Election 2007: Ethics and Eminent Domain

The latest news in Riverside this week that people have been talking about is that Ward One candidate Mike Gardner who is facing off against incumbent, Dom Betro this November has reexamined his position on the use of eminent domain to benefit private developers and he has decided the following.


(excerpt)



This is a revised statement of my position. Discussions with many people during the campaign have convinced me that it is simply wrong for government to take private property from one person and sell it to another private owner. My revised position is as follows:

I do not believe government should take private property from one owner and make it available to another private owner. As your Council member I will oppose the use of eminent domain for development projects.

Revised July 16, 2007




That's a bit of a shift for Gardner who previously has said that he supported this use of eminent domain in certain circumstances when the owner isn't making full use of the property. However, that's a very tricky criterion to use because the city's been throwing those terms and the use of one of its favorite terms of all, "blight", to justify taking properties on Market Street through threat of eminent domain.

And for those who don't know because some do, eminent domain is a racial issue. It's certainly a racial issue in Riverside, given that a disproportionate number of businesses impacted have been owned by Asian-Americans and Latinos but there were barbershops and beauty shops owned by African-Americans particularly on University Avenue that have disappeared as well. Quite a few businesses have been owned by immigrants.

Not that White business owners haven't been impacted but when you see disproportionate representation among people of color being adversely impacted in a situation, then you have to examine its racial aspects. And in the downtown area, that's fairly apparent.

If you go back to the days of Gram's Barbecue which used to sit where Mario's Place sits today and the Tamale Factory which was once closer to City Hall, even then the city would put pressure on businesses owned by African-Americans and Latinos to move out of buildings the city wanted to "purchase" for private developers. If it weren't for outcry from patrons at both of these restaurants, both of them would have been left to fend for themselves. These businesses are owned by very nice people and they know that their customers fully support their efforts and their businesses.

But if you listen to the discussion involving the downtown these days, it's all about catering to a crowd that's White and more affluent. It's not about families with little kids or God forbid, teenagers. It's about wine tastings, live theater(which charges more per ticket than their movie counterparts do) and festivals which cater to the more affluent crowd, which is pretty sad considering that if the downtown part of Riverside truly is the center of its universe, then it should be accessible and enjoyed by everyone.

Even the mixed used housing is geared towards a Whiter, more affluent crowd considering the prices mentioned for this "affordable" housing. Only it's not specifically geared for this city's residents but the Whites who are currently fleeing an Orange County that's becoming more racially diverse. There's a name for what the city's doing and it's called gentrification. But you bring up the G-word at a community forum and inadvertently, someone in a suit, usually one of the city's high-priced development consultants will essentially wave their hands, saying don't look behind the curtain.

One of the biggest areas where you'll see gentrification in the next five years will be the Eastside and University(which is in the process of gentrification) neighborhoods. Eminent domain will be a tool in this process that the city will likely use, although the threat of it seems to be doing the trick.

Downtown is a great place for museums, but what is really needed is a kids' museum. Riverside once had a good one at the corner of Main and University in the same historic building which once housed the Tamale Factory, but that museum is now located in Hemet. A larger library is needed as well with more parking wherever they put it.

And they should leave the old trees that were mentioned as being on the chopping block at posters displayed by several downtown businesses, in place.

Some people fear that the only African-Americans who will be allowed downtown in Riverside will be the statues like Martin Luther King, jr. that have been erected downtown so that the city can both honor civil rights heroes like him and his colleague Mahatma Gandhi and feel better about themselves. Community members had hoped that they would serve as moral consciences over City Hall but has that been working?

But then it's the image of King, Jr. and Gandhi in the town square not their messages which appears to matter much more.

Ask that question while you ask how many Black and Latino employees in management positions in this city including the police department have been placed with termination, demotions, "resignations" or threatened with any of these things.

After all, when King, jr.'s daughter, Yolanda, died, Mayor Ron Loveridge's statement on the matter was that she had said at the statue's unveiling that this rendition of her father was the best one she had seen.




The ethics process was discussed by two members of Riverside's Governmental Affairs Committee and it provided an interesting dynamic in how the city's political situation actually works. Members of the Group including its chair, Jennifer Vaughn-Blakely came in to offer a list of suggestions to Councilmen Frank Schiavone who chairs the committee and Dom Betro.


I'm not sure where the third member, Councilman Ed Adkison was, but the behavior by the two city councilmen was a study in contrasts yet also clearly an example of two men who probably could finish each others' sentences. But what made the meeting the most interesting was that it was one of those occasions where other people can be more effective at making your point on an issue than you can and that actions truly speak more loudly than words.

There's no current acronym for this duo, who many said have replaced "Fred" in the local political lexicon.

Schiavone chaired the meeting as he has the past couple, almost as if he's figured out at last how he wants to get business done. At the Governmental Affairs meetings these days, there are two Schiavones. If you say something that agrees with his position, then he will give you all the time that you need to get your point across and never interrupt you.

If you disagree with him or he assumes that you will, he'll either skip over you in public comment or he will continuously interrupt you and/or throw an army of strawmen arguments at you before you've gotten one sentence out. The intent is to drown you out or to discourage people from attending meetings. This is simply behavior taken from how the city council meetings run these days into the subcommittees, but if you ever want to see how a city council member will serve as mayor, just watch how he or she chairs his or her subcommittee meetings.

Here's a project. Attend all the city council subcommittee meetings, watch how they are chaired and you'll see who will make a good mayor and who would not.

Schiavone's a pretty smart guy and he has positive qualities which wouldn't make him bad mayor material, but unfortunately they were not on display yesterday. And his diatribe about knowing that the voters supported the Community Police Review Commission as a criticism against me making that statement when I hadn't even done so, was a bit bizarre.

But the lesson that meeting taught is that the concerns that people have raised(and Schiavone demanded I list them at the meeting during one of his interruptions) may be valid. Just like people doubt police departments can investigate and police themselves, people also extend that skepticism to elected officials and the behavior at yesterday's meeting may validate that concern.

Schiavone insisted that none of his ward's residents have complained about the current ethics process. The problem which even he admitted to later on in the meeting is that most people in all the wards probably don't know much about it, let alone how it's been implemented since voters passed the initiative which created it in 2004.

It does look like city residents have taken their concerns on a lot of civic issues including city council decorum on the dais to the polls. Schiavone and other council members have blamed the four runoffs in November on the fact that there were multiple candidates in every race, but I seem to recall the case of a certain county supervisor who several years ago won his election outright despite facing three or more rivals.

If you're very popular, you get in the first time around. If you're less than that, you don't.

And it was interesting to see Betro's response during the discussion to a list of pretty good suggestions by Vaughn-Blakely and other members of the Group in how similar it was to excuses given by law enforcement officers who are against civilian oversight. Betro, like police officers, said that there were already oversight mechanisms in place and along with Schiavone, he disagreed that an outside committee consisting of chairs of the city's boards and commissions was needed to hear ethics complaints.

Of course, Betro has received two out of three of the complaints filed so far, including one that went to an actual hearing, if it could be called one.

The ethics process looks good on paper, but then that's all it is supposed to do, look good. If you believe that a serious violation of the ethics code has been committed by an elected official, then you're probably better off to skip this process altogether and just file a complaint with the county grand jury.

If it's related to a political campaign, then file it with the state's fair political practices division or the secretary of state's office.

The process or report may or may not be going back to the city council in August. The two councilmen were in such a hurry to get out of there, I'm not sure. That's also a mirror image of city council meetings these days.








Columnist Dan Bernstein of the Press Enterprise is tackling the ongoing situation of the downtown public library again.

He also challenges the city in terms of why it's taking away parking slots when there's a limited number of them already and why it wants to charge city residents to pay for parking while they enjoy the library and the public museum downtown.


(excerpt)


But moving the library out of downtown or, better yet, cratering it seems to be a body without legs. Mission Inn owner Duane Roberts, who could probably spin the nearby library land into gold, began his letter, "Let the library stay." (And, lo, the library stayed.)

Which brings us back to the elephant. The City Council just approved a downtown 10-story office building that ordinarily would have needed 1,048 parking spaces. The council said the builder only had to provide 729 -- and he'll buy most of those from a recently opened city garage, taking 400 public spaces out of circulation.

Having been so understanding to a builder, the city strikes me as touchy-feely sensitive enough to understand why library and museum customers might resent being ordered to PAY HERE before walking into a place they PAID HERE to build in the first place.

I hope the whoozwhooz will realize that free parking to a city library is like fries to a burger. Those who insist Riverside would be better off with a (reheated) Downtown Burger had best be thinking of ways to cook up lots of those fries.






The professional future of Riverside County Superior Court judge, Robert G. Spitzer will be decided during the final hearing of his case which will be heard on Aug. 29, according to this article in the Press Enterprise.


(excerpt)


A hearing by three out-of-county judges was held in Riverside in January. A follow-up hearing was held in March in Sacramento, and the judges issued their report on Spitzer in April.

In the most serious conclusion, the judges said Spitzer acted with "willful misconduct" when he contacted the mother of a murder victim outside of the presence of defense and prosecution attorneys in the murder case.

