We Are Anaheim, Somos Anaheim hosts picnic to encourage action

ANAHEIM – Children lined up under the shade of canopies at Pearson Park on Sunday to get their faces painted, for a free soda and take part in a scavenger hunt. All the activities were arranged for a common goal: To spark more community activism and voter engagement.

After weeks of community unrest and protests in Anaheim, the group of community-minded volunteers known as We Are Anaheim, Somos Anaheim decided it was time for a picnic.

A simple picnic in the park, organizers said, was a good way for neighbors to come out of their homes and begin talking about where they want to see Anaheim go from here.

“This is just about getting the community to come out and meet each other and getting them to come together to show their support for our city, even if they don’t agree on issues,” said Veronica Rodarte, 25, a nonprofit employee and lifelong Anaheim resident.

We Are Anaheim, Somos Anaheim was the brainchild of a small group of 20-something and 30-something Anaheim residents who saw protesters clash with police outside City Hall on July 24. They wanted to provide a peaceful alternative to encourage dialogue.

So they founded their group on Facebook and arranged a peace march, then a kids’ art project on Anna Drive – the street where a police shooting touched off the community unrest.

“We’ve seen a lot of adults feel like they are past the point of being able to make a difference politically, so we focus on the children – the future – to give them the tools to speak up,” Rodarte said.

In turn, that could inspire their parents and other adults to get involved, too.

Juan Alvarez, 31, a teacher at South Junior High School, said he hopes the idea of a community picnic to get residents chatting about the future of the city – in a non-threatening setting – will catch on in other parts of the city.

The turnout on Sunday was light – about 50 people.

“I consider it a good start,” said a smiling Elsa Covarrubias, 30, a leader of the group sitting under a sign that read “Be the Change.”

“We are a non-partisan group,” she said. “We don’t want to tell people how to vote, but we do want them to come out and to vote – to show they care.”

Source: www.ocregister.com

By ERIC CARPENTER / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Anaheim shootings: Diaz family seeks independent autopsy

MARK RIGHTMIRE, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

SANTA ANA – The family of a man shot and killed by Anaheim police is taking custody of his body from the Orange County coroner’s office Monday to have an independent autopsy conducted to find out where exactly he was shot, the family’s attorney said.

“We want it for legal purposes and the family wants to know,” said attorney Dana Douglas, whose firm last week filed a $50 million lawsuit on behalf of Manuel Diaz’s family against Anaheim and the Anaheim Police Department alleging federal civil rights violations and wrongful death.

With the Orange County District Attorney’s Office investigating the officer-involved shooting, the coroner keeps the autopsy report confidential, but the family hopes an independent pathologist can help verify the accounts of either eyewitnesses or police of what happened, Douglas said.

According to the Anaheim police union, Diaz ran when officers tried to contact him, holding a “concealed object in his front waist area with both hands.”

After a short foot pursuit, the man pulled the “object” from his waistband and turned toward the officers. Fearing he was drawing a weapon, an officer opened fire, according to the union’s statement.

Witnesses have given a different account, saying Diaz, 25, of Santa Ana, was shot in the back, Douglas said. The family’s suit says one of the officers shot Diaz in the back of his leg, making him fall, and then he or the other officer fired a second gunshot into the back of Diaz’s head.

After the shooting, Anaheim police said that Diaz was not armed; the union declined to say what the object the officer reported seeing was.

The family’s attorneys say they also are issuing a subpoena Monday to take the deposition of the person at the Anaheim Police Association most knowledgeable about the incident to find out how the union knew the details it did.

Douglas questioned at a news conference last week and repeated Monday how the union knew details about the shooting that Anaheim police Chief John Welter has not publicly shared.

Union president Kerry Condon said Monday the chief or the department’s public information officer don’t know the details Condon made public because association attorneys have not shared those with them.

The information he put out comes directly from the attorneys representing the officers, which they can share with him if they so choose.

“I don’t speak with the shooting officers involved in this; the info I get from them is from their attorneys, not from me speaking with the officers,” Condon said.

Source: www.ocregister.com

By VIK JOLLY / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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San Bernardino becomes 3rd Calif. city filing bankruptcy in 2 weeks

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN BERNARDINO – As recently as last month, no city in California had opted for bankruptcy since 2008, and no U.S. city of more than 200,000 people had ever chosen bankruptcy.

The past two weeks have changed all that, in a big way, as the fiscal struggles faced by so many American cities became too much for some to bear.

