Feb. 8, 2012: The RPD and City Revisit an Anniversary

Drinking the Redevelopment Agency Kool-aid and have the city's layoffs already begun?




[Sacramento County's current CEO is on a spending spree]


And what of Brad Hudson's latest adventures up north?



Update:


[Mayor Ron Loveridge got someone to provide him with a definition for "crimes of moral turpitude"]


More mayoral candidates are preparing to come aboard as the current mayor asks those around him,
"What is a crime of moral turpitude?"
Fortunately one of the councilman looked up the definition on his Ipad.


UPDATE:

Riverside Police Officers' Association's new contract up for City Council approval.

This new contract includes amendments in the detective's promotional process and an agreement to "meet and confer" between the city and union about the department's controversial transfer policy.

Still up is the RPOA Supervisory Unit's contract to be completed and approved by all parties.

And the least transparent process this week....

City Council Redistricting!

Stay tuned....






Roger Boisjoly

1939-2012

Whistle blew on problems with the Challengers booster rockets which caused the fatal 1986 explosion

Ev'ryone can see we're together As we walk on by (FLY!) and we fly just like birds of a feather I won't tell no lie (ALL!) all of the people around us they say Can they be that close Just let me state for the record We're giving love in a family dose


---Sister Sledge ("We are Family" 1979)

"The public will never know anything about that investigation, any discipline that may or may not be given. By law, none of that can be disclosed."

---Then Riverside City Manager Brad Hudson just telling it like it is.








"Bro don't...You're good dude...We're Code 4, this is a political nightmare...Dude just leave. Go 10-8."

---Patrol officer Grant Linhart to another officer passing through the area of the stop.

"I don't recall anything. It was a nightmare."


[Former Riverside Police Chief Russ Leach in younger days sitting with representatives of the State Attorney General at a city council meeting in 2001]

***UPDATE****

(Feb. 9, 2010)

Rumors are emerging of some intrigue surrounding the police department over an alleged incident during the weekend. Is there more to come or is it just a rumor?

Confirmed: Chief Russ Leach crashes vehicle on early Monday morning, Details sketchy but conflicting information about circumstances of accident. But major questions are being asked about what led to the earlier accident and a later traffic stop by Riverside Police Department officers involving Leach inside a damaged vehicle after numerous 911 phone calls came in involving a black vehicle throwing off sparks while it was being driven in Riverside. The vehicle was later stopped by officers after they allegedly tailed it for a period of time. Then the report writing began...

What's left of Leach's city-issued Chrysler 300 sitting in a cargo bay held for evidence or merely for insurance purposes.

Former Riverside Police Sgt. Frank Orta who wrote the traffic incident report then contacted his inlaw, Councilman Andrew Melendrez after allegedly fearing for his safety after a conversation with a management team member several hours after the incident





[Orta's recommendation was to simply file the report away and take no further action. However, the report soon took on a life of its own]





“Don’t talk to blogs. Don’t talk to the press. We are a family.”

[Interim Chief John DeLaRosa tried to rally the troops behind him at roll call sessions until one detective stood up and said no, soon costing him his career]






“My role in the police department is somewhat limited,”

Then City Manager Brad Hudson said. But was that truly the case and if so, how did Hudson control Leach?





[According to the CHP investigation and unnamed sources, Esquivel did sign the official version of the traffic incident report written by Sgt. Frank Orta if not the version released by City Hall. An internal power play near the top soon left Esquivel permanently on the sidelines. ]

It's hard to remember who won the Super Bowl or even who played into it the day after it happens if you're not much of a football fan. But in 2010, there were other reasons for that memory loss. That was the Super Bowl Sunday where the Riverside Police Department maintained sobriety checkpoints that its police chief, Russ Leach had advertised. Yet that was also the day that Leach drove while intoxicated with alcohol and prescription medications through Riverside without hitting a single checkpoint.

Two police officers, Grant Linhart and Jeremy Miller weren't even paying attention to Leach on the early morning hours around 2 a.m. of Feb. 8. They were located near the intersection of Arlington and Rutland dressed in uniform and one wearing a knit cap to ward off the winter chill while dealing with another situation. Then they see the Black Chrysler 300 driving past them, throwing off sparks because the tires are missing, only the rims of the wheels left to propel the car forward where the driver takes it. '

They leave their current situation and take pursuit of the car which they suspect has some serious problems. The car moves unsteadily ahead of them for a while before it finally pulls over to a stop. Then when they proceed carefully, exercising caution given that the first few moments of a traffic stop can be hazardous, to speak with the driver.

A hand reaches out through the window from inside the car with a badge in its grasp. And from there, the nightmare began.

Soon enough the two patrol officers realized that the man behind the wrecked vehicle was their own chief. One does just before the other and it's clear that they both knew the serious political and professional implications of having to treat their boss as a "subject" and then perhaps a "suspect" of a crime. Neither of them had many years on the force but already they knew that it wasn't going to be an ordinary traffic stop, no they would have to deal with their own police chief.

The same chief who on better days might have shaken their hands after they were sworn in on the force and maybe in passing since, given that in his final years Leach largely isolated himself from his officers and wasn't as much a visible presence. They saw signs of intoxication, reddened eyes, repetitive speech and soaked pants and they knew that he probably carried his city-issued firearm. Meaning that if their boss was intoxicated and armed, then potentially he could harm or kill them if they weren't careful. So they discussed the issue of whether he was packing between themselves as well. One of them said a bit nervously that he saw the chief move his hand towards the center console between the two seats. At that moment, perhaps Leach had appeared to be any individual who might pose a threat to an officer during a traffic stop but reality wouldn't allow them to linger on those thoughts for very long.

He was still their chief and it's clear that these two young men knew there'd be hell to pay somewhere for the choices they had to make whether they were right or wrong, in policy and by procedure or not. Even if the ultimate decisions to make were taken out of their hands by others higher up in the ranks. But as the primary responders, it was entirely possible that their own actions could be held to answer by others.

One of them aptly described the situation as a "train wreck" so much so that he warned backup officers away from the stop. An impulsive action to spare others what he and the other officers were facing because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But they were also in the right place because who knows what might have happened if they hadn't been there, hadn't pulled Leach over. That action by itself might have saved lives including that of their police chief. But that's about all that was saved in the aftermath that followed.

But watching and listening to the two officers struggle with the nightmare that interrupted their graveyard shift was like being a voyeur into the part of the police department that most people always suspected existed but never actually wanted to see. The fact that in this police department and clearly others all people were treated equally but some were more equal than others including inebriated police chiefs.

A retired high ranking law enforcement officer once told me he had pulled over an inebriated county board supervisor and that individual had been driven home without arrest or citation. What else was there to do, he and others said, if I wanted to keep my job and my career alive? So the crisis that hit the Riverside Police Department was hardly unique but that didn't make it any less painful to so many people. But the fact is that this department and others in the Inland Empire had been giving Leach preferential treatment for some time before the last time Leach drove inebriated as a police chief.

The two police officers probably didn't know Leach's complicated history anymore than they appeared to know him. In fact, they seemed to know the black Chrysler 300 without plates as being associated more with the chief than the man who drove it that night. That's clear in one officer's phone conversation with their sergeant.

These two men knew enough that it would be awkward to detain their own boss but they likely didn't know that the police department's management and possibly that of the city allegedly had its own game plan in place when the police chief drank to the point of inebriation. To essentially not arrest or even cite him for DUI but to make sure someone gave him a ride home safely and allegedly, other agencies in the region outside of the Riverside Police Department played into this game plan one way or another.

When the officers activated their lights to pull over the vehicle, they had activated their Cobain video camera installed inside the vehicle and the traffic stop would be documented.The Cobain video of the traffic stop can be found here. The recording though disconcerting to watch and hear does provide valuable insight into much more than what's going on with two patrol officers.

Below are excerpts from the video. Snatches of conversation that took place during an approximately 15 minute recording.

"This is way above us bro... if it goes away it's their call."

---Patrol officer, while Leach is calling DeLaRosa on the phone

Miller and Linhart were two officers assigned to the department's graveyard shift or Shift A as it's called on the patrol log sheets. Both of them had been hired during Leach's tenure as police chief and both of them had completed their probational periods some years earlier. They were supervised that night by Sgt. Frank Orta, who had worked for years in the department's traffic motor division. He had a fairly distinguished career including being involved in the arrest of the notorious serial killer William Suff and had originally planned to retire at the end of 2009. But he had decided to stay on until June 2010 in part because the department was woefully deficient in terms of its sergeant staffing at the time due to a growing number of vacancies. It would prove to be a fateful decision for Orta.