In papers filed after the judges' report, Spitzer's attorneys said the jurist was remorseful and had reformed the obsessive habits that had slowed down his court. None of Spitzer's actions was done for personal gain, they said.





I received an "apology" of sorts from the faux me from the faux Yahoo email account taken out in my name. Seriously, this email didn't read as being any less disturbing than his or her first one.




I am writing to apologize for my previous letter. I'm most sorry that you were concerned that it was some sort of threat or harassment. It was not intended that way at all.
By choosing an address like yours and writing that note, I was simply trying to suggest that you look within yourself to learn why you might be so negative about so many things. I meant you no harm, and my letter was not well written therefore the intended message was not perceived.
No further messages will be sent from this address, as I will close it and will not re-open.
Again, I am very sorry. I wish you happyness and peace.




Yeah, and I have some beachfront property I'd like to show you in Nebraska.




The origin for this email is not an IP address registered to the city of Riverside. The ISP is owned by Charter Communications and the server is based either in Bloomington, California or San Bernardino.

Rain in the forecast?

The weather forecast stated it might rain, but I'll have to see it to believe it.


On Friday, both parties in the case of Ryan Wilson v the city of Riverside took to the courtroom presided over by Judge Dallas Scott Holmes to plead their respective arguments in a terms of whether Wilson, a Riverside Police Department officer should be granted an administrative appeal hearing.

First there was the written legal briefs.

Wilson's attorney, Peter Brock had argued that Wilson should be granted a hearing to appeal the finding delivered to him by the Community Police Review Commission that he violated the department's use of force policy when he shot and killed Summer Marie Lane in 2004.

The city led by Scott Tiedemann argued that the report issued by the CPRC on the case was advisory only, had been roundly ignored by City Manager Brad Hudson and Police Chief Russ Leach according to their declarations and deposition testimony respectively.

Oh, and then they blamed it on a third party, which I guess as supposed to be me.

The judge issued a tentative ruling which was to deny Wilson's writ "under a close call", but then the oral arguments began and things got very interesting.

As before, Brock blamed the CPRC. Tiedenmann blamed the media. Both attorneys representing both parties said that they agreed on the shooting. It was the public who didn't.


The case law presented was Caloca v the County of San Diego. A court case filed by a San Diego County Sheriff's Department deputy to contest a finding by that county's oversight board.

Holmes didn't seem too impressed with Caloca and insisted that the language used in connection to the finding against the sheriff deputy was much stronger than that used by the CPRC against Wilson in its report on his shooting. The word choices were much softer, Holmes said.

And he didn't see any need for the city to set up an appeal process for officers involving findings given by the CPRC because it was just advisory and thus not necessary, he said.

Brock plunged forward with his argument, saying that Leach had these concerns about the impact of the CPRC's report on Wilson.



"These findings will create problems for him and Wilson," Brock said.



Holmes disagreed.


"Police chiefs don't like review boards," Holmes said, "I never met one who liked it."



Then Holmes asked Brock what was he supposed to do, create a process with "three wise clergy persons".



"Would you just have me create this," Holmes said.

Holmes asked Brock for another court case that might change his mind as he issued his final ruling which was to deny the writ without feeling completely comfortable about doing so.

So as of now, the CPRC finding apparently stands.

A while back, the criminal case against former manager in the city's development department was finally closed in that Gregory Bernard Griffin plead guilty to a single felony count of conflict of interest and was sentenced to four days in county jail, 180 hours of community service, five years formal probation and a $10,000 fine according to this article in the Press Enterprise.



Apparently while assigned to oversee the Magnolia Police Station project, he asked its landscape expert to do his personal landscaping while paying for the job out of the funds allocated to the station's construction. The landscape expert reported his conduct to the authorities and Griffin apparently took off for a while but was caught and is now serving his sentence.



The original charges included attempted felony grand theft and attempted embezzlement.



Griffin came over to Riverside from the county's economic development agency in July 2005, not long after his former boss there, Brad Hudson, became his new boss here. Unfortunately, it didn't take him very long to get into trouble in his new job.



Hopefully, after this attempted embezzlement and grand theft was uncovered, an audit was done of the Magnolia Police Station's construction budget immediately, as well as audits on other projects handled by Griffin to ensure that no more funds were misappropriated or misused that should have been spent on these projects.






On Aug. 7, it's the National Night Out which is an annual event sponsored by police agencies and communities in cities and towns across the country to build relationships between them.

Riverside will be holding a variety of events on different days. Sgt. Keenan Lambert from the Riverside Police Department's community policing division talked about them to the Press Enterprise.


(excerpt)


"It's a message for people to get out and understand what resources they have in their city," Lambert said. "They can learn how to use the police department as a resource, and in turn the police can use the community as a resource... And it's to say thank you for taking part in being responsible for your community."

He said the efforts also serve to build trust between the police and neighborhoods.

Riverside Police spokesman Steve Frasher said the events allow police to reach neighborhoods where there is little police presence and areas where there is a lot of police activity.

"It shows an officer as a normal person that laughs and jumps," he said. "It gives them a chance to see our personnel as real people rather than just the guys behind the black cars."


The survey at the Press Enterprise which asks people to report their concerns and thoughts about city government continues to elicit responses here.





The Seattle Times wrote an interesting article on how different cities "police police".

It explores civilian oversight and its origins in several different cities, including Seattle, Portland and San Francisco.

The article showed that for many cities, the process follows a similar pattern.


(excerpt)



The setting: a midsize city near Canada with Scandinavian roots and a reputation for clean government.

The allegation: The police chief is ignoring recommendations by a civilian watchdog agency about how to discipline wayward officers.

Critics say they have lost faith in the ability of the Police Department to police itself.

The city creates a task force that looks into the chief's handling of discipline.

While the scenario might appear to be straight from recent headlines in Seattle, the turmoil occurred last year in a city halfway across the country — Minneapolis.






Seattle's form of civilian oversight is still a work in progress. It has convened a panel which will conduct research on the issue and report back to the city council.


The Governmental Affairs Committee met today in Riverside to discuss the annual report on the ethics process. It's hard these days to get two words without chair, Frank Schiavone interrupting you and then misstating what you said. He demanded a list of everyone who's ever had a concern about the ethics process but under the current climate at City Hall, so if you have concerns and want to get on that list, give him a call.


I do not hand over lists of individuals who express concerns to me about City Hall's operations to any individual including elected officials who demand one especially under the current climate which is more restrictive towards public participation and more into ordering police officers to expel individuals including elderly women from the city council meetings.

Elections 2007: Lining up to start again

Lots of discussions going on about the next round of Election 2007 and who will win the prize of being able to sit on the dais and represent their ward constituents for four years. The fund raisers began this month in earnest as the arduous and highly competitive first round emptied out a few campaign chests.


The consensus appears to be that the Ward One race will come down to who can raise money which usually favors the incumbents and who can go out and knock on the most doors, call the most people and attend the most meetings which usually favors the challengers because incumbents usually rely on others to do that and it makes a much bigger impression if the candidates themselves do this form of outreach.

It doesn't seem to have dawned on the incumbents except perhaps Art Gage that what the first election showed is that people have serious questions about what their city government has been doing. Gage did put that thought out there when the Press Enterprise interviewed him after the election results were tallied in June.

Concerns about the improvement of the city's infrastructure to match population growth, the city's finances and the behavior by city council members towards members of the public are what is influencing this trend. Not to mention the overselling of Riverside Renaissance while not discussing again, how its infrastructure will handle it including one of the most neglected areas, which is the state of the city's major streets in terms of how they handle traffic.

It's not that people don't like the concept of Riverside Renaissance. It's how it has been truncated into five years especially as the city's sales taxes were much less this year than had been anticipated. The economy ebbs and flows and this umbrella of projects doesn't take that into consideration.

A police officer once asked at a meeting, what were the three biggest problems. He answered, traffic, traffic and traffic. And while that issue has been talked during forums by candidates, it doesn't seem to be discussed much outside of election years.

Gage is probably completely aware of his vulnerability at this point in time in terms of the difficult task that lies ahead of him in terms of beating William "Rusty" Bailey to keep his seat. Bailey's got a fundraiser coming up that is being produced by the Michael Williams Company. Former candidate Peter Olmos has endorsed Gage in the next round.

Bailey's heaviest supporters come from the camp of incumbent Dom Betro which makes sense considering how Betro and Councilmen Frank Schiavone, Ed Adkison, Andrew Melendrez and Mayor Ron Loveridge endorsed Bailey before he even filed his papers announcing his intention to run. That of course strongly indicates that those elected officials have kicked Gage out of the club and are seeking Bailey as a replacement.

Some might cheer that action, but it's troubling in that city council elections are supposed to be about ward representation, not city representation. But more and more this is the direction that the elections and the strategies played out during them have been going. These strategies lead to the representation of the development firms and those who have deep pockets to finance campaigns to just plop a few grand in every city council race.

There was even some discussion several years ago of changing the rules of runoff elections to make those citywide. Mercifully that idea didn't amount to much in terms of action.

