Sunday, April 27, 2008

Rialto Police Reintroduce Bicycle Patrols, Anti-Gang Unit, Mobil Command (Press Enterprise April 27, 2008)

Rialto police reintroduce bicycle patrols, anti-gang unit, mobile command



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11:14 AM PDT on Sunday, April 27, 2008
By PAUL LAROCCO
The Press-Enterprise

Video: The ups and downs of Rialto police on bikes

RIALTO - The two Rialto police officers outside Wal-Mart didn't turn heads.

It was a quiet Sunday morning, and officers Shaun Mooney and Mike Morales were ticketing a car illegally parked in a handicapped space.

There wasn't a patrol car in sight -- and that was exactly the point.

"People aren't expecting police on bikes," Morales said.

He and his partner are on the department's bicycle patrol, one of several details recently revived by Chief Mark Kling after disappearing under tumultuous past administrations.

Since taking the job in late 2006, shortly after city leaders ditched a plan to disband the department and have county sheriff's deputies take over, Kling has led a steady rebuilding effort.

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Greg Vojtko / The Press-Enterprise
Rialto police officers Carla McCullough and Mike Morales are on patrol atop their bicycles on Riverside Avenue in Rialto. Officers regularly ride bicycles in pairs through the city's most troubled apartment complexes and busiest commercial centers.

An anti-gang detail, the return of bike officers and an expanded traffic division are among the changes.

"We're starting to do things that we should have been doing all along," Kling said. "We're examining every single aspect of the department and trying to make it better."

People already have noticed. When Wal-Mart's private security guard, Elizabeth Suer, saw the officers ride through the crowded parking lot, she enthusiastically flagged them down.

"It's about time," she said later of the return of bicycle officers. "We could use them here."

Pedaling Police

Mooney and Morales are members of a team of five officers who ride mountain bikes, in pairs, at least twice a month through Rialto's busiest commercials centers and most troubled apartment complexes.

The philosophy is that an officer on two wheels can go places -- both noticed and unnoticed -- that an officer in a patrol car can't.

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"We interact a lot more," Mooney said. "It's all proactive, and when we're in our cars we can't say that."

On the recent Sunday, the two officers pedaled through Rialto's downtown, then south to the stretch of motels, gas stations and shopping plazas along Interstate 10.

They stopped a homeless woman cutting copper wire behind a Hometown Buffet; a man jaywalking across busy Riverside Avenue; and a teen using a knife to slice open a pack of peanuts near a convenience store.

The longhaired, backpack-toting teen, who said he was passing through from Venice Beach to Arizona, bristled when the officers attempted to question him.

"You should thank us because you could easily get robbed standing here," Mooney told him. "We get a lot of drug dealing in this area."

A supervisor said that kind of interaction is the point of the patrols, which are slated to expand to a full-time detail in coming months.

"It gives us a leg up," said Sgt. Vince Licata, a member of the department's original bicycle patrol in the early 1990s. "There's an element of surprise to it. Most of the criminals don't expect this."

The Return

To revive the bicycle team, Rialto police reached out to the community. Local homebuilders donated thousands of dollars to purchase the bikes, special uniforms and wireless communication tools used by the officers.

The patrols were eliminated during former Chief Michael Meyers' tenure, which ended with a no-confidence vote by officers and the City Council's vote to disband the department.

By the time the council backed off that decision and an interim chief had stabilized the department, Kling inherited a force that was a shell of its former self. Dozens of officers had quit. He slowly began recruiting and budgeting improvements.

In late 2006, Kling formed the Street Crime Attack Team, made up of four gang investigators and a sergeant. He also expanded the narcotics and detective bureaus.

Today, Kling proudly points out a new $350,000 computer system in the department and a $205,000 mobile command center that can serve as a main dispatch center should power to the main station fail. The former crisis-negotiation van was a converted Frito-Lay box truck.

There still are budget issues and several open positions yet to be filled, but Kling said that the mood in the department has turned a corner.