Their watch commander was another experienced officer, Lt. Leon Phillips who had been promoted by Leach not too long before the incident. He was an officer who would have his faith deeply tested based on actions performed that night. These were the two supervisors out in the field that night, while management personnel including their captain, deputy chief of field operations and investigations and assistant chief all were off-duty.

But before anyone arrived, Miller and Linhart had to deal with the situation in front of them, with the growing realization that it was going to prove to be most challenging. What was wrong with their chief that he had no clue how "totaled" his car looked? Was he carrying his service weapon and if so where was it? Guns and alcohol make dangerous partners and if both were involved with the chief, how would that be handled?

"He's reaching under the seat dude, that makes me nervous..."


---Patrol officer to other just before Leach gets out of his car

Then at some point Leach gets his cell phone out and starts making calls to people to come help him. Among those called were a then Internal Affairs sergeant who was a close friend, a girlfriend and of course, Leach's immediate subordinate Asst. Chief John DeLaRosa.

"Hey John, it's Russ..."


----Former Chief Russ Leach on cell phone to Asst. Chief John DeLaRosa before Sgt. Frank Orta arrived onscene.





"Who's John. I'm like who's John..."


---Patrol Officer Grant Linhart to CHP investigators

But the two officers already knew by then that they couldn't handle the situation by themselves and so they took the option that they had available to them in situations where they needed assistance from a more experienced supervisor, which is to call for a field sergeant. They took the appropriate action and weren't guilty at all of giving Leach preferential treatment. Too bad, some of those above them couldn't say the same.

"So I put my head in the car and I'm really looking and I get a side view of the driver, looks like an old man, kind of get a frontal view and then he just kind of glanced my way and then I was like, "Oh Crap. That's the chief. The chief." I immediately went over the top and I'm like "Miller" and I pointed down and I'm like "it's Chief One"." He motions to me with a hand signal, you now the telephone to his ear, and he's like "Call the Serge".



---Officer Grant Linhart to CHP investigators during his interview.



"Serg, hey can you come up to our stop? We're at Arlington and Rutland and ah.I'll tell you. You'll know who it is. It's a black no plates Chrysler 300. Really nice and I think you know who drives that kind of car."


---RPD officer to then Sgt. Frank Orta

Orta who was in the same vicinity as Phillips was when he got the officers' call for supervisory support drove out to the scene and Phillips showed up either at the same time or shortly after. Accounts of the situation by sources say that there was a lieutenant, at least one sergeant and the two officers at the scene.

The sergeant had this observation to share with CHP investigators about when he first arrived at the scene of the traffic stop.

"And as I got within arms' distance, he just stuck the phone at me and he said it's the Assistant Chief John DeLaRosa. So I thought that was odd. You know, so they handed me the phone and so he goes "Hey Frank what's going on there"? I said "I don't know I just got here. " He goes, well he goes, is he drunk?"


---Sgt. Frank Orta about a phone conversation with DeLaRosa, to CHP investigators

Judging from the discussion on the Cobain video tape, it seemed Orta wasn't thrilled to get the news about Leach but that he would come on over from the Magnolia Police Center to supervise. But Orta's words were critical because according to what he said, it was DeLaRosa who raised the question of whether or not Leach was intoxicated and it was the first question he asked of Orta. At least one of the officers, Orta and Phillips all told investigators that they had mentioned that Leach appeared intoxicated. DeLaRosa on the other hand said he had no idea and hadn't been told that Leach had been intoxicated. What's strange about that is that given Leach's history in this area and the likelihood that DeLaRosa would have known all or most of it, that DeLaRosa wouldn't have had stronger suspicions that Leach had been intoxicated again.

But what happened when it came to the police department's or city's own investigators trying to decide who to believe, the three subordinate employees or the highest ranking management employee that wasn't intoxicated, apparently some decision maker sided with the assistant chief on every point of disagreement with a larger number of lower ranking employees. These occurrences would later form the major thrust of Phillips complaint that this had compromised the investigation, one that at least initially had turned him into the scapegoat of the entire scandal.

***We break into this blog posting to pass on a public service announcement. City Hall has declared at a public meeting that it does have a Fraud and Audit Hotline. A service representative can be reached at (951) 826-2232, again the number is (951) 826-2232. We know return to our previously scheduled program.***

Another important part of drafting a timeline of the traffic stop involving Leach is created through use of the city's listing of the phone calls that were made by employees using city-issued phones during the incident and the day afterward. Leach had made his own phone calls but then so had others at the scene as this means of communication began to spread out like the branches of a tree.

The Riverside Police Department Phone Tree
(What's Missing are the phone calls from City Hall)




2:51 a.m.: RPD Officers Grant Linhart and Jeremy Miller stop Leach's banged up city-issued Chryler 300. Orta responds to their call for a supervisor within several minutes.


2:53 a.m. Leach calls friend and current or former Internal Affairs Sergeant Marcus Smail who told Press Enterprise he missed the call. Leach makes three unidentified phone calls within first 30 minutes. Smail apparently didn't work on the department's internal investigation of the incident although assigned to that division.

3:02 a.m. Orta calls Phillips


3:10 a.m. DeLaRosa calls Phillips. Why did he decide to call him at this time of the morning anyway? Alas, the phone records didn't help there.


3:21 a.m. Phillips calls DeLaRosa's phone

4:04 a.m. Phillips calls DeLaRosa and both calls last about three minutes in duration



Oh wait, here are the known ones from City Hall:



9-10 a.m. (time varies) Anonymous woman calls Mayor Ron Loveridge's office to talk about Leach incident. At least one other councilman said that an anonymous woman contacted him sometime that day.


1:24 p.m. Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis calls Leach, about four hours after woman tipped off Loveridge's office. Loveridge who was out of the office at the time had said that when contacted, he had made inquiries at Hudson's office about the incident. City Manager Brad Hudson doesn't use his city-issued cell phone to make a phone call that day until 5:08 p.m. and it's not clear whether he ever tried to contact his direct employee through this cell phone on Feb. 8 though it doesn't appear that he did.


4:44 p.m. Loveridge's earliest call by his city issued cell phone that day but if he was out of the office and was notified by his office about the anonymous phone call why is there no record of that call? And again, why is there a big delay between the morning tip and the city manager's office now saying it was notified in the afternoon?


5:08 p.m. Earliest phone call made by Hudson's city issued phone. Really?

Okay there were other phone calls that weren't included on this list like the one that Orta made to his in-law Councilman Andrew Melendrez not long after the incident where he expressed concerns about it. That means that as far as what's known in the public record (in this case the CHP investigative report) Melendrez was the first city official to learn of the incident. Then the mayor followed after his office received a phone call from a mysterious woman about the Leach incident at about 9am. When the mayor and other elected officials found out followed by city management, they didn't go out and write a press release informing the rest of the city's residents, no they apparently both tried to find more information about what happened and then engaged in what was likely intended to be a coverup of the entire incident. After all, that's what usually is going on when concerns are raised about records depicting an incident start disappearing. And it's not like the city hadn't had to do it before involving Leach. Hudson as Leach's boss had denied knowing of any such or even that Leach had any issues or problems with alcohol. However, there's a very good chance that's not the truth. What if Hudson knew the whole time about that and other problems pertaining to Leach and used them to keep him in check? It more than appeared that Hudson and his assistant city manager, Tom DeSantis had pretty much controlled the police department, micromanaging it down to the last paperclip so where did they get their authority and power to do just that?

City Attorney Greg Priamos was exempted from producing even a redacted listing of phone calls he made from his city-issued device citing attorney/client privilege. It's not officially very clear when exactly the city's own legal counsel was brought into the loop. But then the most common theme of the recent charter review process was limiting the scope of the city manager's authority and powers from overseeing internal audits to hiring and firing the public utilities manager. And joining in on this bandwagon was Priamos who proposed the ballot initiative to abolish the city manager's authority to have final approval of personnel decisions made by the city attorney and city clerk. No doubt, that was much more fresh in Priamos' mind this time than back during the last charter review process in 2004 because in the interim between then and 2011, lay the Hudson management regime.