Wards Five and Seven are tough to call at this point, particularly who will win the runoff to replace Adkison. But there's still months to go before the election and much campaigning to be done.

Each candidate is required by state law to file campaign disclosure statements at the Riverside city clerks's office. Included on these statements are campaign donations that are $100 or higher. Reading these statements does help provide a profile of that particular candidate in terms of who or what is supporting his or her political campaign.

Riverside County is beginning to put similar records online, but the city of Riverside has yet to do so. Maybe that's something city residents should push for in the interest of increasing accountability and transparency in the election process.




I haven't received any more harassing emails. I'm still puzzled as to why an IP address registered to the city was on the header of the email sent Tuesday, July 17 at 6:16:15 p.m. I have a difficult time understanding how it wound up there and the city's not interested in providing any possible explanation. It is just making assumptions that I'm interested in subpoenas and tracking down city employees, when it might not even be a city employee who sent it. I asked them one question and one question only and that's what is their IP address doing on an email sent to harass me?

Still, nothing can really be done about it and I've said my piece. The best thing to do is to just continue what I'm doing and as always, looking over my shoulder wherever I go.

It's hard sometimes to write a blog that seems to have elicited mostly hostility and hatred in its first year of existence. It's only more recently that I've heard more positive words said about it and have received encouragement to keep it going from different circles. But I did go through some examination as to whether or not to do just that. Some of that examination took place on days when I was almost afraid to leave my residence.

It's easy to say, if you put it out there and it gets this type of opposition from those who hate your message and even you, that this is some barometer of effectiveness in what you're doing. It's harder to live in it.

I was thinking about this when I attended the writ on the case of Ryan Wilson v the State of California. I watched the attorneys especially the one representing Wilson, who really was impressive in his oratory skills. His argument was flawed as there exists a better one that might have swayed Judge Dallas Holmes but he chose his words well. However, his passion and belief in his own argument was inspiring to watch and he did make Holmes for a while rethink his position. And that's rare for a judge to do in what's left of this county's civil court system. Even Holmes realized that.

So if you believe in something, it's important to keep going at it.

As for the Community Police Review Commission, it was a win-win situation in a game where there had been many losses so not much was at stake in terms of it with this one decision. And ironically, it was Wilson through his attorney, not the city that believed in its strength.







Contaminated soil at a place where recreational vehicles are stored, will be the site of a massive cleaning job by the city according to the Press Enterprise.

They will have to dig pretty deep to clear out the millions of tons of dirt that includes in its composition a substance called lampblack.

After the cleanup, the city will start its project involving a transit village that has caused much controversy particularly in the Eastside which feels shut out of the process which will include the construction of two private bridges between the predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood to the downtown. Residents of the Eastside which is set up to be divided and parceled out into various redevelopment projects in the future have wanted bridges like this over the railroad tracks for a long time.

Now, the bridges are coming but as is typical, they are reserved for a Whiter, more affluent population of people who haven't even come to Riverside yet.


There will also be a public meeting on this issue to discuss safety issues. Those running the meeting will be taking public comment.



Cleanup meeting

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control will hold a public meeting in Riverside to let residents know about a cleanup near the city's Metrolink station that could begin as early as next month.

When: Monday, 6 p.m. open house followed by 7:15 p.m. public hearing

Where: Cesar Chavez Community Center, 2060 University Ave.

More information: 714-484-5488








One man in Hemet won the first round in his law suit which was to evict two city council members off the dais including the vice mayor, according to the Press Enterprise.

Howard Toungate stated in his law suit that the two elected officials had violated the law in serving more than two term limits. The city defended its politicians and stated in his defense that a state law prohibiting term limits which existed at the time negated the city's own ordinance.


(excerpt)


This week, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Edward Webster overruled a request to dismiss the lawsuit made by the council members' attorney.

"It was a round one win for me," said Tounget, who unsuccessfully ran for Hemet City Council in 1996 and 2000. He praised the judge's ruling and said he expects to win.

Amy Morgan, the council members' attorney, said denial of the motion to dismiss the lawsuit does not bode ill for her clients' chances.

She said the judge did not rule on the merits of the case, but merely determined that it was sufficient enough to proceed.

"I feel that the city has followed the law and confident that we will prevail," she said.









Former San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department deputy, Ivory J. Webb had appeared on the Today show after his acquittal on charges in relation to his onduty shooting of U.S. airman, Elio Carrion.

Now, Carrion is taking his case to the same television program, according to the Press Enterprise.



(excerpt)




Carrion said he was wrong for cursing at Webb during the confrontation, but added that he clearly said he was getting up as ordered when he was shot.

"I don't know how the jury found that it was justified. It seemed like they weren't listening to anything the DA was saying," Carrion told "Today" host Meredith Vieira. "When he approached us he was out of control... Clear as day, he said twice, 'Get up, get up.' Then I pushed my upper body up and I got shot."

After being shot in the chest, arm and leg, Carrion said he still struggles with physical activities. He now works as a desk clerk at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.








The article mentioned that Webb is trying to get his old job back. This comes after comments made by San Bernardino County Sheriff Gary Penrod that his department had not wanted to take back Webb and he didn't think Webb would want to work there anyway.



Now, Penrod like a huge chunk of the population in this country knows differently, so what now? Will his department hire back an individual which Penrod told media outlets was a member of its law enforcement family?










A new civilian review board is coming to Corvalis, Texas according to the Corvallis Gazette-Times.

Reaction to the new form of civilian oversight appeared to be positive from different quarters.


(excerpt)


“There’s been a move within the community to have someone to bring complaints to besides the police administration,” board member Prudence Miles said.

No single event spurred the creation of the citizen oversight panel, said Council member Patricia Daniels, but several incidents contributed to its development. Among them were a 2003 study of traffic-stop data in response to concerns about racial profiling and the fatal shooting of Richard Dean Townsend in November of 2005 by a Corvallis police officer.

“I have faith in our department,” Miles said. “But I don’t see any risk in having a citizens oversight group.”

Corvallis Police Capt. Jon Sassaman said having a citizen review board is a “best practice” for law enforcement agencies.

“They provide transparency and access to the community and hold us truly accountable for all our actions,” Sassaman said.



Another interesting thing about this article was that the Corvallis Police Department is planning to have the new commission assist it into examining approaches to interacting with mentally ill individuals. A practice that's being done in a lot of different cities since the city of Memphis created its crisis intervention team in the late 1980s.





Back in Columbia, Missouri, the work to create a form of civilian oversight continues, according to this article in the Columbia Tribune. A research committee is being formed and all those who are interested in Columbia are encouraged to apply. It will research the process of complaint investigations in the Columbia Police Department, research various forms of civilian oversight and then report its recommendations to the city council.

River City: Thank God it's Friday

According to the Press Enterprise, the governor has designated Riverside County a disaster area because of the ongoing drought and a year that only produced about 1.92 inches of rain. Housing values are going down in the Inland Empire and a truck crashed into a residence in Riverside.


(excerpt)



"The whole house shook," said resident William Salcedo. "It felt like an earthquake."

William, 16, was getting ready for school shortly before 9 a.m. when the truck plowed into the home near Riverside City College.

The truck that smashed into a living room also damaged two cars in front of the home in Riverside.
Grandfather James Fuller was asleep at the time.

"I just heard a big kaboom," he said. Then he saw powder from the debris.






Some people have responded to the poll at the Press Enterprise asking them for their complaints, concerns and thoughts about what goes on at City Hall.


The publication's editorial board also tackled the issue of whether or not withholding judicial appointments in the interest of promoting ethic and racial diversity is a wise choice.

The editorial board thinks not and believes that it's more important to push for racial diversity in the law schools. That's an argument that's been going on for quite a while.

The issue of the current judge shortage in both Riverside and San Bernardino Counties was raised as one of the reasons why the judicial appointments should be allowed to continue. It correctly stated that there's about one judge per 6,000 cases each year. What it doesn't state is that while Riverside has shut down its civil trials and accumulated a huge backlog in felony trials, its sister county has not experienced these same difficulties in maintaining its operations. What's the difference in circumstances here?




I came back to all of this after a family reunion which was marred somewhat by one of my big brothers suffering a stroke while at work last week. He felt the symptoms of numbness, tingling and soon after, paralysis of the right side of his body. Fortunately, his co-workers saw what was happening to him even after he tried to keep working through it. He told one of them that it would soon pass and he'd be fine but he wasn't.

It wasn't known until an MRI was done five days later, that it wasn't his first stroke. His first stroke had been what is known as a transient ischemic attack while driving nearly 10 years ago. Below are the symptoms of this precursor to strokes. If you experience them, go immediately to a nearby hospital.


(excerpt)


A transient ischemic attack (TIA) is a transient stroke that lasts only a few minutes. It occurs when the blood supply to part of the brain is briefly interrupted. TIA symptoms, which usually occur suddenly, are similar to those of stroke but do not last as long. Most symptoms of a TIA disappear within an hour, although they may persist for up to 24 hours. Symptoms can include: numbness or weakness in the face, arm, or leg, especially on one side of the body; confusion or difficulty in talking or understanding speech; trouble seeing in one or both eyes; and difficulty with walking, dizziness, or loss of balance and coordination.

