The Road to Micromanagement Is Filled with...Intentions

*****UPDATE*****

Reports of City Manager Brad Hudson's city car allegedly being stored in one of the city's corporate yard with damage to it after reports of vehicle crash. If this is the case, was Hudson tested for drugs and alcohol intoxication pursuant to city policy and was a report taken of an accident?








[Mayor Pro Tem Steve Adams settles in the Big Chair after Mayor Ron Loveridge again misses a day of city council meetings. Given that the countdown has already begun for Election 2011, Adams has softened his demeanor at meetings in preparation for his third run. But it's going to take much more than grasping simple dais etiquette to get him reelected. ]





[Riverside City Manager Brad Hudson tries to sell a car to residents from the Overlook Parkway area which though included in a long-term strategic plan for further development and neighborhood disruption was apparently not included in an ambiguously written agenda item for the afternoon session of the City Council. Hudson wears many different hats, which include according to many, that of police chief.]





[Some of the players in the House That City Hall Built are discussing of all things, the handling of a complaint filed through the ethics complaint process. Only those arbitrating the complaint were the same individuals who belonged to the subcommittee it was filed against. ]






Some of these individuals are also cast members of a theatrical production currently in research, titled, RPD: The House That City Hall Built which will be sure to come to a venue soon. So you'll be reading a lot more about them and their fellow cast mates and the house that they built out of cards. But alas, this isn't a fairy tale and it's not going to be a very happy journey through the back door politics of Riverside. No need for a Play Bill because most of the characters in this sad tale will be familiar to most readers here.

The RPD Updates on the Strategic Plan

With all the uproar that's been going on with the Riverside Police Department, it's pretty easy to lose track with the fact that the department's been working on its next five year Strategic Plan which has been moving forward in a manner of speaking even with all the turmoil in the department. After all, the chief's wrestled with City Hall over the creation of the plan through quite a bit of last year and he's not around anymore, having slipped off into retirement and having just completed his 15 days of home detention. The acting police chief, John DeLaRosa hasn't been as visible since the release of cell phone records implicating his work phone in the controversial handling of former Riverside Police Chief Russ Leach's traffic stop. The remaining deputy chief, Pete Esquivel is abruptly retiring after 30 years not long after Personnel Capt. Mike Blakely allegedly had Internal Affairs (which is under his umbrella) investigating people at the mid-level and higher and has been busy doing his thing. Is this the first chapter of what could turn out to be the RPD's own version of Survivor Island? It's still too early to tell.

But anyway, there's still quite a few people hanging around, enough to talk about the department's Strategic Plan.

The department provided an update to its ongoing process of creating the next five-year Strategic Plan to the Public Safety Committee. Chair Chris MacArthur and members Nancy Hart and Andrew Melendrez listened and asked questions during and after the presentation by a clearly energized Blakely and Sgt. Jaybee Brennan, who is on the Audit and Compliance Bureau. Blakely passed on his apologies that DeLaRosa couldn't attend the meeting but said that DeLaRosa had been busy supporting the department's Baker to Las Vegas relay team where the department exceeded its own goals in the final results.

They provided information on the results of the online survey that was conducted several months ago as well as community forums and meetings and said that the information they received helped them formulate the core values and key components of what when completed, will serve as the blueprint of policing followed by the employees of the department until 2015. They had studied the old plan mandated through the stipulated judgment and looked for its strengths and weaknesses and also looked at other department's plans where they discovered that they had borrowed from Riverside's original plan.

The survey results showed a few things.

97.3% of the respondents worked and/or lived in the city

87.3% thought Strategic Plan was necessary.

74% thought the department was good or excellent.

16.5% thought it was adequate

7.3% thought it as poor.

88% of respondents thought officer behavior was good, very good or excellent

12% thought the conduct of officers was fair or poor.



Top three priorities: Patrol, Calls for Services and Criminal Investigation.


The Strategic Plan will be coming back in a finalized form to the Public Safety Committee and then if approved, will be going before the complete City Council. The new chief whoever he or she might be will have a chance to provide some statements in the plan to give him or her "ownership" over it. As much as any police chief under City Manager Brad Hudson can have ownership of anything. It was very interesting to see Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis say anything favorable about the Strategic Plan because the city manager's office has never been a huge fan of it or its predecessor at least not behind the scenes. Because a strategic plan that was created before they got there could be viewed as crimping their actions at running the police department. This time around, the process will lie in their hands, even after it is completed by the police department at some later date.

After the city had dissolved its first stipulated judgment with the State Attorney General's office, the city council had held a workshop in March 2006 to come up with a strategy to continue the implementation of the original five-year plan which sunset last December. It didn't take long during the long hot summer of 2006 for Hudson to attempt to derail the city council's vote by nearly "failing" to get a contract with a police practices consultant. Earlier last autumn, Hudson and DeSantis had apparently blocked the police department from moving forward with plans to create and implement this latest strategic plan and especially to receive public input from city residents for it. It was only when two city council members began asking questions about the status of the plan, that it moved forward. So flash forward months later and it's just fascinating watching people like Hudson and DeSantis now enthusing about it. If there were enough city council members including on the Public Safety Committee even paying attention to what their city manager was doing, they might actually realize what had been going on but since they've handed off the keys of the city including most of its financial accountability mechanisms to the city manager's office, they've been left in the dark by choice.

It remains to be seen how the strategic plan will be enforced, given that many components of the first Strategic Plan aren't in effect or in place and quite a few of them were casualties of budget cuts. The department itself has seen its ranks get depleted and its vacancy rate currently stands at around 10%. There's been a thinning of the ranks at the top of the command structure and the vacancy rate of lieutenants is about 33%. Both labor unions in the sworn side of the police department support filling at least some of the vacancies at the supervisory levels but City Hall said no.

Blakely, who lost his personnel lieutenant, Gary Leach to the field operations division addressed the department's vacancies during the meeting by saying that he was fully confident that the department should be providing the services as well as it had when fully staffed and that vacancies needed to be "shared" which essentially means that filling one rank exclusively might deplete another. Which is true and something that needs to be considered but it's interesting how there's a long discussion during the meeting on the importance of adequate and accountable management and supervision and then later comments on well, we're able to perform our services even with big chunks of both missing. Even though quite a few people are noticing that contacting anyone in the police department or just trying to find anyone in "command" is very difficult these days because people aren't quite sure who's in command and because the chain of command at the top has been somewhat volatile in recent weeks. The comments and the actions just don't see to really go together, sending a message which is very mixed.

Councilwoman Nancy Hart bristled somewhat that the vacancy issue would even be addressed. She said the city council was kept abreast of every single vacancy in the department and whether it was "critical" or not and that hopefully some day some of those positions might be refilled. That's good to know that she and other dais mates are fully aware of the vacancy rates and can therefore be more readily held responsible for the consequences of maintaining staffing vacancies if anything does happen as a result. Because they are fully informed and on top of the situation as Hart said at the Public Safety Committee meeting.

Blakely and DeSantis threw off some interesting body language during some comments in the meeting about the department recently promoting its first female supervisor in nearly five years. DeSantis leaned back in his chair and seemed a bit petulant while Blakely emitted a sigh. DeSantis behavior is really not that surprising if you look back at his somewhat less than stellar history when it comes first, to inserting himself in the promotional process upon direction by Hudson and second, to his own dubious record of involvement in the promotion of higher ranking female officers.


Blakely can’t be blamed for looking less than thrilled at the mention of it taking so long to promote a female supervisor, as the person in charge of the personnel division. And given the current situation at the level of middle management and supervision, it puts the department in an interesting position given that the promotional ranks most impacted, have been those of sergeant and lieutenant and for both of those ranks, there are women and African-American men in the top positions on thosepromotional lists.


This situation weakens the oft tossed out argument by the department that people in neither groups are getting promoted in supervision due to "low numbers". But then the promotional processes involving both ranks were changed in the past several years in order to accommodate the promotions of individuals from anywhere on the list that those in charge of promoting chose to pick them. This practice increases the necessity of lobbying those engaged in making the promotional decisions for consideration when promotion times roll around, to make yourself stand out as a candidate because rankings on lists don't appear to serve that role. Testing near or at the top of the list for sergeant or lieutenant is no guarantee that you'll be promoted even if tons of vacancies open up to be filled. That increases the power of the individual or individuals who actually make the promotional decisions.

It also makes it much more likely that highly motivated candidates anywhere on the list will try to present their cases for being promoted to those they perceive or have been told are responsible for making promotional decisions. It also means that you're not safely promoted until you've been pinned with your new rank, because any time up to that point, another candidate can engage in a strategy which will pull the rug right out from under you. Promotional decisions can and have changed literally in the 11th hour and the current system of promotion kind of makes a situation like that inevitable at some point. But the impact of the this system involving the promotional process of the police department has clearly been felt and has reverberated both up and down the ladder and even into City Hall. It's also helped shape the command staff currently in place.

After all, being at the top of the list means that your work has just begun. And that's actually where it might end, if it comes down to whose "team" you're playing for, which is what a promotional system like the one in place encourages, and in Riverside, it's complicated even further by the many hands involved in the promotional process of the police department.


For example, the last two promotions for lieutenant, one that took place in July 2008 and the other more recently, the individuals who were promoted, Leon Phillips and Andy Flores apparently ranked #11 and #6 respectively on their lists. Phillips is a much more familiar name to most people now than that of Flores because of his involvement in the Leach traffic stop as the watch commander on duty during that shift.

The captains' positions are more firmly entrenched in management and the promotional processes at this rank had already been changed before the department had changed those at the lower ranks to more closely adhere to the informal system being used to promote the department's captains and above. By thrusting much more power through changing the rules on those making the promotional decisions, that also changed the roster of people who would be making those decisions either individually or in tandem with others. After all, those who promote gained more power under the new system and who in the vicinity wouldn't want to get their hands on that? As it turned out, quite a few people did.

