely one of the strangest complaints I had heard in a while. I hoped it wasn't true because it's really disappointing and stupid behavior by those officers if that is the case. Hopefully, since then, they've outgrown it because it's not clear where else accountability for that type of behavior would come from.

I don't know if the officers were joking or not, but regardless, it was about reducing a woman to the sum of her body parts. An example of the exercising of a similar mentality as that shown by the lieutenant in Portsmouth. If officers including those in supervisory or management positions like McQuate are engaging in this type of juvenile, sexist behavior, what kind of impression are they hoping to make on those who witness their antics?

Because the impression that they are sending is that they have little self-respect and even less respect for the agency they work for and their profession. The message they are sending to female officers or civilian employees that they may work with is that this behavior against women is what defines the department's culture and may be an integral part of peer bonding among male officers. At the top and bottom where it may be happening if that's an issue involving officers who participate in it and others who might be offended but keep quiet about it themselves. At top, if those who manage the department and supervise its officers are choosing to either ignore problematic behavior or punish those who report it instead of those who do it.

Do these officers including supervisors want the public to look at them as caricatures out of some juvenile comedy or as professional police officers? Do they want their female colleagues to see them as professionals or as predators on the job?

It's hard to know how the Riverside Police Department deals with the issue of sexual harassment or whether it has to deal with it. It's impossible for the public to have any idea of how this problem impacts this particular law enforcement agency unless an officer or group of officers files a grievance or a law suit in court. Then it's part of the public record.

And only one law suit has surfaced in recent years and that involved a female trainee who alleged that she had been sexually harassed at the academy by another cadet. Even so, the allegations made were troubling. In her complaint, she stated that she had complained about it to her supervisor who then punished her with a poor evaluation after refusing to provide her with a copy or an update on her own complaint.

Then she alleged that two officers in the Riverside Police Department had approached her and told her that the department had heard about her complaint and wasn't happy with it or her. Soon after, she graduated 21st in her class out of 70 cadets, passed her tests, graduated and then reported for her first day of work at her new job.

Instead of receiving an assignment, she received a pink slip from several department representatives. When she asked why, they said they didn't like her and didn't have to tell her. It's true that they didn't have to give a reason because at that point, she was a probational officer but when she was asked if she wanted to appeal her termination, she said she couldn't unless she knew why she was fired.


She later filed a law suit against the city and department. The city defended its position that since the cadet who allegedly harassed her and the supervisor who allegedly punished her for reporting it weren't employees of the city or department, her law suit had no merit.

However, the law suit focuses on the behavior that this female officer alleged that she faced from the city's own employees and to that, there was very little in the way of a response except to say that the law suit was untimely.

It was dismissed by both sides last month for that reason. An expert on the issue of women and policing told me that it's too bad, as this woman probably would have won because her story was a familiar one.

What's worrisome is that if this former female officer's allegations are the truth, then the department reacted to her exercise of the academy's sexual harassment process by showing her the door. The only reason for the department to do this if her allegations are indeed factual is because the department feared employing a female officer who had already acquired a track record of stating that she would in no way tolerate sexual harassment. Could it be that the police department feared that she might hold its operations to the same standard? It didn't appear that the department was going to wait very long to find out.

What else is troublesome is that the plaintiff had also claimed that other female cadets had reported sexual harassment by the same male cadet to her. Apparently, she stated in her complaint, that they were too scared to go forward for fear of retaliation. So they remain quiet about behavior they found repugnant and remain employed as law enforcement officers and this woman complains about it and probably will never work in this profession anywhere. What's truly unfair is that it's the academies and the departments that urge women to not tolerate sexual harassment because these agencies say they don't and to utilize the complaint processes available to address mistreatment. Yet, they don't tell these women that they will be throwing away their careers if they take this advice.

Did these things happen involving this woman? Are they taking place in the academy and the Riverside Police Department? If you are a female cadet and you file a complaint, will the agency whose role should be to protect your interests turn against you? Will it send its male employees out to warn you first, as may have been the case here?

These questions won't be answered this time around in a court of civil law but if there's truly a problem, they will emerge again through further incidents, one or several of which will see the inside of a courtroom and possibly a jury trial. That's what has happened in other jurisdictions.

After all, the retention rate for women both in the academy and the department is fairly poor and has been like that for quite some time.

But the words written by the four female officers from Portsmouth bear repeating.


(excerpt)


“This is not only important to women, but also to the men in law enforcement who wear the badge every day with honor and integrity.”



That applies to every law enforcement agency whether it's Portsmouth or Riverside.

Canary in the Mine: Protocol or politics?

Update: Invasor, the wonder from down under, has been retired due to a fractured seismoid bone in his hind ankle resulting from a breezing he did this morning in preparation for the Suburban Handicap. No surgery will be required.



Farewell, old boy.



Eighty million dollars sunk into the Riverside Plaza and it has yet to make a profit, according to the Press Enterprise.



(excerpt)


We're not making any money," said George Carroll, a principal with The Westminster Funds, which owns the Riverside Plaza. "We would be if it weren't for the Krikorian mess."

The almost decade-long journey to turn a blighted vacant mall into a higher-end shopping destination that surpassed industry expectations hit as many speed bumps as a shopper might while driving through the complex today.

The entire project from demolition to opening should have taken two to three years, Carroll said. It took six.

"We thought it was solvable," he said



The whole history of the mall's transformation from an indoor mall to an outside plaza is revisited, including problems with the lease of a major movie theater chain which never opened at the location and the profits lost because of Gottschalks Department store which may be sold.

Still there is hope, the interest holders claim.



(excerpt)


"There are some anomalies at Riverside Plaza that impact the profitability for the ownership. Had we not encountered the Montgomery Ward delay, had we not encountered the Krikorian lawsuit, chances are, it'd be very profitable today," he said. "There's no doubt in my mind that the plaza will be successful financially."

Carroll is seeking a reversal to the $22 million judgment against the company. He's fighting for a freeway sign to advertise the mall not visible from Highway 91, a sign that needs state legislative approval to exempt it from the state's Outdoor Advertising Act. And he's hoping to fill three vacancies without lowering his standards.

A 5,220-square-foot space at the mall's western end could be filled by a nationally known retailer of women's clothes, and a day spa is negotiating to fill a 4,753-square-foot space next to it, Carroll said.

"We could have filled these spaces up a long time ago but we're trying to be disciplined," he said. "We're trying to do something a little nicer here."







Community residents wonder if there's any such hope for the Community Police Review Commission in the same city. The seven-year-old panel has not thrived under its handling by the current city management.



The CPRC has yet to schedule its next special meeting to discuss the drafting of its public report on its investigation into the officer-involved shooting of Lee Deante Brown by a Riverside Police Department officer. Some believe it was that shooting that instigated the current crisis with the commission while others believe it was the commission's fateful decision to find against Officer Ryan Wilson in his shooting of Summer Marie Lane in 2005. That decision angered the police department, according to a deposition given in February by its chief, Russ Leach in relation to a law suit filed by Wilson against the CPRC and the city.

The Brown shooting first came back to the CPRC for discussion earlier this year and the creation of the report has been proceeding with fits and starts ever since. This process of drafting it comes in the middle of the ongoing drama stemming from actions taken by the city manager's office, city attorney's office and the police department involving the beleaguered panel. Not to mention even more drama which have been played out both behind the scenes at City Hall and also at more public meetings.

But few people are surprised that the Brown shooting has been anything but unusual.

First, the CPRC took a vote, 6-1, to issue a preliminary finding that Officer Terry Ellefson did not violate the department's use of force policy when he shot and killed Brown on April 3, 2006 at the Welcome Inn of America. Dissenting was Commissioner Jim Ward, who would ultimately decide to draft his own minority opinion as he had tried to do with the incustody death of Terry Rabb last year.

Just the threat of a minority report has nearly unraveled the earlier vote taken by the CPRC with commissioners saying that they might sign in at least in part with Ward's report. That's not completely surprising given the 180 degree turn that several other commissioners took on the case just several months ago.