Priamos as he once told someone has two main functions as city attorney. The first is to protect the city council and mayor. When asked from what, he allegedly couldn't answer that question with anything but silence. But anyway, let's move onto the second responsibility which is to protect the city from civic liability. By banning access to his city issued phone during the period of time during and after the Leach incident under "attorney/client privilage", it's not clear which of these two main responsibilities is driving Priamos' action or whether it's both of them. But given that both Leach and then later Hudson would file claims of various types against the city, it was clear that pretty soon Priamos would have his hands full.

In 1984, the Riverside Police Department and many of its employees were involved in motion picture making. They made credited appearances as "Riverside police officers" in the movie, Killpoint which starred Richard Roundtree.

[A 1984 action movie that starred many officers in the Riverside Police Department including the watch commander and the man who tried to fire him.]

But what happened on Feb. 8, 2010 wasn't quite like a movie. Phones lines to City Hall and the police department soon lit on fire when news got out further than the city would have liked about what had happened during those early morning hours. As it turned out, it wasn't going to be business as usual this time and it would no longer be secret.

Within several days after exposure, Leach was put on paid administrative leave for medical reasons as the city begin to hammer out a medical retirement. Hudson announced that he would personally oversee the "independent" investigation that would be reviewed by former Riverside County District Attorney Grover Trask, now a partner at Best, Best and Krieger. But strangely enough, it would be only the actions of those in the police department that would be investigated, not anyone including Hudson inside City Hall. It became clear soon enough why that was the case when revelations that certain denizens past and present at City Hall had been quite busy decking themselves out like cops, creating their own badges, getting cold plated cars to drive (sometimes crookedly) around town (or across patches of untamed fields strewn with errant fence posts).

For some, just cars with untraceable plates (which were of course illegal for city officials) weren't enough, they wanted police radios, reversible tires and in at least once case police lights to "roll" into those critical incidents. How was all this illegal and very unethical conduct able to happen and who called the shots?

But for the fearless duo of Hudson and DeSantis, they took it a step further by acquiring firearms owned by the city that were sold to them by an unlicensed dealer, the police department. After the State Attorney General's office weighed in, they laundered the sale through a private gun dealership. What came clearer when these revelations came to light as a result of litigation filed by two former police lieutenants was why Hudson wanted to institute an "independent" investigation he could tightly control by establishing his own parameters. It also explains why a bulk of the energy and likely money invested in the "independent" investigation was spent essentially doing a witch hunt of any whistle blowers.

Of course, the city council and mayor went right along with it just like they went along with everything else. When it came to the Leach incident and these embarrassing scandals, the city government had little to say and even fewer questions to ask at least publicly.

***We break into this blog posting to pass on a public service announcement. City Hall has declared at a public meeting that it does have a Fraud and Audit Hotline. A service representative can be reached at (951) 826-2232, again the number is (951) 826-2232. We know return to our previously scheduled program.***

Chris Lanzillo who would later be hired by the police defense firm, Lackey, Dammeier and McGill had been a detective and a former Riverside Police Officers' Association president. According to the lieutenants' lawsuit, he had been warned by Esquivel that he had a target sign on his back in part because of the research being done by leaders of the two police unions into what city management had been doing. But it wasn't until he was sitting in a roll call session that was visited by DeLaRosa that his career trajectory suddenly altered its course. DeLaRosa and his band of captains had gone on tour to speak to officers about the importance of family unity, well the thin blue line really, and that they needed to stick together and circle the wagons against any attempts to find out what had been going on related to the incident involving their police chief. But was that what had really been happening, or were management employees closet to Leach exploring their own options for advancement when it became clear that Leach's near decade reign would be coming to an abrupt end.

Deputy Chief Mike Blakely had allegedly served as an important mentor to DeLaRosa whose meteoric rise in the ranks was unprecedented, well at least since that of former chief, Jerry Carroll who rose from sergeant to chief in about five years. "Johnny D. " or "Johnny Who" was temperament wise much different than the more extroverted Esquivel. But some say they both wanted to put in for the chief's position when it opened up, but as it turned out neither would get it. DeLaRosa became interim picked by Hudson even though it was clear he'd be much more of a central figure in the "independent" investigation than Esquivel. The only upper management team member who would survive was the only one who knew how to do so and that was Blakely.

The problem with Blakely is that he wound up as a defendant along with the police department on a growing number of lawsuits and claims for damages filed by at least four police employees in less than six months. He oversaw an Internal Affairs Division which put on a seminar in how to treat management employees with kid gloves and lower ranking officers like criminals, using them as pawns on a chess board to launch a counter strike against the management member treated with kid gloves. One of the more shameful episodes being how the division treated Officer Neely Nakamura starting with in the parking lot at Magnolia Police Center in 2010. How the city views these lawsuits and the defendants listed them will be largely revealed by the legal decisions it makes involving them.

But every investigation done by the Internal Affairs Division (except maybe the Hudson "independent" probe) in early 2010 became shunted down the list replaced by the number one prioritized investigation which was to investigate Lanzillo for a complaint that was filed by the supervisor of an officer who attended a diversity training class and said he made a racial comment. But then they went back three years to see if he'd lied about making an earlier comment, meaning he didn't actually make it. They relied on interviews of people who didn't recall him making it which could have been due to faded memory over time or concern that the Internal Affairs investigators would ask them why they never reported it if they did recall him making it. But Lanzillo was fired by DeLaRosa allegedly for lying when he said he made a prior racial comment.

But what was really ironic about that was that a former Internal Affairs lieutenant while in that assignment made a racial comment during use of force training offered by the city attorney's office. That lieutenant wasn't disciplined for making that comment, was able to retire and then get another job at City Hall. When the lieutenant had made the racial comment, his division had been in the process of investigating a detective for making the same racial derogatory term that he had, this one in a roll call training session. Initially that detective faced a suspension but after the whole non-discipline thing involving the lieutenant of the division investigating him, the discipline given to that detective was somewhat reduced.

The lesson that differential treatment effectively taught was that if you're higher up in rank and you made a racial comment, then you not only didn't get disciplined, you could get benefits like another job with the same city. But if you're a detective, then you get disciplined although if the guy in charge of the investigation that results in your discipline doesn't get disciplined for the same thing, you might get it reduced. That would be like if an officer and a lieutenant both got involved in off-duty fights with other people, the officer might get disciplined and the lieutenant might not even get investigated. In other words, a double standard of conduct and professionalism would be established. That helps foster a situation where a police chief would get a ride home instead of a jail cell or even a written citation for a hit and run and DUI investigation and that's what even intoxicated, he apparently expected to receive based on the information that was provided of events on Feb. 8.

But Lanzillo's situation wasn't just about how he was treated in comparison to the former lieutenant. It was that the interest in what had happened in the diversity training class became of more keen interest after he had attended one of those roll call bull sessions. Apparently, he had challenged DeLaRosa's comments rejecting them and asking him why it had taken so long (over 30 hours) for him to contact the CHP to take over (or really just start) the criminal investigation involving Leach. Not too long later, Lanzillo received his notice of intent to terminate on the same day as Phillips allegedly received his own. The investigation against Lanzillo began after his confrontation with DeLaRosa in that roll call and after it hit the public arena, a missive was allegedly sent out of Orange Street Station's second floor to Internal Affairs in downtown Riverside's bus terminal to make it the main priority of the division's investigation schedule.

Lanzillo's Skelly hearing in front of the man he'd challenged in roll call didn't last very long and in less than 10 minutes deliberation by DeLaRosa, Lanzillo was fired from the police department where he'd put in at least 15 years of service.

Phillips had been pulled out of his watch command duties some time earlier and relegated into the "penalty box" at Orange Street Station where Lanzillo and at least four other officers were assigned in investigation limbo. But Phillips wasn't keeping idle, he spent his down time preparing and researching his case. Allegedly, he had been given a notice of intent to terminate to get him to be more amiable to accepting a suspension and/or demotion back to sergeant but he wouldn't budge. He had lawyered up and he was able to prove his case to city management and reverse the suspension and demotion to a written reprimand. But then, what kind of investigation would penalize a mid-line supervisor so his pension value was lowered while allowing the management employee that oversaw him and the chief who was later convicted of a DUI to keep their pensions unchanged?

Phillips was castigated by some at City Hall including as part of the "independent" investigation while the employee at the top of the management chain just below Leach was put in the interim position and not criticized in the same manner before the investigation was even completed. The treatment of Phillips provided more case lessons on the buck stopping at mid-line supervision instead of in the assistant chief's office, the chief's office and even Hudson's office. After all, if Leach had issues with alcohol, it would seem that Hudson would be in a greater position to address it than Phillips.