"I think the employees here went through tremendous turmoil they'll never forget," he said. "Now, all these good ideas, they're coming from within the department."

Reach Paul LaRocco at 909-806-3064 or plarocco@PE.com

Rialto police have revived or expanded several details since the department was nearly disbanded in 2005.

Bicycle Patrols: Donations from local businesses helped purchase equipment and uniforms for the team to return last May.

Street Crime Attack

Team: Specialized anti-gang detail returned in 2006.

Mobile Command

Center: Department spent $200,000 for the crisis-negotiation vehicle that arrived last month. Officers previously used a converted Frito-Lay truck.

Source: Rialto police Department


BS Ranch Perspective:

The Rialto Police Department was the first Agency in the Inland Empire to start a Bicycle Patrol, Myself, Officer Joe Castillo (God rest his soul), then Officer Tony Farrar (now he is Capt. Tony Farrar), Officer Todd Wright, Officer Tim Lane (now Sergent Tim Lane), I believe that even Matt Huddleston (God Rest his soul) had a turn on the bikes for a short time during the start of the patrol!

At that time there was a dream of having a full time Bicycle patrol, but Capt. Becknell could not perswaide the chief to the idea of a full time Bicycle Patrol Division at that time, it was then that I switched to the Motorcycle Patrol of the Traffic Division especially since I could and was able to ride the Police Motor's before going to Motor School, with the training of the Motor Officer, which helped me during my time at Motorcycle School.

BS Ranch

Sunday, April 06, 2008

Deeply Worried - Newt Gingrich

The statements that Newt says, are right on when you think about it, and I am Worried as well!!

Why is the Left Opposed to American Victory? - Newt Gingrich

The Left better think about this before they just close off the people that are relying on the USA to help them out at this time!

Saturday, April 05, 2008

A Brief for Whitey (by Patrick J. Buchanan)

A Brief for Whitey
by Patrick J. Buchanan

How would he pull it off? I wondered.

How would Barack explain to his press groupies why he sat silent in a pew
for 20 years as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered racist rants against
white America for our maligning of Fidel and Gadhafi, and inventing AIDS to
infect and kill black people?

How would he justify not walking out as Wright spewed his venom about "the
U.S. of K.K.K. America," and howled, "God damn America!"

My hunch was right. Barack would turn the tables.

Yes, Barack agreed, Wright's statements were "controversial," and
"divisive," and "racially charged," reflecting a "distorted view of
America."

But we must understand the man in full and the black experience out of which
the Rev. Wright came: 350 years of slavery and segregation.

Barack then listed black grievances and informed us what white America must
do to close the racial divide and heal the country.

The "white community," said Barack, must start "acknowledging that what ails
the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black
people; that the legacy of discrimination -- and current incidents of
discrimination, while less overt than in the past -- are real and must be
addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds ... ."

And what deeds must we perform to heal ourselves and our country?

The "white community" must invest more money in black schools and
communities, enforce civil rights laws, ensure fairness in the criminal
justice system and provide this generation of blacks with "ladders of
opportunity" that were "unavailable" to Barack's and the Rev. Wright's
generations.

What is wrong with Barack's prognosis and Barack's cure?

Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black
hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in
Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put
it, "everybody but the rioters themselves."

Was "white racism" really responsible for those black men looting auto
dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as
Otto Kerner said -- that liberal icon until the feds put him away for
bribery.

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.

Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White
America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and
demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was
here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew
into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and
reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever
known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white
Americans.
Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food
stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans,
legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs
designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against
white folks -- with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to
advance black applicants over white applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over
America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult
education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Barack talks about new "ladders of opportunity" for blacks.

Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic
schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out
scholarships for "deserving" white kids.

Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and
incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white
America? Is it really white America's fault that illegitimacy in the
African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate
from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the
black community itself?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and
especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while
white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals
choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the
reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common
in the first
three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke
rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic
of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40
trillion tax dollars ago.