San Bernardino became the third California city in that small span to choose Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection with a City Council vote Tuesday night.

The Inland Empire city of about 210,000 people will also become the second largest in the nation ever to file for bankruptcy. Stockton, the Northern California city of nearly 300,000, became the biggest when it filed for Chapter 9 on June 28. The much smaller city of Mammoth Lakes voted for bankruptcy July 3.

San Bernardino’s City Council directed the city attorney to make the move during a meeting in which administrators explained the dire fiscal circumstances and urged them to choose the bankruptcy option.

“We have an immediate cash flow issue,” Interim City Manager Andrea Miller told Mayor Patrick Morris and the seven-member City Council, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Miller said the city is facing a budget shortfall of $45.8 million. It has already stopped paying some vendors, and may not be able to make payroll over the next three months.

Four council members voted for the authorization, two opposed it, and one abstained.

“This is probably the hardest decision this councilwoman will ever have to make in this chair,” Councilwoman Wendy McCammack said, according to the San Bernardino Sun.

The councilman who abstained from voting, John Valdivia, said he did not trust the information presented at the meeting, and having only served since March believed he should not be held responsible for the money mess.

“The taxpayers of this city have been duped, hoodwinked and misguided for the past several years,” Valdivia said, according to the Sun.

It was not immediately clear when the city planned to file.

Sixty miles east of Los Angeles, San Bernardino is in a region that soared economically during the housing boom, and suffered accordingly after the crash.

It joins a number of other cities and counties across the nation that have plunged into financial crisis as the recession made it tough to cover rising costs involving payroll, pensions, bondholders and vendors.

Before Stockton, a California city had not filed for bankruptcy since Vallejo in 2008.

Since Congress added Chapter 9 to the bankruptcy code in 1937 to allow municipalities to seek protection, about 640 government entities have filed.

Jefferson County in Alabama is the largest local government bankruptcy filing to date in terms of the size of its debt. It occurred in November 2011. Before that, the largest local bankruptcy was Orange County, in 1994. Orange County emerged from bankruptcy in 1996.

Source: www.ocregister.com

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CORONA: Doctor pleads guilty to Rx fraud

KURT MILLER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHE

A Corona doctor given “the chance of a lifetime” in 2011 when she was sentenced to only a year in jail and five years probation for 274 felonies related to prescription fraud could be headed back to jail for a much longer time.

Lisa Michele Barden pleaded guilty Tuesday, July 10, to using the name of another person to obtain goods or services without permission — she impersonated another doctor to phone in a prescription in May. That action violated her probation, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Helios J. Hernandez ruled.

Hernandez did not sentence Barden, 42. Instead, he asked that a probation report be written and that attorneys return to court Aug. 24.

District attorney spokesman John Hall said his office would ask Hernandez to impose the suspended sentence of seven years, eight months that Barden received in the first case.

“The defendant was given a chance — the chance of a lifetime,” Deputy District Attorney Sara Stockwell wrote in a memo for Tuesday’s hearing, noting the suspended sentence.

Barden’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Jason Kralovic, declined to comment outside court Tuesday. Inside court, he asked Hernandez to have Barden evaluated for participation in a drug-treatment program.

Authorities believe that Barden, a gynecologist, obtained more than 30,000 Vicodin painkillers for her personal use over the course of 22 months, using the identities of nine patients and the stolen prescription pads of five doctors before being arrested in 2007.

Hall said his office does not believe Barden sold any of the pills.

Barden pleaded guilty to 274 felony charges of identity theft, burglary, forging a prescription and possession of a controlled substance. She was convicted of felony worker’s compensation fraud and a misdemeanor charge of filing a false police report.

Barden was serving the balance of her 360-day sentence on weekends when she committed the same crime: She called in a prescription for Coreg (for heart failure), Ultram (a painkiller) and Soma (a muscle relaxant) for her husband, Darrell Degner, using the name of Dr. Robyn Jacoby, Stockwell wrote.

Barden paid for the prescription in person at Main Street Pharmacy in Corona with a check in her name. Pharmacist Amie Padilla became suspicious and called Jacoby. Barden was arrested during a probation check.

Degner told police he destroyed the pills when he learned what his wife had done.

Barden’s one-year sentences for most of the crimes ran concurrently instead of consecutively because the crimes were largely part of the same act, Presiding Judge Sherrill A. Ellsworth had explained previously.

The state has revoked Barden’s license to practice medicine. Barden remains in custody. Bail is $100,000.