So despite all this talk from City Hall about how preferential treatment wasn't the pattern and practice and wouldn't be tolerated, the investigation itself was rife in the pattern and practice of preferential treatment including that Hudson afforded himself. The people who were most culpable got their pensions, those that were fired and/or retaliated for whistle blowing or criticizing the very questionable actions of their superiors especially in front of others had to sue to get retirements. In other words, it was clear that despite the fallout from the Leach incident, it was still pretty much business as usual.

But what of the future?

The New Regime

"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it"

---Edmund Burke

After Leach faded into the sunset along with all of his cabinet members, the city hired its police chief Sergio Diaz from the outside. Although the city and department had been promised way back earlier in the decade that it would hire inside after Leach, it wasn't in the position to do that based on how Leach's tenure played out in terms of building its management team.

Hudson announced a recruitment and search for the new police chief and then created a "blind" panel of community leaders, police union representatives and a police practices consultant. The community leaders couldn't ask their own questions but only those that were provided by Human Resources Director Rhonda Strout. None of the panelists were able to talk to one another at all about the process or their opinions about any of the candidates, they could only talk about these issues to Hudson in one-on-one interviews at the process' end. It's not clear how some of the panelists voted. The police unions had allegedly been instrumental in persuading former Asst. Police Chief Mike Smith (who now heads investigations in the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office) to go out for the position and he'd been branded one of the leading candidates.

One finalist reportedly had been told at a social gala by an employee at City Hall that he'd been eliminated from consideration for the chief's position. This candidate then allegedly had threatened to take legal action against the city for its unprofessional behavior in telling one of its seventh floor employees his status in the process when this employee was entirely outside of the process. Soon after, he was added to the list of finalists for interviews.

Remarkably all or most of the community leaders all liked best the same candidate, the assistant chief of Long Beach. It's not clear which members had Diaz as their first choice or how they judged him. The only thing that's known is that when the final decision was made by Hudson, he picked Diaz.

Diaz was sworn in on the last day of June by then Mayor Pro Tem Steve Adams who would have missed out if the city had stuck with the original planned swearing in date of July 1, the new fiscal year. It became clear that at least two upper management positions would be filled from the outside and though the positions had been vested for years, they would somehow be converted without a public vote to "at will" but only for the two newcomers. And so former Pasadena Police Department interim Chief Chris Vicino and former Los Angeles Police Department management employee Jeffrey Greer joined Diaz' cabinet. By then, Diaz had gone against the recommendations of City Hall and picked Blakely to be his deputy chief but Blakely did have much more experience and skills than anyone else in the captain's rank. Also from the time that Diaz had arrived at the police department, he had counted DeLaRosa among his most trusted advisers.

Very good luck for those officers who had been members of that team as several of them were included in the first round of promotions and others were assigned close to Diaz. The new chief then started the difficult task of pushing the department into a new direction away from the scandalous practices that blew up earlier in 2010. He went out into the community, got involved in dancing competitions, had a tamale festival and even directed the arrest of a fifty cent newspaper bandit filling in his new role as "Charles 1". But concerns soon rose about his enforcement of several departmental policies and procedures including the special assignment/transfer policy. Not to mention clashes and highly emotional and colorfully worded exchanges between management employees and also others. Not to mention more than a few from management about this blog in various venues.

Vicino worked diligently on the Strategic Plan which is still awaiting release to the public and edited a Wikipedia page. His essay is the one on the right hand side of the page. It's not bad and in areas, an improvement on the original but as you can see, he did delete the entire section on the Leach DUI incident from his version. That's one way to deal with a historical lesson is to omit it from memory but what would have been better was to just leave it and state that the department and city have put measures in place to ensure this type of preferential treatment never happens again on our watch. That would have been a much more powerful message for the department's leadership to send rather than the message it did send which was let's just pretend it never happened and move on without even showing that we've learned from it.

What's troubling about something that might seem so minor to many, almost like making syntax changes in an essay is that is that the kind of attitude that the department's management will bring into a crisis of confidence that results from a breakdown in accountability? When the management sees any signs of any problem in the department, will it investigate, and then if serious problems are uncovered, address and fix those problems? What if instead it just decides to shut down any examination or critical exercise of anything that looks like it might be a problem and then bury its head in the sand? Will it take the attitude that it's better not to know or find out than to investigate, confront and deal with it?

The management has already been tested by this scenario more than once and what it's done has shown others the answer to these questions.

But the question on this anniversary begs to be asked is what would this department's management do if placed in the same scenario as the Leach incident with an employee? Through its actions so far, the management has effectively answered that question and there are those who know just as definitively the answers.

When employees break the law off-duty or engage in behavior that may be criminal, will they be investigated like the regular public or will it be treated instead as not worthy of attention?

When asked to book employees who break the law or engage in behavior that may be criminal will the management walk away and say I don't want to hear about it?

When an employee breaks the law off-duty or engages in behavior that might be criminal will management team members address that employee's behavior or try to seek preferential treatment for that employee?

When an employee breaks the law off-duty or engages in behavior that might be criminal will it be addressed immediately by management or will management wait until there's liability of public exposure?


If there's evidence of a serious problem, will management respond to it immediately and be concerned about remedying it or will instead shy away from any further exploration of that problem and not address it all?

Does the reality of the department matter more or does the image it projects to the public?

What are or will be the answers to these questions? Have they already been asked and answered? Would these answers provide confidence to city residents that the status quo that existed on Feb. 8, 2010 is really gone forever? The answers to these questions will tell anyone whether or not the city or department would make the same mistakes it made previously in the Leach incident by assigning preferential treatment to certain individuals at the expense of everyone else.

The rest of the city can only watch and wait and hope that history won't repeat itself.




***We break into this blog posting to pass on a public service announcement. City Hall has declared at a public meeting that it does have a Fraud and Audit Hotline. A service representative can be reached at (951) 826-2232, again the number is (951) 826-2232....Oh never mind...don't call us, we'll call you....***

Orange Street Rumbles and the City Council Balks

Update: Riverside City Council votes to send all but one charter initiative to the voters though it turned into a dogfight to garner enough votes to forward the initiative on an internal auditor that reports to the city council and not the city manager.

Shot down was the initiative which if passed by voters would have the Board of Public Utilities have final say on the hiring and firing of the Public Utilities manager.

But Councilman Steve Adams and Councilman Chris MacArthur both adamantly oppose allowing the voters to decide on the measure. Adams says it'll put the city at financial peril, could cause major upheaval and if it's not broke, don't fix it.

[Adams cried foul at the possibility of having voters decide on whether or not the internal auditor should report to the city council and not the city manager]

Adams and MacArthur spearheaded a motion to shoot it down which needed five votes to pass and fell one short when Councilmen Paul Davis, Rusty Bailey and Mike Gardner voted against it. Gardner and Davis' counter-motion to send it to the voters required five votes and with Council members Nancy Hart and Andy Melendrez jumping aboard, it got enough votes to pass.

The most critical moment of the three hour workshop? When Bailey pushed through the motion requiring a super majority rather than the usual simple majority to shoot down a charter initiative off the ballot in June.

Another Meeting, Another Brown Act violation?

In the evening session, the city council apparently voted 7-0 on a motion to add a charter initiative to the ballot to do with the city's planner position. No public comment allowed, no advance notice, even the 24 hours for an "emergency" and none of the protections offered by the state's Brown Act.



Update: The appellate decision in People of the State of California v Anthony Fletcher







UPDATE: Striking Riverside County workers gather by the hundreds to march and rally at the County Administrative headquarters in downtown Riverside one day after a Superior Court judge ruled whether or not certain classes of employees could go on strike.

Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz (l.) and two key members of his cabinet, Deputy Chief Jeffrey Greer and Asst. Chief Chris Vicino during one of their more peaceful moments]

[Diaz (r.) and the first member of his cabinet, Deputy Chief Mike Blakely photographed here in one of the more ironic of situations at a school board meeting]

Mayor Ron Loveridge gave his final address to the city to a sold out crowd of over 900 city employees and civic leaders even as explosions resounded around him. Those were courtesy of several bomb threats received by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department by an anonymous individual against unspecified county courthouses in Riverside. No bombs were found but a couple of suspicious items were blown up and the noises they generated echoed through the downtown. Rubber bullets and protests and words were flying during a demonstration at UCR stemming from a contentious meeting involving U.C. Regents who even while the public university system they represent is facing more severe cuts and tuition cuts, arrived to their meeting decked out in private limousines from likely, a five star hotel.