And what of commissioners who said they might join in the minority report or at least fight for its release against City Hall if necessary? Well, City Hall is striking back with more information on that to be revealed in upcoming weeks as soon as several key summer vacations are completed.




Then the commissioners began discussing why all but one of them had reached that finding, and not long after that, is when things began to really get confusing, and also very interesting with much more to come.

Even before reaching this point, commissioners began dropping off the panel citing a variety of reasons for their resignations or refusals to be reappointed by the city council for a second term.


Few people believed their excuses, given the upheaval that was taking place around them.



In fact, the majority of these commissioners who departed reported feeling frustrated with actions taken by the city manager's office, city attorney's office and the police department to not only micromanage their operations but to change those operating procedures without receiving input from them.


As Les Davidson, who chaired the commission before his own resignation said later, he believed that during one private meeting at City Hall, he and Ward were not being asked what they wanted to do but were being told what was to be done.



Four out of five of the departures involved commissioners with no law enforcement background. Three were Latino. Candidate X who applied for the CPRC's executive manager position said that it was unusual for a civilian review board to have as many members with law enforcement backgrounds adding that 70% of the CPRC's current membership consisted of current or former law enforcement officers.

Those who departed were replaced by three commissioners with prior experience on other city boards and commissions which sent the message that you needed to be an insider at City Hall to get on it, given how few of the city's residents even have the opportunity to get interviewed for one commission let alone be asked to serve on two of them. Council members Dom Betro and Ed Adkison said that the CPRC needed to have commissioners with this prior experience to "hit the ground running" during its current situation. A situation that neither council member did anything about when it was happening, except give the direct employee of theirs who was responsible for it a very generous pay increase.


So the future of the Brown case, which in all likelihood has already been adjudicated, is up in the air. But attention has changed into an aspect of officer-involved death investigations which had been challenged earlier in the year but had received a swift response from community leaders.


Now the CPRC will be addressing the protocol of how it uses its investigators, particularly in the cases of officer-involved deaths which it is empowered to investigate by the city's charter.

CPRC commissioners who attended several private meetings at City Hall with representatives from the city manager's office, city attorney's office and police department said at later meetings that they were concerned about the protocol being changed so that the CPRC would be rendered ineffective at conducting its own investigations of officer-involved deaths.

The city had apparently planned to change the procedures so that the CPRC would not be able to initiate its own investigation and thus send out its own investigator until the department had completed its own investigation or at least three to six months after the incident.

What essentially stopped this effort in its tracks were community leaders who met with the city manager's office to protest this and other actions including the sudden resignation of former executive director, Pedro Payne. City Manager Brad Hudson's reaction was basically, so what, but the city manager's office dropped its plans to change the protocol at least for a little while.



But apparently, this item is back on the agenda again for further discussion. At past meetings, commissioners including current chair, Brian Pearcy were adamant that they wanted to dispatch the investigator as soon as the tape was put up by the department's own criminal investigators. However, attrition of the commissioners and their replacement by those with closer ties to City Hall may have changed the dynamics of the board so that they will go along with its program.

Recent appointments have included a woman who received over $200,000 in campaign contributions from the Riverside Sheriffs Association and the Riverside Police Officers Association when she ran for county board of supervisor in 2004.



Also, at a public safety committee meeting in January, Councilman Steve Adams made comments that anyone who interviewed witnesses of an officer-involved death would be arrested and prosecuted. His words were interpreted by those who attended the meeting as extending to the CPRC's own investigator if he tried to do the job he was dispatched to do. Adams' words attracted the interest of the ACLU, with local representatives saying that they would get involved in that situation with support from the Southern California Chapter. In fact, the representatives said that Adams could be sued just for making these statements at a meeting.



Adams who has been retired from the Riverside Police Department for over 15 years now, apparently thinks he's still a police officer despite the reputed football injury that ended his stint there when he also said at that meeting that the CPRC reviews shootings.



"We investigate them," Adams said about himself and the police department. Meaning not that he was planning to investigate the department but that he and his department would be in charge of investigating the officer-involved deaths. It wasn't clear by his comments who would be in charge and giving the orders.



Adams should go back and reacquaint himself with the city's charter. After all, he was an important catalyst along with others as to why the CPRC is currently under its protection. He might actually get reelected to a second term and would thus have to use the charter, the city's constitution as his compass for performing his job.









The defense in the trial of a former San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department deputy rested its case without calling him to testify, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Ivory J. Webb's attorney, Michael Schwartz, closed out his case by calling another expert witness to the stand.


(excerpt)


William Lewinski, a psychologist and law enforcement professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato, did not offer his opinions about Webb's thought process when he confronted Carrion and the Corvette's driver.

But Lewinski testified that a lone officer dividing attention between two subjects — who were not following orders or showing their hands at all times — would create a situation that is "very high stress for any officer."

Lewinski said he had studied similar situations in which officers did not have control and feared for their lives. "Their analytical process began to collapse," he testified. "They had so much to do that, literally, they were overloaded."

Lewinski cited an example of an officer who, facing a suspect with a knife, repeatedly shouted "Show me your hands!" even though both hands were visible.

The officer was trying to say "Drop the knife" but resorted to familiar commands from his training.

It became clear that Webb probably wasn't going to testify after his attorney pushed hard to get statements that he had made to other deputies into the public record, in a sense putting his version of events to the jury without having to worry about him being cross-examined by the prosecution. Still, if the state of mind is what is to determine whether Webb committed attempted manslaughter when he shot Webb or not, it's hard to determine it without the former deputy explaining what was going on inside his head himself.

Closing arguments for both sides might be given on Tuesday with the case being given to the jury for deliberation after both lawyers argue their cases.









In response to the shooting of Sean Bell by New York Police Department officers, the department's cadets are being sent to a new diversity training program according to this article in the New York Daily News.


The multi-day course which includes facing a panelist of some of the department's toughest critics has been initiated to improve the department's ability to interface with the communities it serves.



(excerpt)



Police-community relations are "not fully recovered from the Sean Bell shooting," said the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, referring to November's fatal police shooting of an unarmed Queens man on his wedding day.

Daughtry, a civil rights activist and self-declared super critic of the NYPD, said the dialogue was "a step in the right direction."

The recruits are the first class to get an additional four days of immersion training as part of the department's new Advancing Community Trust, or ACT, program.

Many officers "behave as if they're detached, as if they don't understand that they're living in the most diverse city in the world," said another panelist, the Rev. Calvin Butts of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.

He gave current NYPD-community relations a grade of C+.




More intrigue in Seattle, Washington over the struggle between the Office of Professional Accountability Review Board which oversees the police department's internal investigations and the police department itself, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The board had determined when reviewing an investigation involving two police officers that the police chief intervened inappropriately. That ruling led to a firestorm that has come close to overwhelming the board's chair, Peter Holmes.


(excerpt)


Lynne Iglitzin, an original member of the board, said Holmes' methodical, detail-oriented approach has been valuable. And his ethics, she added, are above reproach.

"Peter is incredibly hardworking and very dedicated," she said. "He's got a legal mind, so he thinks very carefully. He's deeply committed to the work of the board."

But sometimes the lawyer in him can get in the way.

Sam Pailca, the former executive director of the Office of Professional Accountability, said she had enormous regard for Holmes' work but, "Pete had a very lawyerly, analytical approach to problems, and sometimes the message could get lost in the footnotes."

When someone leaked a review board report critical of police Chief Gil Kerlikowske to The Seattle Times early this week, the message wasn't lost on anyone. Kerlikowske, the report said, interfered with an investigation into two officers accused of planting drugs on an arrestee.

And thus Holmes' relationship with the chief and the mayor officially became what it is now. Public. Nasty.

Holmes said the report isn't complete. And no, as the middle child of five competitive boys who grew up in a farm in rural Virginia, he isn't giving up.

"I believe in this work," he said, grabbing a binder.