BY BRIAN ROKOS

Source: www.pe.com

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VICTORVILLE: Littering leads to officer-involved shooting

A littering suspect pulled a knife and charged a deputy sheriff who opened fire and hospitalized the man, say sheriff’s officials in Victorville.

The drama began at 9:18 a.m. Saturday, July 7, at Amargosa Road and Midtown Drive when a deputy saw someone littering and stopped to question him.

The man – 53-year-old Timothy Gray of Victorville – began acting erratically, then drew a knife and charged the officer, investigators said in a written statement. The statement doesn’t say how many shots were fired or how severely Gray was wounded, though a helicopter was summoned to fly him to a hospital.

Anyone with information about the incident may call investigators at 909-3887-3598.

BY RICHARD BROOKS

STAFF WRITER

Source: www.pe.com

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RIVERSIDE: Second Lowe’s accuser also has criminal record

Daniel Soto, one of the Riverside men who accused Lowe’s employees of shouting anti-gay slurs and profanity at them, has, like his fellow accuser, an extensive criminal record.

Soto, 35, has been convicted of identity theft, second-degree burglary and possession of illegal narcotics.

Soto and his domestic partner Jeremy Smythe, 29, have said that on June 19, an employee at the Lowe’s home-improvement store at 9851 Magnolia Ave. in Riverside became angry at him without cause when Smythe tried to return a leaf blower without a receipt.

Smythe said Andy Olague had to be restrained and that Olague said “I know where you live. … I’m going to get you.”

Soto arrived during the incident. Employee Frank Villa joined in at some point, Smythe said.

Olague and Villa have since been served with temporary restraining orders that prevent them from contacting Smythe and Soto.

The attorney for Smythe and Soto, Linda Roberts-Ross, did not allow the men to provide their dates of birth during an interview with a reporter. Without that information, Soto’s name was too common to determine whether he had a criminal background. But an anonymous caller to The Press-Enterprise provided Soto’s birth date, and a search of court websites — in addition to information provided by Soto’s attorney and matching addresses in public records — produced records.

Soto was convicted of possession of a controlled substance in 1996 and again in 2001 and 2002, according to court records in Riverside and Orange counties.

He pleaded guilty to four counts of identity theft in 2006. As part of the plea agreement, eight counts of having a fake driver’s license and one count of receiving stolen property — appliances, plasma televisions, computer equipment, cellphones, furniture and electronics — were dismissed.

Soto was convicted in 2009 of stealing from Macy’s in the Galleria at Tyler mall.

Smythe’s convictions include check fraud, embezzlement and grand theft, according to court records.

Both men are also named in two lawsuits that each demand they pay $10,000.

Roberts-Ross has said her clients’ backgrounds have no bearing on the truthfulness of their assertions in the Lowe’s matter. She did not return a phone message left Monday, July 2, seeking comment.

 

Health Care Reform Individual Mandate Upheld By Supreme Court

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the individual insurance requirement at the heart of President Barack Obama’s historic health care overhaul.

The decision means the huge overhaul, still only partly in effect, will proceed and pick up momentum over the next several years, affecting the way that countless Americans receive and pay for their personal medical care. The ruling also hands Obama a campaign-season victory in rejecting arguments that Congress went too far in requiring most Americans to have health insurance or pay a penalty.

Breaking with the court’s other conservative justices, Chief Justice John Roberts announced the judgment that allows the law to go forward with its aim of covering more than 30 million uninsured Americans.

The justices rejected two of the administration’s three arguments in support of the insurance requirement. But the court said the mandate can be construed as a tax. “Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness,” Roberts said.

The court found problems with the law’s expansion of Medicaid, but even there said the expansion could proceed as long as the federal government does not threaten to withhold states’ entire Medicaid allotment if they don’t take part in the law’s extension.

The court’s four liberal justices, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, joined Roberts in the outcome.

Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.

“The act before us here exceeds federal power both in mandating the purchase of health insurance and in denying non-consenting states all Medicaid funding,” the dissenters said in a joint statement.

Republican campaign strategists said presidential candidate Mitt Romney will use the court’s ruling to continue campaigning against “Obamacare” and attacking the president’s signature health care program as a tax increase.

“Obama might have his law, but the GOP has a cause,” said veteran campaign adviser Terry Holt. “This promises to galvanize Republican support around a repeal of what could well be called the largest tax increase in American history.”

By MARK SHERMAN, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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Arizona Immigration Law Ruling: Supreme Court Delivers Split Decision

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday delivered a split decision in the Obama administration’s challenge to Arizona’s aggressive immigration law, striking multiple provisions but upholding the “papers please” provision. Civil rights groups argue the latter measure, a centerpiece of S.B. 1070, invites racial profiling.