My brother was extremely lucky. He was quickly taken to a hospital unit that specializes in strokes and given life-saving anti-clotting medication in less than 30 minutes, inside the window of when this action can significantly reduce the permanent brain damage caused by a stroke. The medical profession has made great strides in treating strokes even as that term is disappearing from the lexicon to be replaced by the more apt, "brain attacks" which recognizes their similarity to heart attacks.

That early treatment and medicines to increase his blood pressure enabled him to regain feeling and full strength in his hand within 24 hours although he still is experiencing speech and memory problems including word aphasia which are common in stroke patients.

Still, he was very lucky. My sister-in-law believes it was people's prayers and thoughts to God that has greatly helped him in his recovery. By the time I spoke with him over the weekend, he sounded tired but obviously feeling better. He doesn't remember much of what happened just before and during the stroke. He doesn't remember a lot of things including the rules of games he plays with his children. He can't recall names of certain cities but can pick the correct names off of a list.

Currently, he's recovering at home under the care of his family and undergoing physical therapy and tests to determine why a man so young, healthy and with arteries which didn't have an ounce of plaque inside them suffered two embolic strokes a decade apart. So far, the theory is that the problem is cardiac based but more tests have to be done.

My family, which is quite large, was recovering from that and enjoying the good news and the reunion of family members from different places in the world. Then I went to check my email and that was when I found the harassing email written to myself by an address claiming to be myself. The one that apparently originated from the IP address registered to the city of Riverside, according to the email header.

I was shaken by having an email come like that out of the blue and shared it with family members. My mother, who constantly tells me that she wishes I would move out of "that city" took it much better than she took the news articles that were written in the Press Enterprise about the blog investigation nearly two years ago. I've been seriously thinking in the past year of taking her advice and just moving out of this city. There's a lot to like about it, but the abuse, harassment and intimidation just gets old after years and years of it. The movement to change things for the better in this city is up against a much stronger one to leave things in their current status quo position.

But I'm stubborn and I get that from my mother and many community members have asked me to stay here.

It's hard addressing issues in a police department where its own police chief appears micromanaged to the point where it appears he's spending more and more time teaching at local universities, perhaps because it serves as an outlet to get away from it.If that's true, I can't say that I blame him. And ironically, like former Community Police Review Commission Executive Director Pedro Payne, he doesn't appear to make as many public appearances in the communities where his department polices. But if you're an "at will" employee in this city, it doesn't seem like you can do very much.

Then the city manager's office and police unions are battling over the fate of the police department and its employees which spilled out into the public arena of the city council twice in the past year. This mirrors similar battles in the early 1990s between former City Manager John Holmes and the Riverside Police Officers' Association, according to a research paper written by former Urban Institute fellow, David Thatcher.

The last thing you want to see in the 21st century is patterns from the last century repeat themselves.

This city is being torn apart from its inside as multiple investigations including those involving outside agencies and the county grand jury are allegedly being conducted involving various issues in its midst including a huge one inside of of the city's departments. Riverside Renaissance is what the city is fronting as its success story before it's been realized, even as off the dais, city council members are calling each other liars and one quartet is replacing another.

On the dais, they're calling city residents liars and threatening to have the police officers expel them. Out of three ethics complaints filed against city council members since the implementation of that process that was approved by the city's voters in 2004, only one of them has even been accepted for processing.

The attitude about the latest city council elections is that it will put more people on the dais who are "bought and paid for" and that is from people who have been following the political scene in Riverside for many years. The most pessimism appears to be aimed at the councilman who many predict will win the Ward Three runoff in November, William "Rusty" Bailey, in part because of his lack of political experience and the fact that he worked at the same county agency that City Manager Brad Hudson once headed. People are leery of him because several city council members and Mayor Ron Loveridge had endorsed him before he had even filed papers to run for office.

I heard yesterday, that the assistant city manager, Tom DeSantis tried at some point to dismantle the Human Resources Board but that board said no, you can't because we're not under the city manager's office but report to the city council. It's puzzling that a board that's so watered down both in structure and in reality would be threatened with being disbanded, even though it's included in the city's charter. But the city's issues with its workforce are its most contentious they've ever been in recent years and have allegedly included retaliation against city employees who participate in union activities.

It's only natural that those problems would be masked by City Hall by silencing or weakening the canary in that mine, which is the Human Resources Board, which had already had one of its chairs resign in protest. After all, that's what many people think is happening to the CPRC.

The Human Relations Commission used to be umbrellaed under the city manager's office, when it decided to look into the issues affecting city employees including allegations of racism. It asked the city for more information on the city's employees in terms of statistics kept by the city. The city didn't respond directly to that request but soon after, two staff members who worked on the HRC were suddenly reduced to part-time status and reassigned to other departments.

Not long after that, the HRC was moved to Mayor Ron Loveridge's office.

My mother recovered enough after hearing about the harassing email so that she and one of my older sisters wanted to charge down to Riverside and demand that something be done. Her one negative experience with police officers was when she witnessed a fatal car accident involving a police department vehicle while walking the dog and the investigators didn't like her eyewitness account.

I don't think the city's quite ready for my mother. She's pretty formidable when she gets determined and she's from formidable stock. She was a bit taken aback by the mention of her in the email. I haven't told her that earlier on my blogger, individuals had written much crueler things about her simply because she birthed me.

My sister moved thousands of miles away to a new country when she was much younger to marry and raise a family. She was the one who told me to check the headers on the email.

I had expressed my concerns to the city as to why its IP address was on the email header and it has opted to respond by not responding. At least it was in writing.

The best thing to do in cases like this is just to keep doing whatever it is that I've been doing, because as others have reminded me, that if you're eliciting this kind of reaction after writing about issues pertaining to the city of Riverside and law enforcement, then you must be doing something right.

Personally, I think that's a pretty sad commentary. There's good things about Riverside and there are bad things. And one of the bad things is that the city allows its computers and its internet service to be used to harass other people. I call it being harassed with equipment that my sales tax dollars pay to purchase and operate no matter who is doing it and whether or not they actually work for the city.

But the city has produced a wall between me and this harasser and I can't breach it to see who this person is and why was this person apparently allowed to do this on the city's network. And worst of all, whether or not this harasser constitues a threat to my personal safety.

I've probably written enough on this matter. I wouldn't want a department head to say later on that I never let him or her hear the end of it.

On that note, both parties in the ongoing law suit, Ryan Wilson vs the City of Riverside conducted their writ hearing today on whether or not Wilson will be granted an administrative hearing to appeal the sustained finding handed to him by the Community Police Review Commission.

In a nut shell, Wilson's attorney blamed the CPRC report for Wilson's lack of career advancement in the police department. The city said that there had been no punitive actions against Wilson and said it was the media and this blogger's fault.

Wilson's attorney was by far the best orator out of the Riverside Police Officers' Association's law firm so far. He did his best and his verbiage was stellar in word choice, but Holmes still stuck with his tentative ruling and the CPRC's finding stands.

A more detailed posting on this contentious court hearing next time.

An IP address by any other name

No more harassing emails so far from the faux me to the real me.

Some research done on the email headers showed that one of the IP addresses that appeared on it next to a statement that read, "Received from" was 192.248.248.66.

Here's some more technical information on this particular address from an online site that provides information on IP addresses.



Internet Numbers Registry Report for 192.248.248.66

Visit 11,245
OrgName: City of Riverside
OrgID: CITYOF-151
Address: City of Riverside
Address:
Information SystemsAddress: 3900 Main Street
City: Riverside
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 92522
Country:
USNetRange: 192.248.128.0 - 192.248.255.255
CIDR: 192.248.128.0/17
NetName: NETBLK-RIVCTY
NetHandle: NET-192-248-128-0-1
Parent: NET-192-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: NS1.RIVERSIDECA.GOV
NameServer: NS1.PBI.NET
Comment:
RegDate: 1992-11-09
Updated: 2005-02-08R
TechHandle: TT1578-ARINR
TechName: Taylor, Thomas
Rtec Phone: +1-951-826-5505
RTechEmail: tow@riversideca.gov
OrgTechHandle: TT1578-ARINOrg
TechName: Taylor, Thomas Org
TechPhone: +1-951-826-5505Org
TechEmail: tow@riversideca.gov#

ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2007-07-18 19:10#

whois.arin.net



Interesting, indeed. In other words, it's owned, administrated, operated and registered to the city of Riverside. Not just any Riverside, but the one in California.

When I contacted the city for an explanation as to what it means to have an IP address which is registered to it on an email header, the city forwarded my request to Steve Ranecker, Information Officer on "behalf of the city". He was polite, gave me the standard explanation about hows the city is unable to track down computer network use by its employees if they use Yahoo, call for a subpoena(!) and that I should contact Yahoo for assistance.

I never actually asked for any of these things, simply for an explanation
as to why this IP address was listed on the header of a harassment email that someone sent under a Yahoo account that they initiated under my name.

He or the city he represents has yet to answer that single question.


