I have to say that the Rialto Police Department is off and running on all cylinders with the new Chief. Mark Kling seems to have the idea that the new structure of the Police Department will make Solving crime better.
This writer agrees, that the streamlining of the Command Staff and the Chain of Command will make things a whole lot less confusing as to who is in charge of things and how things get done. It is a good thing that he has the mind set to get the Department back to the original way that it was. With Two Captains, and Four Lt's and Eight to Twelve Sgt's with the rest Corporals and Officers.
The Sweep was a success and the Department is mending great. It looks as if all the attention that the City Administration spent on the Police Departments demise was a 100% of their time when it came to the administration of Employment, because now they have trouble in all the rest of their staffing, such as Maintenance and the Fire Department! Even when the Fire Department Stood Arm and Arm with the City Administration and City Council to get rid of the Police Department and go with a Contracted Sheriff Department!
Well, we reep what we sew!! Right RFD!
BSRanch
Police sweep high-crime areas
More than 100 officers from area agencies saturated Rialto's streets Thursday night. Typically, 14 officers are on patrol.
The operation was the second phase of an eight-hour sweep of the city that resulted in 53 arrests.
The sweeps are carried out about once a month in the county, said Cheryl Kersey, the lead deputy district attorney in San Bernardino County's hardcore-gang unit.
But some people who study police practices say these types of operations are either ineffective, or can be abusive.
"If you tried them in middle- class neighborhoods, there'd be a riot," said Connie Rice, a Los Angeles attorney who is the co-director of the Advancement Project, a civil-rights advocacy organization.
During the first phase of Thursday's operation, police set out to serve 70 arrest warrants but ended up making most of the 53 arrests in the second phase when they saturated the city.
Sgt. Dean Hardin said officers went to high-crime areas to look for people who looked suspicious, were jaywalking or who committed traffic violations.
Larry Gaines, chairman of the Criminal Justice Department at Cal State San Bernardino, said police also can use curfew laws to arrest people. Rialto has a curfew for minors from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. during the week and from midnight to 6 a.m. on Friday and Saturday.
Using those tactics, police collected guns, found a stolen car, drugs, an individual with a quarter-pound of cocaine and another with 21 individually wrapped pieces of cocaine.
Rice, who said she is not familiar with the Rialto Police Department, said those types of strategies are only temporary solutions that make people more miserable.
She said police target people based on "status" instead of going after specific individuals known to have committed crimes.
"They're simply dragnets that are applied to a particular community," Rice said.
The Police Department's specialized gang unit, the Street Crime Attack Team, led the raids. Former Police Chief Michael Meyers, who was seen during his tenure as cautious on issues of police practices, eliminated the aggressive unit and replaced it with the Multiple Enforcement Team. Since becoming chief, Mark Kling replaced MET and brought back SCAT.
Kling said he disagrees that a middle-class community would not want proactive police.
"As long as you have professionally trained police officers who respect people's civil rights, you're going to have a win-win situation," he said.
He said the community will be happy with police services, and morale at the department will be high.
Rice said aggressive policing is not only potentially abusive, but in the long run often is ineffective.
But City Attorney Bob Owen noted that whenever police activity has declined in the city, crime has risen sharply. And police statistics show that total crime was down almost 19 percent in September compared with last year. According to the District Attorney's Office, 60 percent of homicides in the county are gang-related.
Gaines, the criminal justice professor, said police have to use the tools available. He said there's "a lot of Monday-morning quarterbacking" of police tactics even though officers work to do the best they can in difficult situations.
In addition to suppression tactics to get an area back under control through police work, a successful anti-gang strategy needs to include often- neglected prevention strategies as well, he said.
"You can police until you're blue in the face, but if you don't address these social conditions, you're really not solving it," he said.
He complained that there are not enough recreational programs for children and teenagers. He said Operation Phoenix in San Bernardino has been successful at reducing crime because it brings a number of agencies together.
Nationally, the average age of a person joining a gang is lower than 14, he said, noting children often join gangs because their homes are dysfunctional, and the gang serves as a family.
He also said the high density of low-income housing breeds crime - a problem city planning departments need to address.
Kling said the Police Department's new command structure that will divide the city into three areas will help provide a long-term solution to crime and gang violence by having specific police officials forming relationships with the community and by bringing together numerous government agencies to address specific problems.
Rice said the underlying conditions that cause social ills need to be addressed but that they never are.
"And that's the real crime here," she said.
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