Monday’s decision on “papers please” — Section 2(B) in S.B. 1070 — rested on the more technical issue of whether the law unconstitutionally invaded the federal government’s exclusive prerogative to set immigration policy. The justices found that it was not clear whether Arizona was supplanting or supporting federal policy by requiring state law enforcement to demand immigration papers from anyone stopped, detained or arrested in the state who officers reasonably suspect is in the country without authorization. The provision that was upheld — at least for now — also commands police to check all arrestees’ immigration status with the federal government before they are released.

“The nature and timing of this case counsel caution in evaluating the validity of [Section] 2(B),” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy on behalf of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, noting that the law has not yet gone into effect. Because “[t]here is a basic uncertainty about what the law means and how it will be enforced,” the majority chose to allow the law to go forward, but made clear that “[t]his opinion does not foreclose other preemption and constitutional challenges to the law as interpreted and applied after it goes into effect.”

Indeed, such constitutional suits are already proceeding against Arizona’s “papers please” policy. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton heard argumentson whether to certify a class of what could be hundreds of thousands of individuals now trying to bring equal protection, free speech and due process challenges to S.B. 1070.

While Arizona succeeded on Section 2(B), the Supreme Court gave the Obama administration a victory by striking three other challenged provisions as stepping on federal prerogatives. Two of the provisions made it a crime for undocumented immigrants to be present and to seek employment in Arizona, while a third authorized police officers to make warrantless arrests of anyone they had probable cause to believe had committed a deportable offense.

“The history of the United States is in part made of the stories, talents and lasting contributions of those who crossed oceans and deserts to come here,” Kennedy wrote. “The National Government has significant power to regulate immigration. With power comes responsibility, and the sound exercise of national power over immigration depends on the Nation’s meeting its responsibility to base its laws on a political will informed by searching, thoughtful, rational civic discourse. Arizona may have understandable frustrations with the problems caused by illegal immigration while that process continues, but the State may not pursue policies that undermine federal law.”

Justice Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito each wrote separately to say they would have upheld all four of S.B. 1070’s challenged provisions.

Delivering a fiery oral summary of his dissent before a full courtroom, Scalia said that Arizona’s own sovereignty as a state makes it “entitled to impose additional penalties and consequences for violations of the federal immigration laws, because it is entitled to have its own immigration laws.”

In addition, Scalia cited the Obama administration’s recent decision to stop deporting certain undocumented immigrants under 30 years old as a policy change that defies the administration’s argument that S.B. 1070 eats up the federal government’s scarce resources. “The husbanding of scarce enforcement resources can hardly be the justification for this [policy change], since those resources will be eaten up by the considerable administrative cost of conducting the nonenforcement program, which will require as many as 1.4 million background checks and biennial rulings on requests for dispensation,” said Scalia, referring to the number of undocumented immigrants estimated to benefit from the secretary of homeland security’s announcement on June 15.

“The President has said that the new program is ‘the right thing to do’ in light of Congress’s failure to pass the Administration’s proposed revision of the immigration laws. Perhaps it is, though Arizona may not think so,” said Scalia. “But to say, as the Court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of federal immigration law that the President declines to enforce boggles the mind.”

Beyond the Grand Canyon State, lawmakers in Utah, Indiana, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina will be parsing the Supreme Court’s decision to see how their Arizona-style immigration statutes will be affected.

Justice Elena Kagan did not participate in Arizona v. United States, presumably because she worked on the case during her tenure as President Barack Obama’s first solicitor general.

Erin Mershon contributed to this report.

Source: www.huffingtonpost

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RIVERSIDE COUNTY: Bullying, racism alleged

At least two supervisors in Riverside County’s Waste Management Department used racial slurs against black workers, and employees in another county department were regularly bullied by superiors, according to two grand jury reports that found a pattern of hostile work conditions.

The reports released Monday, June 18, detail workplace problems in waste management and a Human Resources program responsible for temp workers. A former waste management worker who is black told the grand jury that he was called the N-word and ordered to eat in a trailer infested with rats and insects.

The report does not specify the race of the person who allegedly made those statements.

WARNING: This document contains language that may offend some readers.Grand Jury Report on Riverside County Waste Management Department

County spokesman Ray Smith declined to comment on the reports pending written responses by county officials. Human Resources Director Barbara Olivier said she was “looking into some of the points” raised by the grand jury. She declined further comment.