Now this type of system clearly is fraught with problems and so much potential for problems and even corruption. What else can be expected of a system where promotions aren't the outcome of a process of testing and being listed but by using other forms of negotiation? And with the depletion of the ranks at top already starting in part because the house that's been built through this process has been shaken to its foundation, it's going to be interesting to see whether these routines for promoting at the mid and upper levels of the department will be part of the pattern and practice even when a new police chief arrives to take the helm of the department. How will the new chief promote, and more importantly how much freedom will he or she be given to promote including at the top level of management?

In upper management, the departures appear to have begun with the announced retirement of Deputy Chief Pete Esquivel and could continue if others at or near that level follow suit especially individuals at or close to retirement age. It's not really clear who's going to go and who's going to stay. Speculation says that DeLaRosa's days are numbered although he's apparently got no plans to make it easy for those who wish he'd walk away. But even as City Hall appears to act as if there's not at the very least confusion at the top, many community leaders and residents have picked up on the obvious difference between the police department before Feb. 8 and the one that's being reshaped as a result.

And that speaks to the confusion that city residents including community leaders are experiencing with trying to figure out who to contact in the police department near or at the top of its leadership. There does seem to be a lot of confusion out there about who is in charge of the department. And with City Hall freezing the newly vacated lieutenant positions by calling them “unpaid” (like the deputy chief position vacated by Dave Dominguez’ retirement), some people have been scratching their heads even as people like Hart and Blakely assure everyone that the department’s handling its staffing shortages. But as the vacancies increase as do the freezes, concern has been growing outside of the sphere of city government that the department and the city is beginning to reap the consequences of how the department's been handled the past five years since Hudson and DeSantis came to town. Since elected officials decided to involve themselves in ways inappropriate with the police department's operations.

The police department’s current lieutenant’s list as stated earlier is in a very interesting place, though one that might unsettle some individuals both at the top of the command inside the police department and inside City Hall. For one thing, white male officers don’t dominate the top of it. And some of the candidates who are most favored by Blakely apparently finished near the bottom of the current list. So the decision not to fill the 33% lieutenant’s vacancy which given the exodus that might be starting higher up in the department’s infrastructure takes on different overtones.



1) White Female

2) White Male

3) White Female

4) Black Male

5) White Female

6-13) White male



But with the lieutenant positions being frozen for the unforeseen future, it's not clear how this will all turn out. Whether the lists at the lieutenant and sergeant level will be diluted by the changes in promotional processes which had a similar impact on the captains' lists. And if who gets promoted comes down to who is the most persistent or the most talented at lobbying and selling themselves to the people that count as prime candidates, how will that impact the makeup and operations in both ranks? After all, the entire city is witnessing what similar practices have impacted promotions at the captains level and higher. Where it maybe not as much about what you can do, but who you know. Who to make happy and who to never, never piss off. And what happens when you reach the pinnacle and discover that it's not what you thought it would be and the job skills that the position requires are not the ones you used to reach it.


During the stipulated judgment with the State Attorney's General office, there was some talk about the importance of infusing a business culture into the department's management level, to essentially turn the department into where it appeared to resemble a corporation rather than a public agency in that respect. If you examine what's transpired while the department's been operating under that system including through its promotional process, it becomes clear what has happened to the department as a result. As well as what's happening now.

The police department and the City Hall which leads it traveled a twisty and turny road to get where it arrived in the early morning hours of Feb. 8 and it sure wasn't pretty. And the end results of that journey have been anything but.

Footnotes on the RPD, City Hall and the Aftermath of Scandal

My goodness! I've been hearing some interesting comments and getting some interesting emails from people who've been reading here and elsewhere about this whole situation involving the Feb. 8 DUI accident and traffic stop involving former Riverside Police Chief Russ Leach. Including from people across the country as I've been forwarding the articles on this situation to different police accountability email lists.

I did get an email from a police officer from some place else on one list to "STOP" with the articles or the blogging, he didn't specify which but most of the comments have been in support of the blogging and many people in the country one way or another have been reading up on what's been happening in Riverside. People just flat out don't like it when municipal or law enforcement related corruption happen in their midst especially when during difficult economic times, they have to bail out the scandals and the cast involved with their tax dollars through worthless probes. Who wanted to have their tax dollars go to the Hudson probe which has worked so hard to water down ethical violations into problems with the police department not having enough written policies to tell some of its employees how to be ethical?

A lot of people have been very concerned with what's happened to the police department a mere four years after it dissolved its stipulated judgment with the State Attorney General's office. People are concerned and furious about the preferential treatment that Leach received for his DUI crash meaning that he got a ride home in the front seat of a police car while most people would get a trip to jail in the backseat of a squad car.

Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200 (let alone a medical disability retirement). People are upset that police management engaged in an attempted cover up and suspicious that so did individuals at City Hall. This sentiment is helped greatly by City Hall spending so much time talking to the Press Enterprise to convince people of its innocence in any exposed and very embarrassing breach of ethics and misconduct. People are starting to ask, doth they protest too much? How many announcements has Hudson made that City Hall had been cleared by his own probe?

But that aside, a lot of the recent furor is about the so-called sweeping probe conducted by City Manager Brad Hudson and the recent appearances in the press by Hudson and other key players at City Hall. And it appears that the feedback on this situation is mirrored at other venues that collect feedback like City Hall and the police department. What was the probe intended to do and who got investigated and what's this song and dance by some personalities at City Hall all about anyway? Well, it appeared to have focused almost entirely on the police department and it's a way for elements at City Hall including Hudson to control the flow of information regarding the Feb. 8 traffic stop and its attempted cover up as well as to discourage any outside agencies coming in for a look at the latest proliferation of problems in Riverside.

The spin offered by Hudson, Mayor Ron Loveridge and Councilman Steve Adams essentially watered down corrupt behavior into "mistakes" and blamed them on policy deficiencies. Not too many people appeared to buy into that.

No Folks, City Hall Was Not Investigated

Unfortunately, there wasn't an objective probe paid for or not by tax dollars to really take a good look at City Hall regarding this and any prior misconduct involving any element of City Hall and the police department. And if anyone in City Hall is assuring you that it passed any accountability tests or got an honest accounting in the Hudson probe, they are either ignorant or they are lying. How could City Hall get a thorough examination when Hudson was placed in charge of the probe and he's the head administrator at City Hall? It's very unlikely he's capable of investigating himself, his own staff and certainly not the people whose votes he needs twice annually to keep his six figured job with the city. Putting him in charge of the probe is the best method of ensuring that City Hall won't be investigated. It's not like the current majority on the city council's going to hold Hudson to any level of accountability at all.

But the selective release of the information from City Hall has been interesting to follow.

Let's look at the cell phones for example. The key personnel in the department who were tied to that traffic stop all had their city-issued cell phones released to the media pursuant to a public documents request. Now let's look at City Hall. City Attorney Gregory Priamos' phone records were not released, due to his invocation of attorney/client privilege. Now it's clear to most people that he could have redacted all the information including phone calls made in relation to that and released all the others. Hudson and Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis released their phone records along with Loveridge and the city council yet inexplicably DeSantis first is shown calling Leach at nearly 2 p.m. about four to five hours after an anonymous caller alerts Loveridge's office. Hudson's own phone apparently had no incoming or outgoing phones all day until nearly 5 p.m. His explanation was that he had his phone shut off for most of the day while touring theaters in Pasadena and other cities.

It's curious that the head administrator would shut off his phone and it's even more curious why if he was notified by early afternoon on Feb. 8 that he would leave his phone shut off for most of the day unless it's not an extraordinary situation for Leach to get into trouble. But then there's the question that if his phone indeed hadn't received any calls, how did he get notified about Leach's situation while touring theaters out of town? It's perplexing that if Hudson were out touring theaters while a scandal was getting ready to break loose in Riverside that his cell phone would remain off and that there would be so little activity showing up on records documenting that day.

Also while Hudson and DeSantis have been pointing fingers at the police department's management for failing to adhere to the city's notification policy concerning "high profile" police contacts (which is then changed by Hudson, to having no policy and thus needing to create one), neither has said publicly whether or not they adhered to the city's policy that mandates testing employees who crash city-owned vehicles. Hudson has also demurred from answering any questions about whether or not there were past problems with Leach that he knew about before the traffic stop.

The city government as a collective hasn't really shown any leadership in this crisis, and that's not been lost on many people. While the epicenter of the scandal involve the Leach stop might have been in some intersection in Riverside, City Hall has not surprisingly captured a lot of the focus from concerned city residents. Except for some completely ludicrous comments coming from selected key players in the most recent coverage, there's really not much going on there in the way of any response to the situation at least in public. Councilman Mike Gardner asked some questions but others like Council Members Rusty Bailey and Chris MacArthur refused to issue any comment at all deferring to the Hudson probe.

The response from the dais has been for the most point completely disappointing and I'm not alone in believing that and there will be upcoming report cards coming up involving different people involved in this situation both from City Hall and the department as soon as more research is conducted.

The RPD is Like A Row of Dominoes

There's also been many questions including one addressed in a previous posting about who's running the Riverside Police Department at the moment. Which is a good question considering Leach is out of the picture and Acting Chief John DeLaRosa has fallen under strong suspicion of playing a role in the cover up of Leach's stop. Next in line was Deputy Chief Pete Esquivel who has done a 180 and announced his retirement after 30 years which will be effective early next month. Allegedly there's been a recent flurry of activity from the department's Internal Affairs Division being run by Capt. Mike Blakely and that's led to more investigations against higher ranking officers. It didn't take long for most of the department's upper management which had been fairly consistent since the 2007 "at will" debacle to be part of the fallout stemming from the incident involving Leach and its aftermath. But then the management of the police department wasn't built on the sturdiest of foundations so it was bound to break down at some point.