BRAS and other cute acronyms

Boom, boom, rattle, rattle as the space shuttle, Atlantis passed over the Inland Empire just before 1 p.m. today, landing at Edwards Air Force Base after being diverted away from Florida by bad weather. Thankfully, after a difficult mission, it has landed safely.



What's left of the city council in Riverside after several incumbents took off on summer vacations after Election 2007 completed its preliminary round met in closed session to discuss whether or not to take further action on the city's SLAPP suit against Ken Stansbury and the Riversiders for Propery Rights group that tried to put an initiative challenging the use of eminent domain on the ballot.

Stansbury told the city council at a recent meeting that it has lost the war but is fighting the battle. He told them that legal think tanks had called the city's litigation against him one of the most egregious examples of a SLAPP law suit in recent history.

The California Court of Appeals' tentative ruling was a setback but not one that flustered Stansbury or his attorney for long. The ruling which stated that eminent domain was a state issue not a local one seems illogical on its face given that it is city councils and county board of supervisors, which both represent local interests, which use eminent domain to sell properties to private developers. That clearly makes it a local issue.

But you know what? Ballot initiatives like this "illegal" one have been successful elsewhere and that's what the city doesn't like about it. Plus, it's never made sense to "assist" an individual or group like the city has claimed it is doing by trying to force them to pay the city's own legal fees which are currently in the six-figure range.


(excerpt, Press Enterprise)



The tentative ruling will become final if neither party requests oral arguments -- the chance to argue their case in front of the 4th District Court of Appeal, Division 2, in Riverside. The hearing would likely take place within 90 days of any request, and the final ruling would come after that.


Reed said he will request oral arguments.

Stansbury and Reed vowed to take the issue to the state Supreme Court, if necessary, because they see it as a battle for constitutional rights.

"I'm in it for the long haul," Stansbury said.



And here's a shout out for local heroine, Marjorie Von Poule who has remained determined in her efforts to hold the city council accountable for its decision to restrict public participation at its weekly meetings.

In July 2005, Councilman Dom Betro raised the motion to create further restrictions including barring the city's residents from pulling items from the consent calendar. His motion was backed by Councilman Steve Adams and passed 6-1 with Art Gage casting the sole dissenting vote.

Most of the public who spoke at the city council meeting that evening opposed these restrictions. A couple members of the Downtown Area Neighborhood Alliance supported Betro's motion adding that they were tired of the ranting and raving done by the city's residents and that they should meet with their council members on issues they were concerned about. A councilman's office is one venue for these discussions but for the majority of city's residents, the city council meetings may be a more accessible means to address their elected leaders on civic issues which impact their lives.



Since that date, Marjorie has been up before the city council asking for that decision to be reversed and this right to be given back to the city's residents. The city council led by the newly created BASS quartet has held firm and 100% of the actions taken against city residents by city council members whether it's instructing the city attorney's office to mail out "warning" letters or to expel city residents from the chambers for speaking too loud or addressing individual city council members by name comes from this quartet.

Even Marjorie at the age of 89 was nearly escorted out by several very embarrassed police officers who were told by her that they would have to carry her out. Fortunately, due in large part to Deputy Chief Dave Dominguez, this didn't happen. Unfortunately, no good deed goes unpunished and a city employee who didn't deserve it was as some have said, treated very unfairly.

Marjorie missed the last meeting and that didn't go unnoticed. She feels discouraged some times like all of us do. But she's very determined to bring the consent calendar back to the people. For her determination, sense of humor at the dais and for being a fearless leader of the Friday Morning Group, Marjorie should be lauded and she's my nominee for the city's spirit award. Unfortunately, she treads on some toes to do what she feels is right so she might just have to settle for the alternate, independent city spirit award. So if you run into Marjorie around town, give her a hand and a few words of moral support. She deserves them.

Go Marjorie!

Some elected officials including those who read here have bristled at the whole acronym thing. Actually, some of them have been clever while others are more sedate. That could change in the upcoming months.

If by chance, Adams gets reelected and William "Rusty" Bailey wins the third ward seat, the new moniker might wind up being BRAS so things could really be a lot worse in the acronym category. Still, imagine all the ways that this new quartet could be protested.

Still, Adams still has to win more voters and Bailey has to win the next round before that potential crisis of a quartet of men being named after a female undergarment may emerge. On the bright side, BABS was submitted as another possible nickname and if you include Mayor Ron Loveridge in this party, there's always BLABS.

Oh dear, that doesn't sound too nice either.

But word is, that BASS believes that Loveridge is too soft on the gavel with the public to be supported the next time around. The problem is, that those who were potentially planning to use this year's elections as springboards to run for the mayoral seat next year have not only failed to win their seats so far but they're broke too. A lot of political ambitions are being postponed or shuffled around into other venues as a response to both the disappointing results of this election cycle. How this shapes the scene in Riverside including at City Hall remains to be seen in the weeks and months ahead.




The ACLU chapter in St. Louis, Missouri has an innovative program to address police conduct inside its city's limits, according to semissourian.com.


(excerpt)


The ACLU scheduled a news conference Wednesday to outline details of the new program, dubbed Project Vigilance.

"Project Vigilant levels the playing field," ACLU spokeswoman Brenda Jones said in a statement. "Police officers who know their misconduct will be reported and probably filmed might be less likely to abuse their authority."

ACLU spokesman Redditt Hudson said last year the program would train residents to videotape police activity while providing them with free cameras to do so. He said the program would also included classes to teach residents of their rights when approached by police.

St. Louis police spokesman Richard Wilkes declined to comment in detail on the ACLU program when asked how it might affect police relations with the community.

"We don't have any opinions or feelings about it one way or another," Wilkes said. "Hopefully it records positive interactions between the police and the community."


I wonder if they would launch a program like that in other places like Los Angeles. No wait, I think in a sense, they already have.





San Jose's city council has agreed that the Independent Police Auditor's office needs to be improved, according to the latest edition of the San Jose Mercury News.

In a room crowded by protesters and police officers, the city council voted against giving Auditor Barbara Attard more power, but called the current system problematic.

Both Attard and the police department chief, Rob Davis brought their stances to the body.


(excerpt)


One issue that remains pending is whether the IPA will get the
authority to review police investigations when people die or get
seriously injured when officers use batons or Tasers. The council
told the city attorney's office to look into any liability issues.
The IPA already can review police shootings when the suspect dies.

Before voting, some councilmembers scolded the police brass and the
IPA for making the conflict about police oversight so bitter.

Councilwoman Nancy Pyle called it "a shootout at the O.K. Corral."




Attard held her ground. She wanted to see more oversight over what she called problems in the department's investigations including the filing of too many of them as inquiries.



(excerpt)


"The issue is not one of bad policing," Attard told the council. "It
is about good government and good oversight."

But police and the City Manager's office told the council that
Attard was basing her case for change on flawed, misinterpreted and
slanted data.

"We do not sweep cases under the carpet that need to be
investigated, " Davis said.






The Seattle Post-Intelligencer had an update on the situation there involving allegations that the police chief had intervened in the investigation in an inappropriate manner.

Now, apparently the police guild has jumped into the fray involving the police chief and the Office of Professional Accountability Review and has accused that office of overstepping its bounds when it reviewed that case.



(excerpt)



"To me, this is all about good government. Gil (Kerlikowske) assumes
everything we do is politically motivated. ... I wanted it to be
about process. Long after Gil's gone, long after Mayor (Greg)
Nickels is gone and long after I'm gone, I hope there's a process in
place that will help us get some results." -- Peter Holmes, chairman
of the Office of Professional Accountability Review Board, shown
above at his home on Thursday.
"They're supposed to be doing random reviews of investigations, "
said Sgt. Rich O'Neill, guild president. "This report was clearly an
investigation and wasn't just a random sampling of cases as the
ordinance says."

The review board chairman, Peter Holmes, said his goal was not to
antagonize the Police Department. "To me this is all about good
government and about transparency, " he said.




Holmes regrets the controversy that he caused by what is otherwise known as performing his job duties and said that the situation has been hell for him.