But as far as strawmen arguments go, his wasn't that bad.



Ironically, I would be surprised if it was a city employee. The ones who hate me are probably too smart to do such a stupid thing on a city computer especially because contrary to what Renecker stated, the city last year gave a seminar on exactly how effective it was in terms of identifying its employees who accessed just one single Web site. And the vast majority of the city's work force are professional and very dedicated to serving the public. Many have expressed concern about this situation.

My impression is that whoever wrote the email probably lacks the social maturity, judgment and probably the skills as well to serve as a city employee and likely if applied, would not be hired. My question is that if this is the case, how was this individual able to do possibly through an internet system owned and operated by the city of Riverside. My question is still why is this particular IP address on a header on an email sent specifically to harass me?


Neither he nor anyone else from the city has answered that one question I did ask. I don't suspect that they ever will. I will be asking my elected city government this same question.

Some people have generously sent me referrals to private investigators to help me track down who sent this email. Several people even offered to donate funds to pay for his or her services. My only interest in choosing this option is because there's no way of knowing whether or not this individual is a new harasser on the roster or one of the still unidentified individuals who harassed and stalked me last year on my Web site.

The people who harassed me online last year engaged in what is known as cyber stalking. That's a federal and state crime. I was told by the police department that criminal conduct had occurred on my Web site including violations of PC 422 which is issuing criminal threats. Also, it was possible that violations of the federal laws against cyber stalking had taken place as well.

In addition, an unidentified poster threatened me in July last year with blackmail because they were upset at my site. Even thought the information this person provided was false, the penal code defining felony blackmail states that the person who commits the offense only has to believe that it's true.

I switched comments to moderation and that seemed to discourage a couple but others including one or more who used nicknames continued though less infrequently to send posts that either were harassing or talking about shooting investigations including Brown and especially Joseph Darnell Hill including one who thought learning that one family losing two family members to officer-involved shootings was just hilarious, until I shut down comments in May.

One had IP addresses using PacNet in the Los Angeles County area including the cities of Downey, Rosemead, Monteray Park, Pico Rivera and Brea. This ISP cluster still visits my site at least once daily, usually morning or late night.

One had IP addresses using a Verizon ISP from cities including Pomona, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga and Upland. This ISP cluster has not visited in several months.

Another harasser who wrote comments in September and October used a Road Runner account showing the cities Fontana and San Bernardino. This ISP cluster still visits nearly weekly though there was a spike in visits around the postings on the Kelsy Metzler law suit.

These were individuals who posted after September 2006.

I'm not big on IP numbers, but if you harass, stalk or threaten me, yours will be posted here on this site. Consider this your written notification.






The mayor of Salt Lake City has selected four new commissioners to serve on the beleagured review board which had lost nine of its members, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

Not everyone approved of the mayor's selections or even that he made them at all.


(excerpt)


During an emotional exchange, Saxton admonished the council for making the move, insisting "the board is tainted."

"I have no question about your ability to do the job," she told the appointees. "My problem is to put you into a broken system and expect stellar response is unrealistic and unfair. . . . It's garbage in, garbage out."

Councilman Dave Buhler, who is running for mayor, agreed the board's reputation is in question. But he disagreed with Saxton's approach, saying he
will remain "optimistic."

"I'm hoping you can restore the board's credibility," he said.




Now if they could only restore that of the city and its politicians.

The city of Riverside can relate to this, having lost five of its nine members to resignations and being termed out after the city manager's office apparently decided to as Press Enterprise columnist Dan Bernstein called it, hollow out the Community Police Review Commission.




The Spokane(WA) Review released some interesting news about a report released by the city's attorney about the assault and arrests of activists at a rally.


(excerpt)


In a report delivered Monday to Mayor Dennis Hession, City Attorney Jim
Craven said his review of video shot by a police officer does not
depict events described in police reports written after 17 people were
arrested in the park.

“It does not show an assault on an officer,” Craven wrote. “It R>does not show any obviously criminal behavior on the part of anyone,
other than resisting arrest once the trouble started.”

Craven said the incident would be appropriate for review by an ombudman
or someone else with the responsibility for police oversight. Hession
has said he supports hiring such a person, but must first wait for
negotiations with the police union.

Thanks for those who support this blog

Hi,

I'm the author of "Five Before Midnight" and I appreciate the support that my blog has received from many of those who read it. I've received a lot of positive support for the blog from a variety of individuals and I'm thankful for that.

I enjoy blogging and have though last year I nearly quit because of a vicious round of what the federal and local agencies define as cyberstalking or cyberbullying. Both are violations of federal and state law.

It's actions taken by anonymous individuals with the strict intent of harassing, threatening and intimidating a blogger into silence. Several well-known cases involving female bloggers have come to light including that of Kathy Sierra who shut down her blog because of the harassment. She's hardly the only one.


These actions used by cyberstalkers include the following:

Slander(i.e. if someone says you aren't driving b/c you have too many DUIS which I've had).

Threats including sexual violence.(I had one poster say that I wished I would be handcuffed and raped by police officers. One posting said I should be shot on a list of liberals.)

Posts which make it clear you're under surveillance or they are keeping an eye on you. (this email and several blog postings.)

Porno fantasies(more of these than I can count)

If individuals who engage in this behavior are told to in writing or in person to stop the behavior and they refuse to do so.

[The individual or individuals who did the above in my blog has or have been admonished in writing that the posts or contact is to stop and they disregard it. In August 2006, I posted a written admonition on my site. Unfortunately since he, she or they didn't leave names so it's not clear whether this individual is the same one or a new one. Perusual, no real name or even a fake name was provided. ]

Sending harassing emails,

Trying to impersonate an individual when setting up an email account or Instant Messaging account.



Half of cyberstalkers target people they know. Half don't.






Some say that if you put it out there, you should expect it. But many female bloggers who have been targets of this cowardly behavior didn't blog about topics that were controversial. One of the most vile cases of cyberstalking I've heard of involved a woman who wrote about knitting on her blog. Sierra wrote about computer technology.

Unfortunately, being the author of this site hasn't always been pleasant. I've been the recipient of harassment, slander and threats on my site during most of 2006. It's an unfortunate part of being a blogger, particularly a female blogger who obviously has stepped on the toes of several insecure men and/or women who hate me and my site.

Last night, I received this email from an individual apparently to impersonate myself using my name and choosing an email so similar to my own, Yahoo had to do a domain check to make sure it wasn't a spoof email.

People have asked me why I don't enable comments. It's because even moderating them made me sick to my stomach. Obviously someone believed that using another outlet was necessary to get his, her or its point across.

This is the email, plus header information which indicates the path it traveled through the internet to get from the sender to me.






Jul 2007 18:17:57 -0700
X-Originating-IP: [68.142.236.44]
Return-Path:
Authentication-Results: mta209.mail.re2.yahoo.com from=yahoo.com; domainkeys=pass (ok)
Received: from 68.142.236.44 (HELO n6a.bullet.mail.re3.yahoo.com) (68.142.236.44) by mta209.mail.re2.yahoo.com with SMTP; Tue, 17 Jul 2007 18:17:57 -0700
Received: from [68.142.230.28] by n6.bullet.re3.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 18 Jul 2007 01:16:16 -0000
Received: from [66.196.101.132] by t1.bullet.re2.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 18 Jul 2007 01:16:16 -0000
Received: from [127.0.0.1] by rrr3.mail.re1.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 18 Jul 2007 01:16:16 -0000
X-Yahoo-Newman-Property: ymail-5
X-Yahoo-Newman-Id: 699101.34815.bm@rrr3.mail.re1.yahoo.com
Received: (qmail 28370 invoked by uid 60001); 18 Jul 2007 01:16:15 -0000
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com; h=X-YMail-OSG:Received:Date:From:
Subject:To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:Message-ID; b=xDvCgPvGCzQPgI0QueBRrONM45GLbto29mHtinQt
QprwZ9fytKJavlUlFG20rnc8l3V
/bsgNObLV83LOuSpEpiRlH3jfnYeGtfjIsq1wmc1VizaxpBIu7JSxX9/
fr7wuUapX+Mfkcm1
W24k9g9pHREbWZ0IL+RkKdFMUwNUVLNc=;
X-YMail-OSG: 9LwnKsIVM1nx4o54.BFepMeCOGc08a0t9fSLyN.D3_0X3SBcz
WbBORFxy0nBJLv2l7
MA7MU6EJnwRNUSA2YcoJai68oEjtJqkjc-
Received: from [192.248.248.66] by web45316.mail.sp1.yahoo.com via HTTP; Tue, 17 Jul 2007 18:16:15 PDT
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 18:16:15 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Mary Shelton" Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
Yahoo! DomainKeys has confirmed that this message was sent by yahoo.com. Learn more
Subject: Question
To: [my email]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="0-836160325-1184721375=:27550"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Message-ID: <938671.27550.qm@web45316.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>
Content-Length: 1075

Mary, Mary with shorter (yet still greasy) hair -e.

Why do you hate people so?

Do you truly despise others?

Or, perhaps just your mother?

Or, maybe...just yourself.