They are either going down because of what transpired on that day or they are going out because of the major shift in the dynamic of leadership and power at the police department's upper echelon. Have we seen the bottom of this turbulent chain of events, not likely. The value of stock in the department's management has plummeted with the public since Feb. 8. Even on its best days, the RPD appears to be a balancing act of power at the top that shifts when the wind blows or in this case, a few key players either get benched or knocked out of the game. And apparently it's shifted in the favor of Blakely at least for now. A long-time captain whose rise through the ranks didn't involve the same system as everyone else and who's in a perfect spot as personnel captain to seize control. And every position between him and DeLaRosa (as acting chief) has been vacated through attrition and subsequent freezes.

But before anyone frets, the seismic shifts in this latest quake to shake Riverside's power infrastructure will mirror the economic recession in other ways, meaning that the detrimental affects of it will impact various mechanisms of power in Riverside at different times. Meaning that right now, the department is facing the lion share of the impact and damage but that's simply because it's located the closest to the epicenter. Rest assured, that City Hall likely will not be spared its own share of instability and turbulence in the weeks and months ahead. That's how it played out in the city's last crisis, which happened with the Tyisha Miller shooting in 1999. It took over a year for the impact of that to affect different players at City Hall including then City Manager John Holmes, then City Attorney Stan Yamamoto and several city council members but they didn't escape unscathed.

In the meantime, there's some interesting dynamics playing out in the department. While some of the representatives in the department and at City Hall seem to be trying to reassure everyone that everyone's one big happy family, the reality seems to be that at least inside the police department, turbulence and uncertainty remain the rule. That's not surprising in a situation like this one at all and it will play itself out in the weeks and months to come as a result of the house of cards collapsing, the house that City Hall built. While Leach is definitely responsible for his misdeeds, the handling of the situation which arose when he committed a crime revealed a department with serious problems which stemmed from its micromanagement from Hudson's office which began not long after he and DeSantis were hired in 2005. And now with its leadership essentially disintegrating, that has put Blakely at an advantage at least until the new chief gets hired by Hudson.


This most senior captain has been extremely active lately filling in the vacuum left by a retreating DeLaRosa who had come on strong as the acting chief until the release of the cell phone call logs to the media implicated him in the cover up. As for the rest of them, it's very possible that it could resemble Survivor Island pretty soon, if it's not already.

Many however addressed a common thread and it had more to do with City Hall especially in the light of more recent coverage of how individual at City Hall including Mayor Ron Loveridge and City Manager Brad Hudson are treating the obvious breaches in professional ethics as exercised by some individuals as "mistakes" or problems stemming from inadequate or missing departmental policies. A couple of the people from out of town were incredulous that people in government could actually make comments like the ones issued by Loveridge and Councilman Steve Adams in that news article without people angrily calling city council and heading on down there. When in actuality, there are many people who do feel like going down and complain about how a few selective representatives of City Hall have been talking down to them. But their leadership for the most part has been quiet because most of them have clamored to be picked for Hudson's very selective panel of "community" individuals to interview police chief candidates. You can't be asking too many questions right now about the problems at the police department and City Hall and have a prayer of landing a spot.

This might shock City Hall but many city residents know the difference between a serious breach or disregard for professional ethics at the management level of the police department and "mistakes", "mistakes in judgment" and problem pertaining to a shortage of departmental policies. Riversiders often speak out for or against what city government is doing or stands for at the ballot box. Many an elected official has been lured into believing that just because they aren't getting hit by a barrage of angry mail that their elections wins are assured. After all, Schiavone used to claim he got very little "anti" email complaining about anything he did but he got his pink slip anyway.

And there's an election cycle less than one year away.

Speaking Through the Vote

But even when they're quiet, the Riverside populace isn't as apathetic as people might think. Including the city's voting population because that's often where the people of this city speak out on behavior by elected officials that troubles them--the voting booths. If you don't believe that this is true, consider what's happened the past several years and ask yourself how many incumbents either got voted out of office or didn't run for reelection just during the past two city council election cycles. Then add to that the elected official who won reelection against a candidate he outspent about 30 to 1 by a scant 13 votes. The voting populace of Riverside in recent cycles has swung towards anti-incumbent sentiment once, sending the likes of Dom Betro and Frank Schiavone who were both heavily favored in their last council elections. Both heavily endorsed by the city's labor unions and other big players including developers all the way from Beverly Hills and Newport Beach.

Both men lost at the polls, one by a handful of votes the other by many more than that after issues arose with both of them prior to and during their campaigns. There's not much else to say here because election year will tell the tale as it usually does in River City. And if people are very unhappy with Hudson's comments and handling of this situation, they do know who employs him. If this whole situation becomes an election issue next year, then some incumbents are going to be in trouble.

Misplaced Priorities at City Hall?

News also came out that City Hall is not going to fill the two lieutenant vacancies in the department that developed with the departures of Tim Bacon and Darryl Hurt pursuant to the settlement of their lawsuits. The two men have received retirements but have been placed on a form of paid leave until they reach retirement age. This decision by City Hall which handed down the order to the police department not to fill these vacancies has left the agency with six vacancies at the lieutenant level which has led to a shortage of watch commanders for the patrol shifts. This latest organizational chart highlights some of the vacancies at the upper levels.

Expect those number of vacancies near the top to increase by the way. And they probably won't be filled until the new police chief settles in.

One of the lieutenant vacancies, that under Special Operations, was allegedly filled through the last round of promotions while the other remains empty. That entire division has been divided up between two lieutenants. Lt. Guy Toussaint took over the Traffic Division along with other assignments including the Volunteer Division and what's left of Community Services. Lt. Larry Gonzalez is in charge of four units including METRO/SWAT and Aviation. The Police and Correction Team had already been disbanded by the department and its personnel assigned to the field operations division. If you examine the Special Operations area of the organizational chart, you will notice one other unit is missing and that's K9 which most likely has been reassigned to the field operations division as well as had been planned.

If DeLaRosa doesn't survive his apparent involvement in the cover up involving Leach, then the department will be devoid of all three of its upper management positions, those being the assistant chief position and the two deputy chief positions. It will be interesting when the new chief arrives, how many positions he or she will be authorized by the city to fill, but then again, one of the main questions will be whether or not he or she will be able to operate independently as a department head to fill them. Chief, or Hudson puppet, is probably one of the main questions on people's minds lately about this situation.


Replacing Bacon will be Lt. Gary Leach who allegedly wasn't too keen on being removed from his assignment in personnel and training which is now vacant to handle Bacon's shift while Hurt's shifts will be handled by the other watch commanders through one-week assignments. So there's a bit more shuffling going around with assignments.

But what's interesting and in some ways, very ironic about this situation is the absence of Hurt and Bacon from the department and the placement of them on leave until they are eligible for PERS retirements because it provides a sharp contrast with what's been happening with some of the key players in the Leach scandal. And the difference between the handling in both cases tells you something about City Hall's priorities. Not to mention providing plenty of food for thought in how not serious River City is about cleaning up wrongdoing in the management of the police department but elsewhere as well . Who gets exorcised faster from its landscape, those who engage in corruption and wrongdoing or those who challenge it?

That's a rhetorical question. City Hall clearly knows the answer to this question and it still chooses quietly as an entity to uphold the bad behavior and overlook the punishment of anyone who tries to challenge it from the workplace. There might be individuals in the 'Hall who might wish it were much different but the majority of those in power there right now favor not only fostering the conditions that have led to the serious problems of the police department but also in trying to keep their involvement and those problems hidden. Until of course they burst out like a ruptured boil. Then City Hall does its best to clean up the mess while assuring everyone that it's a "mistake" or something that can be fixed by more policies. More policies in writing to be violated further down the road because they clash with management's ethics.

Some people have asked why some of the individuals who have fallen under deep suspicion in the situation surrounding Leach's traffic stop haven't been placed on paid administrative leave themselves due to the seriousness of the situation until the investigation is completed. After all, that's what most reputable agencies do with officers when it becomes clear that the suspicion of wrongdoing arises in investigations of serious misconduct allegations. But in this case, that action hasn't been taken, in fact the city officials quoted in the most recent article seem to think that it's perfectly fine to have an acting chief who appears to have been involved in the covering up of a crime committed by his perpetrator. As if that weren't a serious violation of professional ethics inside a law enforcement agency. After all, police officers are supposed to enforce and uphold the law aren't they? And management personnel were supposed to lead by example, right?

Mind you, these individuals made these comments while believing that DeLaRosa did engage in misconduct. And those involved in the cover up remained silent while the majority of the blame was placed on the patrol officers who had stopped Leach when they could have admitted what they were doing and shifted the blame where it belonged rather than the primary responders. But then if you read the lawsuit filed by these two former lieutenants, it tells a lot about how City Hall micromanaged the police department including the promotional processes at the upper management level and the portion of the city government that wasn't involved in that looked the other way. And it's interesting and very unsettling what the fate of the police department has become as the dissolution of its five-year consent decree period with the state intersected with the hiring of Hudson and DeSantis.

There's a lot involved with settlements that the public doesn't know because it's all behind closed doors but it's interesting to see how City Hall seemed to be very intent in getting rid of Hurt and Bacon because if you pay employees not to work for the city until they can retire, you clearly don't want them around. Yet, at the same time City Hall appears very loathe to place officers at the management level who participated in misconduct to cover up the commission of a crime on administrative leave pending the completion of the investigation. Those involved in the cover up get to stay on board as if nothing's happened and those who brought up the issues of micromanagement of the department and its end result are gone.

Why on earth, is DeLaRosa still in the position of acting chief when it's becoming more and more clear what his involvement had been, having him remain there is putting both the credibility of the department and the city on the line. It's ironic that the individuals who were most under scrutiny and for good reason have remained on active duty and yet the city has focused much more effort to help ensure that the two to-retire lieutenants weren't still active members of the force, almost as if trying to exorcise them. People like Adams are saying well, this won't happen again as if a 30 year employee waits until closer to the completion of his career to exercise such a bad "error in judgment". But then Adams has dotted the landscape quite a bit when it comes to the history of City Hall's handling of the RPD, including involving at least three of the department's most recent captains' promotions and if that's indeed the case, then he's responding to a crisis that is at least partly of his own making by trying to downplay it.