Welcome to the world of civilian review, Holmes. Maybe you should drop by River City sometime during a slow period if you want to find out how a city can barely break a sweat on "managing" civilian oversight and still have enough energy left over to some say, "manage" a police department as well.

Canary in the Mine: The director or the directed?

The second round of interviews for the final candidates for the executive manager of the Community Police Review Commission are supposedly taking place this week or next. Nine candidates were interviewed last week by two panels, one that's community-based and the other that's from the city. It's not clear how many of them made it to the next round in the selection process expected to result in a final candidate by the end of July.

This individual will replace interim executive-something-or-another Mario Lara who has held a position for over six months that he has no experience, qualifications or training to hold. When DeSantis was asked what Lara's qualifications were to serve as the CPRC's director at a Public Safety Committee meeting, he snapped back that Lara had sat in several meetings between DeSantis and Internal Affairs Division personnel and that he had been working with him for a while. It's really not an optimal let alone professional situation to have a management employee in place who clearly has no idea why it is important to have an executive director, even an interim one, who is properly trained overseeing a civilian oversight mechanism. That's how it works for boards and commissions across the country if not currently in this city.

That's how it worked under former city manager, George Carvalho and former Interim City Manager Tom Evans not to mention former and interim assistant city managers, Larry Paulson, Jim Smith and Penny Culbreath-Graft. Not to mention that these former employees also provided accountability regarding their own decision making process on findings by releasing statistics to the CPRC on the outcomes of complaints that resulted in differential findings from the CPRC and the police department. This information covering a three-year duration was included in one annual report.

Contrast that with the current city management team which won't even admit to keeping such statistics let alone provide them to the commissioners or the public.

Unlike Payne, Lara has not been visible in the community as the interim director of the CPRC. You're more likely to see him sitting in on committee meetings addressing issues outside the purview of the CPRC than you are to see him representing the commission out in the community.

Even though the executive manager position includes community outreach as a job requirement, so did the job description that Payne worked under and we all know what happened with that last autumn. The actions which essentially banned Payne from doing outreach and the invisibility of Lara out in the community seem to strongly indicate that the new executive management will be tightly reined in, in terms of his ability to do outreach. History is what unfortunately provides testimony to this realization.

There's a name for what DeSantis had described but it's not called appointed an interim director who is qualified to perform the job responsibilities of directing the CPRC. After all, Lara's predecessor, Pedro Payne, received training to perform his job duties by retired police chief and former commissioner, Bill Howe before it was announced that he would be working in that position.

When asked whether or not the latest executive manager would be allowed to be any more independent than his predecessor, the answer appeared to be, a firm no both outside in the community and inside the city. After all, look at the city's history including the past several years that the CPRC has served under its current management.

Everyone watched last year what happened to Lara's predecessor, Pedro Payne and how his position was slowly micromanaged by the city manager's office after the commission issued its controversial finding on the Summer Marie Lane shooting in November 2005. The last controversial finding this commission will ever reach.

Payne's days were numbered after that finding was released.

An initial briefing submitted as part of Riverside Police Department Officer Ryan Wilson's law suit against the city and the CPRC details the reaction of the police department including its management to the Lane finding. Soon after the Lane finding was released and essentially ignored by the city manager's office, the police department, city attorney's office and city manager's office began pushing for the implementation of changes to the commission particularly its investigation of officer-involved deaths, which was blamed by the police chief in a deposition as the cause of problems between the department and the commission.



(excerpt, Chief Russ Leach deposition, Ryan Wilson v the City of Riverside)


"It was not until they got involved in conducting their own investigations of these officer-involved shooting deaths when the communication process broke down."



Payne's resignation in December 2006 eventually led to a search for a new executive manager. Nine applicants were interviewed last week. One, Candidate X, called asking questions about what had happened to the CPRC as part of background research. I guess it's hard not to notice the exodus of commissioners during the past six months.

One of the questions, was who would really be running the show? The executive manager or the city manager's office? It's a question that probably every applicant for the position was at least thinking about.


So one wonders what will happen instead when the dust settles and an executive manager is finally hired. Will the city hire someone that it feels it can keep under its already very crowded thumb or will it mistakenly hire someone who is independent-minded and clash with that person, as much as an "at will" employee can clash back, for the foreseeable future?

What do you think?

It also appears that Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis isn't the only one smarting over the questions coming to his door regarding the current state of the CPRC on his watch. Far from thriving as it would under competent, visionary management from upstairs, it is now a shadow of its former self with commissioners resigning with regularity and very little work product in the way of community outreach and status reports including the annual one to show for it.

Not to mention three fatal shootings by officers that are waiting to be investigated and reviewed including the Lee Deante Brown shooting that's going on its second year. A shooting that perhaps has already been adjudicated, given how much the official time line of it under G.C. 3304(d) has fluctuated in the past year depending on who is talking about it.

It's clear that DeSantis isn't happy with those who ask him the wrong questions, but he's far from the only one.


Two floors down, apparently City Attorney Gregory Priamos is still a bit miffed over last week's CPRC special meeting when his latest legal interpretation of the term, minority reports was met with criticism from several commissioners. There's been a lot of activity buzzing around on the Seventh Floor over that meeting in terms of what will happen next to the beleaguered commission. On how to handle it, what to do next and muzzles may be handed down by end of this latest episode to more than one commissioner.

And then there's the minority report.


Never has there been such a battle over the control of a document filed by a member or members of the CPRC as there has been over Jim Ward's latest minority report. It hasn't been read or seen by any other commissioners yet and its impact has already threatened to undo the 6-1 vote to find the Brown shooting within departmental policy. The vote that was taken as a sort of "straw poll" by the panel before any real discussion took place. It became clear after the vote was taken that more than one commissioner was confused by what they had just voted on. Most of the audience was as well.

Whatever lies in its pages or just the thought of what may be there, has clearly unnerved several commissioners to the point where several were considering jumping on board at least in part.

But the issue of minority reports has been a thorny one.

At a workshop in March 2004, Chief Russ Leach advocated for the production of minority reports by commissioners regarding findings on citizen complaints. Since Leach's opinion on the CPRC appears to depend on who he's talking to, it's hard to gauge how he really feels about a report that in all likelihood would challenge not just the commission's own finding but that of his own department.

We all know how that works from the Lane case, albeit from a far more worrisome majority perspective. Thanks to Wilson and his attorney, Michael Lackie who deposed Leach last February as part of Wilson's law suit.

So what's the history with minority reports?

If you remember, Ward had tried to draft a minority report on the incustody death of Terry Rabb, but was told by the city that he could not release it with the CPRC's public report unless the other commissioners by vote agreed to allow him to do so. They voted against him doing so, because they said, they disagreed with its content.

This ruling by the city's attorney that led to this vote made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Fortunately, however there's been several different opinions provided since.

On the Rabb case, Ward's report was not distributed publicly. What was interesting is that its content although for the most part, unseen did influence the content on the commission's final report.

But Ward's latest report is causing quite a few ripples on both the commission and the city.


It's already caused quite a disturbance on the Seventh Floor of City Hall, which plays into the old barter system that still rules politics on the top floor. Just how much so may be clear quite soon.






Under intense cross-examination, Inglewood Police Department Sgt. Kenton Ferrin stuck to his contention that former San Bernardino County Department deputy, Ivory J. Webb exercised restraint when he shot Elio Carrion in January 2006, according to the Press Enterprise.


(excerpt)



"He was trying to get compliance," Ferrin said. "This (profanity) was used, in this case, as a certain degree of force."

Ferrin disagreed that Carrion's noncompliance with Webb's orders was the result of mere drunkenness.

"I believe he was intoxicated ... but not to the point that he can't comprehend or understand," Ferrin said. "I believe he was (intentionally) defiant and uncooperative."

Webb was dangerously close as he held Carrion at gunpoint, Ferrin said, but the expert argued that Webb had to stay "in harm's way" so that he could also keep an eye on the driver, who was still in the Corvette.

"Backing up does present a problem," Ferrin said of the alternative. "Deputy Webb has no idea what is behind him" and could have tripped and fallen, which also would have made him vulnerable to attack.