That irony was not lost on many people in attendance at a huge demonstration at UCR even those who stood there quietly observing. It's a serious situation since the health of the California economy has always been in part defined by the percentage of college graduates within the state's boundaries including those who graduate from public universities. So clearly much remains to be played out if this state's economy is to recover on different fronts. With the hard hits to post-high school education, that recovery is less likely and most likely delayed.

But in the meantime, one professor at that university who also happened to be the mayor made his speech at the Riverside Convention Center which will close for several years to be renovated if City Hall can ever agree on a design or cough up the money to pay for it. But then even as the city management is telling city employees that the financial situation's more dire than it's been telling the press, the city's still pledging to spend more money on projects like there has never been a budget crisis.

People gave Loveridge a standing ovation and the Greater Chamber of Commerce and its leader elect for life Cindy Roth presented Loveridge with one of its awards. Some city departments' employees stayed for the luncheon. Others had to leave early because their department's budgets didn't include sending employees to the annual luncheon.

Amid the situation involving the bomb threats that shut down a portion of downtown and what was happening at UCR stood Deputy Chief of Investigations and Field Operations Jeffrey Greer. Formerly out of the Los Angeles Police Department, he'd faced more than what was going on the day of the mayor's last annual address but Riverside's surely presented its own challenges in other ways. After all, not too long ago, Greer allegedly found himself in the middle of a standoff between himself and two members of the upper management team including Chief Sergio Diaz over the assignment of a sergeant into the supervisory position inside one of the department's general investigation units. But in that case, he apparently prevailed and his decision stood and the assignment never took place.

What had allegedly happened was that the sergeant assigned to the domestic violence division was cycling out under the policies and procedures set aside for special assignments/transfers. He had done his time there and the policy stated that when an officer completes a 2-3 year stint in a special assignment, he or she has to then spend a year working in field operations before he or she can apply and have a chance of receiving another special assignment. So this sergeant had reached the end of his time and he was to be replaced by another sergeant. However, that particular sergeant designated to replace him would be supervising a team of detectives that included his own sister-in-law. So one of the sergeants who had also tested for the position expressed concern about it.

Diaz and Asst. Chief Chris Vicino apparently wanted him to be assigned to the division anyway but allegedly Greer who oversees investigations said no, that doing so would violate the nepotism rule due to the close familial relationship between the sergeant and one of his detectives. He didn't back down even as two higher ranking management team members apparently disagreed with him. Finally they backed down deciding that would be the wiser course of action and another sergeant was assigned to head the domestic violence division instead. It did appear like the wise course of action to take because it's always best to try to avoid having close familial relatives working together particularly where one is supervising the other as well as other employees.

However, in a medium sized department like the Riverside Police Department where there are quite a few officers related to others (and at one point there were two sets of three brothers working there) and in marriages with other officers, that can be very challenging task to accomplish. The city and city departments do have nepotism policies in place but it makes practical sense to avoid having family members work directly together especially in situations where one supervises the other. Doing so reduces any perceptions of favoritism or actual practices of preferential treatment that might take place and the sergeant can be assigned to another division where any conflict of interest issues wouldn't be a factor.

It was ironic that it was the assignment of a new sergeant in domestic violence that led to the standoff amongst members of the department's upper management because the special assignment/transfer policy itself had already been the subject of growing controversy. Allegations involving its use by Diaz had already led to an earlier standoff between him, the management and the leadership of the Riverside Police Officers' Association. Only the reasons were far different from allegations of nepotism.

Yet directly or not they still addressed allegations of favoritism and special treatment towards some officers at the expense of others. A not uncommon theme in the Riverside Police Department as it's turned out.

"Worse than Leach..."

The focus of that controversy that brought the management and the police union at a crossroads involved the reassignment of six sergeants into special assignments after they had already just served time in other special assignments. Meaning that in these cases, the sergeant was assigned to one special assignment for a two to three year stint and then upon completion of that assignment, instead of being transferred back to the field operations division for a year, he or she instead received another special assignment. The rank and file officers had long been noticing that while some of them had to do the minimum of a year in patrol in between field assignments, others didn't have to face those same requirements. Several were even bumped out of their special assignments without completing their time to be replaced by other officers, even though they had been doing quite well in their assignments.

This in large part was courtesy of some language attached at some point to the special assignment/transfer policy that stated that special assignments/transfers could be doled out regardless of a previous assignment at the discretion of the police chief. That language in some cases rendered all the language which preceded it null and void because if it's the chief's discretion then the previous requirements don't have much relevance in the final decision making if the chief chooses to ignore them. In some cases, it can be seen where exceptions to mandating time in patrol might be made but it seems that there are quite a few cases among officers and sergeants were it's the rule rather the exception. In the past year, it seems to have reinvented the "team" system which had been so destructive to the police department under the leadership and management of Chief Russ Leach and his successor, Interim Chief John DeLaRosa. The teams again seem to focus around the issue of special assignments and the application of the policies which govern this practice.

That's not that surprising to see because differential treatment of officers from entry level to the top of management based on the individual's personal relationship with the police chief defined the management culture inside the department before Diaz even arrived. And in time, this dynamic had created a two-team system, meaning that some individuals were on Team Leach and others including later on were on Team DeLaRosa. Most individuals weren't included on either team either by choice or because they lacked certain requirements to even be eligible for team membership in what became clubs with closed memberships.

Teams were then allegedly decided based on who vacationed with who, who partied or drank with which individual and whether or not someone played on the right informally organized sports team. Leach and DeLaRosa each apparently had their own teams, which didn't really come into conflict until Leach's retirement after the DUI incident and attempted cover up during the period of time it was unclear which team's leader would prevail.

As it turned out, neither of them did although DeLaRosa played a much larger role in the future of the Riverside Police Department under its new leadership than did Leach.

When Diaz arrived, many officers hoped that the team system would go the way of the teams' captains and who could really blame them? But by the time Diaz had arrived, team membership had become all about survival, inside a profession where the stakes were already very high. Officers are already highly dependent on other officers to do their jobs and sometimes for their survival. Also organizations that are quite large break down into smaller groups quite naturally which often leads to clique formation, the beginning of team formation.

The irony with the team system is that a lot of those people didn't really need them already having the skills and talents to do just fine if they have the opportunities to develop those attributes. Not that the opportunities for leadership and other skills to grow were abundant because the higher up in rank that individuals rose, the more competitive and cutthroat it all became.

Promoting captains apparently became about who owed who what favor and who cut favor with elected officials and who had angered them. The city denied that there were ties between the whims of elected officials and police officers at the highest levels by awarding large settlements and top tier promotions to two police lieutenants who raised the allegations among others in their lawsuits. Anything to avoid the reality of what these promotional processes would have had spilled out inside a U.S. District courtroom during a jury trial. While telling everyone there were no truth truth to these allegations, by actions the city showed that it believed what it paid out both financially and through public exposure would be much less at settlement than it would be at trial.

But the biggest evidence of the destructive nature of the "team" system on the development of future leaders and managers was shown when after Leach retired, the rest of his cabinet soon followed. Not to mention the fact that when a new outside chief was hired, two out of three members of his cabinet also came from outside agencies which shows a dearth of leadership at the management level that is able to step up into the deputy chief and assistant chief positions. In an environment of cut throat competition and backroom deals where individuals could literally win and lose a promotion during the time period it takes to reach the office to accept it, where is their room for fostering an environment to build and foster leadership and management for the next generation of leaders?

The answer was there was no room to do this at all and there were no leaders or managers who could be chief or even chief in waiting. The talent was definitely there and in great numbers but it was like someone had taken what should have bridged these future leaders and managers to the upper echelons and leveled it to rubble leaving only a big canyon between supervision and mid-line management and the top tier of the chain of command.

But then the agency and city had reaped what they had sown and left the police department with the job of rebuilding and reinventing itself.

The period of time where this all took place left the city in a position where it had to go look outside for its new chief and his or her cabinet. And so that's what the city did during the spring and summer of 2010.

But was anything learned by these prior mistakes that had been made? That would remain to be seen and many people watched and waited during what's called a police chief's "honeymoon
period".

Some People Are More Special than Others

The issue involving special assignments and how they were allocated out by Diaz arose almost immediately.