Adams was being sued for threatening the lieutenants and officers who associated with them for not endorsing him yet he's cool with having an employee in position as acting chief who really should be on administrative leave at this point. With the falling dominoes who would have then been put in charge isn't real clear but then it doesn't seem like DeLaRosa's in charge anyway. Still the message that it sends to keep him in that position and the defense of it is very telling.

On another note, it was curious to hear on the grapevine that the Riverside Police Officers' Association and Riverside Police Administrators' Association are already endorsing city council candidates for 2011. Apparently, at least the RPOA has already decided to endorse Adams. Some say because the union has decided to endorse incumbents and it will be interesting to see if it follows through on that theory by endorsing people like former Community Police Review Commission member, Mike Gardner. Still, the RPOA's record on picking the right candidates to endorse (because the effectiveness of endorsements on getting candidates including incumbents elected is extremely mixed) has been spotty in the past two city council cycles and left it with a 2 for 7 record including watching three incumbents go down in flames.

It's an interesting twist to see that it has endorsed someone like Adams who not only insulted the board during the past election in part through his "goodbye to all that" letter that he circulated regarding the RPOA but really hasn't done much except apparently lash out at those who don't endorse him. But the RPOA committee that decides on political endorsements had split over the decision not to endorse Adams during his 2007 run and the decision to endorse incumbent, Frank Schiavone in 2009.

It will remain to be seen as usual what the impact of the union endorsements will be on election results. But Adams seriously downplayed actions by management in the police department which put two or three RPOA members in very difficult positions, subjecting them to harsh criticism as a result while the management in the RPD who could have come forward and taken responsibility remained quiet.


It really makes you wonder. That the efforts of two lieutenants to file a lawsuit alleging micromanagement of the police department by Hudson's office and council member like Adams can be seen as a worse thing by City Hall than a cover up by police management of the commission of a crime by a police employee, which in a way was foreshadowed by Bacon and Hurt's lawsuit. Their lawsuit provides a blueprint of why situations like that involving Leach's traffic stop and the aftermath were so ripe to occur in the first place. City Hall's response to that was Loveridge calling similar allegations raised by members of the Eastside Think Tank "fiction" at the same time the city's essentially trying to settle the lawsuit which addressed those same allegations.

But through their lawsuit Bacon and Hurt proved to be a check and balance system for Hudson and certain elements at City Hall involving the handling of the police department which is why the focus was on removing them from the canvass rather than in even placing the management personnel involved in the Leach scandal on administrative leave. Because their lawsuit was filed in the courts which are public, this situation which for a long time had been behind closed doors was brought to light. Not that there hadn't been plenty of rumors and stories circulating about actions taken by Hudson and DeSantis in particular, but the lawsuit put them in writing.

Update on RPD Criminal Cases

As you know, the resolution of the case involving Leach's DUI charges leaves two remaining prosecutions of former Riverside Police Department officers in the Riverside County Superior Court system.


Det. Scott Impola: (misdemeanor assault to commit great bodily injury, entry into noncommercial building, unauthorized information use)

Impola's case has held a series of misdemeanor settlement conferences which have mostly been continued. However, there are signs in the minute orders that this case might be heading towards resolution meaning a plea bargain. The next court date set is May 18.




Officer Anthony "Rod" Fletcher: (lewd act with a minor, annoy/molest child)

This case has also had several felony settlement conferences but appears to be heading to a preliminary hearing.

Still Soliciting Chief Input

If you couldn't attend one of the three public forums on soliciting ideas for the new police chief, you can fill out this form online. Even though people have already begun applying for the position.




Press Enterprise Columnist Dan Bernstein writes about Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco's no show at the latest candidate forum held by the American Bar Association.


Speaking of the upcoming county elections, this new blog has some definitive opinions on incumbent Riverside County Sheriff Stan Sniff.




Some Neo Nazis including Riverside's rally in L.A..

Public Meetings

Monday, April 19 at 10 a.m. Public Safety Committee is discussing the update on the Riverside Police Department's Strategic Plan according to this agenda. Sgt. Jaybee Brennan will be providing an oral update on its progress to the committee. It's interesting that Brennan has been chosen to give the presentation to the committee given that past protocol indicated that the department representative to give presentations was usually someone at the captain's level or higher. But it's better this way because when it comes to the process involving the Strategic Plan, no one knows it better than Brennan and has put more work into it than she has during some difficult times. It's hard not to view the change in protocol as indicative of the department's management level currently being in tremendous upheaval and apparently, tremendous flux as well.



Tuesday, April 20 at 3 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Riverside City Council Meeting at the City Hall and this agenda is up for discussion. It's a fairly short agenda with Mayor Pro Tem Steve Adams at the helm because once again, Mayor Ron Loveridge has something better to do than chair meetings, having seemingly reduced his appearances in recent months.

In the consent calendar, Councilman Mike Gardner gets himself a membership (rather than alternate status) on the March Joint Powers Commission.

Finance Committee Once Again on Ice

To no one's surprise, the Finance Committee meeting tentatively scheduled for March has been canceled and the next "tentative" meeting date is May 10 at 2:30 p.m. There's not a shortage of items to talk about when it comes to the city's finance, it's just that some people at City Hall appear loathe to maintain this extra layer of transparency of how the government is authorizing the spending of the tax payers' money. But then Chair Nancy Hart seems willing to defer the financial accountability which once lay in the hands of the city council. Ever since City Manager Brad Hudson put the previously separate Finance Department under his own office right before Riverside Renaissance's launching. Then it voted to limit its accountability over inter-fund transfers even more and then...well among other things, the Finance Committee stopped meeting regularly.

The Hudson Probe: When Ethical Violatons Become "Mistakes"

"We're not talking about truth, we're talking about something that seems like truth-the truth we want to exist."


---Stephen Colbert

Wonder Twins Activate!

It's beginning to sound a little bit like spring cleaning at City Hall in downtown Riverside, as several key players there gathered to express their thoughts on the Hudson probe and how it was time for the city to move forward and away from that untidiness involving the Feb. 8 accident and traffic stop involving former police chief, Russ Leach. And first up in the itinerary was some rug sweeping done at City Hall. Up and under the debris will go, courtesy of the city's top administrator, Brad Hudson and its top ribbon cutter, Mayor Ron Loveridge, the newly anointed Wonder Twins of Riverside. They teamed up not long after this happened to announce the search for the new police chief using Roberts Consulting Inc. which is run by people friendly with Loveridge. Now they're teaming up for their latest project, Operation Sweep Up, to take a crisis of professional ethics, play with that a little bit and then market it to the masses as a much more benign problem involving absent or inadequate policies which they will of course go in and fix through drafting more policies.

The police management personnel who engaged in the debacle of Feb. 8 behaved inappropriately and unethically because there weren't any policies telling them how to behave any other way! Yes that must be it! If only the right policies existed in writing, then Leach would have been given a sobriety test and then parked in the back seat of a police car to be taken off to jail or at the very least taken off the road and given a citation to appear in court. Are these two men serious, when they are presenting this argument or are they researching a comedic routine for Star Search?

Maybe they should both try the Gong Show first.

But what they won't tell you is that in police screening and training processes at different levels, candidates are often asked about or tested on their responses to handling a variety of scenarios on the job. One hypothetical is how they would as an officer or a supervisor handle a situation where they had to evaluate or respond to a criminal situation involving someone higher in rank than them which presumably would include the police chief. This scenario is presented to these individuals not because it involves testing their knowledge and mastering of departmental policies but because it's an opportunity for those evaluating these candidates for positions or promotions to get a better sense of their professional ethics particularly in tricky situations like say, arresting the boss or one's supervisor.

Professional ethics which includes treating individuals as equal under the law isn't a practice that involves policies and it's not missing in situations because there's no policy telling people to behave ethically. It's missing in agencies where there's not a uniform and universal expectation that professional ethics are to be an important guideline and performance standard of behavior by employees including those in leadership. What happened in the situation involving Leach and his backup from members of management reflected that deficiency of professional ethics and had nothing to do with whether or not there exists in the RPD policies telling its employees to be ethical or telling them how to behave appropriately. And the people in an agency who engage in professional ethics do so because it's expected of them to remain employed and because they expect it of themselves. Oh but it would also help if those in leadership or management positions could serve as role models for those they lead or manage through their own adherence and practice of professional ethics. When management can't do that or present themselves as poor ethical role models, often trouble erupts at some point.

That's something that's so basic, it's baffling and very disturbing that people at City Hall including those who play different characters on the dais have exhibited no clear understanding of what it means when an agency has a high standard of professional ethics including at its top management level and also what happens when it does not. To chalk up the actions by management personnel to cover up the commission of a crime in the hopes that it won't be uncovered and could never be adequately investigated, as a "mistake" and to have that coming from inside City Hall makes it clear that the serious issues involving professional ethics in public agencies aren't just faced by police management personnel.

And it's disturbing that Hudson and his devoted followers appear to believe that police officers hired by this city in particular need written policies telling them how to behave in an ethical fashion. To do things like enforce the law in the same way against their own employees including the police chief that they would with members of the general public, which is supposed to be a fundamental tenet of their job in Riverside's police department and with the profession in general. That police officers can't do this and be held to doing it unless the city manager's office invests a lot of time telling them how to behave ethically through drafting new policies. What it seems like the police department's officers need more is the freedom and job protection to enforce the law equally against their employees particularly those who outrank them like the police chief. If this situation exists where there's no job protection, you can include as many policies in the roster telling people on how to behave ethically and everyone of them will be disobeyed just like this so-called protocol on notification cited by Hudson and DeSantis (if indeed it was violated).