The grand jury investigated waste management and the Temporary Assignment Program/Medical Assignment Program, which is part of the county Human Resources Department. Human Resources has 337 employees while waste management employs about 200 staff members.

Waste management operates seven landfills countywide. The jury’s report included testimony from current and former employees who alleged less-qualified workers are hired and promoted “because they are in the right ‘clique.’”

Twenty-one complaints of harassment and discrimination have been filed against the department since 2006, resulting in 13 human resources investigations for misconduct, the jury found. Employees considered senior management to be unapproachable, the report read.

Grand Jury Report on Riverside County Temporary Workers Program

“The jury also found employees feared that old corrective and disciplinary reports could used against them. Those reports are only supposed to be kept for one year,” the report read.

Annual employee evaluations are not being done in a timely manner, according to the jury.

The Waste Management Department has a history of racial discrimination, the jury found. A supervisor at the Lamb Canyon landfill refused to sign a 2004 reprimand of an employee found guilty of making racial comments about blacks to an African American, the report read.

Two operations and maintenance supervisors are known to use racial slurs to describe blacks, and a black former equipment operator said he was called the N-word during his eight-year tenure and told to eat in the filthy trailer, according to testimony cited in the report.

‘Wild West’

The Temporary Assignment Program is the county’s temp agency while the medical program hires temporary medical workers.

“Bullying by supervisors and managers has become pervasive” in both programs and has lead to “fear and intimidation among employees,” the report read.

A group of program recruiters is derogatively referred to as “the wild, Wild West” and targeted for harsh treatment, the report found.

As punishment, seven of those recruiters were put on performance improvement plans or asked to provide doctors’ notes for sick leave, the jury found, adding that documents examined by the jury had language showing “disrespect to employees beyond what would be considered reasonable.”

Performance evaluations were not timely and training was inadequate for supervisors, the report read.

The report recommended a series of steps to improve the departments, including an anti-bullying policy and enforcement of an existing zero tolerance policy on harassment.

County officials will provide formal, written responses to the reports by September. The jury’s recommendations are not binding.

Follow Jeff Horseman on Twitter: @JeffHorseman

Source: www.pe.com

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Chief’s wife convicted of shooting at cops

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SANTA ANA The wife of Oceanside police chief and former Cypress City Councilman Frank McCoy was convicted Monday of five counts of assault on a police officer for firing a gun from the couple’s Cypress home during a 2010 standoff.

Prosecutors said and several Cypress police officers testified Brinda Sue McCoy, 49, of Cypress, waved and pointed her husband’s service semiautomatic handgun at them and then fired twice on the night of Dec. 16, 2010 in a standoff she initiated.

She denied seeing officers or shooting at them, saying she only aimed and shot at a truck outside her home.

More than 1½ hour after a 911 call she made to police asking for help, with numerous officers outside her home, McCoy came out her front door but did not show her hands when officers asked her to, saying instead “f—— shoot me,” Deputy District Attorney Rebecca Olivieri told jurors.

Members of the SWAT team arrested McCoy after using a bean bag gun to stop her.

McCoy testified she test fired the handgun and then dialed 911 to get help as she spiraled into depression after her husband, Frank McCoy, sided with their 17-year-old son when she was angry with the teenager.

“Without question the defendant knew more than most people” about what would happen when she fired a gun because of McCoy’s emergency room nursing experience and her law enforcement connections, Deputy District Attorney Rebecca Olivieri said in her closing argument.

Defense attorney Lew Rosenblum told he could not believe prosecutors “want you to convict my client” because of her work experience and being married to the chief of police in Oceanside.

Rosenblum also hammered away at what he said was an inept investigation by Cypress police, saying “when the police don’t do their job, people like me can’t properly defend.”

He listed more than 100 items he contended should cause jurors reasonable doubt about his client’s guilt, including no crime scene diagrams, no photographs of police vehicles, no patrol car videos, officers tossing notes for their reports of the incident, and radio broadcasts his client was going to shoot at the truck.

Officers “knew she wasn’t pointing at them, otherwise they’d have shot back,” he said.

The prosecutor countered the defense was throwing up all it had to confuse jurors, hoping something would stick.

In every case mistakes and omissions are present because “people aren’t perfect,” Olivieri said. McCoy began referring to shooting at the truck about 30 minutes into the standoff, she told jurors.

Source: www.ocregister.com

BY LARRY WELBORN AND VIK JOLLY / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

 

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