If some people get turned down for special assignments or face delays because they are told they have to fulfill the patrol requirement while others get to bypass a year in patrol and rack up back to back to back special assignments, then yes, this is going to generate serious problems. The perception could arise that some individuals get to serve one special assignment after another because they are "favorites" of the chief and/or his management team and it'd be difficult to explain to that individual why he or she shouldn't think that way. It's a shame that this pattern is apparently reemerging because favoritism of any sort and a culture that fosters it as a necessary tool of advancement or survival has never benefited the police department and in fact, has proven to be a huge detriment. Not much controversy to that statement if you study its history.

The patrol division is the backbone of any police department including this one or so they say. That's what the management including Diaz has been saying since they'd arrived to lead and manage the police department in the summer of 2010. They said a lot about how down they were with patrol, how they wanted to be stationed where the "troops" were at Lincoln Field Operations Station. But it became clear soon enough as summer turned to autumn that year that instead the management team would render itself invisible to most of those it would lead and manage. Similar to how police management is conducted in the Los Angeles Police Department where those at the bottom are separated by those higher in rank than them by more than just L.A.'s massive geography. It didn't take long for Diaz and his management team members to isolate themselves from the majority of those who work under them. Diaz, Vicino and Deputy Chief of Administration Mike Blakely are all assigned to Orange Street Station in downtown Riverside.

Greer is assigned to Magnolia Police Center across town in La Sierra. Some say that might be a blessing in disguise considering the climate at Orange Street Station. Still, most of the people really don't see much of the management team. They rarely attend roll call sessions and even the field operations captain stationed at Lincoln Field Operations made himself scarce while there. What's interesting about the policy and procedure involving special assignments/transfers is how it's written in part to uphold the inherent necessity and value of the department's patrol division but then its application shows just the opposite. The language requiring the year to be spent in patrol ensures that the patrol division always has the same footing as special assignments, that one can't exist without the other and it's intended to ensure that those who serve special assignments have that time in patrol to keep their required skills relatively fresh and strong so they don't weaken with time spent away from patrol.

But the application has always been manipulated in various ways by different police chiefs and not everyone who is a part of it has been treated equally. It's understandable if questions are raised about sergeant A who applies for an assignment after working in patrol as a supervisor and then loses out to sergeant B who gets that assignment even though he's spent two years or more in another special assignment? Also in cases where officers spend up to six years solely in one special assignment after another? What if after that six years they are put back in a patrol uniform for the first time in six years serving as a higher ranking supervisor of officers including many who have continuously worked in patrol?

Still, when a chief allows an officer or a sergeant to skip the year spent in patrol in order to receive another special assignment, is that a way to express how much a chief values the contributions of the department's patrol division or does it instead devalue it? And if you afford certain employees the abilities to skip that year in patrol but don't offer those same abilities to others, does that foster an environment where everyone is equal but some are more equal than others?

Quite a few interesting issues and questions arise in situations involving special assignments/transfers. But as more and more questions are asked and yes, more controversy arises in how the policies and procedures governing these practices are carried about by the police chief, there likely will be more opportunities for this to happen. The RPOA is under new leadership after its most recent elections produced a new president and vice-president and the leadership has already allegedly issued informal complaints to the management involving the special assignments/transfers involving at least six sergeants.

What's interesting about the burgeoning issue involving special assignments/transfers is the fact that their stock has grown considerably in the past year that Diaz and company have been managing the department. Most visibly this has been in the area of promotions especially those at the mid-line supervisory level meaning lieutenants. That can be gleaned by examining the promotional lists for that rank and comparing and contrasting the composition of three different lieutenants lists in play since January 2010.

Initially, the lists were dominated by sergeants who worked patrol assignments though there were those who worked special assignments sprinkled about near the top of the list as well. But all of the people in the top five of the January 2010 list had recent patrol experience. Whereas most of those on the list who had spent more time in special assignments comprised the middle of the list and lower. Still, if you follow the trend for promoting lieutenants in 2010 before and after Diaz' arrival, this is what you would have seen.

The sequential order of promotions in a field of 12 eligible candidates as like this: 6, 5, 9, 11, 2 and 1. The last promotion was done involving the highest ranking candidate on the list in use in January 2010 but during the period of the next test where the grading had been switched from numerical ranking to the banding system. So why patrol officers dominated the lists for lieutenant, it was those who worked special assignments who tended to be more represented percentage wise in the final selections.

What was noticeable about the production of the latest lieutenant's list is that the process of grading the lieutenants had changed offering up Diaz more control of that process. The composition of the list had changed as well with the top of the list being dominated by officers who had spent time, sometimes quite a bit of time in special assignments. The two "A" band candidates were both working in special assignments inside the chief's office at the time and one or both of them had previously been worked a special assignment before picking up their current position. The other interesting change was that unlike his first round of promotions including three lieutenants in July 2010, Diaz began promoting straight off the lists choosing "A" bands for lieutenants and going by the numerical ranking on the sergeants' lists.

Three females were promoted into supervisory positions by Diaz since he arrived in Riverside and at least two of them had to pass several "tests" before their promotions were solidified. The female sergeant most recently promoted had to be interviewed by Diaz with two other candidates who ranked below her on the sergeant's list. A female lieutenant had to work three different assignments at the same time in the month or so before her promotion. It's not clear if the male sergeant who topped the most recent promotional list was interviewed by Diaz before his promotion along with the female sergeant candidate and another one or two male candidates or if the recently promoted male sergeant was interviewed again by Diaz along with the other "A" band candidate before their promotions took place. It's also not clear if the decision to re-interview candidates on the promotional lists is new practice that Diaz has instituted or whether it was just used with this particular promotion. The practice isn't necessarily bad and might be useful but if it's selectively applied, then that might raise issues.

The promotional process and Diaz' promoting off the list in sequential order, whether he's doing these special interviews or not, once its composition changed left individuals working in the department's patrol division not surprisingly feeling very concerned. The belief that officers needed to work special assignments to have any shot at getting promoted if they were field officers began to grow and field officers wondered if it was even worth testing for sergeant and especially lieutenant if you were a field patrol officer. Whether that concern is widespread may or may not be reflected in the size of the promotional lists after the next testing process. Will the numbers of those who apply and pass tests increase or decrease during the next round?

After all, when Diaz arrived, there were 35 candidates who had passed the sergeant's test which was quite a bit higher than the last promotional list under Leach. Not uncommon one would imagine when a new chief arrives on the job and is given a clean slate. But the interviews done in the latest round were certainly interesting. Not that it's bad to do that but it should be done more consistently if so not to single out one individual.

Sergeants:

1) Charles Payne (promoted not interviewed by chief)

2) Deborah Foy (promoted after interview)

3) Robert Tipre (interviewed)

4) Peter Elliot (interviewed)



Lieutenants


A Band (alphabetical)

Mark Rossi Special Assignment, Chief's office (Not interviewed)

Russ Shubert Special Assignment, Chief's office (Promoted, not interviewed)


B Band

Frank Assumma

Steve Bradshaw

John Capen

Christian Dinco

Val Graham

Julian Hutzler

Dwayne May

Skip Showalter

Lisa Williams


C Band

Brian Dailey

In the meantime, rumors of a captain's vacancy would begin to grow even as members of top level management denied anyone would be leaving. But with an anticipated departure perhaps as early as April, the short list of captains began to get busy. Diaz began having dinners with some of the candidates and another was mentioned by him as being the "entire package" for a captain. These promotions in particular have garnered a lot of interest because Diaz had promised at his swearing in that when he left the department in a decade or so, the next chief would come from within the department. That means building leaders and managers from the lower ranks.

The captains' rank wasn't seen as particularly strong due to the focus on how well candidates allegedly called favors, did favors in the middle of the night and lobbied themselves in front of the chief as shown in sworn testimony by several high ranking members of the police department's management team. This was shown by the fact that when Diaz picked his cabinet, only one of them Deputy Chief Mike Blakely came from inside the department and the management level above the captains had collapsed quickly enough like a house of cards. The department had never had more captains than it did at that time and never had fewer in recent history who were in the running for promotions.

Blakely had been the most senior captain and had avoided the jousting matches to become a captain that apparently dominated the process in the five years preceding the arrival of Diaz. The city itself showed how much when it settled a lawsuit filed by two former lieutenants rather than take those issues to trial in a public forum. The promotion of the next captain in the department will be an interesting and very telling process to witness because how it's done will define a lot about what the department has become under Diaz' watch.

Retirement Postponed?

But that process became delayed when the captain set to retire decided to pull the papers back postponing that decision to leave the agency. That action apparently sent shock waves through the short list of lieutenants on the captain's list.