If officers don't feel they can arrest or even investigate the police chief at any level without being terminated from their employment or otherwise punished, then that's not a problem involving a failure to draft enough policies from within or from City Hall dictating ethical behavior, but a problem with promoting the expectation that professional ethics is part of the job at every level. Because the expectation should be that if the police chief needs to get arrested, he gets arrested. If he needs an investigation, he gets investigated and life and career trajectories go on the way they would otherwise.

It's clear that this situation doesn't appear to exist within the police department because of the failures in management to engage in ethical behavior themselves in these situations. And if they can't do this, they have the capability and the motivation to punish anyone below them in rank who does want to do it right.

And the comments in this article by some of the parties who made them, just make it much easier to understand why this mess happened in the first place, and they show that the city has fostered the perfect medium for this kind of conduct not just to take place but to take root, flourish and grow. To watch individuals at City Hall stumble so hard at knowing the difference between an ethics violation and a policy deficiency, is very unsettling to say the least and then the more cynical part, realizes that they do know the difference but they're hoping that the city residents fail to see that themselves.

Still anyway, Hudson's off on this new tear and the city council apparently is giving him the rein. His latest bent is to fix an embarrassing lapse of ethics including involving one of his former department heads by writing up some new policies. And so Hudson has taken this brilliant salvo with help from an elected official public.

We will create new policies, Hudson in the latest Press Enterprise article as he and Mayor Ron Loveridge joined forces to sell the covering up of a criminal act by Leach as "mistakes" and problems pertaining to missing or deficient policies. He cites the failure of police to give Leach a sobriety test (yet still hasn't said whether or not he had Leach tested similarly for smashing a city owned vehicle as required under policy) and failure of notification are "breaches of protocol".

Which is interesting on one level because one of the policies that Hudson pulled out of his hat that's deficient or missing and needs to be "modified" is the notification policy, but early on, Hudson and Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis had helpfully pointed out to the press that there was a policy like that in place for "high profile" people but it hadn't been followed by police management. So do they have a notification or don't they? Do they have this "protocol" that was disobeyed or not?


That's why it's interesting that first Hudson and DeSantis say yes, they have this notification policy for "high profile" people and then, they take the opposite stance as of late and say, we've got to create one. Which sounds somewhat like duplication but it's got to be easier than funneling ethical "tough love" regarding management employees who didn't behave ethically into a written policy to add to the big binder of rules and regulations of the police department and City Hall.

But that's not the only place where the management half of the Wonder Twins and his sidekick, DeSantis contradict themselves. Maybe both men need to create a written policy to prevent them from engaging in that type of behavior on future occasions. Because surely they can't be behaving somewhat less than up front because they choose to do so but because there's not a policy telling them to behave otherwise.

The Three Wise Men

Hudson wasn't actually quoted in the article and some of what he did say will be addressed further down this page. But Loveridge's always willing to provide a good sound byte, that is in between out of town trips as the president of the League of Cities and trying to launch a new conceptual study or get a new consultant hired. And here he gives it his best shot.

(excerpts of quotes, Press Enterprise)

"We're changing the rules. I think this incident is going to change the expectations of anyone in (the Police Department) for the next 10 years or so."

---Mayor Ron Loveridge

This quote's kind of recycled from back in 1999 when in the wake of the last major upheaval involving the city and its police department, he had said the same thing about the changes that the police department would make while implementing reforms coming out of a written report given by his ad hoc committee, the Mayor's Use of Force Panel. Back then, the city had engaged in "changing the rules" by changing the patterns and practices of the police department in crisis even before the State Attorney General's office would come to Riverside to do the same thing. Although it appeared that Loveridge's biggest concern back then had been what to call the legal settlement brokered between the city and the AG office. He loathed the two words, "consent decree" and how they would impact tourism in Riverside and then AG Bill Locker came up with something softer. But anyway, Loveridge had made similar comments back then that apparently he is now. Now back then, it could have been part of the script given to him by the Sitrick and Company which remembered Riverside fondly enough to include it on this client list. Apparently now, it's borrowed from his template which is structured like this:



I think this incident is going to change the expectations of anyone in (insert city department/project that's attracted undesirable attention) for the next 10 years or so."



Now Loveridge gives it his best college try but he sounds like he's trying to sell another one of his academic studies about the psychological/cultural/social/political/ aspects of urban existence to the city council and public, and not another redefinition of the police department as (this time) an agency that needs to have City Hall inject ethics into it by the creation and selling of more written policies. Which is ridiculous because if there's an ethical problem in the RPD and at the management level, there's definite signs that show that there's problems, then the police department didn't reach that point inside a vacuum. It had plenty of help from City Hall which is duly noted after reading an article where it's clear that the Wonder Twins have fumbled the ball when it comes to even understanding professional ethics, and admitting the breach of those ethics inside the police department for being just that.

The city's residents passed the charter initiative requiring the creation and implementation of an ethics code and complaint process. The city did just that, and then proceeded to water it down to the point where it's absolutely meaningless. There were clearly written policies and procedures including those written in its resolution and its FAQ sheet. And yet the city council and mayor either engaged in or allowed several violations of the processing of ethics complaints to take place by handing them off to the City Attorney's Office to arbitrate rather than forwarding them to the appropriate board/commission or the Mayor's Nomination and Screening Committee.

Several times, elected officials and city employees presented as their alibis for these policy violations, that they were "mistakes" or "miscommunications" and this took place even with clearly delineated policies in the books. When in actuality, they were simply willful attempts to sidestep the accountability mechanisms (as limited as they are) set up to ensure the integrity of the code and the complaint process. There are parallels between how the city handled this process and how it's currently handling the ethical transgressions involving Leach's DUI accident and traffic stop. Calling willful choices to breach ethics or an ethics process, a "mistake" or an issue involving a deficient policy, when people make the choices that they do, like the management personnel did on Feb. 8, whether there's policies governing them or not.

If you're going to engage in the obstruction of a DUI investigation involving your boss willingly, do you think you'd be worried about violating a police department and/or city policy?

But then there's the second of the Three Wise Men in this article, who's a police lieutenant in the department and who also serves as the president of the Riverside Police Administrators' Association. He contributes the following quote in the news article.

"It's not indicative of management in general. This is one incident and one decision, and whether we agree or disagree with the decision that was made, what happens now will lie with city manager. In the meantime, we still have a department to run."

-----Lt. Ed Blevins, Riverside Police Administrators' Association president and member of the Captains list which given newly accelerated attrition rates at the top might not be a bad place to be.

It's a very safe statement that Blevins made and it's also a very political one.

Within his comment, he make a statement within his public statement which does make clear sense. That "we" still have a department to run. That's true and the police department has managed to proceed with the vast majority of officers able to carry out their responsibilities which is absolutely critical during this time. But there's one question within, and that's who is "we"? Who really "runs" a police department? Those who manage it, those who lead it or those who carry out its mission assignment on a daily basis?

Anyway his choice of pronouns is interpreted, it brings up the pressing question of how the department will be run considering that the last police chief is medically retired and has been sentenced on his DUI case, the acting chief is under a cloud of suspicion at least by city residents for his "mistake" and the deputy chief is on his way out the door into retirement. Even if Asst. Chief DeLaRosa stays in the department (which appears to be his plan), there's three captains vacancies out of eight. The positions at the top of the chain of command (excluding the tippy top which according to the spiffy chief's brochure is Hudson) currently are as followed:


Acting chief: DeLaRosa

Assistant chief (and captain): Vacant

Deputy chief (and captain) : 2 positions, both to be vacant

Captains: 4 filled, one vacant



So the department's being run, but who's running it? I get asked that question at least 2-3 times daily. Technically, that task has been assigned to the former assistant chief under Leach which is DeLaRosa. But as the cloud of suspicion around him grew, compounded by the selective release of phone logs by City Hall to the Press Enterprise, DeLaRosa pulled a 180 on everyone regarding public appearances. After Leach had disappeared on medical leave, DeLaRosa had been moved into the acting chief position and he began appearing everywhere including city council meetings and those taking place in communities. Whereas Leach had been practically invisible during his final year or so as chief and DeLaRosa wasn't a common fixture at meetings either, there had obviously been a change given that DeLaRosa started popping up everywhere, sparking talk among city residents, including the question, who is he and what does he do?

But in more recent weeks as more and more came to light involving DeLaRosa and his city issued cell phone and who he had been talking to on it in the wee hours of the morning of Feb. 8, DeLaRosa began to fade back into the woodwork again. No longer appearing at city council meetings or out in the communities, vanishing almost as quickly as he had arrived. What had happened, some asked but many knew. Clearly the acting chief, who's supposed to as part of his job serve as the ambassador of the department, had either been told to lie low or had figured it out on his own. He became less visible at the work place as well and that created a vacuum of leadership in the department which was filled quickly enough with nary a whoosh of wind.

DeLaRosa Retreats; Blakely Moves In

Capt. Mike Blakely had ridden into the RPD on the wake of one of its former and now nearly forgotten chiefs, Ken Fortier and had been his deputy chief and right hand man. After Fortier left town, Blakely reverted back to being a captain and wound up assigned first to investigations where he once recommended that former Sexual Assault and Child Abuse detective, Al Kennedy get a written reprimand for having sex with a rape victim whose case he had been assigned to investigate, even though departmental policy requires any discipline imposed to be at least a suspension. Leach fired Kennedy, but Kennedy got his job back and not too long after city council members avowed to appeal his reinstatement as long and as far as it took, they quietly withdrew their legal appeal and retired him. After that, Blakely went to Personnel and Training which placed him in the position of not only handling those critical issues for both areas but also with overseeing the Internal Affairs Division under then Commander Richard Dana. At one point, DeLaRosa was assigned to run that division.

DeLaRosa's career trajectory had taken a markedly steep climb after Leach's hiring and within each rank he touched, he worked a variety of assignments but none for a very long period of time. Before he could really have time to master the ropes of any one of them, it was time to reassign him to the next one. His rapid ascension within the ranks into the top management positions had earned him the nickname by some around him of "Johnny Who". DeLaRosa reached a point on the food chain when Hudson and DeSantis first arrived in Riverside where he could begin to be impacted by both men's practice of micromanaging the police department, mostly Leach but several of those closest to him as well. Hudson and DeSantis so dearly wanted to demote the other deputy chief, Dave Dominguez back to captain and they had to try to micromanage the other two management personnel, then Capt. Pete Esquivel and DeLaRosa.