Asked by Webb's defense lawyer if he would say that Webb found himself in harm's way because of bad tactics, Ferrin said no.

"I'd call that valor."




The Press Enterprise's Editorial Board praises the state's highest judge's decision to send 12 judges to spend the summer handling the backlog in criminal cases impacting the Riverside County Superior Court.


(excerpt)


Resolving the differences between judges and prosecutors would also improve local court dynamics. Judges blame the district attorney's opposition to plea bargains for crowding the court with criminal trials, while the DA says the judges could do a better job of managing the workload. But both sides have a big stake in a functional court system and should work together to find solutions.

Still, the long-term answer is more judges for the county and the state. The California Judicial Council, which oversees state courts, wants to create 150 new judgeships. Legislators added 50 new judges statewide in the current fiscal year, and the Legislature should approve 100 more over the next two years. And that total is less than half the number the state needs, the Judicial Council says.

Without new judges, the court system will grow increasingly overburdened, and not just in Riverside County. The strike team can ease the immediate crisis, but only the Legislature can truly remedy the judicial shortage.








The New Haven Register published an article on the ongoing situation involving its police department and the ongoing federal probe being conducted involving alleged corruption within its ranks. This investigation stemmed from the arrests of two police employees, Lt. William White and Det. Justen Kasperzyk who were nabbed in a sting conducted by the FBI.

Community members appeared at a public form to describe their experiences with these two officers and others in the department.



(excerpt)


For Danielle Legrand, knowing that the FBI is investigating police corruption charges simply is not enough.


Back in January, Legrand said she was "in the wrong place at the wrong time" when narcotics officers raided a house on Sherman Avenue. "They kept asking me for my ID," she said.


Legrand said her identification was in her wallet in another room, and after all was said and done and the police were gone, so was $200 in cash.

"I just cashed that check," she said at a public hearing Monday on police corruption at James Hillhouse High School on Sherman Parkway. The hearing was held by the Board of Aldermen's Public Safety Committee. Another hearing will take place at 6 p.m. July 5 at Fair Haven K-8 School, 164 Grand Ave.




More information on the two planned hearings on police complaints in New Have, Connecticut can be found here.



In Seattle, criticism has been aimed at the police chief there for being too lenient on his officers, according to this article in the Seattle Times.


Strife within the Seattle Police Department between management personnel and rank and file officers has apparently led to Chief Gil Kerlikowske softening his tough attitude regarding them.

Not long ago, the citizen review board began to start paying attention to it, particularly after allegations were raised that Kerlikowske intervened too much in the investigation of two officers who allegedly used excessive force on a drug dealer and then lied about it. A video tape of the incident contradicted the officers' version of events.


(excerpt)


A Seattle Times statistical review in 2005 found that since January 2002, Kerlikowske had reversed 27 out of 100 findings by investigators of misconduct by officers. In some of those cases, officers accused of multiple violations were disciplined for at least one offense. But in others, no discipline was imposed.

The reversals caught the attention of the citizen-review board -- the panel that last week concluded in a report that Kerlikowske intervened in the internal investigation into the actions of a pair of officers involved in a controversial drug arrest in January.



Here's a question to ask in situations like this one. Who can fire a police chief and who has fired more police chiefs through "no confidence" votes?

Community members or the police unions? That's not a difficult question to answer. Just look around you and behind you.



The San Jose Mercury News' Editorial Board admonished the city council to resolve its issues with the independent police auditor's office. It stated that current auditor, Barbara Attard was asking for too much in her request for more powers, although it agreed with giving her some of what she asked for and urged greater cooperation from both the police chief and the city council.


(excerpt)


There's no cause to change San Jose's model. The number of complaints against the police - 444 in 2006 or 4.4 per 10,000 people - remains low. There has been no widespread pattern of officer misconduct. The auditor currently gets to review all complaints and to appeal disagreements to the chief and the city manager. Last year, the auditor appealed only 18 formal findings and got the dispositions changed in seven.

However, there have been troubling trends. Rising numbers and larger percentages of complaints have been dismissed as proper procedures. More than half of the 444 complaints filed last year, including some alleging excessive force, were classified as mere "inquiries" where citizens agreed not to proceed with a formal complaint and to forgo a formal investigation.

Davis says that the rise in inquiries may reflect better outreach. Attard says it may show that the department is not taking complaints seriously or is discouraging people from filing them.

It's hard to know which is the case; people are reluctant to file complaints for many reasons. But Attard is right in urging a more objective process with written materials, so that people with complaints know their options, including mediation.

Attard has requested too much power. But with his campaign to dismiss her report, Davis is undermining his argument that the police have nothing to hide.


Another article in the same newspaper offered up a list of suggestions from the mayor's office on how to address civilian oversight in San Jose.


Even though it involves a totally different civilian review mechanism than that in Riverside, it's hard not to see some parallels between what's happening in San Jose here.



Another San Jose Mercury News article depicts the first civil law suit filed in the wake of an audit done by Californians Aware which tested accessibility to public information in different law enforcement agencies. Many agencies in the state received poor or failing grades by the audit including those in the Inland Empire.

The law suit won an important ruling by the presiding judge.


(excerpt)


Public information watchdog groups called the lawsuit unusual when it was filed in February. Normally cases charging government agencies with violating public records law are brought by people denied the records. The judge in this suit ruled Friday that such a move wouldn't be necessary, but that the Naymarks would have to prove that they pay taxes in cities other than where they live for the case to move forward.

"This was a great victory," McManis said. "Now the case can move forward on its merits."

The documents the suit alleges that law enforcement agencies routinely deny the public access to could help people learn about crime in their neighborhood or the ways that the department spends public money.

McManis said that he plans to bring a number of people who've had trouble accessing documents to the witness stand.

City Hall: Theirs or yours?

"The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday - but never jam today."


---Lewis Carroll




Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis apparently isn't too happy with me, telling me after the city council meeting that he was no longer going to provide me with any more information, because he had been courteous to me and I had not returned it in kind. It was amazingly similar to a speech given by City Attorney Gregory Priamos to Community Police Review Commission member, Steve Simpson last week when Simpson asked him what he was smoking when Priamos provided yet another legal opinion of the definition and use of a minority report.

What may happen with Simpson for all his outspokenness may become more clear in upcoming weeks as it's a developing story, but it makes one wonder if some of the city's staff have been to the same seminar.


I had to laugh at this, because I've heard stories from concerned community members that the city manager's office and at least one other city department had been saying negative things about me in meetings held at City Hall in recent months. It's a bit startling to hear from other people that city employees are calling you an "instigator" or "troublemaker" after these words travel the windy path back to you. So if that's the kind of courtesy that the city manager's office is referring to, I could do with a little less of that!

I've been called worse by people better at it so the alleged comments just rolled off, but I certainly did hear about it, beginning in early January. Hopefully, the silent treatment by the city manager's office will extend to those types of comments if indeed they were being made and aren't merely rumor.

The fact is, that the current city manager's office has controlled the operation of the Community Police Review Commission for at least one year now. It's much worse off in terms of just about any parameter you can use to measure its performance or where it's at, than it was before it fell into its current hands. Five commissioners have departed, as did an executive director who was probably one individual at City Hall among others, who was honest, outspoken and brought intelligence, hard work and commitment into an environment where these qualities are deemed as negatives by individuals who clearly do not have the faintest clue what these qualities mean as their handling of the CPRC and the community's feelings about it have shown.

Executive Director Pedro Payne tried to build bridges with both the community and the police department including the Riverside Police Officers' Association. He met with some of the latter's board members and it took some guts on both sides for a meeting like that to take place. He also met with officers newly hired by the city to answer their questions. A program that along with roll call visits was suspended not long before or at his resignation. Despite this, the city manager's office banned his outreach to communities by claiming that he was showing bias to them. Outreach dwindled to almost nothing, a trend that's continued to the current day. As a result, the communities of this city have lost their collective memory of the CPRC and its members and have stopped filing complaints in several neighborhoods.