[City Manager Scott Barber is Diaz' new boss but appears unlike Hudson, to give his employee free rein]

Diaz does have a new boss in City Manager Scott Barber, perhaps the least suspenseful selection for city manager in the city's recent history. It's a given that when you have a city manager who abruptly leaves for another job by announcing it in the middle of a closed session evaluation that the city's not going to want to hire anyone from the outside to wrinkle their noses and question any potential messes left behind. Barber fits that bill quite well, being as far different from City Manager Brad Hudson in temperament as one can get. But what kind of city manager he'll turn out to be remains to be seen as the city enters its fiscal budget crisis. And yes, Nancy Hart there is a crisis given that Barber and others told city employees in labor negotiations that the city was financially in apparently worse straits than we've all been told publicly. This led not surprisingly to employees saying, hey you just told us we were in better shape, could balance a budget and now we don't have enough money? Color some of us confused as well as to the why the city's sending out mixed messages on its financial status to different parties.

The Riverside Police Officers' Association for example just ironed out its long overdue contract with the city and is awaiting city council ratification on it. It held steady compared to the last one but the union leadership hired an auditor to look at the city's finances. That's good news in the sense that it means that two groups were currently auditing the city's finances, more people should be paying attention to what's going on that the city's not publicly telling people. But as confusing and overwhelming as it all might look, here's a benchmark to look at in the upcoming year if you're a city resident.

Look at your utility bills, electric water and yes, sewer. Look for rate hikes, new "fees" and taxes on your bills. You'll be seeing hikes and here's the reason why. The city rakes in a lot of cash from owning its own public utility but it's limited by the city's charter in how it can access that cash flow and how much of it. The city charter currently states that the city can take no more than 11.5% of that cash from the utilities and there were no efforts to raise that cap. There were discussions on lowering it but no action was taken in response. So if you can't raise the cap legally but you need more cash in a hurry, what do you do?

There's only one thing the city can do and that's raise rates and impose fees and taxes for all these services. That's what the city will be doing to pay off its accumulated debt and the money owed on the $2.1 billion in Riverside Renaissance projects.

That will present challenges in a city where it can't even say how it intends to provide $1.4 million in funding to relocate the police dispatch center, money that truly should have been secured before the city entered and probably influenced the highly questionable four-way land swap that has the police department moving out of the Orange Street building a few years earlier than planned. The county responded to that action by planning to retake that building by the end of the calendar year which has increased the necessity of the relocation of dispatch. Since it's likely that the land swap was done largely to benefit the developer who needed lease revenue to pay off $37.6 million in state revitalization bonds for his new office tower, it's too bad that more attention wasn't paid to the details that impact city departments. The developer needed that lease revenue from an anchor client in his tower because the property he put up as collateral for the bonds, the Raincross Promenade, couldn't lease out enough of its condos to make the bond payments which have to come from lease revenue.

It's beyond mind boggling that in the midst of this musical chairs taking place with developers, high priced law firms and city departments over four pieces of property that it was one of the most important components of all, the dispatch unit that was left without a chair.

Then again perhaps not.

But then if you read through the city's enforceable obligation payment schedule, involving the soon to be dissolved RDA, it provides some picture of the city's financial picture.

The city council for the most part didn't even seem to have read it but then it's not clear who reads what agenda reports, though it's clear that with some council members they are taking their first look at them when they are on the dais. It and its management tell the public and the press one thing and the labor unions another which clouds the picture even further.

Meanwhile Back at the Ranch

[Riverside's soon to be vacated Orange Street Station which has seen its fair of drama...and locksmiths this past year]

But while Riverside's halls of power continue to sort out the financial picture or cloud it further, a few blocks away sits another power structure of sorts at the Riverside Police Department's administrative headquarters. This is where Diaz and two members of his cabinet, Asst. Chief Chris Vicino and Deputy Chief Mike Blakely set up shop and do their respective jobs. Greer is stationed about 10 miles away from the epicenter and runs a pretty low-key operation apparently in respect to the rest of management. Whether he appreciates the added distance between him and Orange Street isn't clear. But the people who are currently inside the aging building better not get too settled because Riverside County intends to kick them out at the end of the year if they're still in residence.

How the upper management is run closely mirrors the administrative style of another police department situated 60 miles away in Los Angeles. The members of the chief and his cabinet keep a low profile inside their agency certainly from the other stations like Lincoln Field Operations and in a pretty cramped old-style building, certain dynamics come into play as they did fairly early on.

One of the first dynamics to play out apparently involved Vicino and Blakely who both work in their offices on the second floor at varying distances away from the hub of power which is the chief's office. The design of the station provides opportunities for various members of the management staff to either allow easy access to them by other members or to place restrictions on it. This is easily accomplished in most cases because each office is connected to the neighboring one by a door. It's pretty easy to get a good sense of how the dynamics of the administration are set up by whether or not these entry ways are open or closed and which ones. There have been some administrations that pretty much had an open door policy and kept the doors open connecting all the offices together.

Then again, there have been some administrations where access has been restricted. This allegedly took place in the case of Vicino and Blakely who both have fairly dynamic and strong personality styles and their own ideas about how things should be done. So perhaps it's not that surprising that one or the other might want to place some barriers between them. While Diaz quietly watched, the two allegedly had their passionate disagreements, sometimes in the parking lot at the station. At one point, allegedly a locksmith was called out to change the locks on Vicino's door. Some people saw it as a dynamic between the older and more established guard at the police department and the newcomers.

At one extended command staff meeting early on, Diaz was allegedly concerned that members of his management were perhaps making it difficult for him to accomplish his objectives in branding the police department with his style and sending it in his defined direction as any chief would do. So one lieutenant asked him, give us an example and Diaz allegedly related the conflict that arose early on in the police department and City Hall regarding the selection of his cabinet. One of his choices, not being backed by City Hall, most likely Hudson who was his boss at the time. Diaz' initial boss had been heavily involved in the police department rendering the police chief he supervised and many say, micro managed down to the last paperclip completely inert. At the time Diaz had been receiving advice and assistance from DeLaRosa who had been his tour guide of sorts when Diaz had first been hired, a decision that some questioned concerning what had happened with DeLaRosa in the wake of the DUI incident involving his former boss.

But Diaz kept his cabinet choice and when his cabinet was assembled, they began the task of deciding how to manage and operate the police department. Clashes developed in large part because people bristled at language used to make changes by stating "this is how we did it at [insert former police agency]" as the Riverside Police Department didn't want to be defined as another agency. Sometimes it came down to whether you trust what you know, or trust what you don't. The department had a recent history of alternating between inside chiefs and those hired from the outside but in this case, it had just received its second outside its chief and another one with an extensive history in the LAPD.

Diaz and his two outside hired cabinet team members were awarded "at will" three year contracts that expire in the summer of 2013. He had said at his swearing in that he'd be a long-term chief in a department that like many in the nation had only one in recent years that had lasted nearly a decade. However, Vicino unlike Diaz had prior experience twice as an interim chief in the Pasadena Police Department and it wouldn't be surprising if he was interested in becoming a permanent selection in another jurisdiction. So the experience and good recommendations would help him greatly in that endeavor and his time spent in Riverside has been that he's been put to a pretty demanding work schedule by Diaz. He's also been placed in the responsibility as head of administration to institute changes initiated by Diaz in various divisions under that umbrella.

But no one in the cabinet including Diaz had prior long-term chief experience.

Some of the most changes instituted by Diaz and Vicino being how the department handles administrative investigations carried out by its Internal Affairs Division which then has its work product evaluated, reviewed and ultimately signed off (or not) by Vicino and Diaz. Formerly, Blakely had played a much larger role in that process involving the Internal Affairs Division but changes led to Vicino playing a much larger role which not surprisingly had a large impact on how the police department conducts that side of its business. Staffing in the Internal Affairs Division was cut from five sergeants to only three even as the department still struggles to complete the investigation and review process of citizen complaint investigations to better accommodate the guidelines for competition in that process stated in RPD policy 4.12.

That division had been commanded by Lt. Mike Cook for several years but Lt. Bob Williams would be moving in at the end of the month to take the helm. Williams, a strong candidate on the captain's list would be overseeing the operations of the division that oversees internal investigations. One of his roles and responsibilities is to determine whether or not investigations will be launched and who will be doing the investigations. In the role of citizen complaints, this might mean farming the majority of them out to be handled by field supervisors. But Internal Affairs had seen more than its share of politics and power plays during the Leach years.