DeLaRosa didn't appear to go easily. On one occasion, he had been browbeaten by DeSantis not too far away from the city council offices on the Seventh Floor but held his own. The impression was, that he wasn't easily controllable by city management. If that's the case, it's a good bet that Hudson and his crew didn't like that much.

Blakely is an enthusiastic captain, who put in a full day at the office. Whereas others checked out early, Blakely embraced his role inside his division, which required him to take charge of different areas of personnel and training. He went out and did presentations and answered questions at different meetings. Some people saw him as a remnant of a very old guard in the RPD, that had mostly disappeared leaving him there, amidst captains created under much different circumstances than he had been. That can leave a person feeling very isolated but Blakely appeared to have adapted to that.

But some people said that Blakely wasn't anyone to be messed with and that Leach and the other captains saved him for when they wanted unpleasant tasks done and that he did them very well. Like the barnacle that some people called him for remaining in the department, Blakely had a tough exterior that seemed to allow him to deal with anything in his own way. While the other captains were greatly shaken and driven into an apprehensive state by the events that transpired in the department since Feb. 8, Blakley seemed to thrive on the chaos that emerged around him.

He had a curious dynamic with the younger DeLaRosa. Some say they had a mentor relationship at one time and others said, DeLaRosa felt subordinate in some ways to him despite the difference in their ranks. That's understandable in a sense given that DeLaRosa ascended so quickly it's unlikely that he remained at one rank long enough to really feel confident in it before he moved up again, leaving his confidence level a bit further behind. Rapid movement upward can leave a person in a sense being professionally at one rank but mentally in a past one waiting to catch up. This is why law enforcement experts often say that rapid ascension through the ranks isn't such a great practice and that it's created problems later on for individuals in that situation.

So DeLaRosa became acting chief in a difficult and immediate situation after a rapid ascension through the ranks particularly in the preceding five years. He knew that soon enough, the situation involving his use of his cell phone to call the watch commander at the scene of Leach's traffic stop would come to light. He also had this dynamic with Blakely. So when he began stepping back after the revelation of the phone records, a power vacuum was created and of all the captains who were next in line, the most likely person to step into it would be Blakely.

The other captains came into their positions of management through a political system run at least partly out of City Hall which did little to inspire confidence in those it rewarded. It created a command staff where the majority of the individuals rose up without the requisite confidence to be definitive leaders, which as it turned out had a detrimental impact on the police department and its employees in several different areas including the spree of arrests and/or prosecutions which numbered at least five in a 14 month period. But Blakely didn't come up through that same system. Interestingly enough these (and other) arrests began not too long after the controversy that took place at City Hall which challenged the promotional process at the highest levels. These arrests and prosecutions began not long after the tail end of the development of the current command staff and the increased involvement of the city manager's office and a politician or two in the promotional process.

The situation with former Officer Robert Forman (who avoided termination for sexual misconduct several years before his 2008 incidents) was the most blatant in terms of the failure to track a problematic officer by at the very least monitoring his use of a piece of required equipment, his digital audio recorder, during the time period after his initial incidents, one of which was captured by the recorder.

So within the command staff, there were leadership issues arising. Some of them had gone through so many twists and turns to get where they were at, they seemed at a loss of what to do when they arrived where they wanted to be. And when DeLaRosa began to withdraw a bit as his involvement in Leach's traffic stop came to light, some members of the command staff remained at a loss.

So Blakely filled the vacuum of leadership over the RPD and acted immediately. At least four police officers were placed on administrative leave and since Blakely was in charge of Internal Affairs, he was able to open personnel investigations involving employees at his rank and lower. The first casualty of these actions involving these investigations allegedly filed his retirement papers not long after this all started.

In the meantime, DeLaRosa had sent out signals that he had plans to stay where he was at at least as long as he could do so.

With all this intrigue taking place, it adds quite a few layers to Blevins' reference to "we" and makes it a much more difficult question to answer. But what kind of message does it send to the city residents when the RPAA stands by its leadership which includes members who might have conspired and engaged in the cover up of criminal activity which is supposed to or at least viewed by many to be the antithesis of what law enforcement officers including management are supposed to be doing. It's not reassuring at all to a skeptical public that's just had its trust violated to see that the RPAA is taking such serious misconduct so lightly, even in the interest of trying to smooth things over and get the department on its path. It sends the message that this so easily could happen again and it will, if it's just seen as a "mistake" or oops, I did it because there's no policy telling me not to do it.

Tell that to the individuals who will get carted off to jail during the upcoming DUI check point for driving drunk. Not that they won't deserve it but because the ability of the top-ranking police employee to avoid that fate at least from his own agency due to active efforts by other employees to ensure that, the insult's been added that it should be viewed as a "mistake" including by those in positions of power who could easily received or may have received in the past similar preferential treatment from law enforcement officers including those in other agencies.

And believe it or not, the RPD has a much better chance of being run the way it should be so it can do its task while enjoying public trust if it addresses the issues within its structure that led to management personnel at its top, being able to arrange or order by phone the obstruction or prevention of a criminal investigation of the top-ranking employee. If it addresses the issue as to why police officers will be or assume they will be committing career suicide if they arrest their boss. If it addresses this perception of a double standard of treatment between the public and the police chief or "high profile" individuals. Doing this is a first step towards its best chance to come out of a very bad situation in a much better way.



As a blogger of things River City, I just can't help but love Councilman Steve Adams. Whether he's calling my blog "something brown that you flush down" at a council meeting or calling me and other people names or liars or whatever, he's just great for blogging. It's too bad he's not nearly as good for this city in well...certain areas of government. He's great at some things like train crossing advocacy doing public service announcements on cable television but others, well his marks don't come in as high. Still, he's my favorite recipient of the Golden Tongue Award because his quotes often turn out to be gems.

One of those "gems" is included below.



"An error in judgment does not make a 30-plus-year career look bad. Something like this won't happen again."

---Councilman Steve Adams, Ward Seven, up for reelection next year

It's interesting that Adams brings up the impressive tenure of DeLaRosa with the police department because a 30 year veteran would seem to be much less likely to make this kind of "mistake" than a career veteran if that is indeed what had happened.

But in most cases, DeLaRosa would likely have not only been unable to serve as an interim head, he would have been placed on administrative leave during an investigation into the cover up of a criminal act and the obstruction of any investigation that the department would have done. After all, didn't Hudson say that he would come down on anyone who would have obstructed his probe or the CHP's criminal investigation even saying they could face criminal penalties for obstructing an administrative investigation? So why is it when a management employee in the police department deters a criminal investigation from being done by the city's police department, it's not treated as anything else but a "mistake"? If the CHP's investigations aren't to be messed with unless you want to face criminal prosecution and Hudson's internal probes aren't to be messed with either, then why isn't it anything but a "mistake" or an "error in judgment" to mess with the RPD's investigation?

And something like this won't happen again, because the newly crafted policies that Hudson has in mind are going to stop it. But then again, it's Adams who's saying this and that has to be taken into consideration.

Whether or not this "error in judgment" as Adams calls it, has an impact on how a 30 + year career is viewed isn't the issue here, the issue is whether it should impact the placement of DeLaRosa in the interim position, replacing the chief he allegedly tried to protect from criminal prosecution. The emails I've received include those from shocked people who don't understand why the involved individuals weren't place on paid leave pending the resolution of the internal investigation including those in management. And they are further shocked that an interim chief is in that position with a huge cloud of suspicion over him during a time when the public trust in the department including its management is at a nadir. But then it's been interesting reading the emails coming in after last night's article regarding the comments made by city leaders, the few that have spoken.

One person said it aptly, that this is why incidents like this happen in the first place, no reason to be surprised the next time that history repeats itself.

The Sound of Silence: Brad Hudson's Cell Phone

But to me the most interesting part of the article was the long sought explanations from Hudson about the ahem, gaps in the phone records including why DeLaRosa called Phillips at 3 a.m. and why it took so long for Hudson to use his cell phone on Feb. 8. Hudson explained that Leach had called DeLaRosa's home phone so that's why the trail with DeLaRosa's involvement began with DeLaRosa. That makes some sense.

What doesn't add up nearly as well is Hudson's explanation as to what was going on with his own phone that day. He said he had it shut off the majority of the day while he was out and about touring theaters in Pasadena and other places. So if his phone was shut off most of the day, how did he get notified in the early afternoon about the Leach incident and why then would he shut off his phone after that while touring theaters? What happened to any incoming calls, including the one well, you know where he had been notified about said incident with Leach? How then was he notified and through what means?

Let's see, does he shut his phone, then turn it back on get the phone call about one of his department heads and then shut it off again and enjoy the rest of the tour? If that's the case, it doesn't sound like much of a big deal what had happened and certainly not that shocking.

And why does the city manager who's making a fairly good six figure salary shutting off his work phone for large portions of the day anyway? If someone needs to contact him for an urgent reason, like the police chief got drunk and crashed a city owned vehicle, how could they do it if his phone's shut down most of the day?



Press Enterprise Columnist Cassie MacDuff who's written a lot on the Leach incident challenges the confidentiality of police probes.





Moreno Valley's courthouse tries to clear some major congestion.

Traffic Advisory

Iceland ash plume closes airports across Europe. If you have plans to check out Europe, maybe you'd better go by boat.

Oh What Tangled Webs We Weave...The RPD and City Hall's Relationship

"STOP"


---Terse email I received today.










[The statement released from City Hall on the Hudson Probe not surprisingly focused on the police department, not much mention of City Hall which had been cleared earlier through public announcements by Hudson.]