Does this sound like a CPRC which is properly managed? Was this how Hudson and DeSantis' predecessors managed it?

Actually, no.

Former City Manager George Carvalho and even interim, Tom Evans did not run this commission into the proverbial ground in less than one calendar year. They did not have commissioners dropping off like flies in their watch nor did the commission fail to provide the markers that it does to inform the community of its operations during their tenures.

Of course, Carvalho was considered to be one of the top city managers in the state of California. Riverside had him manage the city for several years and the city council's GASS quartet fought him every step of the way. Hudson is considered to be a very fine well, economic director in the county he left by some people and DeSantis worked for Riverside County as a public information officer before doing a stint in San Bernardino County as well. But he's never had experience addressing a responsibility like this one and so far? He hasn't done anything to inspire confidence in the community that he actually knows what he's doing.

After all, people see a CPRC that is not really functioning at all and they know where the buck stops.

The irony is that Payne probably cared more about the well-being of this city's police officers than the entire city manager's office. He definitely cared more about the city's communities as well. After all, his first response when he discovered he would be going to community meetings, wasn't to go out and get a concealed weapons permit. And if you're that afraid of the communities who may rely on a civilian complaint process the most, then you certainly have little to no respect for that process or those community members. Carvalho moved around much more freely and with assured confidence in the community than either Hudson or DeSantis has done.

But as for caring about the city's employees, it's not clear that the city manager's office truly does if its track record with the labor negotiations which led to three law suits, a strike vote and several packed city council sessions is any indication. The people who construct our streets, install electric transformers, pick up the city's refuse and work in a variety of other departments did not feel particularly valued for their efforts and the city's workforce has never been more demoralized than it is now. As the SEIU's city chapter present Gregory Hagans said recently in an Inland Empire Weekly article, city employees are being disciplined and even terminated by someone they had never even met.

What's also truly unfortunate about this whole set of circumstances involving the CPRC is that the same people who have insured that it's worse off today than it was a year ago, are telling everyone including their employers that it's never been in better shape. There's only so many times you can be told that the emperor has clothes on and still buy into that and it's getting harder and harder for people in the community to do that. Sitting through the public safety meeting in January with DeSantis giving a power point presentation on this "progress", one he would later sell to the CPRC was very interesting, not just in terms of the information provided but the fact that DeSantis and Hudson apparently were allowing the public to attend a meeting about it, given the meetings that they and other department heads had in private during 2006, leading up to what was likely Payne's final meeting in December 2006. Which may or may have not been the same one when now-departed CPRC Chair Les Davidson said later on, they aren't asking us, they are telling us what they are going to do.

Here are some things that the CPRC hasn't done or been able to do on the watch of Hudson and DeSantis.

There's been no annual report in over a year, the committees have barely met and the commissioners have fallen behind on training including Brown Act training for newer commissioners, the city manager's office with the police department in tow have gone to committee meetings and talked about its "progress". Last week's public outreach meeting clearly showed that the commissioners are very leery of doing outreach in the community lest they be seen or it be construed as them soliciting complaints. This was the same accusation launched against Payne last autumn by again, the city manager's office, one that first surfaced at a CPRC committee meeting last autumn.

Most of the outreach it seems, will be aimed at telling community members not what the CPRC can do but what it can't do. This too is a legacy of the current regime in the city manager's office. The CPRC in Riverside used to have an ambition to host the national NACOLE conference by the year, 2008. Now with one year to go, it barely exists at all.


What a difference the city management makes.

At the same time, there's no facility for the CPRC, save one cordoned off cubicle and as has been stated, it's hemorrhaging commissioners who are just fed up. Something that's not gone unnoticed by at least one individual who applied for the executive manager position, who wanted to know what was going on and who was pulling the strings. After all, if a group of people just quits a process, then there's serious problems with that process. After looking back at the CPRC in the past year, that argument is difficult to challenge or disagree with in terms of its merit.

What do you say to someone who asks if the city manager's office micromanages the CPRC's staff? What do you say to someone who asks the same question about the police department? What's interesting is that given that the CPRC and the police department are diametrically at odds with one another, they still share one common denominator and that is that those who lead them don't appear to be entrusted with, well leading them. That's the message that the city manager's office, both Brad Hudson and DeSantis, have been sending to the community this past year.

In late March, the community and the two police unions did a rare thing. They responded together when it was apparently the police department's turn to be micromanaged and the city manager's office blinked.


It's interesting if the city manager's office believes that I'm losing out because it no longer share information about the CPRC's operation or its staffing, information that by the way every resident of this city that pays the sales taxes that go into the pockets each year of both Hudson and DeSantis is entitled to know. This information is not simply allowed to be tucked away and bartered out to people who fall into their favor at any given time. It belongs to everyone, not a select few.


My question? I had asked DeSantis whether or not the Community Police Review Commission executive manager would have an office space to work out of when he was hired. Actually, if as expected, this newest member of the city manager's staff is hired by the end of July and the CPRC will not have its latest permanent space ready by this autumn at the earliest, then the answer is probably no.

Maybe there's some room available on the sun deck.

But as far as DeSantis stomping off after avering not ever providing any information to me again. I can live with that given how much of what he did and has provided had to be taken with a grain of salt. After a while, you run into someone who's asked someone in the city manager's office the same question you have and you compare the different responses, before going out and taking a survey to figure out which response to the same question has been heard by the most people. That's how you find out what's going on at City Hall.


Like for example, does the city manager's office believe the CPRC should have its own independent attorney. The current responses are yes, absolutely, and no, because the planning commission doesn't have one. Ask this question and contribute your response so the results can be tabulated like a survey. Just like city employees get together and compare notes on issues like this, so do community members.

As for whether or not I'll get an answer to a question that's admittedly just as rhetorical as fact-finding about the executive manager's digs, the truth is out there.

I can just submit the same request in writing to his office under the California Public Records Act request. State law does not allow public officials to deny the release of public information and records simply because they are either miffed at you or have decided to take their marbles off of the table and go home.

But it's amazing the arrogance of some city employees when it comes to parsing out information to the public that the public has a right to know about one of its boards and commissions. It makes you wonder if you're dealing with mature adults or small petulant children. What remains to be seen is how long the new executive manager will last in that position if the city mistakedly hires someone who thinks and wants to act independently and not be managed by the manager. A year? Six months? One week, before the boom comes down or more appropriately, the thumb? The track record coming out of the city's manager would receive this grade, needs improvement.

At least during his stint here in River City, here's hoping that the executive manager at least has appropriate office space for the duration. Here here!







Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton was appointed to a second term by a vote taken by the Los Angeles Police Commission, according to the Los Angeles Times.


(excerpt)


Commission President John W. Mack praised Bratton for "enlightened, decisive leadership" during his first term. "He's the right leader at the right time," Mack said.

When the decision was announced, Bratton smiled broadly, his eyes meeting first those of his wife and then Mack as he turned to face the commission.

The chief credited the officers and leaders of the Los Angeles Police Department for his success.




The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has an article out about the criticism being aimed at Seattle Police Department Chief Gil Kerlikowske's interference with internal investigations involving several officers in his employment.

The criticism are coming from the city's police commission which oversees the department's investigations.

It all started when two officers,Greg Neubert and Mike Tietjen, were being investigated for using excessive force and lying on police reports.

They were investigated and the police chief announced the results of the investigation.


(excerpt)


On April 9, the chief announced that the investigation cleared the officers of the most serious allegations -- use of excessive force and planting drugs.

The two were instead disciplined for failing to note in their reports that they had briefly handcuffed and detained a second man, who has not been publicly identified. One officer was given a letter of reprimand, the other a one-day suspension.


Almost immediately, there were complaints that the chief had overstepped his bounds. The Office of Professional Accountability Review Board did its own probe of the incident and released its own findings.



(excerpt)




"The Chief of Police subsequently intervened in the OPA's open investigation, directing extraordinary measures to obtain testimony of a previously uncooperative, unreliable witness to (1) bolster part of the officers' inconsistent testimony and (2) discredit the complainant and another independent witness," the report states.