Bold, mine.

River City Hall: The meetings

Another pedestrian was killed by a Metrolink train in Ontario on Monday evening. The brief in the Press Enterprise said that the 707 train was delayed and couldn't leave Union Station in Los Angeles, but actually it was only a few minutes late in arriving. A woman there told confused passengers that they might have to wait up to three hours for the train to arrive, but soon after a train arrived on the east side of the bridge and that's the one everyone ended up boarding after initially being told that no, that wasn't the proper train, it was simply a San Bernardino train staying over for the night.

The next day, she had a name, according to this brief posted by the Press Enterprise.



Police said an 80-year-old woman was killed by a Metrolink train in Ontario Monday evening after she tried to run across the train tracks.

Lucita Serrato, 80, of Ontario was hit by the passenger train at the San Antonio Avenue crossing at about 5:10 p.m. Monday, according to a San Bernardino County Coroner’s report.

Witnesses told police the woman was headed south across the tracks when she ducked under a crossing guard rail in an attempt to beat the train, according to the report.

There were no injuries to the more than 300 passengers on the train from Los Angeles to Riverside.

- John Asbury
jasbury@PE.com


Where was she trying to go in such a hurry that she couldn't wait for a five or six car train to pass by? What was waiting on the other side of the tracks? She gambled with her body against the train at the ripe age of 80.


As has been the case too many times, the train won.





One question I'm asked often by people is the following.

Why if using cellphones while driving is dangerous, do you see so many Riverside Police Department officers talking on their phones, while driving the street even through intersections?

After all, a study from the University of Utah stated that using your cell phone while driving, even one that didn't require you to hold it, was as dangerous as driving drunk.

It's probably no joke to Officer Paul Turner. He and the city of Riverside, his employer, are being sued because nearly five years ago, his squad car struck a woman who was walking in a cross-walk, causing her serious injuries which led to the law suit. The city defended his actions by claiming that the woman was crossing against a "don't walk" signal. Of course, that would still mean that Turner had run a red light, even though apparently he wasn't being dispatched to a call and didn't have his sirens and lights on at the time.

The law suit is currently in arbitration but before that, plaintiff Christina Gayler was trying to subpoena Turner's cell phone records to determine whether or not he had been talking on his personal cell phone when he drove into her. The city claimed that was a violation of his privacy and might jeopardize the integrity of any investigations he may have been working on at the time.

But the subpoena request revisited the issue of mixing cell phones with driving, an action which will be illegal by July 2008 in the state of California.

If Turner had been using his cell phone at the time he hit Gayler, he wouldn't have been the only officer using one while driving. And it's true, there are a lot of police officers driving in squad cars using cell phones in Riverside.

Some say that police officers use cell phones for professional purposes to communicate with people who have called for assistance. But is this means of communication safe for them while they are on the road? Is it safe for the motorists and pedestrians around them? Is there a safer way to communicate what is necessary and any technology which will facilitate this process?

According to the FBI, the second highest number of police officers were killed in vehicle accidents on the job in its preliminary release of 2006 statistics. That number equals the ranking for the statistics compiled during the last century when more and more deaths on the job were due to accidents including those involving automobiles and motorcycles. And traffic deaths and injuries in this city involving motorists and pedestrians are indeed very high.

In contrast, the department's traffic division is quite small with barely over a dozen officers most of them on motorcycles in a city that's size and population will grow tremendously in the next few years. And the city's streets will grow much more congested than they are already.

Construction projects including yet another one on Alessandro Blvd will make the situation more difficult, for traffic officers and for vehicle safety.

The traffic division does run a pretty good education program considering its entirety is financed with grant funding. One informative presentation that is especially worth seeing and hearing is Sgt. Skip Showwater's presentation on street racing, a practice which has killed and maimed quite a few of Riverside's younger people. Too many teenagers and even young adults believe they are immortal and that just isn't so.

On vehicle accidents involving its officers, the city of Riverside has paid out settlements in several cases involving onduty car accidents by police officers in recent years as it had in the 1990s.

My own close call as a pedestrian came in a major intersection when I was crossing on a "walk" signal and a male officer was turning right in a second lane on that street. He narrowly missed me, but he saw me. He just looked and mouthed the two words that every pedestrian can read without hearing, which are "oh fuck".

And yes, he was on his cell phone at the time.






Speaking of public safety, that city committee met at City Hall and heard among other things a presentation on the police department's mental health training by Capt. Mike Blakely. The training which began its second session this week has been going well, he said.

In attendance was an interesting combination of city employees considering the dynamics which have played themselves out at City Hall in the past year. From the police department, there was Deputy Chief Dave Dominguez and Lt. Mike Perea, who works in the personnel and training division currently headed by Blakely.

City Manager Brad Hudson and Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis also attended and peppered Blakeley with questions on the training and Blakely hit them back with answers. DeSantis was still into his silent treatment kick but I can't say I miss his voice and having to check out the veracity of every thing he says.

The current class of officers in the mental health training numbers 33 and the current curriculum takes about 30 hours to complete. Feedback received from the first round of officers including some handpicked to take the course because of the honest assessment they would provide, resulted in an expansion of a dialogue section between officers and people with mental illnesses who had contacts with the police.

The entire patrol division as well as other officers will receive this training within the next 18 months. Joining them will be many civilian employees as well who interact with the public either through profressional contacts or as dispatchers.

Next up is forming crisis intervention teams but who will serve on them has yet to be decided. Also participating in the creation and implementation of this mental health training has been the County of Riverside, the Riverside Fire Department and American Medical Response, an ambulance service.


Socorro Huerta, who is the program coordinator for the city's gang intervention and prevention program known as Project Bridge gave a presentation on PowerPoint about the work that she and others have done to keep the program viable and operating at its maximum potential.

No one said much but Councilman Steve Adams started acting nostalgic about the many years he spent working as a Riverside Police Department officer in this city before the untimely injury which was suffered onduty or in an intramural football game depending on who you talk to, led to his retirement in the 1990s.

Apparently, he spent 15 years "working with gangs" and talked about how much the businesses and residents disliked the clients of Project Bridge and the way to fix that was to have the kids in the program "get off their lazy butts" and clean up "the mess they made". Then he talked about all the work he with a little help of course from City Attorney Gregory Priamos have done addressing this serious problem. It is still an election year after all, and Adams is hanging on to about one-third of his ward's votes with a runoff with former mayor, Terry Frizzel in his future.

Huerta said that only few of the people in the program were "taggers" who she said are a different group from those in her program and are the ones doing most of the graffiti in the city. Adams snorted and the gold chain on his chest shook and he continued on with his election year performance about "them" even as he wasn't sure who "them" really was.

Isn't it interesting how every issue is suddenly important during an odd-numbered year? The number of officers added to the police department is of grave importance even as increasing the number of fire stations and upgrading public utilities facilities. But if anyone asks for these things in even-numbered years, those people are seen as being unreasonable.

All of a sudden, you can't have too many parks in a city which boasts less park space per capita than the state's average.

Anyway, next year after the elections are finally done and decided, life will go back to normal and the development firms will be running the city again.

Oh wait, next year is the mayoral race. Cool!





Hudson said that the police department will be presenting its next audit by consultant Joe Brann as well as its update on its implementation on the Strategic Plan some time in August. I had sent emails to the city council members on this issue last week and Councilman Ed Adkison forwarded his concerns about it to Hudson who said he met with Brann last Friday.

After all, the first audit showed problems in the police department that emerged at its management level not long after its consent decree with the State of California dissolved in March 2006. The city council had enthusiastically averred to continue with a program to oversee the plan but it kind of went by the wayside for six months because the city council forgot the promises it made about 10 minutes after making them.

It's just too bad that you can't put one of those development project signs in front of the police department and said, "Project: Strategic Plan" starring [insert city manager's office and city council] in big print and [insert police department management] in smaller print, [insert rank and file] in even smaller print and finally, [insert the community] in the smallest print of all.

Oh well, who said big was better? But if a sign like this was erected at all the police facilities, maybe the city council would care to hear updates about it as much as they do for development projects. Maybe they would believe that the health and continued growth and reform of the police department matters too.

If only to show that the newer city government has learned from its predecessors the tried and true adage: Pay a little now or pay a lot more later. Some lessons are too costly to repeat.

Not all was bad in the audit as the department did show signs of improving in the last few months covered in its last audit. But it's important to remain engaged so that improvement can continue. The police department's future must be internally driven and the city and community must remain involved. That's the only way it can ultimately succeed.

As always, what is past is prologue.

If you want to read the Strategic Plan, it's here. For those who don't know, it's a blue print for the implementation of goals and objectives from 2004-2009 that was mandated by former State Attorney General Bill Lockyer which is part of the stipulated judgment.

Hiding in Plain Sight: A different form of gender harassment

In Investigating Sexual Harassment in Law Enforcement written by Penny Harrington and Kim Lonsway, there's a discussion of sexist attitudes that unfortunately still exist in many police agencies.

