Last week, I felt like Alice in the looking glass when an activist who protested against the death of Tyisha Miller was released from a 30 day stint in Riverside County jail and former sergeant Gregory Preece was given awards by the police department and California assemblyman Rod Pacheco.

Dressed in orange coveralls, and wearing a beard, Frank Esposito sat in the jury box, with the other inmates and listened to presiding judge Robert G. Spitzer offer him the option of either being released from the jail in Banning to work off the remainder of his sentence in the County Sheriff

Thanks for sharing your well voiced piece. Could you elaborate on Pacheco's background and his involvement in the award... I know the name, but can't place it....

Yeah, a lot of us here realize we're looking through the looking glass... with struggle, hopefully we can become optometrists to one oblivious charge at a time...

Pacheco is a republican assemblyman from the Inland Empire. He is currently serving his last term b/c of term limits, then might throw his hat in the 2002 District Atty's race in Riverside County, against the 20 year incumbant Grover Trask. The awards were citations and plaques awarded by him to officers involved in the city council shooting in Oct. 6, 1998. Preece was one of the officers. The awards were originally supposed to be issued several years ago, but Pacheco was tipped by the police dept. that they were stashed in a closet somewhere, supposedly b/c Preece's name was on one of them. Most people don't have a problem with the officers who got the award, but Preece is a racist cop with a history of bad behavior during his relatively short stint in the RPD, before his firing in July 1999. When he got his two awards, and was slapped on the back in congratulation by new police chief Russ Leach and Pacheco, and got the loudest cheers and applause by the 200+ officers in the room, many people felt slapped by that. And that's natural for them and myself to feel like that, because of all the vile things Preece said and did.

Pacheco has a rep. of supporting cops, good and bad. He was an ex-prosecutor, b/f running for assemblyman.