Riverside’s New Top Cop Strives to Heal Old Rifts

Much the way the police beating of Rodney King enraged the black community in Los Angeles, the 1998 shooting of Tyisha Miller rocked the city of Riverside.

But Riverside’s new top cop, unlike Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, has managed to broker a delicate peace, satisfying officers and African American community leaders while carrying out sweeping reform under the scrutiny of federal and state justice officials.

All that progress could unravel in the coming weeks, however, when city officials must decide if they will rehire two officers fired as a result of the Miller shooting.

“It would be a shame,” cautioned the Rev. Paul Mumford of New Joy Baptist Church in Riverside, “if they made a decision that would undo all the good work they’ve done.”

Activists on all sides agree that after 17 months in office, Riverside Police Chief Russ Leach--a former LAPD manager--has managed to implement reforms without alienating rank-and-file officers.

Union leaders are supportive. And the black community is warming to him.

Leach walked into a delicate situation after taking over from Chief Jerry Carroll, whose retirement was partly brought on by the drama that followed the fatal shooting by white officers of Miller, a 19-year-old black woman who was passed out in her car with a gun in her lap.

Bolstered by his success, Leach now makes his way around the law enforcement talk circuit with a speech titled “Lessons Learned, Riverside Police Department.” He delivered it most recently at the annual conference of California police chiefs in Anaheim.

Even a consultant for the state attorney general’s office charged with enforcing Riverside Police Department reforms ordered by the U.S. Justice Department is impressed with the progress. “I think the right leadership is clearly in place,” Joseph Brann said.

But the officer rehiring issue promises to jolt Leach’s delicate tightrope walk. Chief Carroll in 1999 fired the four officers who took part in the shooting. With less than 18 months’ seniority, Officers Dan Hotard and Paul Bugar had no union rights to appeal their terminations. But the other two, veteran Officers Mike Alagna and Wayne Stewart, did appeal.

Last month, an independent arbitrator found their firings unjust. The city has until April 21 to rehire them or appeal the finding in court.

A lawyer representing Alagna and Stewart, William Hadden, already is gearing up for a battle if the city objects. So far, Hadden said, the decision to terminate the officers has been driven by politics, not the facts.

“You can’t exonerate an employee and then fire him.... It’s incomprehensibly stupid,” he said.

Reputation as Bigoted Department

Leach took over the Riverside department in September 2000, replacing a chief who had risen through the ranks. Carroll was well liked by officers because he was one of them. But the department suffered, city officials said. Supervision was lax and police policies were routinely ignored. Annual performance reviews for officers fell behind. Citizen complaints went unanswered. And the department’s reputation as a bigoted organization that indulged in racial profiling grew.

That reputation became so bad that applications to join the department plummeted, said Lt. Pete Curzon, who oversees recruiting. In 1999, Riverside was able to hire just two new officers, despite having more than 20 vacancies. But last year, the department made 42 hires.

One of Leach’s first challenges was turning around the department’s image. A 20-year Los Angeles Police Department veteran and community policing advocate, he ran the LAPD’s Harbor Division before taking a job as police chief in El Paso in 1995. Three years later, he became deputy director of the national organization Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or DARE, in Inglewood.

He jokes about returning to police work and taking on a department in crisis. “I thought, ‘If I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna find the most challenging job I can,’” Leach said. “And I found it.”

His very first task was to review a slew of deeply critical reports about the department: the U.S. Justice Department, state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, the county grand jury and independent consultants.

He then sat down with Lockyer’s office to work out a series of reforms. It was the first time in California history that the state had mandated changes within a police department.

At first, city officials bristled at the thought of a court-ordered consent decree. Riverside City Council members, who begrudgingly approved the settlement under threat of a lawsuit a year ago, were insulted at the implication that they couldn’t clean up their own house. Officer morale plummeted.

“I think there was just a good bit of denial going on,” Leach said. “But when you examined all the evidence, it’s clear there was a management failure here and the results were disastrous. Change was needed.”

He embraced the process. And, in a move that Leach believes was critical to ensure officer support of the reforms, he invited the police union’s then-president, Lt. Jay Theuer, to sit in on the negotiations. It worked, Theuer said. “It was clear we had some strong, definitive leadership, and we were ready for that,” he said. “We were ready to take the medicine and get well.”

And they have, even when some of the changes meant a reduction in officer independence. The briefing room, where racist jokes occasionally were told during roll calls, now has a television camera, with monitors placed throughout the department, including the chief’s office. A citizens review panel now regularly monitors police activity.

Other changes include tripling the hours for cultural diversity training, biannual performance reviews, and a 30-day turnaround for responding to citizen complaints.

All officers will soon be required to tape-record their interactions with the public, and later this year the department will begin installing video cameras in patrol cars.

The city also agreed to add 22 positions. Most of them are supervisor slots, including an assistant chief position, four lieutenants, one captain and 11 sergeants. And the department has increased its hiring of black officers at all levels.

Leach has moved to bolster morale by approving 42 promotions in the last 12 months, all of them from inside the department. He also lobbied the City Council to approve pay raises for officers.

“This guy simply came in and told the council, ‘Look, if you want good people, then you have to pay good wages,’” Theuer said.

Reaching Out to Black Community

Leach, who is white, also is making friends in neighborhoods where his department was reviled not so long ago. He created a chief’s advisory panel, which includes some of the department’s most outspoken critics as members, including Riverside NAACP President Waudier Rucker-Hughes.

“I’m very pleased with the chief,” said Rucker-Hughes, who, after the Miller killing, was a regular at the protest marches and rallies outside the department’s downtown headquarters. “There’s still work to be done, but the tenor of the black community today is that they are hopeful and willing to give it a try.”

In what Rucker-Hughes describes as a peace offering, Leach was invited to introduce the keynote speaker at the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People’s annual Freedom Fund Banquet in Riverside earlier this month. Standing before a crowd of 400 people, including a group of Riverside police union leaders, Leach introduced his friend and former boss, L.A. Chief Parks.

The Riverside department’s most outspoken critic, the Rev. Bernell Butler, who became the Miller family spokesman, said he thinks much of the good work being done in the Riverside Police Department is a direct result of the high-profile marches and rallies he helped organize.

“Because of our efforts, we have saved lives,” said Butler, who said he has never spoken to Chief Leach but approves of what he’s done so far. Still, he said, he has a healthy amount of skepticism about local police authority.

“They’ve made changes for the better.” Butler said. “But for some of these older officers, it’s probably more of a dog-and-pony show. That old racist mentality exists, and it’s going to be hard for the chief to make long-term progress until those officers are weeded out.”

Robert Parker Nash, a sociology professor and director of the Robert Presley Center for Crime and Justice Studies at UC Riverside, agrees with Butler, saying that the most difficult change to make is a change in mentality. That, he said, will take years and may come only after the old guard has moved out or retired.

“If you ask me if the chief has been successful at changing the culture of the Riverside Police Department,” said Parker, “I doubt it.... Police cultures are slow and resistant to change, and it’s hard for someone who comes in at the top to make a difference.”

Leach acknowledges that his work is just beginning. He says he’ll know he has really turned the corner when he starts getting applications to join the department from the black community.

“It’s hard to recruit African Americans, because we haven’t yet proven that we treat African Americans well,” Leach said. “That perception is still out there and we have to overcome that.

“But we’re working very, very hard to earn that trust back and put that shine back on the badge,” he added.