Here's a list from the book of some of the more common statements made by male officers who are either reluctant to work with women in law enforcement or hostile to it. They are what are known as harassment comments that are not specifically forms of sexual harassment. Several of these comments are illegal in the workplace, according to state law if they contribute to a hostile work environment or are used to prevent female law enforcement officers from having equal access to opportunities in the agencies. Believing in stereotypes itself is not illegal, according to the book, but behaviors that manifest them are.



(excerpt)



"I don't want to work with a woman as a partner."

"Women can't work in SWAT(Special Weapons and Tactics)."

"I don't want women backing me up in a dangerous situation."

"I won't work for a female supervisor."

"She won't be able to hold her own in a fight."

"I won't work with her because she does not have good survival skills."

"Women should be protected; that's why they shouldn't be police officers."

"I would rather work with lesbians; at least they can fight."





The key words in these statements are apparently "women" and "shouldn't", "can't" and "don't". All negatives to match the negative views about women in law enforcement.


Given how insulated most law enforcement agencies, it's difficult or impossible for those outside of it to know when comments like these ones are being made in most cases. One exception is when the officers make these types of comments in public venues. And several years ago, one male Riverside Police Department sergeant did just that at of all places a recruitment fair at Fairmount Park.

He was giving a presentation on the department's SWAT/Metro team and a female onlooker asked him if there were any female members of the SWAT Team. The sergeant said, no there were not because they weren't physically strong enough to be on the SWAT Team. Then he mentioned that "animal" of a female deputy who served in the SWAT Team of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

Interestingly, that was a question asked at Yahoo by an individual, whether women could serve on SWAT Teams. Still, the SWAT Team has been described as the last bastion for male officers but interestingly enough, there are other answers out there being given.

Law and Order Magazine stated that yes, there were women on SWAT Teams. Here are several of them.


(excerpt)


A police officer at the age of 27, Janice Easterling of the Dallas Police Department, now a lieutenant, joined the SWAT team in 1988. "There weren't many women," she stated. "I was motivated by the challenge." Attending college on a volleyball scholarship, Easterling liked the idea of working out and was not intimidated by the physical challenges.

"Most of the men had a positive attitude, but there were a few on the tactical side who didn't want me there," Easterling said. Initially, some subtle hints suggested she was not entirely welcome. During MP5 training the men just stood and watched. Curiosity was a factor, but Easterling, whose sister is on a Georgia SWAT team, just showed them she could do the job. Eventually promoted, she left after two years, returning in 1994 as a sergeant when there was an opening. "They never had a female sergeant before or since," she said.

Lieutenant Denice Faxton of the Tippecanoe Sheriffs Department in north central Indiana made the SWAT team in 1991. The only woman, she was treated equally and never contended with a negative attitude from her male coworkers. Faxton also went through a pregnancy while on the team. Advancing through the patrol ranks, she was, until two weeks ago, the only female in the entire department, which covers 500 square miles.

"I had excellent family support. My parents and husband, an expolice officer, helped out, especially when the calls came at one or two in the morning," says Faxton. One of the biggest challenges for her was finding a place in the middle of nowhere to change clothes. The team is parttime and gear must always be in the car.

Sergeant Cynthia Howard of the Annapolis, MD, Police Department, spent two years weight lifting, running and improving her shooting as a patrol officer before trying out for the SWAT team in 1991. "It started out almost as a joke. I found out there had never been a woman on the team and decided I could do it," says the 5'4", 125pound African American. Howard has nothing but praise for the men, particularly then Sergeant Cross, who mentored her, helping improve her skills. She is now one of two sergeants on the 15 officer team. The other is male.



It's common to see how sexist comments may also be homophobic comments in law enforcement agencies especially comments that demean lesbians or stereotype them as female men like the statement above. They are meant to say as much about a woman's gender as her sexual orientation by placing women into "butch" and "feminine" categories. Often, male officers call female officers "butch" or "lesbians" because they figure that women, according to their definition which might be based on assigned gender roles for women, couldn't be in law enforcement unless they were trying to be men. Or they sexually propositioned them and were rejected and it's one reason they use to save face to mask their own gender insecurities.

The law suit filed by former Sgt. Christine Keers listed examples of comments where officers made references to her and other female officers as being lesbians especially if they were assigned to work together. If Keers rejected any sexual overtures by male police officers, she was on the receiving end of comments that she was a lesbian.

The comments about female officers threatening the safety of their male partners or other male officers appears to be one that is used as a reason to exclude them from the profession. The closest experience I ever had with this particular line of reasoning was in 2005 when an unknown individual stated in a comment left on the blog that I was pushing Chief Russ Leach to go out and kidnap women to work as female officers and putting them and the other officers in terrible danger. That was before this anonymous individual stated that the department was assigning women to drive around answering "safe calls" while the men were out there chasing gang members and arresting or smacking down parolees. If women could do this, then they could hang with the men.

Harrington and Lonsway list other excuses used by male officers to harass female officers.


(excerpt)



"She is too aggressive."

"She thinks she knows everything."

She likes to get all the attention. She's a showoff."




It's not too difficult to figure out why statements like these by male police officers throw up red flags just by reading them. Many women have been hearing these excuses since they first started school and hoped that as childhood passed, statements like these would as well. It's interesting how attitudes that are seen in high school are also seen in the work place of law enforcement agencies. It's almost like you expect the male officers who harass women to say she's got cooties and go running around the room.

The first comment seems to imply that she's too masculine, meaning that she exhibits a quality most men seem to view as being particular to their gender and that's aggressiveness. Or that the male officer comes from a familial background which enforced rigid gender stereotypes and thus has difficulty viewing female police officers as equals to their male counterparts. The flip side is that male officers complain when a female officer is not aggressive enough, meaning that she's too slow or doesn't have guts. In fact, some experts in policing and gender consider the words, "she is too slow" to be code for the words, she doesn't fit in the police culture. Often it's how these evaluations of female officers are handled by supervisors especially if the same male officer(s) keep churning them out.

The second, sounds like something a little boy of about elementary school age would pout and say after a woman volunteered information that they didn't know or did a task better than the men did. These male officers offset the implosion going inside their thought processes and save face, by using the tried and true playground insult, being this person is a know-it-all.

The third, appears to be similar to the second statement in that a male officer is feeling insecure because a female officer knew or did something better than he could. Rather than admit that his assessment of women as a gender being unsuited for law enforcement, it's far easier to use yet another playground insult, she's a show-off.


And the number one excuse used in Harrington and Lonsway's book, is that there's a personality clash. Sometimes there are personality clashes in the social arena or the work place, but if individuals in supervisory positions start seeing one particular male officer having a "personality clash" with different female officers, it's time to call it something else. Of course, if he has a "personality clash" with one female officer who files a complaint, then that should be taken seriously by whoever is assigned to investigate the harassment complaint. That's of course more useful in cases where simply filing a complaint of sexual discrimination and/or harassed doesn't get a female officer bounced out of or run out of the involved agency.



The stories by female law enforcement officers of their experiences with sexual discrimination, harassment and retaliation in the work place can be found everywhere.


Hal Brown, a licensed social worker wrote a paper titled The Trials, Tribulations, and Triumphs of the "Lady Cop": Surviving in, and Changing, The Macho Copshop, and How to Cope with Your Police Stress but what was interesting was the responses that Brown's paper received from female law enforcement officers here.

Here's one example on his site.


(excerpt)



"You wanted to know what it's like to be a female officer. I wish I knew where to begin. I've been a cop for 8 years. I'm accepted as "one of the guys", this meaning they can be crude and say what they want in front of me. But when it comes down to being invited out for a beer, or to watch a game at another cop's house, or being called on the radio with a question, I'm not one of the guys. I'm invisible. I've earned their respect over the years, to a certain degree. Yet I get the feeling a rookie is viewed s more competent than myself. Sure, the guys are protective...I really don't mind. In fact I find it comforting to know that I'll always have backup.

But the world of policing is very different for a woman than a man. Women don't get the respect (fear) on the street that men do. Our strength is our ability to communicate and our ability to read a situation, thus avoiding use of force. There are those officers, most in supervisory positions now, that don't think a woman should be an officer. I've been harassed and nit-picked. I have even been criticized in an evaluation for not "looking good" after a midnight shift.

Sure, a few officers have crossed the line with sexual comments directed at me, but female cops can't say anything. If we do, forget the job. I I'll be made so miserable I'd have to leave. There's so much involved."





Brown, who once was a reserve officer gave female officers some advice. Interestingly enough, Brown uses the high school analogy in his analysis of the police culture's attitudes towards female officers and other women as well.


(excerpt)



Going along to get along

All too frequently, women who become police officers find that to get along they have be "one of the guys", and to talk and behave in ways at best they find a strain and at worst, repulsive. In some departments there is what has been called a locker room mentality among the male officers. By this is meant a boys junior high school gym locker room. Can you imagine as a junior high school girl, feeling comfortable in the boys locker room? I don't mean to indict all police department, of course. Many chiefs across the country hire personnel who are mature and have successfully grown out of their adolescent preoccupation with sex and their tendency to treat women as objects.

Can you be too smart?