After the State Cuts Its Strings, The RPD Begins to Unravel

A mere four years after the Riverside Police Department severed its consent decree with the State Attorney General's office, it's currently mired in a scandal that has rocked its foundation, one not entirely of its own making. And it's one that's been brewing for a while even as it's being presented as an isolated incident by the Hudson probe, which broke its silence on April 13 with some preliminary findings.

City Manager Brad Hudson released some preliminary findings in his purported "sweeping" probe and has pointed his fingers at the police management. An announcement that really surprised no one, because the evidence being released piecemeal by the city had been painted in neon and pointing at the top of the department's chain of command. In fact, Hudson cleared himself, his office and the rest of the probe fairly early on which only left the police department. But the probe fulfilled its purpose, which was to help ensure Hudson's job security and to try to distance himself and City Hall from the antics of the police department's upper echelon, the house that City Hall built. But then there's no time to think about that now that the probe's preliminary findings have been released. Now it's time to sell them to the public which no doubt will be an active part of the itinerary of some elements of City Hall for a while as the public relations machine is rolled out to make people forget that there was ever any problems at all, let alone a scandal that was some years in the making.

It'd be great to forget everything that happened but what's difficult is to see how the city still hasn't really learned anything. And if you don't learn from your history, then you're doomed to repeat it. Has Riverside learned? It sure doesn't look like it. And people in this city really are much more astute than apparently people like Hudson and others might think.


The response from people so far seems to not be a very happy one mostly because many people have problems believing Hudson's contention that the preferential treatment shown Leach on Feb. 8 was truly an isolated incident without any precedence. In fact, it's hard to find someone who does believe that's indeed the case. At least outside of City Hall, further away from the people who make the decisions, there's disbelief and skepticism about what's coming out of City Hall regarding this inhouse probe. And it's hard to find anyone who really believes that Hudson had no idea what had been going on with Leach the past five years that Hudson's been employed by the city. But then many people understand that the main purpose of this so-called "sweeping" probe is to save Hudson's job as much or more than anything else. And that "sweeping" means diverting people's attention towards one mess which is the actions exercised by an unspecified number of police brass which prevented the investigation of a crime, while the rest gets swept quietly beneath the rug out of view.


And that's what happened here.


While Hudson and others point fingers at the police management which does deserve a fair amount of that, the hopes are that the attention and the anger by city residents which has been brewing the past several months will be focused there and not any amount at Hudson and City Hall. But Hudson and other key players at City Hall played a large role in what the police department became particularly since the bulk of their influence came during the years that the department had been operating without oversight from the State Attorney General's office. And the ink hadn't dried on the dissolution papers when the city council had voted 7-0 to approve a modified oversight program for the implementation of the department's first strategic plan. The legislative body had conducted a workshop to grapple with how to keep the department moving forward without any state oversight for the first time since March 2001.

Its then members issued an order through that vote for Hudson to carry out a plan and as soon as summer distracted them, Hudson changed the terms of the orders that the city council had issued him, nearly grounding the implementation of the strategic plan. The police department faltered heavily during the first months out of the judgment because of Hudson's actions including his decision not to carry out the directive the way it had been issued to him by the city council (the altering in direction possibly spurred with "help" from a council member or two) and also because the department's command staff at the time failed to uniformly apply the management skills they had been trained in during the consent decree and Leach apparently didn't hold them to it. That put the police department in danger of backsliding due to failure of its upper echelon to move the process forward.


At some point, there were different command staff members working not necessarily together and some key areas of the department's forward movement stalled during the first nine months after the dissolution of the judgment. Increasing micromanagement coming from Hudson and DeSantis and Leach deciding to live at Councilman Frank Schiavone's residence for a period of time apparently without invoking an attack of apoplexy in either Hudson or the city's legal eagle, Gregory Priamos. Elected officials including Schiavone, the former reserve officer, who was said to be very much "hands on" with the police department and Steve Adams, the former police officer, began becoming more involved in the department including some alleged with the promotional process at the highest level.


At any rate, the dynamic between Hudson, DeSantis and Leach over the police department began to definitely take an unhealthy turn.


After all, it's a little hard to miss that the relationship between the police department and City Hall began intensifying in terms of issues it faced beginning not long after 2005 when the city council hired Hudson to be its next administrator after ousting George Carvalho in a narrow vote and having Tom Evans serve in the interim position. Rumors about Hudson and Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis taking a more active role in managing and some say micromanaging the police department began to proliferate not long after their arrival. In fact, it only took several months for that to happen as it turned out that people began to notice.

In 2005, the department faced the final year of its reform mandate and then counted down the months until the dissolution of its stipulated judgment with the State Attorney General's office. Leach would be granted a five-year contract in December 2005 in the face of concerns about what had been taking place on his watch. Not long before the meeting where the city council and Mayor Ron Loveridge voted on that contract, a letter was sent to them by someone with some prior connection with the department.


(excerpt)


Chief Leach has done all he can do for the City and should retire. You see, many present and formers employees of the department know what Chief Leach is - and it’s not a Leader. Over the more than five years that he has been Chief, he has committed acts of malfeasance, and in some cases unlawfulness; has failed to develop leaders capable of leading the department into the future, in spite of the fact that he has promoted the majority of his command and executive staff; has lied and spread rumors about members of the department, has lied to and spread rumors about public officials, including some of you; has caused dissention and dysfunction throughout the ranks; has engaged in unethical conduct unbecoming of a Chief, and has promoted based on favors and friendships rather than merit.





Most of the city officials who served on the dais when this letter was issued have either retired from the dais or were voted off of it. Though Loveridge and council members, Steve Adams and Nancy Hart still remain. It's a safe assumption that if council members or the mayor had received a letter like this when the issue of the chief's contract had been before them, that they would have forwarded these allegations to Leach's boss, Hudson but it's not clear whether or not Hudson ever examined the allegations before the contract moved forward for approval before the city government packed it in for the holiday recess. But at the very least, Hudson should have been served notice that issues had arisen with Leach that needed to be examined closer, which makes it a little less than convincing when he appears to present the picture that he had been in the dark all these years about his employee. I mean, if there were allegations of malfeasance and illegal activity involving the police chief, why wouldn't the city manager's office be all over it, as it's just claimed to have been now through its public announcement regarding its probe. Especially considering that it's all over the police department the rest of the time, but some of the allegations made in this missive apparently weren't just directed at the police chief by himself which might answer the above questions. And it's clear given that the letter was sent not too long before the city council vote, that there wasn't enough time for Hudson to adequately investigate the allegations in the letter, easy to deduce when you factor how long Hudson's office took to do this most recent probe which will have lasted well over two months.

Let's see, over two months to investigate the cover up involving Leach's traffic stop and a handful of days to address the allegations in the above letter. So it's pretty clear that in regards to the allegations raised above, it's more than likely that no action was taken by Hudson's office back in 2005. But it's also clear that because of this, Hudson and DeSantis can't claim to be in the dark about problems with Leach. Not without attracting a few raised eyebrows, etched with skepticism.

Building Your House of Cards

During this time period when the city manager's office became more entrenched in the department's activities, the department had seen some of its command staff members retire and thus actions were taken to fill these vacancies through promotions. Over a period of several years, it carried this out but soon concerns and questions also arose in terms of what process was being used by the department and as it turned out the city as well. In fact, it appeared that Leach had become less and less involved in the promotional process of the officers wh0 would be working the closest with him, his command staff including those at captain and above. At the same time, it appeared that the role played by City Hall had grown considerably in that process. Someone said that part of the idea of reforming the RPD was to install a business culture into its management and in that, they clearly succeeded, because the actions taken in this process rival those of a Fortune 500 company, more than a public agency. It seemed that a bunch of people in City Hall put themselves in the processes. When elected officials weren't calling for "political deployments" of the department's police officers in their wards during their reelection bid, several current and former ones involved themselves in some of the department's other items of business.

In fact, it's rumored that Leach hadn't even been in town when the promotions of his two closest command staff members took place. Legend has it, that Hudson took that role of elevating current acting chief, John DeLaRosa and Pete Esquivel into the positions of assistant and deputy chiefs giving them that pay increase plus a commitment to serve "at will". That got struck down and their promotions stood. Even when it came to promoting captains, it seemed that various parties outside the police department placed themselves in the mix. The promotional processes for both lieutenants and sergeants were changed in the past several years and became more subjective. Even people on the detectives list wondered if their "politics" would hurt them. The lists became dominated at the supervisory levels by experienced female officers even as only one of them, Linda Byerly, was promoted in her case to sergeant. African-American male officers also placed themselves well on lists ranging from captain to sergeant but despite placing high, they weren't promoted either.


Some officers including Leon Phillips didn't have as much trouble. Phillips had been about 11th on his lieutenants' list and was promoted in July 2008 to replace a retiring Ken Carpenter. Beating out Byerly the first round this year, was an officer who had been fired and then reinstated through arbitration. The process left people wondering if it came down to what "team" you were on inside the splintered department. These changes particularly with the promotional processes at the top end influenced the direction that the department headed in until things came falling down on Feb. 8 in ways that will be detailed in future postings.

The Hudson Probe

Hudson stated in his press release that information that he received on the afternoon of Feb. 8 led him to order the criminal investigation be turned over to the California Highway Patrol and directed Internal Affairs investigators to report to him. However, that agency didn't receive notification of that decision until 24 hours later, at about the same time that the media outlets began calling both the city and police department for more information about Leach's accident. The probe initiated by Hudson's office was begun a day after the investigation was handed off to the CHP, again while a firestorm had erupted from the city's residents and Riverside was once again a topic of scorn across the state and country from the erupting scandal.