The Free Lance-Star's article on the situation involving Colonial Beach's decision to hire a firm to evaluate its police department. This is at the direction of Mayor George W. "Pete" Bone,Jr.


(excerpt)



Council's closed session last week followed another May 31 in which the council reportedly discussed a letter signed by police officers critical of Police Chief Courtlandt A. Turner.

The police problems surfaced last month when Turner and Sgt. Ryan Hood returned to work after a federal judge acquitted them on 15 charges stemming from two Taser incidents in 2005.

A federal grand jury last year indicted both officers on civil-rights and obstruction-of-justice counts. In the months before the trial, the town placed Turner and Hood on paid leave and assigned them to other town jobs.

In issuing his not-guilty verdicts for Turner and Hood, U.S. District Judge James Spencer said changes made to a police report were "the most damning behavior in the entire case."

Yesterday, Bone released a copy of a letter to Dana G. Schrad, executive director of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police.

"Help us build a better police force," Bone asked in the June 14 letter.







The NACOLE newsletter is out! All you need to do is click the most recent link and to have access to Adobe Acrobat Reader.





The prosecution rested today in the trial of former sheriff's deputy Ivory J. Webb Jr., who is accused of attempted voluntary manslaughter in the January 2006 shooting of an Air Force airman.

The first defense witness was called to the stand this morning by Webb's attorney, Michael Schwartz. Attorneys said they believe that testimony could conclude next week.

Webb was videotaped shooting Airman Elio Carrion, who had just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, after a high-speed chase that ended in a crash in Chino. Carrion was a passenger in the Corvette that fled officers at speeds reaching 100 mph.

Posted by PE.com at 3:23 PM



The defense opened its own case with an expert witness, according to the Press Enterprise.


(excerpt)



I would have shot him," said Inglewood police Sgt. Kenton Ferrin after watching a videotape of Air Force military policeman Elio Carrion moving a hand toward his jacket during the January 2006 late-night confrontation in Chino.

Guns often are hidden in a suspect's jacket, shirt or waistband, Ferrin said.

"I once found a .357 Magnum (revolver) in a lady's bra," he told the jury of the now former San Bernardino County Deputy Sheriff Ivory Webb Jr.



He went on to defend each and every one of Webb's actions and said he would have done the same. If he had, he'd probably be sitting in Webb's chair listening as the defense's expert said the same thing and so on.

Pacheco, Copley Press and other characters

The Editorial Board at the Press Enterprise has spoken.

This time, against maintaining the secrecy of police officer records by refusing to provide the names of police officers involved in critical incidents from the public.

This editorial stemmed from actions taken by Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco to question California State Attorney General Jerry Brown on whether or not the recent Copley Press decision allowed the release of police officers' names who were involved in shootings and other critical incidents.

Brown said, yes.

Last year, Riverside City Attorney Gregory Priamos provided the same answer when asked the same question about whether or not to release the names of the city's police officers involved in both the Douglas Steven Cloud and Joseph Darnell Hill shootings.

Calling the State Supreme Court's decision on Copley Press "misguided", the editorial board issued further advice on this issue, cautioning agencies against using this decision to stonewall on providing information on police officers involved in incidents that was allowable by law.



(excerpt)



Brown should provide plain guidance that public agencies still have the obligation to release officers' names. The idea that an officer's name is confidential information is nonsense. Police wear name tags on their uniforms, after all.

Law enforcement is a public activity, funded by taxpayers, who are entitled to know the details of police actions.

Withholding officers' names allows rumor to run rampant and unnecessarily protects police at the expense of the public interest. No public official, especially an attorney general, should find that tradeoff acceptable.



On a side note, I guess this explains why Belo.com was on this site last week running searches on "Pacheco" and "Copley Press". It wasn't clear what the two topics had to do with one another. Now it is, and so is the point that the editorial board has raised as well.






The time it took to count votes in this month's city council elections was the topic of some controversy.

It took 43 hours to tabulate the votes in the first round of elections for the odd-numbered wards, a delay that created most problems in the tight Ward Three race between incumbent, Art Gage and newcomer William "Rusty" Bailey. So that left both of them, their supporters, Ward Three and most of man and womankind waiting on pins and needles for the last vote to be tabulated.


(excerpt, Press Enterprise)



"There's got to be a better way to get them counted," Councilman Art Gage said.

City Clerk Colleen Nicol and Riverside County Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore are promising the June 2009 election will be different. The city contracts with the county to run the election.


The key, Dunmore said, is for the city to pay for her staff to work overtime on election night to get as many votes counted as possible.

Nicol said she had expected this would happen in the recent election but she did not communicate well with Dunmore.

"I didn't say to her what my expectations were," Nicol said.



But although it's important to get the results of elections especially in closely competitive races out quickly, it's more important to be accurate and to be using a process that's accountable to the city residents.


Those in charge of this process assured the public that the kinks will be worked out of it by June 2009.





Is the fire department growing fast enough in the city of Riverside? This was a question asked in a recent Press Enterprise article and the answer according to its chief was, yes.

Four new stations and 27 new fire fighters to staff them are some of the developments in the past year.


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Riverside is booming. Things have grown so much," said Fire Chief Tedd Laycock.


He said that firefighters now look to the Riverside Fire Department as an ideal destination for long-term work.

"We used to consider ourselves a stepping stone where young firefighters would get experience before moving on to bigger places. Now we're finding that they're coming from smaller departments to our department."



Staffing issues have impacted both the fire department and the police department as well. The police officers have 10 positions coming their way as well.




Dan Bernstein, columnist of the Press Enterprise chimed in on the judicial crisis in Riverside County and the actions taken by Sacramento to address it. The chief justice up there is sending 12 judges down here for the summer to handle the caseload.


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This wasn't the locals' idea. This came from the highest levels of Golden State judiciary. It has never been done before. Naturally, I assumed the chief justice had concluded that, with all its spitting and spatting, the RivCo legal community was in dire need of a baby sitter.

"I do not think this is a negative reflection in any way," Chief Justice George told me Monday. He noted RivCo has been growing like crazy, cases have pretty much avalanched the system, and the exec 'n' legislative branches have created new judgeships at roughly the same pace that one ages single-malt scotch.

I could've sworn there was an adult-supervision issue here, but since the chief justice himself says there's not, I'm going to turn my full attention to making sure the 12 "strike force" judges have a boss Riverside summer.

Please sign up here for a game of musical courtrooms.





In San Bernardino, the trial involving former San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department Deputy Ivory J. Webb resumed Monday with further testimony for the prosecution's case, according to the Press Enterprise.

According to expert witness Joe Callanan who's been on the witness stand forever, Webb failed to use proper procedures when conducting his pursuit of the vehicle where Elio Carrion was riding as a passenger.


(excerpt)




And immediately before he was shot and wounded three times, Air Force military policeman Elio Carrion was "mouthy," slow to comply with orders and appeared to be intoxicated, said prosecution witness Joe Callanan.

Yet Carrion's behavior was no justification for then-San Bernardino County sheriff's Deputy Ivory Webb Jr. to open fire, Callanan said.



"The training is very clear that the officer is supposed to slow down and calm down" when dealing with drunks, the retired Los Angeles County sheriff's lieutenant told Webb's jury. "When emotions rise, reason falls off."



Webb felt threatened, according to this article in the San Bernardino Sun. Statements that the prosecutor, Lewis Cope was trying to keep out of the courtroom were revealed. It's not clear at this point in the trial whether Webb will take the witness stand and testify to his account of events.


(excerpt)



Webb told the detectives he believed Carrion tucked a hand into his jacket as he rose, as though he were reaching for a weapon.

Webb said he believed Carrion was in a position to possibly kill him, according to the statement, and that he had never been so scared in his life.
"I mean, my heart is going crazy," he said.




Also, in San Bernardino, the city wants to hold onto its ability to use eminent domain, according to the Press Enterprise.