Female officers also may find that they have more education, or unlike many of their male colleagues actually paid attention, studied and did their own homework while in school. The may not be "street smart" as rookies the way male officers mean the term,; but they are often more wise to the ways of the world. The woman who dares to come across as too smart, however, is likely to be resented. So if you have your eye on promotions, you have to be very careful how you go about proving yourself. Otherwise, even when to come out number one on the sergeant exam and get those stripes, you will be resented by your subordinates.


According to her law suit, Keers discovered that when she was promoted several times albeit with great difficulty under two separate police chiefs in the department. Both Linford "Sonny" Richardson and Ken Fortier told her to be patient, as they promoted male officers with less qualifications, times and greater disciplinary records ahead of her, as if it were owed them not for what they had done on the job but their gender.

Other officers joked when Keers was promoted that she was doing the boss, giving him oral sex to get her promotions. Even when Keers tried to share knowledge about how the military tied certain knots with rope, officers said she was doing the entire U.S. Navy.


Sexist images in policing are here and here. Depictions like this are stereotypical of women in policing that were published as calendars in the 1970s and 1980s. They help feed these behaviors in the workplace even as they are forms of their expression.


The International Association of Women Police offers resources at its Web site including how to file a sexual discrimination and/or harassment complaint and how to find legal assistance.

Here's an interesting blog, P.C. Bloggs, by a female police officer from Great Britain who recently took a look at the past and how much harder she had to work each day to prove herself to the male officers in her agency.


But first here's the introduction to her blog.


(excerpt)


The police: upholding the law, protecting the weak and innocent, bringing the guilty to justice... or just a chaotic bunch of nincompoops? This blog makes no attempt to decide, but read on and maybe you can. The material in this blog in no way reflects official policy or opinion of any police force, it does however represent the official opinion of one very hacked off policewoman. Yes, I did say WOMAN.


Here's her republishing of an older blog entry.


(excerpt)



"21st Century Newsflash - Women achieve EQUALITY:

As I seem to be the only female police blogger out here at the moment (please let me know if I am wrong)*, I thought I should really talk about life as a WOMAN POLICE OFFICER.



To begin, I did some RESEARCH. You can see some of it here, here, here and here (forces chosen from a spread of the country and not very enlightening, but that is all they offer).

I am one of two female officers on my shift of ten (when full strength). It's great being a woman in the police nowadays. In case you were unaware, 21st century women are EQUAL to men. It's taken us a few millennia to catch up, but at last we've done it and the view from up top is pretty fab. I am now permitted to be crewed with another female, which makes for lots of girly chatting. I am also permitted to be single-crewed, which gives me lots of chances to fight men and show how EQUAL I am. For the first time, not all female police officers are lesbians, so that makes for a much happier atmosphere of flirting and inter-colleague affairs, rather than all the nasty insults about "dykes", which are now just reserved for those women officers with short hair.









Who polices the police?

That's a question asked by Eric Hartley of the Capitol Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland. His answer for that city is, no one. And like in most cities and counties, this question is sparked by a series of incidents, which most often, are fatal encounters that individuals have with police officers.

Often with the same police officers who were called to help them particularly in incidents involving the mentally ill.

Hartley starts his column on that note.



(excerpt)



Whenever the police do something wrong or controversial, we're told, in essence: "Trust us."

We heard it when county police officers shot and killed an unarmed naked man in 2005 and a scissor-wielding teenager last year. And we're hearing it again in the wake of the Annapolis police raid last month on the wrong apartment.

As always, police promised a thorough investigation, punishment of any wrongdoing and changes in policies so mistakes aren't repeated.

But "trust us" just isn't good enough. It's time for Annapolis and the county to join a growing number of communities across the nation with some form of civilian oversight of police.




And so it begins.

The discussion taking place in yet another city about creating and implementing a form of civilian review over its police agency. There were dozens and soon to be, hundreds of cities and towns like Annapolis in this country. And the same police agencies which resist any form of outside oversight that are bringing these police commissions, independent auditors and civilian review boards to their jurisdictions just as surely as they bring on the consent decrees, also courtesy of outside agencies.

Hartley also discusses the secrecy that surrounds police investigations of their own employees and how more transparency is needed.


(excerpt)


It's a perfect illustration of the problem: Police promise openness, but in the end the public rarely gets the full story. Independent oversight is far from a panacea, but done right, it can bring the truth out of the shadows.

"We provide a certain level of transparency in what is going on," said Richard Rosenthal, the independent monitor of the Denver police and sheriff's departments. But in places without such oversight, he said: "The department might be doing a good job policing itself, but it's so cloaked in confidentiality and secrecy that no one actually knows or believes it."


And fewer people trust it.





In Des Moines, Iowa, the push for a civilian review board there came up in a discussion on the new chief of its police department, Judy Bradshaw. The discussion took place on a forum run by the Des Moines Register.


(excerpt)


A police chief that is disliked by the community is a sure recipe for confrontations (which Bradshaw has had many) and an adversarial relationship with those she is supposed to serve.

Oh, wait a minute, this is Des Moines where what citizens want means nothing. If the city cared they would hear the voices that have said we want a civilian review board for YEARS!!! (Something Bradshaw vehemently resists.)




Two people supported the board. One opposed it, calling it a "panel of do-gooders". Prediction? Civilian review will be coming to Des Moines, but not without some resistance.






A report released on the San Francisco Police Department stated that too many sworn officers were doing desk jobs, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The problem which mirrors one in the police department in Los Angeles has aggravated already existing staffing shortages in the department yet the county that oversees the SFPD seems reluctant to hire more civilians to do these jobs instead.

The use of officers in these positions has also driven up overtime expenses, according to the report that was submitted by the San Francisco County Grand Jury.


(excerpt)



Currently, there are 1,879 sworn officers on full duty, the report stated, and the department has been scrambling to add more academy classes so the shortfall doesn't grow. Most academy classes of 50 recruits average 30 actual graduates.

"San Francisco may soon face a critical shortage of sworn officers, as it is currently understaffed and has a significant number of officers who become eligible for retirement in the next few years," the report said.

The mayor's office, the report said, was less open to the idea than police officials.

"(Officials at) the office of the mayor ... (stated) that using civilians in desk jobs would be impractical; if the city hired more civilians it would still need to have the agreed number of officers, and 'going to the mayor for an increase in full-time equivalent employees is not likely to fly,'" it stated.



San Francisco's shortage of police officers is similar to that faced by many large cities including Los Angeles which struggles to fill its classes while it's issuing mandatory retirements to officers and New York City which is losing officers because it offers salaries considerably lower than agencies in update New York where over 20,000 officer candidates compete for a few open slots annually.

Riverside has an officer shortage as well, even with about 40 positions created in the past two years. The city's growth both in acreage through annexations and population through annexations and migration will more than match that increase in positions in less than five years. If the city doesn't increase positions annually to meet or even anticipate the population growth, then it will have serious problems in the future. I've asked city officials to read the writ of mandamus in that document and count how many allegations made by the State of California's attorney that the department had inadequate staffing to perform its daily operations, to the extent that the department habitually violated both the state's Constitution and legal codes.

The writ is included in the Riverside County Superior Court case, The People of the State of California v the City of Riverside.

In addition like most police departments facing mandated reform by an outside agency, Riverside's police department had an exodus of retirements, both voluntary and encouraged, and other departures. It lost about 80% of its patrol division in several years and nearly faced resignations by entire divisions including the SWAT division and the Field Training Officers' Team, according to a report submitted by the Riverside County Grand Jury in 2000.

The department filled most of the vacancies in its patrol division but consequently, these actions of replacing the old who had departed with the new who had just arrived resulted in a very young force where the average officer was 24-years-old and had 2 1/2 years work experience.

In contrast, a number of civilian positions in the police department were frozen earlier this year after employees departed, which has caused a drop of performance in several customer areas including taking police reports by telephone. Not sure where the money that was supposed to be spent on the replacements went, but it's not difficult to guess where it possibly has been used instead.

But if you increase officer positions to match population growth in a city, it is important to increase the civilian positions as well which support those officers.


One area of training which Riverside's police department has implemented during the past year was in the area of crisis intervention for the mentally ill. Last autumn, the city council's eyes glazed over when this issue was brought before them, except for Councilman Andrew Melendrez who not only expressed an interest in the training, but brought the issue to the public safety committee which he chairs.

Capt. Mike Blakely who heads the department's personnel and training division has been giving regular updates to the committee on the progress of this training.

Last week, I ran into Blakely and he said that the first training classes for police officers in mental health training began at the end of May. Officers were picked for the initial training who the department believed would provide an honest assessment of the training's positives and its shortcomings. And apparently, that's what they did.

The curriculum has been shortened from 40 hours to 30, with a reduction in time spent lecturing on medicines used by those who have mentally illness. Blakely said that the course material provided by the medical experts was too detailed for police officers.

Areas of the training which received much higher marks from the officers was a tour of the county mental health facility where police officers usually bring in people who are mentally ill for a psychiatric evaluation. Also scoring high was a panel of those who were mentally ill including people who had contacts with police officers. The department is planning to expand that session, said Blakely.





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