Press Enterprise Editorial
10:00 PM PDT on Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Crime Bluster

Political posturing and half-baked threats from Riverside County's district attorney do nothing to protect public safety in Riverside -- and in fact, could disrupt the city's policing strategy and community relations. District Attorney Rod Pacheco needs to end the self-serving rhetorical outbursts and let Riverside police manage the city's law enforcement.

The district attorney erupted after revelations last month that the city police had yet to make an arrest under an anti-gang injunction, five months after a judge approved it. The district attorney and Riverside police filed the injunction against 114 East Side Riva gang members in August, with great publicity. The injunction bars gang members from a variety of activities, such as being out after 10 p.m., wearing gang apparel and associating with other gang members.

Pacheco last week threatened to intervene in Riverside to enforce the injunction, and accused the city police of doing a poor job: "Though we have deferred in the past to the local agency, we will defer no longer. I will not sit idly by while East Side Riva gang members terrorize the community."

Well. If empty bombast could protect the public, Riverside residents would have no worries. The district attorney managed to insult Riverside police, civic leaders and residents while proposing potentially disruptive outside interference in local law enforcement. Riverside police bear responsibility for patrolling the city's streets. The district attorney's role is prosecution.

But the realities of policing Riverside are more complex than the district attorney wants to admit -- and include more crucial public concerns than how the injunction affects the DA's political image. Contrary to Pacheco's claims, the city's handling of the injunction makes practical sense and the strategy appears to be working.

In fact, crime in the east side of the city has declined over the past year, which hardly suggests Riverside police have been slacking off. Police Chief Russ Leach says the city actually has bigger law enforcement issues in other parts of Riverside at the moment. The injunction remains useful, however, for heading off Eastside gang flare-ups in the future.

Riverside's practice of enforcing the injunction strategically -- and often in connection with more dangerous crime -- is entirely sensible. Targeting every violation of the injunction with big sweeps would yield little practical result. A violation is a misdemeanor, but people convicted of misdemeanors in Riverside County rarely see much, if any, jail time because of insufficient jail capacity. Sheriff Stan Sniff says the county cannot guarantee jail space for gang members who merely violate an injunction.

Riverside would accomplish little by clogging the already overburdened county justice system with misdemeanor arrests unlikely to result in serious punishment. Pursuing more severe crimes can actually take criminals off the streets. And the injunction eases prosecutors' task of proving gang ties to such crimes, which can add years to prison sentences.

But Pacheco's failure to understand the nuances of Riverside policing is far less dangerous than his threat to start enforcing the injunction on his own. The district attorney could easily upset the careful balance of police-community relations. The Riverside Police Department has worked hard to build public trust in the aftermath of the 1998 shooting of Tyisha Miller. The 19-year-old's death at the hands of police inflamed tensions with the city's minority communities -- including those in the Eastside -- and brought years of oversight from the state attorney general.

Interference from an outside agency, unfamiliar with neighborhood circumstances, could undercut the community support police need to be effective. Setting back years of progress in building better relations would be a poor trade-off for a few misdemeanor citations to make the DA's record look better.

The Riverside police have a firsthand grasp of the city's law enforcement needs and know best how to meet those challenges. Riverside does not need a shadow police chief -- especially one who fails to see the difference between political grandstanding and practical policing.