In fact, on Monday morning and afternoon, there was a lot going on at City Hall but very little in terms of investigation in terms of being accountable to the city's 350,000 residents. No, most of the energy was spent on trying to clamp down on the situation before it broke publicly. The involvement of alcohol in Leach's accident and traffic stop was downplayed by employees at City Hall and the vehicle he had been driving wasn't taken away from the scene as evidence in a criminal investigation but for the purposes of repairing it and removing any traces that any form of accident had taken place. Mayor Ron Loveridge's office had been tipped off by an anonymous caller but there was no city-issued cellular phone activity by Hudson or his assistant city manager, Tom DeSantis until nearly five hours after the woman had called.

DeSantis' phone was used for the first time that day to call Leach just before 2 p.m. on Feb. 8 and Hudson's was activated several hours later to call an undisclosed individual. It's extremely odd some might think that if Hudson and DeSantis had been trying to make all these phone calls to get to the bottom of the situation as Hudson claimed early on and arranging for all these investigations to be handled, the city would have released information pertaining to any involved phone calls made by these individuals.

Hudson did hire Best, Best and Krieger attorney (and former district attorney) Grover Trask to provide "independent oversight" and Trask played a fairly active role but the details of the contract between the two were never discussed or reviewed by the city council nor were the terms of the contract ever released.

Hudson also said that all the evidence was "secured" and delivered to investigative agencies including the "inadequate" police report, audio and video recordings and such. That appears to be the case with the more limited scope covered by the CHP investigation but as far as the administrative investigation goes, very little in the way of proving such has been offered to the public. It's not even clear who actually in Internal Affairs did the investigation given that at least two of the five sergeants had close personal ties to Leach and thus, probably should have been interviewed as part of the investigation rather than assigned to investigate. Given that the Internal Affairs Division operates directly out of the Chief's office, were assignments given out in that division to people with close personal ties to the former chief? One sergeant, Marcus Smail had been called the first known person called by the police chief during the traffic stop but Smail told the Press Enterprise he didn't answer that phone call.

It appears that Lt. Mike Cook who heads the division played a very active role as did Hudson and Trask. But it also appears that Cook has at least political ties to DeSantis having served on the Hemet Unified School District Board in high-ranking positions with him in the past, which is certainly interesting. But at any rate, while it might be less than clear who actually investigated the police department, it's fairly clear that very little investigating was done by anyone of City Hall. After all, the Internal Affairs Division has zero jurisdiction to investigate City Hall for any misconduct involving the police department or any of its employees. So who's left to investigate City Hall? Hudson? Does that include himself? Well then, that takes care of that.

Hudson then said that there was absolutely no obstruction of either the criminal investigation being done by the CHP or the administrative probe being done by his office by anyone. And if that happened, criminal prosecution would have resulted of any such individuals. Certainly interesting information given that it appeared that the police department including its management was more rigorously investigated than any parties at City Hall. And it's difficult to believe that those who placed themselves at the helm of the investigation were investigated thoroughly either by themselves or by anyone paid as an employee or independent contractor through Hudson's office, or even investigated at all. If Leach had so many problems which led to his criminal conduct and a cover up, then right after investigations should have been launched against these individuals, one should have been initiated by the city council against its employee who after all, was Leach's boss for the past five years. After all, who allows the fox to guard the hen house and then have the fox investigate when one of them turns up missing?

The probe was to investigate allegations of the obstruction of a criminal investigation into DUI and hit and run offenses which in itself could have prosecutory ramifications but has not. How can you criminally prosecute an individual for obstructing an administrative investigation when individuals have already been given cart blanche to obstruct and deter through orders issued to do like with a criminal investigation involving Leach's DUI? All this would be more credible coming from Hudson's office if he hadn't already obstructed or prevented any investigation of his own conduct involving Leach, his alcohol consumption and the police department the past five years.

Hudson then goes on to state the obvious about the DUI stop not being conducted in proper fashion and that surprise, Leach was given preferential treatment by officers. He does mention that patrol officers Jeremy Miller and Grant Linhart have been cleared of any misconduct. That should have been done sooner as the two officers stopped Leach, noted "objective" signs of alcohol intoxication and called for their supervisor, thus placing the situation in the hands of the supervisors who showed up.

He mentions that the failure to take reasonable actions occurred exclusively in the management ranks. No, what happened was that the decision making which led to the failure of other officers most notably the two supervisors onscene to take reasonable actions was done by at least one management employee who wasn't at the scene. Two supervisors misbehaved at the scene to some degree. One. Sgt. Frank Orta, did by failure to investigate his boss based on the officers' and likely his own suspicions and then failing to write an "adequate" (and describing the report as "inadequate" is a misnomer if there ever was one) report.

The other, Watch Commander Leon Phillips likely participated in some form of conversation over the decision that was made to engage in a failure to take reasonable actions and thus cover up a criminal act committed by Leach. How much a role he played in that dialogue was not known and certainly not disclosed but Philips probably was issued orders by someone higher up to cover up the crime and take care of Leach and the damaged car. What's wrong with Hudson's statement is that it clearly overlooks probably intentionally the climate produced in the police department by different actions taken including those involving his office which led to a situation where the cover up of a crime could be carried out through a series of phone calls, the extent of which is publicly unknown given that the city engaged in only a partial release of phone records in connection with that very limited time period. There was this sense of entitlement that the police chief deserved a cover up and that the way it was handled, seemed to indicate that there was indeed precedent for it.

The part of the findings which many people seem to have the most trouble swallowing is the part where Hudson insisted that there were no evidence has been identified of any prior instances of preferential treatment. Whether that's specific just to Leach or includes anyone else isn't clear by the press release. But few people buy that "finding" at all, because many of people don't recognize this incident as the first time it happened, but the first time people got caught engaging in this behavior. There's a difference between the two that might be lost on some folks but not on many city residents.

Deputy Police Chief Pete Esquivel Retiring

With the news of the so-called Hudson probe about to break to the Press Enterprise, the retirements began, with that involving Deputy Chief Pete Esquivel, a 30 year veteran of the police department who before all this broke had shown no signs of wanting to depart anytime soon. In fact, "Pete" as he's known inhouse had seemed more energized in recent years. But rumors of his impending departure had been in the air for over a week even though no reason has been given why he has decided to retire.

Esquivel had been promoted into that upper level position in March 2007, a decision that because of the circumstances surrounding it had brought a crowd of officers belonging to both the Riverside Police Officers' Association and the Riverside Police Administrators' Association to a city council meeting at the end of that month. He and DeLaRosa had allegedly accepted their promotions after signing contracts that provided them with an incremental pay increase and "at will" status. The contracts were essentially voided of that requirement after the city gave a panel presentation at this contentious city council meeting on why it couldn't do what it had made it clear that it was going to do. Hudson made his speech and so did Leach, which was surprising because apparently the promotions had been made without his knowledge when he had been out of town. He had been somewhat...piqued when he got wind of what had transpired and some thought, he would call Hudson, his boss on what had been done. Of course now, it's clear that didn't happen. What didn't become clear until later is how Hudson had been able to mollify Leach into playing the role that he played fairly well at that same meeting.

Only weeks ago, Esquivel seemed hardly in the mood to call it quits. He even considered applying for the top spot. But now he's saying goodbye to a 30 year law enforcement career that began after he graduated from the peace officers academy and saw him work a variety of assignments, including many in the community, while moving himself up at a somewhat less than meteoric pace when compared to "Johnny D." who at times seemed more like "Johnny Who" given his rapid ascent from sergeant to assistant chief since Leach's hiring. Esquivel's retirement is the first to arise among the upper management but don't be surprised if it's not the last. Command staffs in scandals like this one have the tendancy to fall like a row of dominoes. It's the nature of the beast, part and parcel of the energy that got them there.

Two RPD Lieutenants Settle Lawsuits and RPOA President Laments Supervisory Vacancies

In the meantime, the city and two Riverside Police Department lieutenants, Darryl Hurt and Tim Bacon are settling their lawsuit which they filed several years ago, alleging that they were harassed and retaliated against for their active involvement in the RPAA, not to mention being denied promotions at the management level of captain even though they tested very well. Their lawsuits that they filed in U.S. District Court are required reading if you want to take a look at some of the serious issues that arose in the department due to problems within as well as out of micromanagement from various elements at City Hall. Issues raised in their lawsuits are relevant in the wake of the situation involving the former chief and its aftermath, and in a way provided some foreshadowing that these problems would come to a head at some point due to the dysfunctional dynamic between City Hall and the police department. Which is what ultimately happened.

Because with that kind of micromanagement being allegedly done by elements at City Hall including a politician or two and the department's internal problems, the situation had really no chance of avoiding some serious consequences. And so what happened? The city bet, the house won and the department's employees and city residents paid the price of City Hall's ignorance or involvement in the issues raised in the lawsuit and other venues. Some serious consequences for the city and the department which could have been avoided, if the red flags popping up all over the place had been heeded.

RPOA President Det. Cliff Mason told the Press Enterprise that there were critical vacancies in the supervisory and management level, which is interesting because usually the rank and file labor unions tend not to be too concerned about a shortage of management but anyway Mason did bring up that there's going to be a minimum of three captain vacancies and six lieutenant vacancies (which puts the rate there at roughly 33%) and then there's the expected 7-8 or more sergeant spots anticipated to be vacant by the end of the year. The level of supervisors in the police department has fallen to the critical level even with the recent rounds of promotions, at levels low enough to cause serious problems in the still primarily very young police department.

These are alarming shortages indeed and promoting will create more shortages including at the officer level, but the department will be at the point where if it doesn't promote lieutenants, it will be short watch commanders, given that the reserve positions in that division are already unfilled. Each rank filled depletes from the one below it, so if the department promotes as it should, then that has to be done so that none of the ranks get depleted to critical levels as a result. For example, filling lieutenants increases the shortage of sergeants which if filled, directly or indirectly depletes officers levels due to the detectives positions being quickly filled due to the MOU between the RPOA and the city. What it boils down to really, is an overall commitment by the city to ensure that the overall staffing levels of the department are built back up to healthy levels where needed to ensure that promotions enhance each levels' numbers along with the accountability factors.






In other news, the RPD brings back the DUI checkpoint.