This county like others is trying to create laws to keep this power in their arsenal for redevelopment. Residents of those jurisdictions are also trying to create ballot initiatives which would restrict this power.

Here's an interesting excerpt about how San Bernardino County was able to co-opt this process to place a watered down version of an initiative on the ballot which would control eminent domain, albeit still allowing the county supervisors to exercise it to their hearts' delights as representatives of the county's redevelopment agency. Voters passed this toothless piece of legislation.


(excerpt)


A local voter-approved change in San Bernardino County's charter, known as Measure O, prohibits the county from using eminent domain to turn land over to another private entity. But the measure, approved in November, does not apply to the redevelopment agency, a separate legal entity that supervisors oversee.

Wert said the ordinances do not contain any specific properties targeted for acquisition. And he said Measure O, placed on the ballot by supervisors, shows how reluctant current supervisors are to use their eminent domain power.



Included is a survey about whether or not cities and counties should be able to seize property by eminent domain and sell it to private developers.

River City: Just another Monday

How cities pick their leaders is a brief article in the Press Enterprise today.

It addresses Riverside's history of either having its city council elections take place among all the city's voters or to stick with allowing each ward to elect its own representative.

(excerpt)



Riverside has gone back and forth between the two methods of electing the city council. From l907 to l952, Riverside had the ward system. From l952 until l963, Riverside had an at-large council. In l962, Riverside set up council elections by wards, and this pattern has continued to the present.

Which method is better? Even the experts disagree.

Gary Ovitt, former mayor of Ontario, and a member of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, favors the at-large system of council election because the entire council is accountable to the whole city rather than a council member appealing to one ward or part of the city. In addition, at-large supporters point out that the best-qualified candidates may all live in one part of the city.

Those favoring the ward plan say this system tends to encourage wider voter participation. For example, under the at-large system, La Sierra had no councilman and felt shortchanged.


Some people in La Sierra do still feel shortchanged under the current system.



Also, in the Press Enterprise, was a short article on whether or not law enforcement officers use quotas when writing traffic tickets. Several law enforcement agencies responded including the Riverside Police Department.


(excerpt)


The Riverside Police Department released this statement through Public Information Officer Steven Frasher:

"Quotas are illegal in California and it's covered in the vehicle code. Section 41602 of the code states that no state or local agency employing peace officers or parking enforcement employees engaged in enforcement of the vehicle code or local ordinances may establish any policy requiring those personnel to meet an 'arrest quota.' Arrest quota is defined in Section 41600 as the number of arrests made or citations issued by one of those personnel, compared to a number of arrests or citations recorded by any other personnel.

"Riverside Police supervisors and managers evaluate an officer's performance by total activity produced -- citations, reports and investigations. There is no number of citations, or expectation of a number, required for officers or other employees."




News has been coming out by concerned individuals involving a traffic stop by two Riverside Police Department officers involving Ward One candidate, Letitia Pepper early this morning. Not much information is available, just that Pepper was stopped near the downtown area by two unidentified police officers who she had waved to as she passed them where they had parked their cars. Apparently, the officers did not provide their names when she asked for them.

More news of this as it becomes available but apparently it has upset people.

In Maywood, California, a corruption probe has widened into both the police department and the city council that oversaw its operations according to an article in the Los Angeles Times. Coming under scrutiny in investigations being conducted by the FBI, the State Attorney General's office and the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office are tow trucking firms which might have received kickbacks from the city's government.

Singled out was Tooradj Khosroabadi, known as "Bravo" who some called, the most honest person they had ever known in his defense. But others said that he had landed a contract with the city by offering gifts to the police department employees and city officials.

Allegations came out of the police department as well including against its police chief who had been hired for the job despite having a criminal conviction in his background.

(excerpt)

According to interviews and court documents, top police officials made an effort to help Khosroabadi's business succeed. Maywood Police Officer Pablo Cunningham, who has accused the department of retaliating against him for reporting an array of alleged misconduct, has said in court papers that Police Chief Bruce Leflar once called a meeting at which he pressured officers on behalf of Khosroabadi, telling them he "needs more impounds."

Leflar, who abruptly stopped showing up for work late last year, declined to comment.It was not just the chief who was allegedly applying pressure on officers, according to Cunningham's lawsuit. Cunningham said he was shown an e-mail from a lieutenant to two sergeants discussing the lack of traffic enforcement by some officers.

The lieutenant encouraged the sergeants to use whatever means necessary, the e-mail said, "to get them to see the light and get into the game."According to Colleen Flynn, a lawyer involved in a separate class-action suit against the city, Cunningham told her that officers initiating the most number of impounds were rewarded by being allowed to work four 10-hour days so they would have three days off.

Cunningham said officers targeted motorists whom they believed were illegal immigrants; their alleged offenses were derisively referred to as "driving while wet," according to Flynn.

The police department would set up checkpoints targeting Latino motorists if they were believed to be undocumented immigrants. Then impound their vehicles if there were violations.

(excerpt)


The city of Maywood also received a cut for each vehicle that was towed, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars for city coffers.

Many motorists had their vehicles seized at random traffic checkpoints, at which Khosroabadi would station catering trucks and let officers help themselves to free food and drinks, officials confirmed.

The checkpoints were often set up at rush hour on Atlantic Boulevard and Slauson Avenue, the city's main thoroughfares, resulting in traffic jams that backed up into neighboring cities.

Alleged offenders would be ushered to side streets where police vehicles and tow trucks would be waiting.

In another Los Angeles Times article, Maywood's vice-mayor who criticized the corruption allegedly surrounding the towing business in his city wasn't above offering up gifts to get his own vehicle out of the impound lot.


(excerpt)



Though he should have had to pay hundreds of dollars to the city and to Maywood Club Tow, Aguirre was allowed to reclaim his 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee for free.

Police Chief Richard Lyons waived the city's $200 fee for reclaiming an impounded vehicle, and the company owner, Tooradj Khosroabadi, opted not to charge Aguirre the standard $120 for the towing and one-day storage of his vehicle. Aguirre owes $50 for the parking violation.

Aguirre made no apologies for what he acknowledged was special treatment.

"I didn't ask for any of this. I was willing to pay all the fees, but that's not what happened," Aguirre said in an interview Friday. "I know what it looks like, and, well, you know, so be it."



In New York City, police officers claimed that they were trying to prevent a gang from crashing the National Puerto Rican Day march but instead arrested 208 people, an act that angered parade organizers according to the New York Daily News.

(excerpt)


"We are very disappointed and alarmed that these violations of civil rights should occur," said Madelyn Lugo, president of the National Puerto Rican Day Parade. She is demanding an explanation from Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.


The police claimed that all of 10 of them were gang members, but at least one of them said he wasn't.

(excerpt)

Among those arrested Sunday was Thomas Scull, an 18-year-old high school senior from Harlem, who said he was busted because he was wearing black and gold sneakers, the Latin Kings gang colors.

"They automatically assumed I was a Latin King," Scull said. "I was going to have fun. ... So now I can't wear my sneakers because the police say so?"



The city council will be looking into the situation.


New York Daily News columnist, Juan Gonzalez had harsh words about the controversial arrests.

He detailed the arrest of Nick Nieves, 16, and the son of a police lieutenant.


(excerpt)


Nieves was wearing a white shirt with a Puerto Rican flag and blue shorts. The yellow shirts worn by the group of strangers in front of him were promotion shirts for Def Jam records, he said, and none of them had made any attempt to break into the parade.

Suddenly cops descended on the group from all sides and began handcuffing and photographing everyone.



"They let my friend go because she was 15," he said. "But they took me and about 20 others to the precinct [stationhouse]."

Nieves said he was not allowed to make a phone call to his parents until 10 p.m. and was not arraigned until the next day.

"Because of all this, I missed my final exam in Spanish Monday morning," he said.

How many more "dangerous Latin Kings" like Nieves did cops arrest last Sunday? Or doesn't anybody in City Hall care?




New York Times Columnist Anemona Hartocollis checks in with an opinion of the mass arrests.