In 2010, it also had played a role in the investigation of the Leach DUI incident though Hudson and his assistant city manager, Tom DeSantis pretty much controlled that whole process. The division launched an investigation against then Deputy Chief Pete Esquivel and then provided a case lesson on its differential treatment of officers who are under investigation compared to management team members.

In one case, a male deputy chief was told to wait inside a police station to be informed of when he would be interviewed by Internal Affairs and a female officer was essentially forced into a car without much explanation, driven across town and then interrogated for hours as if she had committed a major crime and really had no rights under the process. It's difficult not to notice the disparity in treatment between a management male employee and a female subordinate employee in an investigative process and not believe there's a double standard there.

Within days of her interview, most everyone knew about the content of its content. When the department couldn't treat one of its own like a human being during a process where an individual is afforded rights then what does that say about everyone else? The department and city had spent as much time during its investigation of the Leach incident trying to find out information on th0se who had blown the whistle on it. Lawsuits and early retirements abounded that year as the whistle blowers left the canvas as well. The cost of litigation in response to what happened in 2010 just in terms of what that one division was ordered to do by higher ups is still being determined.

In late 2010 and 2011, the climate changed and at the December meeting of the CPRC, the dynamic between Vicino and the Internal Affairs division members giving a presentation at the meeting seemed downright chilly but then the dynamic had seemed chilly among management and supervisors and/or members of other divisions too. How can you miss the fact that there are members of Diaz' management team who only stand on opposite sides of the city council chambers from each other and never acknowledge each other like they do with other individuals?

In the particular case of the CPRC meeting, it caught the attention of a couple people in attendance and was in contrast to interactions that took place in the past. If you've been watching the fabric for a while, it's not difficult to see a wrinkle in it. And some of these chilly or hostile dynamics get noticed.

One wonders what the reasons for all these curious dynamics that appear in public might be because there's a lot that people recognize on the outside but don't see the origins of why that might be in any dynamic that rises to attention. But the division itself is most known for the investigations it didn't do when two key incidents involving some of the personnel that Diaz kept closest occurred and investigations weren't conducted in either case. When a chief walks away from questions on whether an investigation should be conducted in one case by allegedly saying he didn't want to hear about it, then it's not surprising that's going to cause some ripples around it. Every chief has faced those kinds of tests and how they are handled or whether they are handled at all does define their tenure in the seat they've been hired to fill. But what will happen if another employee say a lower ranking one gets into a similar incident and it becomes about whether or not to institute a double standard by investigating that individual when a prior individual was treated much differently?

That likely will be determined next time.

Until then, this month, the police department underwent its most recent shift change. Like most city departments, the police department had already stopped posting its management and supervisory hierarchy on its Web site. But Capt. John Wallace and his executive lieutenant, Gary Leach were both reassigned out of the patrol division. Wallace went to Personnel and Training and that lieutenant, Mike Perea is now at Lincoln Field Operations Station in charge of field operations. Leach is now assigned to the West Neighborhood Policing Center with Lt. Andy Flores replacing Lt. Vic Williams in the East NPC.

As 2012 continues, more dynamics continue to play out. In December, a confrontation occurred between an officer retiring from the police department on medical and Blakely during the roll call ceremony. Some say Vicino continues to play the muscle for Diaz out in certain areas of the department and Greer stood firm against Vicino and Diaz in the face of a growing budget crisis in the city. Civilian staffing continues to get depleted, new police union leadership is elected and the dispatch division remains in limbo over $1.4 million which is the kind of money Hudson used to call chump change in a city with a "balanced" budget.


To Be Continued....

State of the City of Riverside
And Whether to Allow Its Residents to Amend Its Charter



[Mayor Ron Loveridge gave his final State of the City Address and meant it this time, which still leaves him time to weld his influence on the dais like he did with the Charter initiative process]



7-o vote by City Council

No to Vote, Yes to Afternoon Workshop as Councilman Steve Adams warns that some of them might not be "charter worthy" or have unforeseen consequences.




[A packed city council chamber listened to the city council's plan to postpone voting on the charter amendment initiatives]

[The Finance Committee has once again dropped off the canvas even as fiscal accountability dominated discussions during the Charter Review Committee process]

Even as the Finance Committee again starts dropping meetings off of its schedule, the city council grappled in the face of the charter initiative recommendations that were brought to it by its own hand picked committee this past week. It's difficult to say which ones had the city council and mayor most concerned and why unlike with past charter review processes, this leadership decided to go against its own committee that it had just praised so heavily minutes earlier and postpone the whole process to an afternoon workshop session next month.

There was a lot of rhetoric about how concerned they were that the public hadn't fully participated, which is somewhat...belated in nature. After all, when the concerns about the number and scheduling of the public forums was brought up including to elected officials several months ago, only one council member, Paul Davis, raised any concerns about the lack of meetings in the city's largest ward. Total silence from everyone else on the dais, including from three members who at the time had no public forums scheduled in their wards.

Councilman Steve Adams said it had to be determined whether the initiatives were "charter worthy" or wouldn't have unforeseen and unpleasant consequences. They might, if the initiative on the independent auditor passes because the city council has made it abundantly clear that it has little or no desire as a body to involve itself in its duties involving fiscal accountability and oversight choosing to rely on "staff" to do that for it. After all, the city council had little or no knowledge that its previous city manager had generated expenditures in his discretionary fund of between $29-45 million annually. It still has very little or no interest in those expenditures which far exceed those afforded a city manager in most other cities.

It's likely that the biggest stumbling blocks in the recommendations were the ones involving fiscal accountability (which dominated the discussion at the Charter Review Meetings) and changes involving Riverside Public Utilities.

Will the city council use the workshop process to actually stonewall public comment? For public workshops, public comment is entirely optional and left to the discretion of the mayor and the fact that it's being held in the afternoon, that speaks for itself. But it'll be apparent soon whether this is all being done to truly elicit public input or to stonewall the process so that the city council and mayor can winnow down or even out the initiatives it doesn't like. As this workshop approaches, a list of the proposed ballot initiatives will be featured along with their accompanying "danger factor" score, meaning which ones will most likely be viewed by the city council and mayor as the greatest threats.

So far the call for an independent auditor that reports to the city council is at the top of the list as surprisingly (or really not) this one has very little support on the dais at the moment.

The workshop is currently scheduled for Feb. 7 in the afternoon.

The Charter Review Committee submitted this report to the city council on its recommendations and they include the back stories of how they came to be part of that list. Some of these if passed could present an unforeseen consequence to the city government by pushing its accountability score up a few notches up. And yes, there are some on the dais who might see that as a development of the most dire nature.

First Fight Breaks Out in Mayor's Race

Adkison Vs Bailey

Round One

[Mayoral candidate Ed Adkison has lobbed the first jab at one of his rivals in the 2012 mayoral race]

The Riverside's mayoral race is off and running with its very first controversy launched before the opportunity for filing your papers has even closed.



Rusty Bailey's current campaign site doesn't list any endorsements received. Google produced an endorsement page which when clicked, produced what's known as a 404 Resource Not Found page which is commonly found in cases where a page once existed but has been taken offline.

Adkison has a facebook page as well as a campaign site. The brouhaha died down soon enough and it's certain that the next fight will be on civic issues including the lack of true financial accountability and fiscal oversight over this city and the city council's recent stumbling over the very idea that initiatives might be placed on the June election ballot addressing these shortcomings. The useful aspect of this brouhaha that broke out is that perhaps it's pretty much informed people which candidate retained political consultant Brian Floyd's services for this election cycle.

[Councilman and current mayoral candidate Rusty Bailey won't be able to nod off during the 2012 elections]

So far besides the aforementioned Adkison and Bailey, Council members Mike Gardner and Andy Melendrez have also entered the race along with Dvonne Pitruzzello and Peter Benavidez. The election is sure to heat up soon and hopefully focus on the many issues pressing this city as the cycles are set to coincide with several key incidents in early 2012.

Adkison so far has picked up the most endorsements and there's more to be handed out and boasted about in the upcoming weeks.

Election 2013 Already Beginning?

[Councilman Paul Davis might already have company in his re-election bid]

It appears that Election 2013 is already getting started Where else but on Craigslist? It's been rumored for a while now that Charles Condor who is the legislative field representative for Councilman Chris MacArthur is planning to run against Councilman Paul Davis in 2013 but most people didn't seem to actually believe these rumors. Still, it will be interesting to how this plays out including when people actually file for the election.

No City Council meeting on Jan. 21.